CHENEY IN CHARGE

The report issued by the Sept. 11 commission includes a couple of details that could be cause for concern, including whether Dick Cheney was making presidential decisions of his own accord.

According to The New York Times, Cheney ordered the shooting down of any airplane that posed a threat from the White House bunker, prompting Bush's chief of staff Joshua Bolten to suggest calling Bush to confirm that order:

Neither Mr. Bolten, nor I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, nor Lynne V. Cheney, his wife, all of whom were in the bunker, said they recalled a phone call minutes earlier that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush said they had had authorizing the drastic action.

Did Cheney lie to the commission?

Also, if you haven't seen the video of Resident Bush sitting at the Florida elementary school, you might want to check it out. Stunned, he doesn't move for a good five minutes.

At 9:03 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, these two starkly contrasting photos were taken in Florida and in New York. (The Center for Cooperative Research has one of the most comprehensive and well-documented accounts of Bush's actions that day.)

I wonder what he was thinking, with such a blank look on his face. Perhaps he was mulling the plot intricacies of "The Pet Goat."

"Anyway, it was an interesting day," Bush said later, amid joking in response to a question about his thought process in those moments.