...While the Anti-Arab Discrimination Committee[sic] said Romney's remarks were "dangerous" and asked him to retract them, Romney told reporters that he stood by his comments.

"When it comes to protecting our citizens, there is no place for political correctness," Romney said at an unrelated press conference. "We should be doing more in terms of intelligence and counterterrorism in the state to protect ourselves from terrorists. We spend a lot of our resources thinking about response, but response can't protect us. We have to be able to prevent attacks."

Romney said that if U.S. intelligence officials have information that a person is "preaching messages of hate and terror," then there should be sufficient grounds to conduct surveillance on them in their places of worship.

"Surely, we have to recognize that some of this has gone on in mosques in the past," Romney said. "Most mosques are teaching doctrines of love and consideration, but there have been places of extremism where certain teachers have been identified as having been involved in or led to terrorist attacks. Let's not pretend that's not the case."...

...[President of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Massachusetts Merrie] Najimy, who is Lebanese, said she does not think American society has "come a long way" since the attacks of four years ago...