Bureaucracy: The Leprosy of Government

From USA Today:

Bush defended himself and his predecessor Wednesday. "I told the commissioners right here in the Oval Office that had we had any inkling whatsoever that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America," he said. "And I'm confident President Clinton would have done the same thing — any president would have."

You mean instead of going on vacation for six weeks, with George Tenet and Dick Cheney and everyone else on vacation just before the worst attack in American history?

Clinton, BTW, took almost the least amount of vacation time ever from the top post, while Mr. Bush takes more time off than any other president in modern history. In fact, about 40% of his days in office have actually been spent out of office, and that isn't counting campaigning which seems to consume all the rest of his time.

The proposal for a director of national intelligence was criticized by Tom Ridge, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. "We don't need more bureaucracy. We need more analysts, we need more Arabic-speaking analysts, and we need a lot more human intelligence," Ridge said on Fox News Channel.

One might ask - and quite legitimately - why the fuck we need Tom Ridge.

Thanks to Lambert at Corrente for the link to the article.