WASHINGTON TIMES
by Jennifer Harper INSIDE THE BELTWAY
EXPLOSIVE NEWS
A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still
haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel
disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to
know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the
destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.
"In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the
material must have been artificially, exploded outwards," says
Richard
Gage, a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects
& Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
Mr. Gage, who is a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to
persuade more than 1,000 of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal
inquiry.
"The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of
Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and
fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction. We are
therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials," Mr. Gage
adds.
The technical issues surrounding the collapse of the towers has prompted
years of debate, rebuttal and ridicule.
He is particularly disturbed by Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper, which was
not hit by an aircraft, yet came down in "pure free-fall acceleration." He also
says that more than 100 first-responders reported explosions and flashes as the
towers were falling and cited evidence of "multi-ton steel sections ejected
laterally 600 ft. at 60 mph" and the "mid-air pulverization of 90,000 tons of
concrete & metal decking."
There is also evidence of "advanced explosive nano-thermitic composite
material found in the World Trade Center dust," Mr. Gage says. The group's
petition at www. ae911truth.org is already on its way to members of Congress.
"Government officials will be notified that 'Misprision of Treason,' U.S.
Code 18 (Sec. 2382), is a serious federal offense, which requires those with
evidence of treason to act," Mr. Gage says. "The implications are enormous and
may have profound impact on the forthcoming
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
trial."
Stay tuned for more in this space.
JUST SO YOU KNOW
It's done broke. But given enough duct tape, Gorilla Glue and a few safety
pins, we'll get by, perhaps.
Only 5 percent of Americans say our system of government is "broken and
cannot be fixed," according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey of 1,023
adults released Sunday. The vast majority - 81 percent - say, yes, it's broken
"but can be fixed." An optimistic 14 percent insist the government "isn't
broken."
Some don't buy any of it, though.
"With metronomic regularity, we go through these moments in Washington where
we complain about the government being broken. These moments have one thing in
common: The left is having trouble enacting its agenda,"
George
Will told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. "No one, when
George W.
Bush had trouble reforming Social Security, said, 'Oh, that's terrible
- the government's broken.' "
THINK ABOUT IT
"For years, we have had information stands about the war commanders. But the
supreme commander was missing. We need to remember the man who led our country
in the war."
-
Vladimir Makarov, chief of Moscow's advertising and
information committee, on his decision to decorate the city with posters of
Josef Stalin on May 9, which Russia marks as the 65th
anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II.
WHAT WORKS
Political operatives should remember that people still crave viable, timely
content and friendly community that has not been sullied by technology's bells
and whistles. Witness conservative goddess
Michelle Malkin, who
has sold Hotair.com - a spirited political blog she founded in 2006 - to Salem
Communications, which syndicates such talk-radio heavyweights as
Bill
Bennett,
Hugh Hewitt and
Michael
Medved, among other things.
Mrs. Malkin has emerged from her experience with insight about communications
in the often chaotic media/political/ideological realm. For one thing, the
"clean, simple, user-friendly format" has stayed the same, she says in a
farewell message. And the answer to attracting a loyal audience did not lie in a
burdensome multiplatform extravaganza, either.
"To survive, we needed to adapt, respond to market forces, and adjust the
business focus to meet readers' revealed preferences. Like the teleprompter
reader-in-chief always says, 'Change is never easy.' I made the decision to
redirect our resources away from original video reluctantly," Mrs. Malkin says.
"But we looked at the metrics, we looked at the bottom line, and we listened
to you. You wanted a 24/7, up-to-the-minute, one-stop, all-purpose conservative
blog and aggregator. You wanted an Internet water cooler to hang out with your
friends - a place where you could find all the political coverage you needed,
but also a place where you could get comic relief, humpbot videos, the latest
'Duuudes' and 'Hmmms' and 'Heart-aches,' and off-beat stories of the day."
