"We haven't really figured this one out," answered the perhaps least competent of Bush's outgoing cabinet members, Tom Ridge, when asked this morning by NPR's Steve Inskeep whether he "knows who the enemy is in the war on terror." Fishbowl isn't surprised. What's mildly dispiriting, though, is how all nominally Bush-critical radio hosts become hands-off when actually in the presence of someone from the very cabinet they love to whack on a daily basis. Hey, guys, why do you think Bush just dumped him, despite the tears in the Oval Office during the canning?

Inskeep must have known that as of this morning, the FBI has publicly concluded that the recent Boston terror scare was bogus; why not shove that in Tommy's face? Instead, Inskeep kept his distance, allowing the architect of the roundly hated "terror alert color codes" to tell us how he thinks that system "absolutely" works but that, perhaps, "the public might need addtional information." He was also allowed to dodge a question about whether the propitious timing of the pre-election elevated terror alert was in any way political.

Fishbowl will stop now, except to leave you with Ridge's exiting zinger - which was allowed to stand unchallenged: "The threat to you tomorrow is greater than the threat to you today." Heavens, that sounds like a WW2 "Keep Mum" poster. But that's the era NPR obviously thinks we still live in, judging from today's reverent tone.