It turns out, contrary to the claims of Democrats in Congress, that they did know the same things about Osama bin Laden’s threats as President Bush, at least as early as July, 2001, according to a TV interview of Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) back then. This prompted Ari Fleischer, the President’s press secretary, to wonder aloud, “And that raises the question, what did the Democrats in Congress know. And why weren’t they talking to each other?”

And CNN reported, one week after the terrorist attacks, that the FBI knew as far back as 1995 that plans existed for the hijacking of planes and slamming them into buildings. Potential targets included the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, as well as buildings in San Francisco, Chicago and New York City. According to the report, that information was given to the FBI but, “it’s not clear what was done with it.” So the Clinton administration knew about this 7 years ago and quite possibly sat on it. I found the link to that article on the Drudge Report. So let’s see if the news media covers that angle with as much vigor as the attacks on Bush. (Hint: Hold not thy breath.)

Of course, don’t expect Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) to consider either of these tidbits in her public outrage. She stands by her statement that the Bush administration was involved in some sort of “conspiracy of silence” about terrorist threats. (I would have to assume that Sen. Feinstein and President Clinton were involved in that “conspiracy” as well, no?) And do you really think Ms. McKinney would have smiled with joy if we had done some serious racial profiling at airports and emptied all tall office buildings in order to prevent bin Laden’s guided missles from taking lives? Given the vague nature of what was known, and even if the exact dates, targets and MO were known, those types of measures would’ve been required to prevent the attacks. Cynthia doesn’t like profiling now, and she wouldn’t have approved of it then, but she sure does know how to may hay out of hindsight.

Selective memory is beginning to take hold on the Democrats.

The President knew about an attack on Washington and New York by Osama bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001! A State Department spokesman for the Clinton administration said…excuse me? Oh, you thought I meant the current brouhaha about President Bush getting reports in August, 2001. Well, that’s not hard to understand, given the short term memory of the press and the politicians, but consider this: In the archives of the Drudge Report, Matt relayed reports from TIME Magazine and the New York Times about similar threats from the Al Qaeda honcho at least as far back as December, 1998. But does anyone fault Bill Clinton personally for the US embassy bombings that occurred later? No, and for good reason. I’m quite sure that many terrorist attacks have been thwarted in the past by our intelligence folks that we never hear about, but sooner or later something’s bound to break through the barrier.

If reports of bin Laden attacks against Washington and New York go back at least 3 years prior to September 11th, you should blame Clinton as well. If you insist on blaming President Bush, then it’s a “both or neither” scenario. Hindsight doesn’t count.

Should there be investigations into how our intelligence failed and find out how to make it better? Definitely! But keep an eye out for who blames what on whom, and it’ll be easy to spot the political partisans from the fair-minded observers. My prediction is that the press and the Democrats (read: liberal elite) will be the ones with selective memory.

Larry Elder did his homework and answers some questions about the Second Amendment: “What did the founding fathers mean by ‘militia’?” and “If the phrase ‘the people’ doesn’t mean each individual person in the 2nd Amendment, what happens to that phrase in the rest of the Constitution?” and “What would James Madison have said?”

The National Center for Policy Analysis has a list of 15 Myths About Gun Control. (OK, it’s a 10-year-old policy report, but I just bumped into it.) It really deconstructs the claims of the left about how gun control supposedly “works”. I’d consider it required reading before entering the debate.

Consider this quote: “Does this money, when it goes to the families of unwed mothers on welfare, tell another woman, ‘Go have babies yourselves, and we will give your family money?’ This is ridiculous.”

Yet that is what has happened. In far too many instances, unwed mothers on welfare had more babies knowing that they could get more money, disregarding the children. And we thought that this made sense. Could there not have been a better way to provide for needy families than by the welfare system? Hard to know, since liberals treat welfare as some sacred cow.

I must admit, that quote is a bit fabricated. The actual quote, from Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, is:

“Does this money, when it goes to the families of the suicide bombers, tell another boy or girl, ‘Go kill yourselves, and we will give your family money?’ This is ridiculous.”

Wonder how many liberals recognize a connection between Saudi government money and suicide bombers, but fail to see the same connection between U.S. government money and welfare babies. You get more of what what you pay for. It’s as simple as that.

Consider this interesting take on ‘pedophile priests’. David Kupelian tells us that the vast majority of the cases are not against pre-pubescent boys, but of older teenagers (which I alluded to earlier). Further, between 90 and 98 percent of those cases are against males. If the priests involved had the same heterosexual / homosexual mix as in the general population, wouldn’t you expect that the ratio would be the exact opposite of what it is? Shouldn’t we be hearing about 98% of the victims being girls?

Dave also makes a great case for the Boy Scouts in all of this. Aren’t they in hot water over trying to prevent the very thing priests are being accused of? And do liberals arguing against both really not see the contradiction?

Hmmm, maybe if those priest hold out long enough, they’ll be retroactively exhonorated. Dr. Laura Schlessinger points out that junk science and liberals with an agenda have fired the first major salvo in the new front on the culture war–accepting pedophilia as normal and, in fact, good for children.

When I used to debate on a local computer bulletin board about how “pushing the envelope” meant that after homosexuality was considered normal then pedophilia was next, I was taken to task for using extreme examples to try to make a point. That would never happen. Folks, when it comes to “liberal values” (oxymoron, I know), there is no extreme, except the eradication of values (read: “tolerance”).

Sure enough, a study comes out to prove (again) that homosexuality & pedophilia are linked. Here’s an article describing “Child Molestation and the Homosexual Movement”, a study by Steve Baldwin. Bet this gets short shrift from the mainstream press, and they still refuse to acknowledge the homosexual angle in the priest pedophilia issue.

Consider this: Yesterday the Pope said that priests should stay celibate, in response to those calling for the removal of that requirement. The AP story on this said that the Pope “didn’t refer to sex offenders or pedophilia”, but they neglected to point out that he didn’t mention homosexuality either.

And that’s what I’m noticing in the press when it comes to this issue. Regardless of age, and they’re not all under 10 years old mind you, those abused by priests have been all male. The issues, as framed by the media and liberal pundits, are sexual abuse and pedophilia, but they barely, if ever (and I’ve yet to hear them say it myself) mention the homosexual aspect of it, and yet it’s just as much an issue in these cases as the other two.

Bernie Goldberg called it right; it’s bias. It’s bias both in the choice of what news to present, and, as in this case, how the news is presented. The liberal media dare not ruffle the feathers of those they agree with, so out the window goes objectivity and full disclosure. It’s no longer a journalist’s duty to simply say what is, now they are trying to effect change by distorting what is, presenting an incomplete or slanted picture.

Journalists journal. Or at least that’s what their supposed to do.

A while back, I “considered” creating an “essay” that I would add to on a semi-irregular basis, much like Great Quotes from the Internet. But then I bumped into the “blogging” phenomenon and saw how similiar it was to what I had planned. And Blogger.com makes it so simple.

So, without further “ado”, I present to you “Considerettes”; conservative commentary served up in bite-sized bits.