The media reported that President Barack Obama was not notified of the latest terrorist attack on our country - a nearly successful attempt to blow up an airliner carrying 289 passengers and crew on Christmas Day - until about an hour after it occurred.

When he was told, he responded "keep me in the loop" or words to that effect and went back to his vacation in Hawaii. There he played a round of golf at the Marine base near his bungalow, and presumably played footsies with the fiddler crabs on the beach as an aircraft was burning.

Fortunately for Obama, but far more fortunate for the nearly 300 people on the plane, the burning was limited to a portion of the cabin wall and the lower extremities of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the latest Al Qaeda stooge who wants to meet the non-existent 72 virgins. Alert passengers then jumped the aforementioned stooge and body slammed him into submission. They should have fed him a pork sandwich while they were at it, but the airline probably didn't have any.

Contrast the media outrage over President Bush gently extracting himself from a classroom full of little school children where he was engaged in a reading exercise when the terrorist attacks of 9-11 erupted. President Bush got the word, nodded quietly, finished his reading and then left as though all was normal, not once frightening the children or letting them know that something was terribly wrong. This all took less than 15 minutes.

But his administration was already fully engaged, moving the vice president to a secure location, and executing a plan to keep Bush mobile on Air Force One. There he was in constant communication with every essential federal agency until the attack was over and the Secret Service was convinced it was safe for Bush to return to Washington. Nonetheless, Bush was pilloried by the communist media and left wing yakkers for not responding quickly or effectively.

I guess from their point of view it would have been better if he had run from the classroom, scaring the hell out of a bunch of little kids and forever searing fear into their brain cells.

But do we hear the media saying one word about the lack of response by Obama? Nope! Did we get a live broadcast of the President making a reassuring statement to the American public. Nope! Did we see him hunkered down with senior advisers, military and intelligence analysts, or State Department honchos? Nope! We got network and cable news reporters doing stand ups from the beach miles away from the Obama vacation compound.

How did Obama and his advisers know that instead of just one bomber on one plane, there weren't a bunch of bombers on a bunch of planes intent on making Christmas a day of horror for future generations of Americans?

Answer: they didn't, I hope. But instead of swinging into action against the terrorists, the Obama Administration went on a media tear. They are calling it a legal matter for the police to handle, and trying to make the case that the latest bomber was just another rogue, instead of an Al Qaeda operative with links to terrorists in Yemen and access to PETN - a highly effective explosive.

Oh sure, a rogue who knew exactly what seat would give him the best chance of doing the most damage to the plane. A rogue who used the same type of explosive that the functionally illiterate "shoe bomber" Richard Reid used. PETN, which is about two-thirds more powerful than TNT ounce for ounce, has been around since before World War I, but you can't exactly purchase it over the counter.

PETN's many explosive uses include land mines and in detonation cord which burns so quickly that if you wrap it tightly in a confined area it ignites explosively. I was trained in its use in the Marines and it was a favorite in Vietnam for quickly clearing jungle landing zones. Several yards of "det cord" could be wrapped tightly around a tree trunk and detonated, resulting in the tree coming down in one shot.

It has more than sufficient explosive power to bring down a passenger plane, especially when strategically placed, which is exactly what the alleged bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to do.

Yet, instead of a direct communication to the American public, letting us know what was going on and putting the official stamp on the bomber's resume, we get administration apologists on FOX News Sunday and other talk shows doing the "all is well" routine yet again.

For instance, Congressman Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, actually had the temerity to tell host Chris Wallace that terrorists "Have to be right once. We have to be right 100 percent of the time." Only a year ago, when that same line was uttered by members of the Bush Administration, Dems mocked them. Now they are embracing it. Hypocrites.

I hope that as President Obama and his family are enjoying the Hawaiian vacation, that will last until January 4, he is reflecting on what is going on around the globe - objectively for a change.

If so, he is learning that the reason America has enemies quite often has nothing to do with who is in charge in America as much as it is a matter that America exists. Whether it is the global warming charade, the War on Terror, the balance of trade deficit, reemerged communism or third world dictators and war lords, many people want America to fall because we offer a viable alternative to what they offer.

Throughout the first year of his reign Obama has shown himself to be an obsequious appeaser, which our enemies see as weakness, which itself presented opportunities for them to attack us - three times since Inauguration Day - and undermine freedom and democracy. It should be obvious from the near tragedy on Christmas Day, in addition to the Ft. Hood, Texas and the Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office shootings, and the ineffective response to them, that the Obama approach is the wrong approach and only invites more attacks.

That a democratic republic such as we have works, is obvious in the fact that Obama is president. That it will continue to work will be equally obvious when his party gets slammed in the November elections.