For about five weeks after 9/11, media people who had spent the previous decade jabbering about Monica Lewinsky and “Hillary Care” and O.J. Simpson and Pets.com and the Macarena and Krispy Kreme suddenly decided “everything changed” when some lousy terrorists did what they did and killed some 3,000 people who just happened to be flying on passenger planes or working in office buildings on that day. Well, no. MORE »

* Ralph Reed is happy to grip and grin with a blatant adultering cousin-fucker, as long as it brings in contributions. [Talk To Action] MORE »

The DoD is taking extreme security precautions for Sunday’s tasteful Clint Black jamboree commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks–to the point of erecting restraining fences all along the two-mile path of the march from the Pentagon to the National Mall: MORE »

Loudon County contractor John A. Andrews II laid to rest a controversy over the authenticity of an American flag he purchased on eBay said to have been flown atop a construction crane at the Pentagon in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Andrews had two Boy Scouts and a Loudon County Boy Scouts commissioner cut the stars out of the flag and burn it in two metal drums filled with burning oak logs–a method, the AP reports, that “followed one of several methods outlined in Scout protocol.” MORE »

• Administration officials privately acknowledge trouble with Iraq. Bush: “The recent violence in Iraq is a grim reminder of the brutal enemies we face in the war on terror.” Retired General McCaffrey: “It’s a race against time because by the end of this coming summer we can no longer sustain the presence we have now. . . The American people are walking away from this war.” [WP, USAT]
• Bush expresses sympathy for Sheehan: “It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place.” White House does not publicly dispute Sheehan’s characterization of her original meeting with Bush. [WP, NYT]
• Abramoff is indicted on fraud charges by federal grand jury in Florida. Rothenberg: “It absolutely could play into the Democrats’ national message. They are going to look for any and all ways to paint the Republicans as ethically challenged.” [WSJ, NYT]
• NARAL will change its controversial anti-Roberts advertisement. [WP, NYT]
• FBI prepares for a possible domestic terrorist attack around anniversary of 9/11; sources propose a plot that involves exploding fuel tankers. DHS flack: “The information is uncorroborated, and the source is of questionable reliability.” [NYT]

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Remember Rudy Giuliani’s bravura propaganda turn at last year’s GOP convention? When he delivered the plainly apocryphal tale about turning to Bernie Kerik amid the smoke and rubble of the WTC attacks and blurting, “Bernie, thank God George Bush is our president”? MORE »