NOT ALLOWED TO RESPOND

Don't put up someone I am not allowed to respond to without questioning the authenticity of their grief.

--Ann Coulter

*****

U.S. intelligence officials are upset over the possibility that Congress will open its public investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with testimony from victims' families.

..."Who's running this investigation, Oprah?" complains one exasperated government official, who spoke on condition that he not be named. "The goal is, 'Let's see who we can get to cry on camera.' The next day they will have witnesses from U.S. intelligence come in to explain why all these people are widows and orphans."...

--USA Today, August 14, 2002

In fact, they found some family members - and I'm going to say this - they found some family members who seemed to have more concern over who the president of this country is than over the sanctity of the loss of their own family members. It is beyond the pale that this could happen. It is beyond the pale, yet people cooperate with it, and so much more has been learned about this since.

...it turns out that a lot of these 9-11 family members are part of a political organization that is funded in part by Teresa Heinz-Kerry! Well, this stuff is incestuous! You know, these people are poisoned. They have literally been poisoned by their hate. They have been poisoned by their rage. It is unbelievable, the depths to which they will sink.

--Rush Limbaugh, March 9, 2004

The 9/11 Widows: Americans are beginning to tire of them.

...A fair number of the Americans not working in the media may, on the other hand, by now be experiencing Jersey Girls Fatigue...

Nor can anyone miss, by now, the darker side of this spectacle of the widows, awash in their sense of victims' entitlement, as they press ahead with ever more strident claims about the way the government failed them. Or how profoundly different all this is from the way in which citizens in other times and places reacted to national tragedy....

--Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2004

Yet again, Chris Matthews was interviewing widow/aspiring politician Kristen Breitweiser just now. Why don't they just hire her as an NBC News Consultant? Just pay the girl for her round-the-clock, 3,000-murdered-on-Bush's-watch talk. Matthews actually asked blandly for a response on the great Dorothy Rabinowitz slam today, and Breitweiser actually laughed dismissively (just like an aspiring politician) as she repeated: I know terrorists killed my husband, but Bush failed to save lives, yada yada yada....

--Tim Graham at The Corner, National Review Online, April 14, 2004

Having listened to them myself, I believe it is fair to say that they are all anti-Bush and anti-Iraq War. They accept everything Richard Clarke says without question and take it as an article of faith that the Bush administration is engaged in some sort of conspiracy to cover-up pre-9/11 failures by senior Bush officials. For these widows, it appears to be a given that the 9/11 attacks were entirely preventable and primarily the result of failures by the Bush administration.... Quite a few of their statements on Hardball last week were absurd, including unsubstantiated accusations that John Ashcroft was warned not to fly commercial aircraft prior to 9/11 and did not do so.

--Robert Cox of the National Debate, quoted by Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post, April 16, 2004

Anti-Bush 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser had never met a camera or mike or editorial writer she didn't like.

--Charlotte Hays at the blog of the Independent Women's Forum, May 13, 2004

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz read an op-ed submission by 9/11 widow and incessant Chris Matthews' Softball yakker Kristen Breitweiser. When Rabinowitz inadvertently emailed her critique to Breitweiser rather than to the Journal editor for whom she had reviewed the submission, her critique became public.

Anyone who has been subjected to Breitweiser on Softball knows that Rabinowitz hit the nail on the head, describing Breitwiser's piece as "total and complete... repetitive...nonsense from people given endless media access to repeat the very same stupid charges, suspicions and the rest...this is just an opportunity for these absurd products of the zeitgeist -- women clearly in the grip of the delusion that they know something, have some policy, and wisdom not given to the rest of us to know -- to grab the spotlight. Again."

--Scott Johnson at Power Line, May 15, 2004

Debra Burlingame, whose brother Frank was the pilot of the American Airlines jet that was flown into the Pentagon by hijackers, spoke at the GOP convention in New York.

She, too, has been fiercely critical of the five New Jersey widows, calling them "rock stars of grief" and accusing them of taking cheap political shots.

--UPI/Washington Times, September 14, 2004

On his show this morning, [Bush] apologist Glenn Beck called Cindy [Sheehan] a "tragedy slut".

He said the term also applies to the 9/11 families (aka The Jersey Girls) and Michael Berg, because they're all using someone elses death to forward their own political agenda.

--Terri in S.Fl., comment at Brad Blog, August 15, 2005

Just a few things that were somehow said about people we're told no one is allowed to criticize.