Updated

As you know, Louis Freeh, Janet Reno and John Ashcroft testified before the 9/11 Commission (search) Tuesday and it was painful. I get paid to watch this stuff and I thought about quitting.

According to these people, nobody did anything wrong. If they had more money, they would have done better. And they themselves are the knights of the roundtable. Gag.

Let's take them one by one.

Louis Freeh (search) presided over a system that made it almost impossible for his own agents to report Al Qaeda information to Washington headquarters. O'Neill in New York, Riley in Minneapolis and Williams in Phoenix all said the FBI's bumbling bureaucracy prevented them from stopping the terrorists. Yet Freeh said the problem was lack of money. He also said there was no rivalry with the CIA. Incredible. The guy lives in the land of Oz.

Janet Reno (search) continues to insist that everything was swell on her watch as Clinton's attorney general. Reno, of course, presided over the growth of Al Qaeda cells in this country, the unbelievable looting of the robber baron CEOs and the corruption of the 1996 presidential election, where foreigners illegally sent money to the DNC and President Clinton. Reno did little about any of those things and actually impeded the campaign finance investigation. But listening to her, you would think she was Elliott Ness.

John Ashcroft (search) was completely clueless before Sept. 11, failing to engage Al Qaeda on any level; too busy throwing sheets over naked statues. Now to be fair, as Talking Points mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Ashcroft has made a comeback of sorts. The nation's security today is light years better than it was pre-Sept. 11.

None of these people admitted any major mistakes. None of them appeared emotionally engaged in an attack that killed over 3,000 people, mostly Americans.

It's the same old, same old: Washington bureaucrats failing to take responsibility for their own failings.

And that's the Memo.

The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day

Due to the shortened show, there was no Most Ridiculous Item of the Day for Tuesday, April 13.