contrapositive

Political Security It wasn't the first time I'd seen a pack of machine gun-toting New York City police officers pile out of a van. It wasn't even the first time in the recent months.

But watching, late this afternoon, as those officers ducked out of their unmarked vehicle and took up positions around a midtown building, bomb-sniffing dogs in tow, I found myself livid all over again about House Speaker Dennis Hastert's refusal to allow the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission the time it says it needs to finish its work.

The commission may not be perfect, but it's our last, best chance to get answers to important questions about the events of 9/11.

And walking through midtown on a day like today, it's clear that those questions remain a matter of life and death.

But homeland security be damned, right? Politics is politics.

And yet, one wonders if the calculus would be any different if the lives and deaths at stake were more likely to be those of Hastert's rural western-Illinois constituents...