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Wash Po having trouble keeping it straight again

Last week, the WaPo was editorializing against the gun mfr's liability bill:

"The measure's extreme nature was highlighted last week when Rep. Chris Van Hollen
(D-Md.) offered an amendment in committee to clarify as exempt from protection the situation in which "the seller knows that the name of the [gun buyer] appears" on the government's gang and terrorist watch list "and the person subsequently used the [gun] in the commission of a crime." Judiciary Committee Republicans voted the amendment down ... [claiming it was vague or redundant]"

This week the WaPo runs a major story on terrorism matters, answering the Bush Admin. claims to have made 400 terrorism arrests (not just watch list, arrests) with an argument that nearly nine-tenths of the defendants did not even have an allegation of a link to a terrorist group. It adds, with regard the watch list, that " large number of people appear to have been swept into U.S. counterterrorism investigations by chance -- through anonymous tips, suspicious circumstances or bad luck -- and have remained classified as terrorism defendants years after being cleared of connections to extremist groups." It quotes an official as saying "A person could not have been put on this list if there was not a concern about national security, at least initially," he said. "Are all these people an ongoing threat presently? Arguably not."

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