Suppose Bush had known 18 Muslim immigrants planned to hijack four planes on Sept. 11. What could he have done? Throw Arabs out of the country? Put them in preventive detention? Order airport security to take an extra little peek at swarthy men boarding planes?

Liberals won't let us do that now!

In a girly-girl, eye-poking attack, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., has demanded an investigation into "what the White House knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it and, most importantly, what was done about it." The more urgent question is: What do the Democrats know now?

Memo to Democrats: Muslim men are plotting another terrorist attack on America right now! That's what you know. What are you doing about it? Directing airport security to keep searching white paraplegics at the airport?

Gephardt's genius plan for assuring air safety after Sept. 11 was to federalize airport security. But he refused to allow airport security to scrutinize passengers who look like the last two dozen terrorists to attack civilian aircraft. That's what he did when he knew about it.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has thundered that it is "imperative" that Bush tell the Senate "what actions were taken in response" to any advance warning of a terrorist attack.

In response to the next terrorist attack, here are the actions Leahy took: He hauled the attorney general before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying he was "very" angry at Ashcroft. Leahy was "very" angry not because Ashcroft was failing to do enough to prevent the next terrorist attack. Just the opposite: Ashcroft was doing too much, thereby threatening the civil liberties of Arabs.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., reacted to Sept. 11 by babbling about having the proper "balance" between fighting terrorism and protecting constitutional rights. If the Democrats had shown half as much indignation about terrorists as they did about Ashcroft, their convictions might rate more with real Americans.

Hilariously, Democrats are especially indignant that nothing was done in response to the memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix who had noticed a lot of Arabs enrolled in American flight schools. As The New York Times reported (in the always-crucial penultimate paragraph): "FBI officials said there was reluctance at the time to mount such a major review because of a concern that the bureau would be criticized for ethnic profiling of foreigners."

Let's see, who might have criticized the FBI for ethnic profiling?

For Ashcroft's evident interest in immigrants of Mideastern descent rather than, say, currency traders after Sept. 11, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, railed that the detention of Arabs "smacks of racial profiling." Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., hyperventilated that the Bush administration was "literally dismantling justice."

David Bonior, the second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, leapt to action after the Sept. 11 attack by repeatedly denouncing nonexistent racial profiling at the airports. He even dragged the FAA administrator and eight FAA assistants to Detroit to listen to constituents who claimed they had been profiled at airports. Continued...