Even the NY Times and Washington Post noticed when rightwing religious zealots Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attempted to shift blame for the slaughter of innocents away from their fellow religious fanatics in the ranks of Islam, and put it squarely on the shoulders of secular and religious Americans who don't share their brand of bigotry.

While jawboning together on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club," which Robertson hosts, Falwell said, "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

"Jerry, that's my feeling," Robertson agreed. "I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population."

Falwell said the ACLU has "got to take a lot of blame for this," to which Robertson again agreed, "Well, yes."

Thus encouraged, Falwell then threw in the federal courts and others he claimed were "throwing God out of the public square." He added: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "

People for the American Way transcribed the broadcast and denounced the comments as running directly counter to President Bush's call for national unity. Ralph G. Neas, the liberal group's president, called the remarks "absolutely inappropriate and irresponsible." An ACLU spokeswoman said the group "will not dignify the Falwell-Robertson remarks with a comment."

Recalling Bush's back-peddling from Bob Jones University, once it had served its purpose in the South Carolina primary, a White House official swiftly ducked away from the controversy, calling the remarks "inappropriate" and saying, "The president does not share those views."

But Falwell gave only the slightest bit of ground, claiming in in an interview that he was "making a theological statement, not a legal statement." In an apparent attempt at further clarification, he said, "I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist." But, he added, "I sincerely believe that the collective efforts of many secularists during the past generation, resulting in the expulsion from our schools and from the public square, has left us vulnerable." More specifically, he said that America's "secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord's [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture . . . the result is not good."

(Tragic and horrifying as Tuesday's terrorist acts were, they pale in comparison to the bloodiness of the Civil War, in which both sides emphatically claimed that God was on their side.)

Less noticed, but not to be outdone by the men, virulent anti-feminist columnist Ann Coulter ranted, "We don't need long investigations of the forensic evidence to determine with scientific accuracy the person or persons who ordered this specific attack. We don't need an 'international coalition.' We don't need a study on 'terrorism.' We certainly didn't need a congressional resolution condemning the attack this week.

"The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory racial or 'religious' profiling…."

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

Presumably, if the Taliban allowed women to write op-eds, this is pretty much what their Ann Coulter would have written, only substituting "Islam" for "Christianity." Coulter's column appears in various venues, but strangely enough it swiftly disappeared from its place on The Jewish World Review. Apparently she let the cat of the bag.