The Rant

By George F. Will Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A27 It took exactly one month -- until the president's prime-time news conference of Oct. 11, 2001 -- to refute the notion that Sept. 11 "changed everything." When a reporter said, "You haven't called for any sacrifices from the American people," he replied, "Well, you know, I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before." And that was before the sacrificing became really hellacious with the requirement that passengers remove their shoes at security checkpoints. The idea that Hurricane Katrina would change the only thing that matters -- thinking -- perished even more quickly, at about the time Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a suitable symbol of congressional narcissism, dramatized the severity of the tragedy by taking a television interviewer on a helicopter flight over her destroyed beach house. "Washington...

Assigning blame Charles Krauthammer (archive) September 9, 2005 WASHINGTON -- In less enlightened times, there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews). A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush. This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph. There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period. The problem with the evacuation of New Orleans is not that National Guardsmen in Iraq could not get to New Orleans, but that National Gu...

Mark Steyn Terror war all but forgotten on home front BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Sept. 11, 2005 -- the fourth anniversary of the start of the war. That is, if you believe it's a ''war'' A lot of people didn't want to, even in those first days. About a week after, one of my local radio stations held a fund-raiser and this is how their trailer for it opened. Cue the terminal-illness-movie-of-the-week soupy piano. Then: ''After the tragic events of Sept. 11 . . .'' And, by the time I'd heard it half-a-dozen times, I retuned the dial and never listened to the station again. It wasn't a "tragic event" or even one of a series of unfortunate events. It was an "attack," an "act of war." I sat at the lunch counter with a guy who'd tuned out the same station on the grounds that "I never heard my grampa talk about 'the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.' " But, consciously or otherwise, a serious effo...