Tough on terror? If "homeland security" is America's top priority today, why did the Bush administration stop publishing a 19-year old annual report on international terrorism? Perhaps because it's not politically beneficial to the White House: the report found that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any other year since 1985, the first year the report was issued. The report was abruptly dumped, prompting criticism from counterterrorism experts. "Instead of dealing with the facts and dealing with them in an intelligent fashion, they try to hide their facts from the American public," charged Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who first disclosed the decision to eliminate the report in The Counterterrorism Blog, an online journal. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said, "This is the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world. It should be unthinkable that there would be an effort to withhold it - or any of the key data - from the public. The Bush administration should stop playing politics with this critical report."

The Bush administration has a pattern of hiding facts that aren't glowingly supportive of its efforts. David Sirota reminisces:

- When unemployment was peaking in Bush's first term, the White House tried to stop publishing the Labor Department's regular report on mass layoffs.

- In 2003, when the nation's governors came to Washington to complain about inadequate federal funding for the states, the Bush administration decided to stop publishing the budget report that states use to see what money they are, or aren't, getting.

- In 2003, the National Council for Research on Women found that information about discrimination against women has gone missing from government Web sites, including 25 reports from the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau.

- In 2002, Democrats uncovered evidence that the Bush administration was removing health information from government websites. Specifically, the administration deleted data showing that abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer. That scientific data was seen by the White House as a direct affront to the pro-life movement.

(Via Daily Kos.)