WASHINGTON, D.C.- Last week, reporters learned that the FBI's special psychic anti-terrorism unit had failed to foresee the World Trade Center attacks. In fact, one clairvoyant brought a cup of tealeaves to the president, indicating that a hijacking may be imminent. Unable to substantiate the warning with a second cup, administration officials refused to act on it. Outraged, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D- Missouri) issued a call for an independent commission to investigate intelligence failings prior to September 11th.

Gephardt was careful to remind reporters that his commission would not be a partisan circus bent on damaging the President's credibility. "We have no preconceived conclusions going into this," said Gephardt. "We just want to know exactly how President Bush's lax counter-terrorism efforts allowed the World Trade Center tragedy to occur. For example, what terror warnings did the President ignore and when did he ignore them?"

According to early reports from deep within intelligence circles, members of the clairvoyant anti-terror unit may have been too busy answering the phone to notice the warning signs.

"We're not out to place blame here," Gephardt continued. "We want to learn from this so we can do a better job...beginning in late January of 2005."

The unit, which grew from the cadre of psychics employed by former First Lady Nancy Reagan, had been cut back considerably in recent years as the need for their services appeared to diminish. Gephardt and Daschle maintain that this reduction in psychic capability was a critical error in judgement on the part of the Bush administration.

Perhaps in an attempt to illustrate the wide variety of threats on the radar screen, the White House began issuing dozens of terror threats on earlier this week. At first terror experts warned of bombs in apartment buildings, then holiday transportation hubs. By the end of the day on Tuesday, New Yorkers were hoarding canned food and preemptively soiling their undergarments.

While Democrats spent most of last week criticizing the administration for remaining mum about terror threats, the same officials were asking the White House to shut its cake hole just days later.

"There has to be a happy medium between dropping the domestic security ball and scaring the crap out of the citizenry," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D- South Dakota).

All of this seems to put the President and members of the intelligence community in a difficult no-win position. Not so, say members of Congress. In a bill expected to clear committee some time next week, Gephardt proposed a standard for threat disclosure that would be applied retroactively once a terrorist attack occurred.

"Don't get me wrong," said Daschle. "Our domestic security needs to be fairy tale perfect. We just don't want to hear about it or be inconvenienced in any way. And if you could do all of this without deficit spending or cutting social programs, that'd be peachy."