night, it has now become a national conversation. isl suzanne malveaux is live at the white house. looks like the president, shall we say, elevated the debate? he certainly waded into the debate here, john and kiran. i have to tell you for weeks i ve been asking robert gibbs pushing him on this matter whether or not the white house had an opinion on it. they said it was a local matter. now white house aides are stelg telling us that it is an issue of timing, that the president originally wanted to weigh in on the controversy but they wanted to clear it first with the local zoning board and they wanted the right moment. there was the dinner recognizing the beginning of the holy month ramadan on friday. that s when the president did make it clear that he believed it was appropriate that muslims had every right to build this mosque near ground zero. then there was a lot of criticism that came from those comments after he made them. it was less than 24 hours he told our own ed