We will never politicize homeland security. . . . Psyche!

Tom Ridge's self-righteous proclamation becomes ever more hypocritical. It was revealed some months ago that he had regular meeting with Bush on the campaign trail. Now he's pretty much come clean-- that odd coincidence of the inverse relationship between Bush's approval ratings and the terror alerts was no coincidence:

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "

Is this the best we can hope for? That the GOP will only self-destruct when forced to cover their own asses by implicating others? Funny how Tom Ridge only comes clean when he's safely out of politics, though. Any Republican officials out there care to develop a conscience while it still makes a damn bit of difference?