is from October 17, 2001, in reaction to a story in that day's New York Times. http://nytimes.com/2001/10/17/national/17WEAP.html?ex=1176523200&en=3af1fa36862e8fe9&ei=5070

Daschle Letter Called First Use of Anthrax as Weapon
By STEPHEN ENGELBERG and JUDITH MILLER
The discovery of what government officials say is high-grade anthrax in a letter mailed to Congress is the most worrisome development yet in a series of bioterrorist attacks that has already rattled the nation. . . .
. . . Grinding the material to a small, uniform size without damaging a significant portion of the germs is not easily done, former American and Soviet germ scientists say. The discovery of expertly processed anthrax, one former scientist said, casts serious doubt on the theory advanced by some investigators that the germ attacks were the work of a lone amateur with a smattering of knowledge about biology. . . .
. . . The attempted use of anthrax against a United States senator takes President Bush into a new, uncharted realm, particularly if the attack is ever linked to a specific nation. . . .
- - By STEPHEN ENGELBERG and JUDITH MILLER

Sullivan reacted to that New York Times article by blogging :

. . . My hopes yesterday that this was a minor attack seem absurdly naïve in retrospect. So they are warning us and testing us. At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter. . . .
- - Andrew Sullivan

Sullivan was speaking not just for himself but for many other people that day, who were all thinking something like, "Even the liberal New York Times says that neither a solitary Unabomber type, nor even Al Qaeda, could have done this, and the Times implies that Saddam is the logical suspect." And that was the national mood, the national mindset, the national maelstrom into which ABC dropped their "scoop" nine days later, on October 26, 2001.

That context, already half-forgotten, is why this is a big deal. It was a context in which prudence should have demanded extreme and extraordinary degrees of fact-checking before releasing such a "scoop", but prudence was on leave.

drove this "commonsensical" conservative Republican to write a new book : http://leadershipnow.com/leadershop/9781416532477excerpt.html

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. . .
. . . Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world -- and I like it here."

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.
- - Lee Iacocca

I get it, that most people contain at least a little authoritarianism, and many people yearn for leadership and for top-down consensus more than they yearn for egalitarian consensus.

I get it, that a few, but too many, people yearn so strongly for leadership that they want war and crisis, because they know that war and crisis moves the general populace towards more authoritarianism (actually, it's a tendency of most organizations, not just nations, to withdraw blindly into a turtle shell during those crises when vision is most vital).

What I don't get is how any people yearn so strongly for leadership that they actually convince themselves that emperor George Bush is wearing clothes.

http://americancivicliteracy.org/report/major_findings.html

America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions. There is a trivial difference between college seniors and their freshmen counterparts regarding knowledge of America's heritage. Seniors scored just 1.5 percent higher on average than freshmen, and at many schools, seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy. Overall, college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading scale.

On the other hand, you could say that our high schools are doing an outstanding job. They're producing high school graduates who have 98.5% of a college graduate's understanding of civics!

Perhaps some of you liberal elitist snobs are thanking God and Mom and Dad that you didn't go to Podunk U.? Read it and weep :

http://americancivicliteracy.org/report/major_findings-2.html
Prestige doesn't pay off. An Ivy League education contributes nothing to a student's civic learning. Indeed, there is no relationship between the cost of attending college and the mastery of America's history, politics, and economy. Moreover, of the 50 schools surveyed, including Brown, Georgetown, and Yale, 16 showed negative learning—in other words, at 16 schools seniors scored lower than freshmen, suggesting that they will graduate with even less civic knowledge than what little they had as freshmen.

In 1957, when the Soviets launched Sputnik, the USA got scared and decided to beef up our math and science education. What's it gonna take before we get scared and realize that we need to beef up our civics education?

http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjQ4M2Y0ZjgxNzBlMDI2ODRhY2M3NzY0Mjk5N2RlNDQ=

Boy, it sure would be easier to defend this White House's innocence if they would quit acting so guilty.
- - David Frum