In the politest possible way, Joe Biden tells David Gregory on "Meet the Press" that Dick Cheney is a lying bag of dog doo in his attacks on how the Obama administration is handling terrorism. Cheney appeared this morning on "This Week", clearly laying the groundwork to blame the Obama administration in the case of another terrorist attack. Why do I get the feeling he's actually rooting for one?

DAVID GREGORY: Let me ask you about some of the criticism that's been leveled at this Administration by former Vice President Dick Cheney. He has argued that this Administration has failed to treat the fight against terrorists as war. He cites the decision related to Khalid Sheik Muhammad to offer him a civilian trail as one example. Giving the Christmas Day Bomber the privileges of the American criminal justice system is another example. The decision to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison. What do you say?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Let me choose my words carefully here. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinion. He's not entitled to rewrite history. He's not entitled to his own facts. The Christmas Day Bomber was treated the exact way that he suggested that the Shoe Bomber was treated. Absolutely the same way. Under the Bush Administration there were three trials in military courts. Two of those people are now walking the streets. They are free.

There were 300 trials of so-called terrorists and those who engage in terror against the United States of America who are in federal prison and have not seen the light of day. Prosecuted under the last Administration. Dick Cheney's a fine fellow, but he is not entitled to rewrite history without it being challenged. I don't know where he has been. Where was he the last four years of the last Administration?

DAVID GREGORY: What about the general proposition that the President according to former Vice President Cheney doesn't consider America to be at war and is essentially soft on terrorism? What do you say about that?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I don't think the Vice-- the Former Vice President Dick Cheney listens. The President of the United States said in the State of the Union, "We're at war with Al Qaeda." He stated this-- and by the way, we're pursuing that war with a vigor like it's never been seen before. We've eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken out 100 of their associates. We are making, we've sent them underground. They are in fact not able to do anything remotely like they were in the past. They are on the run. I don't know where Dick Cheney has been. Look, it's one thing, again, to-- to criticize. It's another thing to sort of rewrite history. What is he talking about?

DAVID GREGORY: You have often said, when I've asked you and others, that you never impugn a man's motives. But why do you think Dick Cheney is speaking out and being so critical of the President and the Administration so publicly?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I don't know. I-- I-- I'm not gonna guess about his motive. All I know is he's factually, substantively wrong. On the major criticisms he is asserting. Why he's insisting on that. He either is misinformed or he is misinforming. But the facts are that his assertions are not accurate.

DAVID GREGORY: You would not be this outspoken or critical when you're out of office. Is that fair to say?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Well, I-- I-- I would hope I-- look, it's one thing to be outspoken. It's another thing to be outspoken in a way that misrepresents the facts. And I-- I guess-- again, I-- it's almost like Dick is trying to rewrite history. I can understand where the-- why that would be-- you know, an impulse. And maybe he isn't-- literally, I'm not being facetious. Maybe he's not fully informed of what's going on. I mean, the progress we have made. There has never been as much emphasis and resources brought against Al Qaeda. The success rate exceeds anything that occurred in the last Administration. And they did their best. I'm not-- I'm not impugning their effort. It's simply not true that the President of the United States is not prosecuting the war against Al Qaeda with a vigor that's never been seen before. It's real. It's deep. It's successful.

Susan Collins came out and attacked Obama like she was possessed by Lynn Cheney over the handling of the underwear bomber because he was treated by our laws.

"Because of that blindness, this administration cannot see a foreign terrorist even when he stands right in front of them, fresh from an attempt to blow a plane out of the sky on Christmas Day," she said.

"There's no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab's interrogation. There's no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal."

Most conservatives are taking this point of view and are suddenly saying that even their hero, George W. Bush, made mistakes handling terrorists. Of course they were never heard from when Bush was actually in charge, but the media ignore this fact.

Eric Holder, the AG shot down all republican arguments today about their complaints.

Attorney General Eric Holder today basically accused Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and 10 Republican senators of playing politics with national security by criticizing the administration's decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court.

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(h/t Media Matters)

Conservative teabaggers couldn't contain themselves, as I predicted, unfortunately, because I figured they would complain that Obama acted quickly in a time of a real catastrophe. They are lapping up the Haitian disaster not because they are worried about the thousands of people that have been killed and are suffering there as we speak, but lapping it up to see how they can harm the president. Really, when will the media start treating them exactly like the disgusting lunatics they really are?

Think Progress:

Limbaugh said the White House thinks it can use the disaster to boost its credibility with the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community” in the U.S. Defending his comments, Limbaugh attacked Obama for speaking publicly about Haiti sooner than he had the failed Christmas Day terror attack. Today on his radio show, Fox News host Glenn Beck jumped on the bandwagon:

BECK: I also believe this is dividing the nation…to where the nation sees him react so rapidly on Haiti and yet he couldn’t react rapidly on Afghanistan. He couldn’t react rapidly on Ft. Hood. He couldn’t react rapidly on our own airplanes with an underwear bomber…it doesn’t make sense. [...] Three different events and Haiti is the only one. I think personally that it deepens he divide to see him react this rapidly to Haiti.

The teabagging talkers are all lying about how America feels President Obama is handling terrorism. His poll numbers are actually improving, but that doesn't matter.

I challenge Howard Kurtz to stop playing the false equivalency games and be very succinct in his critiques of the right wing media's performance during the earthquake in Haiti on his Reliable Sources Sunday show. If he needs help and he can seearch C&L or any other credible blog for some facts and he can check out Jamison Foser's rundown: The right-wing media react to Haiti

WTF?:

Congressman Gresham Barrett (R-SC) has announced his intention to reintroduce legislation that would prohibit “the admission of aliens from countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism as well as Yemen to the United States.” The Stop Terrorist Entry Program (STEP) Act, first introduced in 2003, also would have required all persons from these countries on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange and tourist visas to leave the United States within 60 days, despite their legal status in the country. Residents and nationals of Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen would be affected.

The bill makes an exception only in the cases of individuals who are seeking political or religious asylum, or who have immediate emergency medical needs.

Congressman Barrett said his bill came in response to the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas-day attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit. “While President Obama may have declared an end to the War on Terror, it is clear our enemies did not get the message. Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation and the Administration has failed to adapt its national security and immigration policies to counter the renewed resolve of those who seek to harm our citizens.”

The American Army major and Nigerian alleged to have committed those attacks would not have been affected by the STEP Act.

I swear, Republicans cannot think their way out of a paper bag. This would have done NOTHING to prevent the two attacks in the last year. In fact, I would hazard a guess that it might actually radicalize even MORE Muslims with its naked bigotry.

And while we're at it, let's examine that list of targeted countries. Remind me again, how many terror attacks have originated from Cuba? Iran? And why isn't Saudi Arabia on that list?

The National Iranian-American Council has launched a campaign against Barrett's actions. It states:

If passed, the bill would deport all Iranians on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange visas, and tourist visas from the United States within 60 days. It would also make it illegal for Iranians to travel to the United States, though some exceptions may be made for medical emergencies and political or religious asylum after "extensive federal screening." [..]

At a time of increasing repression in Iran, this proposal will impose even greater burdens on Iranians seeking refuge abroad. Iranian Americans must unite to tell Congressman Barrett that this legislation is offensive to American principles, harmful to US interests and discriminates against Iranians and Iranian Americans.

I can't possibly emphasize enough what a tenuous place Iranians find themselves right now. I've spoken to many Iranian friends who feel strongly that the government is in a state of flux and could quite possibly radically change (and secularize). This is not the time to play cowboy and give the Iranians a reason to rally around us as an enemy.

But of course, when has facts and reality ever actually played into the kabuki theatre of partisan politics?

Well, the system did work, sort of. But not much good to question someone when they get off the plane if the person in question is going to blow up the plane:

Reporting from Washington - U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday.

The new information shows that border enforcement officials discovered the suspected extremist ties involving the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in a database despite intelligence failures that have been criticized by President Obama.

"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official said. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy -- that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."

If the intelligence had been detected sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab at the airport in Amsterdam, according to senior law enforcement officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

"They could have made the decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane," the senior law enforcement official said.

But an administration official said late Wednesday that the information would not have resulted in further scrutiny before the suspect departed. Abdulmutallab was in a database containing half a million names of people with suspected extremist links but who are not considered threats. Therefore, border security officials would have sought only to question him upon arrival in the U.S., the administration official said.

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President Obama held a brief presser with the media and explained what happened on Christmas.

President Barack Obama asserted on Tuesday that the U.S. government had enough information to foil the attempted bombing on a Christmas Day airline flight but intelligence agencies "failed to connect the dots." Obama called that unacceptable and said, "I will not tolerate it."

"Our intelligence community failed to connect those dots which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list," he said. "This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already have."

Obama said that it was clear the government knew that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had traveled to Yemen and joined with extremists there.

"It now turns out that our intelligence community knew of other red flags that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula sought to strike not only American targets in Yemen, but the United States itself. And we had information that this group was working with an individual ... who we now know was in fact the individual involved in the Christmas attack," he said.

As for the prison for terror suspects in Cuba, he said, "Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison," Obama said. Guantanamo, he said, "was an explicit rationale for the formation of al-Qaida" operating in Yemen.

He kept it short and to the point and didn't take any questions from the media.

Washington's (and the complicit media) obsession with the Christmas Day underpants bomber and the need to not only find blame, but to demand reactions to "make us safe" made me realize that we collectively have become the five year old who needs his parents to scare away the monsters from under his bed at night. How else can you explain the fear behind the Fox poll showing a majority of respondees wanting to waterboard Abdulmutallab?

It's ludicrous to think that there is any system that could offer us *perfect* security. Forcing us to stay seated for the last hour of a flight? What's to say the next bombing attempt won't be during take-off, or even in a crowded terminal prior to boarding? Richard Reed forced us to remove our shoes; will we now have to strip naked, thanks to Abdulmutallab? And how do we enforce this from foreign airports, since Abdulmutallab boarded a flight in Amsterdam? Or maybe it won't be airline-related at all. Lex at Scholars & Rogues:

What i don’t understand is the idea that Americans are entitled to perfect security. Here we are (and for the record, all the troops stationed everywhere in the world are you and i) crashing around the globe and blowing shit up, yet those of us in God’s country should face no threat. And for the most part, we don’t face any threat. Nobody’s bombed any of the weddings i’ve been to over the last few years. I’ve never thought, “I don’t think i should go downtown, because somebody might suicide bomb where i shop.” I’m convinced that the Canadians will launch their plan for world domination any day, by invading the social and evolutionary cul-de-sac of America where i live. But as of yet i have not had to contend with RCAF close air support in the neighborhood.

Still here we are, gripped by fear and willing to submit to whatever the organs say is necessary to protect us.[..]

I’m not being glib nor am i underplaying all those “very real dangers” that we face in the post-9/11 world. I’m saying that if we don’t want to live with the dangers then we might want to stop provoking them. I’m saying that there is no such thing as perfect safety and security; you are going to die someday and you probably won’t go to heaven. And i’m saying that our government consistently overplays any actual threats (and their probability) in order to control us through fear.

The intent of terrorism is, by definition, to terrorize. If we have reached the point where we can no longer have anything on our laps or use the restroom during the last hour of a flight, then the terrorists have succeeded in doing just what they had hoped.

I still have to--on occasion--chase out the scary monsters from under my little one's bed. I do this by mocking them: I've told her that they can't stand the smell of my perfume, because they know I am a ferociously protective mama and much scarier than any of them could hope to be. So I spray a little bit of my cologne around her room and she feels better, knowing that familiar scent will keep the monsters away. I acknowledge the fear, but minimize its importance. I would much rather not have my government be the parent who focuses on the scary monster so much that it becomes bigger and scarier than anything that could fight it.

Is it so difficult to not be treated like a five year old?

Is anyone actually surprised that this happens? I'm not. I assure you that it's not all that difficult to get supposedly "confidential" information if you know the right people, and it's inevitable that the information will be abused.

Which is why we should think about privacy issues before we institute these programs:

The White House nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration gave Congress misleading information about incidents in which he inappropriately accessed a federal database, possibly in violation of privacy laws, documents obtained by The Washington Post show.

The disclosure comes as pressure builds from Democrats on Capitol Hill for quick January confirmation of Erroll Southers, whose nomination has been held up by GOP opponents. In the aftermath of an attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day, calls have intensified for lawmakers to install permanent leadership at the TSA, a critical agency in enforcing airline security.

Southers, a former FBI agent, has described inconsistencies in his accounts to Congress as "inadvertent" and the result of poor memory of an incident that dates back 20 years. He said in a Nov. 20 letter to key senators obtained by The Post that he had accepted full responsibility long ago for a "grave error in judgment" in accessing confidential criminal records about his then-estranged wife's new boyfriend.

And by the way, as we are rushing toward installing full-body scanners at airports, we might want to keep this in mind the next time Michael Chertoff appears on the teevee:

What he has made little mention of is that the Chertoff Group, his security consulting agency, includes a client that manufactures the machines. Chertoff disclosed the relationship on a CNN program Wednesday, in response to a question.

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Well, we already knew that torture apologist Andrea Tantaros is a good fit at Fox News, since she is eager to transmit the right-wing talking point du jour -- no matter how scummy or stupid -- with gusto.

She did it again yesterday on The O'Reilly Factor, debating with Alan Colmes over the political fallout from the failed bombing of Flight 253 on Christmas Day. Tantaros trotted out every cheap rhetorical trick in the book -- suggesting that the right-wing attacks on Obama were a matter of "checking the baggage" of the administration and bringing up Van Jones, then comparing Obama to Tiger Woods -- in order to promote the right's favorite new talking point: Obama and the Democrats aren't serious about combating terrorism.

Fortunately, Colmes delivered a righteous smackdown of this kind of cheap smear:

Tantaros: But the point now is that we cannot discount this, we cannot use terms like 'manmade disaster' and go after -- it seems like this administration is more interested in going after Republicans, and going after the previous administration, than going after our real enemies. When you say, 'Don't blame Barack Obama' --

Colmes: That is an outrageous smear, an outrageous smear against an administration that's trying to do the right thing, that cares about this country. The implication that this administration or Democrats don't love America, don't want to protect America, don't want to protect the American people -- that's an outrageous smear against Democrats.

Tantaros: Alan, I don't blame just Barack Obama, like you said, Alan. I blame you, I blame Nancy Pelosi, and I blame the left and the liberals who are trying to weaken our country.

I really do wonder when the Fox talkers are finally going to bring up the issue of how the Bush administration responded in 2001 to a nearly identical attack. My guess is never.

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Sen. Jim DeMint went on Fox News' Your World yesterday to explain why he's been holding up the appointment of a new Transportation Safety Administration chief's appointment: Namely, he's more concerned about the potential unionization of the TSA than he is about the agency's ability to function properly.

Of course, he claims that keeping the unions out is essential to making them able to function well:

DeMint: It makes absolutely no sense to submit security in our airports and the passengers here in this country to collective bargaining with unions.

Of course, that would preclude such things as air-traffic controllers unions too -- but then, DeMint is probably fine with that. Because unions are a greater threat than terrorists.

McClatchy has the full story:

Who's running the TSA? No one, thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint

WASHINGTON -- An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.

The post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has held up President Barack Obama's nominee in opposition to the prospect of TSA workers joining a labor union.

... Two Senate committees have given Southers their bipartisan blessing. An acting administrator is in place pending his confirmation.

Marshall McClain, the president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association, said that the Senate should have acted sooner to confirm Southers.

"Friday's terrorist attack on U.S. aviation makes it all the more imperative that there be no further delays in filling this crucial position," he said.

DeMint said in a statement that the attempted attack "is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA." He wants Southers to clarify his stand on unionizing the TSA, a shift that Democrats support.

Without collective bargaining, DeMint said, the TSA has "flexibility to make real-time decisions that allowed it to quickly improve security measures in response to this attempted attack."

If organized labor got involved, DeMint said, union bosses would have the power "to veto or delay future security improvements at our airports."

ThinkProgress has more.