If you watch 60 Minutes, you may recall a segment where a disgruntled Turkish-American FBI translator named Sibel Edmonds was fired after complaining that a supervisor ordered work slow-downs so the department could request a bigger budget.
According to this story, Ms. Edmonds has additional concerns with the Department of Justice:

A former FBI translator said Wednesday that the bureau had “real, specific” information relating to the Sept. 11 attacks before they happened. Sibel Edmonds worked for the agency working from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002.
Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities. Edmonds said she could not comment in detail because she has been under a Justice Department gag order since October 2002.
Edmonds has testified before the Sept. 11 commission, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.

Hmmm. Sounds like an interesting story. I wonder why I haven’t heard about this from the mainstream press.

Richard Clarke, former National Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, testifying today:

I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/11 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurance. I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11. To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask — once all the facts are out — for your understanding and for your forgiveness.

This is a rare moment when any senior Bush administration official has apologized, much less admit error for mistkaes. It’s always someone else’s fault.
No wonder the infallible are going after him so hard.

[H]ad my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September the 11th, we would have acted.
George W. Bush
March 23, 2004

Really? It’s reassuring to know that had the Bush White House received Mohammed Atta and company’s flight plans in advance, they would have been competent enough to act on it. That kind of leadership must be why he is the most powerful man in the world.
The point is that America spends billions of dollars to anticipate and respond to such incidents. The system failed spectacularly, and these silly statements are merely efforts to obfuscate the real issues surrounding this collapse.
On Monday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan had this to say:

Q Scott, this morning, you said the President didn’t recall the conversation in the Situation Room on September 12th that Mr. Clarke said he had, where the President asked Dick Clarke three times to pursue links between 9/11 and Iraq. And you said he doesn’t — I had two questions. So did the President tell you or somebody in the White House over the weekend, he doesn’t recall?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I talked to him. He doesn’t recall that conversation or meeting.
Q And that was — he said it this morning, or this weekend? When did he say that?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, this weekend and this morning, yes.
Q Okay. And secondly, Clarke now says that he has three eyewitnesses, and he repeated it again this morning, and he named them — to the conversation.
MR. McCLELLAN: Let’s just step backwards — regardless, regardless, put that aside. There’s no record of the President being in the Situation Room on that day that it was alleged to have happened, on the day of September the 12th. When the President is in the Situation Room, we keep track of that.

As Jon Stewart pointed out on last night’s Daily Show, if 9/11 didn’t warrant meeting in the Situation Room, exactly what does? What kind of “situation” are we saving it for?

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rules that South Carolina’s “Choose Life” plate is unconstitutional.
TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt offers a compromise which would likely dry up the demand for these “Choose Life” plates: add the phrase “End the Death Penalty.”
I could go for that.

Here’s a a weird crime weapon. Maybe we need federal bowling ball control:

A 69-year-old man tried to kill three law enforcement officers by dropping a 16-pound bowling ball at them from the terrace of his 17th-floor apartment, police officials said yesterday.
The ball narrowly missed the officers, and the district attorney in Brooklyn charged the man, Douglas Stiff of East New York, with attempted murder, attempted assault, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon.
. . .
Two police officers and a parole officer, on their way to track down a parole violator, diverted their mission and responded to the call. As they walked around the side of the building, a bowling ball thudded to the ground a few feet away, the police said.
The officers looked up and saw a man on a terrace on the 17th floor, law enforcement officials said. When they went up and knocked on Mr. Stiff’s door, he answered it, wearing a pair of binoculars around his neck, law enforcement officials said.
The officers found a second bowling ball on the terrace, and arrested Mr. Stiff.
. . .
The practice of throwing things at police officers from rooftops and other high places is somewhat common in New York, enough so that the targets have a name for it. They call it airmail. Even so, a bowling ball is an unusual piece of correspondence, the police said.