I'm taking my ball and going home

What stands in the way of the 9/11 commission reforms? Pride:

...at the last minute, two powerful House chairmen - James Sensenbrenner of Judiciary and Duncan Hunter of Armed Services - balked, the former insisting on drastic and unrelated measures against unlawful immigrants and the latter reflecting claims by the civilian Pentagon and the military that the new system would obscure battlefield intelligence, although specific language in the bill addressed just that.

Rather than risk the small partisan embarrassment of passing the reforms without a majority of Republican members, Hastert scrapped the whole thing.

The president says he was pushing hard for enactment, but was he? Bush has wobbled all around on the matter from the first, initially opposing the 9/11 commission, then seemingly indifferent to its recommendations, only later embracing them and then without obvious enthusiasm.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was for a spell in open opposition - the Pentagon controls 80 percent of intelligence spending and doesn't want to let go - and at the end did or did not work to undermine the compromise behind the scenes, depending upon just whose paranoia you choose to credit.

Bush's own support is doubted in some quarters as more for show than for keeps, and indeed Rumsfeld has said that the late opposition from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff - a rare open dissent from the commander-in-chief's professed position - was expressed with the prior knowledge of the White House. Was Bush's endorsement done with a wink?

It gets better:

Defying President Bush, two influential Republican House chairmen - who led opposition dooming legislation based on the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations - said they won't change their minds without Senate concessions.

"It'll be tougher now because the well got even more poisoned by the senators and their supporters thoroughly criticizing Duncan Hunter and myself by name on the talking head shows yesterday," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday.

So the reforms that a majority of members of the House and the 9/11 commission agree would help prevent another major terrorist attack are held up because the GOP is to proud to let a bill pass that doesn't involve a majority of Republicans. Further, the two men who are most responsible for the hold up are going to dig in even harder because someone told the American people that they were responsible for holding up reform to prevent another major terrorist attack. Who's living in a pre 9/11 world now, fellows?

And these guys are in charge for at least two more years?