ABCGate

I am with James Lileks. I don't much care that the Clinton administration paid little attention to the jihadist threat. Not many people were paying attention back then, myself included. As Lileks, puts it: "Just so you know: 9/11 reset the clock for me. All hands went to midnight. I’m interested in what people did after that date..." By this standard, the Democratic Party ca. 2006 is an abysmal failure: opposed to the NSA surveillance program, opposed to detaining al Qaeda combatants at Guantanamo and opposed to trying them in military tribunals, opposed to the war in Iraq, etc., etc.

But I can't get too worked up about the Dems trying to keep ABC from showing their TV movie docudrama, "The Path to 9/11." It's a TV show. It's not supposed to be historically accurate and, frankly, very few people are going to watch it -- I'll bet if it gets a 15 rating they'll say it's a "hit," but that's a lot less than any Tony Danza comedy's worst night. The Dems just look silly protesting it, and we should let them look silly and laugh at them.

But I do think it is humorous to consider a parallel. Here, ABC is going to broadcast a movie that has political implications two months before an important election and Democrats have threatened their broadcast license. In 2004, CBS broadcast a "news" story -- the story about President Bush's military service that led to Rathergate -- that had political implications two months before an important election. Can you imagine what the MSM would have done if Republicans had threatened CBS' broadcast license?