Safer than what?

And safer from who?

While Bush doggedly sticks to his claims that Americans are safer today than we were in the pre 9/11 days, the facts seem to be just as stubbornly refuting those claims.

While much of his focus is on the merits of his international adventurism and the effect it has on our day to day security, his policy of cutting support for internal law enforcement, such as the COPS program, in order to put more money in billionaire's pockets is having a devastating impact. In fact, it's literally killing us.

Here's the latest...

A decade after police crackdowns on drug gangs helped lead to historically low crime rates in cities across the nation, gangs suddenly are re-emerging in waves of violence that have jolted officials in Tulsa, the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and many other communities well beyond the groups' traditional big-city bases.

The resurgence of gangs whose names became symbols of the turf wars over crack cocaine during the 1980s - the Crips, the Bloods, the Mexican Mafia, the Gangster Disciples and others - is helping to lift homicide rates in several cities at a time when overall crime rates remain low.

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"This thing is growing, but it has been masked to a great extent by reports about how overall crime has been coming down," (LA Police Chief William) Bratton says. "Not a lot of people are paying attention to this. But the way it's going, it has the potential to explode as it did in the early '90s."

Putting a lid on the activities of fanatics in foreign ports is important, no doubt, but it becomes meaningless if we turn our neighborhoods over to homegrown thugs.

Putting first things first means putting our First Responders back on the federal funding list. Homeland security doesn't mean much if you don't live to enjoy it.