The morning-after pill case can keep rolling.  Springfield-based U.S. Judge Jeanne Scott refused to throw it out, per an AP story, “Federal Judge Rejects Dismissal,” etc. that Chi Trib helpfully has on its web site but that appears not to have run in hard copy.  That’s a pity, since it’s a hot issue in some circles.

In the suit seven pharmacists challenge Gov Blago’s edict that they have to sell the pill, to which they object on religious grounds, claiming violation of religious freedom.  Five of the seven lost their jobs at Walgreen stores when they refused to sign a promise to sell it.

The opinion’s a 28–pager.  The state defendants said the ruling had nothing to do with religious belief but was solely to provide contraception to all.

It took Boston College that long to find a black teacher for this spot reserved for a black. Either BC is too fussy or the pickin’s are slim.

The Instapundit man, Glenn Reynolds, and Twin Cities’ James Lilek both note that if Clinton et al. reacted poorly to Islamic threat, so did most people; so give them slack.  What’s happened since 9/11 is what separates men and women from boys and girls is this line of reasoning.  But, says Power Line,

there is a huge problem with this magnanimous approach. The Democrats are, today, trying to dismantle our efforts to fight the terrorists. They are trying to block the NSA from intercepting terrorists’ communications; they are trying to force our armed forces to treat captured terrorists with the same deference they would accord to a member of our own services; and they are trying to block the confirmation of John Bolton as U.N Ambassador so that he can be replaced with someone who will offer meaningless platitudes instead of aggressive advocacy of American interests.

What the Democrats are trying to do is return to the hunker-down and hope for the best days of the Clinton administration. They are trying to sell the American people on the absurd proposition that the terrorist threat we face today is mostly George Bush’s fault, and that if we only abandon his tough approach to national security, everything will be fine.

That is why I think it is critically important that the American people not be deceived about how we got to the pass we arrived at on September 11, 2001; and that is why, I think, the Democrats are so hysterical about The Path to 9/11.

They give every appearance, in other words, of being up to their old tricks.

Beats me how Sun-Timesman Elfman found “The Path to 9/11” boring. As the longtime friend asked the Democrat turned Republican, how could he? The thing kept this viewer glued to seat except for peeing time. All that ice water, you know. In fact, I’d say the National Association of TV Critics (NATC) should strip him of his credentials. He either has no concept of what’s boring or wanted to keep people from watching this because it makes Clinton and his people look bad, which it does.

Reader M. tells all:

I just phoned the local ABC-TV affiliate in Chicago (after e-mailing to the network), and the lovely African-American lady logging the phone calls said it was “refreshing” to get ONE who wanted the “Path to 9/11” to be shown!

I asked what the complaint was by the majority, and she said “They called it a pack of lies.” She said she was going to watch it, and said she wanted to tell them, “Just change the channel if you don’t like it!”

If Disney censors its property, for the Party NOT in power, it will show how dangerous the Libs will be the next time around if they get power.

Most Chicagoans are apparently sitting back thinking the network won’t buckle, but I’m wondering. How disappointing for the producers if the guys in suits do a hatchet job on it. The new version: Bill Clinton ends up in mortal combat with Osama and actually SLAYS him!  A truly happy ending.

Grrrrrrrr.

Sun-Times critic Elfman “once sat in a car forever waiting for [his] mom to come out of a grocery store,” but that was nothing compared to the five hours he presumably spent watching “The Path to 9/11,” set to run Sunday and Monday on Channel 7 in Chicago and nationwide on ABC. 

So what’s the problem?  If it’s so dull, why did 25,000 people write to compain?  That many people could be wrong.  Consider how many vote Democrat in Cook County alone.  But wrong enough to demand changes in or pulling of the show, which hasn’t aired yet?  The word must be out, not that it’s dull but that it’s very threatening to Democrat self-esteem.  Can Elfman feel threatened also?  To how many shows has he given zero stars?  Is this his all-time worst docudrama?  It’s tied anyhow, at least.

He’s on record before this as excusing pre-9/11 officials as “flawed people committing errors”?  Or is this his maiden foray into geopolitics?  Who does he think he is, Brad Pitt?  He did read a recent New Yorker article, anyhow.  Give him credit for researching the matter to that extent.  However, he might go beyond this effort, assuming he has time before his next deadline, and look at Power Line’s listing of what happened before 9/11 to deliver a sense of urgency even to flawed people.

It’s a partial listing of terrorist events as gotten from Wikipedia:

There is no doubt about the fact that the terrorist menace grew and became increasingly obvious during the Clinton administration. To note just a few highlights:

* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.

That’s for starters.  Thirty-four incidents later, the Power Line list closes:

* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.

Between 1993 and 2000, everyone who was paying any attention knew that the threat from Islamic terrorism was grave and getting worse. The catastrophic losses that occurred on Septimeber 11, 2001, could just as easily have happened in 1993, when the first plot to destroy the World Trade Center was carried off successfully, but the terrorists had miscalculated the effect of their explosives, or in 1995, when the plot to destroy eleven American airplanes in flight was thwarted by counter-intelligence work in the Philippines. What did the Clinton administration do in response to this grave threat? Essentially nothing. Worse, Clinton tried to sweep the problem under the rug, lest it disrupt the surface calm and prosperity for which he was eager to claim credit.

However Path to 9/11 portrays the Clinton administration, it can be no worse than the reality.

Hand-held cameras aside (Elfman objects to their use in the film), can this be what makes Elfman a defender of the flawed?

Chi Trib’s Michael Tackett’s main interest is how Bush is spinning things politically. He could not care less about actually defending us against terror attacks. He gets page one billing, “Behind disclosures, GOP political agenda,” so as to make his point, much as Carey Orr, Joseph Parrish, and other cartoonists had page one years ago under Col. McCormick. He’s today’s equivalent of a page-one political cartoon. Call it cartooning while on head trip.

Combine him with Mark Silva, whose story of yesterday’s late web edition is today’s hard-copy page one next to Tackett, verbatim. Look down and there it is. For Silva, and they are on the same page figuratively too, the emphasis is on torture. This is his main interest, with defense against terrorism a distant second. They are both perfect Democrats. In a Republican paper!

Some of Tackett:

“Surprising concessions” by Bush “about secret CIA prisons” are in his lede, as in the Silva head. Bush’s party is “limping” and “burdened.” Bush “still has a sense of the bold,” but “the public now listens with a far more skeptical ear” than when he “grabbed a bullhorn at ground zero in New York” and rallied the nation. He remains “unapologetic in acknowledging that his administration had gone to extraordinary–some would say extralegal–lengths in the name of defending us.” (Italics added: get the “some,” which is standard for “he did it.”)

And he used such delicate language–“alternative set of procedures”–to describe decidedly indelicate techniques in forcing information out of suspects.

Such as what? “Such” means “very” here. Indelicate? Here lies irony, even sarcasm. Cartoon analysis.

“He did not identify” nations where we may continue to hold prisoners. No? Now why not?

He attempted to shift the focus [Trib won’t let him] from the fighting in Iraq, where there is little hope of any dramatic turnaround in the short term, to various faces of evil [Italics added: This on a news page? What next?] who finally will be put on trial for their roles in terrorist attacks against the U.S.

What’s more, “He gave those villains names and faces.” Those villains. Colorful, eh? Italics not necessary.

He’s going for legislation to facilitate his pursuit of evil faces and villains, “almost ensuring that those who opposed such tribunals could be branded as weak on terrorism.” Which they certainly are not, right?

With the upcoming [sic] commemorations of the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation will be reliving that harrowing day–and the days following when Bush enjoyed the highest standing of his presidency. Having actual suspects held to account for their alleged roles in those attacks ensures in the short run that terrorism stays prominent in the news cycle.

Not if Chi Trib has anything to say about it, with Tackett leading the charge on p-1 with such (very) devastating analysis. “Niceties of the U.S. legal system” are not to obstruct punishment of “those people.” Yes, niceties. I said it’s a cartoon, but can’t he be a little more subtle?

It’s coming:

Cue the videotape of the suspect being walked before the cameras and open coverage of the case that the government has against him.

Over our dead front-page news analyses!

It apparently suits the White House now to acknowledge the existence of the CIA prisons. Before, the mere mention of the subject engendered a fury of recrimination from the administration.

Those furious recriminations get to you after a while. The strategy?

The White House, and by extension Republicans running for Congress in November, will talk about these matters, but on their terms [fancy that!], hoping to force Democrats into the kind of defensive crouch that has kept them in the minority.

Oh? That’s why? Tackett has analyzed the defensive crouch before, has he? Page one analysis, so that we could see clearly that the voting majority has not trusted them in these matters? When was that?

But Democrats signaled that they have seen this movie before [this “Farenheit 9/11” for Bushies] and are prepared.

“I understand his desire to talk about the war on terror and not Iraq,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Etc. Read it yourself. It’s a sort of love-letter snippet from one of Chi Trib Wash bureau’s sources with whom they feel really comfortable. Italics not added.