From the Sept. 11, 2001 NBC “Today Show” coverage of the attacks.

Katie Couric, earlier in the coverage:

We have some video tape, I understand, that we’re going to show you from the West Bank. These are Palestinian celebrations in the wake of Tuesday’s terror attacks in the United States. Pa–apparently Palestinians took to the street chanting, ‘God is great.’ People were throwing candy, distributing candy to passers-by. The US government obviously has become increasing–increasingly unpopular, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because Palestinians feel that the US government has sided with Israel.

Katie Couric, later in the coverage:

Tom, this is an upsetting wire that just came across the transom from the West Bank. It says, “Thousands of Palestinians celebrated Tuesday’s terrorist attack in the United States, chanting ‘God is great’ and distributing candy to passers-by, even as their leader, Yasser Arafat, said he was horrified. The US government has become increasingly unpopular in the West Bank, in Gaza Strip in the past year of Israeli-Palestenian fighting with many Palestinians accusing Washington of siding with Israel.”

Looks like Couric was reading from a wire report, presumably ad libbing around it in the first case and reading word-for-word in the second.  Probably was wise to call it an “upsetting wire.”  Still, it’s quite a statement about big media that they fingered “the U.S. government” early on for blame.

An announcement from one of the best causes around — America Supports You:

Remember 9/11. Participate in the America Supports You Freedom Walk

The seventh anniversary of 9/11 is fast approaching. How will you commemorate this day? Here’s one way: Join thousands of Americans in the annual America Supports You (ASY) Freedom Walk.

Created in 2005, the walk is an occasion to reflect on the events and meaning of September 11th—to commemorate the lives lost, to honor our troops and their families, and to renew our commitment to freedom and the values of our country. Here are the details.

National Walk

The 4th annual national ASY Freedom Walk will begin at 9:00 AM EST on Sunday, September 7, 2008, at the Women’s Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, and will finish at the Pentagon South Parking lot. The total distance is about one mile, after which the Grammy-winning Oak Ridge Boys will perform a tribute. Click here to sign-up now.

Local Walk

If you have friends or family who live outside the DC area, you can encourage them to participate in one of the more than 230 local walks taking place in communities across the country, beginning the week of September 11th. Click here to find a local walk.

Instapundit alerts us to this Politico article: “Anti-war leaders stymied, frustrated.”

In the article, Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, says:

“Right now, we could write the story of this Congress as ‘Profiles in Cowardice.’ There’s a great deal of frustration with the Democrats in the Congress – a sense almost of betrayal.”

Rabbi Lerner seems to have felt a great deal of frustration for some time with the American government overall, since, you know, it may possibly have kinda sorta perhaps maybe who knows just try to disprove it caused 9/11.

From the Feb. 6 Forward:

Rabbi Michael Lerner, the longtime activist and editor of Tikkun magazine, has published an essay saying he is open to the possibility that the American government may have been behind the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“I would not be surprised to learn that some branch of our government conspired either actively to promote or passively to allow the attack on 9/11,” Lerner wrote in an essay published in the new book, “9/11 and American Empire: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out.” Lerner added that he would also not be surprised if it turned out that the attacks were not the result of a government conspiracy.

Hopefully by now the Rabbi worked all that out in his head.  Now he’s just mad at Democrats.

Tough talk against organized labor today from a rare source — a top Bush Administration official.

Check out the testimony Kip Hawley, assistant Secetary for the Transportation Security Administration (Department of Homeland Security), just gave to a subcommittee of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee.

There will be a serious negative security impact if the labor provision adopted by the Committee, or the alternative pending amendment, becomes law.  Both proposals would dismantle the innovative human capital authorities given to TSA by the Congress after 9/11 and replace it with a 1970’s-era personnel system that is unsuited to TSA’s real-time security mission. …

When the safety of the public is on the line, taking an old, rejected solution and putting a new cover on it and then making it law without full examination can have alarming unintended consequences in the real world.   In a bill that uses the name of the 9/11 Commission, security must come first …

Today, if a TSO is not making the grade, that individual can be taken off the checkpoint immediately.

Under collective bargaining, that person could be screening passengers for months before the process finally runs its course. …

Taking our TSO’s, who today flex and adjust to meet real-time needs, and force-fitting them into a creaky old system, would have far-reaching negative security consequences.

’70s-era … creaky … old — umistakable language about the pre-9/11 security world.

HBO’s new documentary “The Journalist and The Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl” has some amazing video of both Pearl and Omar Sheikh before Pearl’s early 2002 murder in Pakistan.  But most gripping for me is the opening scene, where 9/11 is relived.  The program shows video of people jumping from the World Trade Center — I believe this is the widest audience that footage has ever reached.

Radio talk show Michael Savage had another classic angry take the other day on the Arab world:

They gave us the zero. We were using clumsy Roman numerals before them. They gave us the zero. Name one invention they’ve given us since the zero. OK, they gave us the IED.

Not sure I put it that way, but I might point out that the zero has its own troubling history with America.

There’s the Japanese Kamikaze Zero plane that wrecked America’s Navy during World War II.

And the more recent Ground Zero from the current war on terror.

Photo and caption from today’s Washington Times:

“Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist photographs President George W. Bush participating in a Wreath Laying at the Pentagon commemorating the Fifth Anniversary of September 11, 2001.”

Hotair.com has video of CNN on Sept. 11 the morning before the planes hit the World Trace Center. This report was given moments before the breaking news:

“I’m Amanda Lang at the New York Stock Exchange where we could be in for a solid open to the trading day … One stock that could come under pressure is Boeing.”

CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein interviews Dan Coleman, the FBI’s former top expert on  Osama Bin Laden:

…he is certain that Washington remains bin Laden’s unfinished business. Coleman can see the next hijacked plane swooping down over the the Mall’s ribbon of green grass and roaring over the tourists’ heads, straight into the Capitol. Airliners rest virtually unguarded while they are refueled on airport tarmacs, he points out. The Transportation Worker Identification Credential is still far off. Terrorists can easily beat X-ray scanners and explosives detectors, he maintains, especially in Europe. And it would not be too difficult for al Qaeda operatives, using false identities, to charter a single large airplane, take over the crew and fly it into the Capitol Building loaded with fuel. “They have to up the ante, make it worth their while” to risk another attack in the United States, Coleman said. “They have to kill a whole lot of people.”

Bill Clinton this week, discussing the ABC film “The Path to 9/11“:

“I think they ought to tell the truth, particularly if they’re going to claim it’s based on the 9/11 commission’s report.”

Hillary Clinton this week, asked by ABC News “Nightline’s” Cynthia McFadden “Are you running for president in 2008?”:

“I am not thinking about that at all. I know everybody else is and lots of other people are saying, “Oh, she is, she is,” but the truth is, I don’t think about it.”

Hillary doesn’t even think about it? Come now, Hillary, are you taking your husband’s advice, to tell the truth?