Let’s examine last week’s five bombshells and look for the pattern:

1) According to Bob Woodward’s new book, Condi Rice was warned two months before 9/11 of an impending al-Qaeda attack but brushed off the CIA report.

2) George W. Bush’s White House had been warned for years that the insurgency was on the rise in Iraq but failed to alter its failing strategy.

3) The recently released National Intelligence Estimate says that the Iraq war has increased the number of terrorists and made Americans less safe.

4) Republican Congressman Mark Foley, who was co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, sent sexual emails to underage congressional pages.

5) House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was warned a year ago that Mark Foley had inappropriately contacted a 16-year-old page, did not act until last Friday because the email messages his office saw were not sufficiently “explicit.”

It is now painfully clear that the very Republicans whose job it is to protect us and our children from danger have failed repeatedly, because they’re too busy protecting their own political power. The evidence is as overwhelming and repugnant as Mark Foley’s emails.