Yesterday on Hannity, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove sharply criticized President Obama’s response to the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day. In particular, Rove went after the fact that Obama issued his first public statement on the matter 72 hours after the event:

CARLSON: This President was not notified until three hours after this incident became known. Is that a long time? It seems like a long time.

ROVE: Look, they woke him up immediately to tell him he won the Nobel Prize but couldn’t bother to interrupt his vacation for three hours to tell him a terrorist tried to bring down a plane on Christmas Day. And the President waits 72 hours before we hear from him, and it’s over 72 hours from the time of the incident to the time that the President spoke today, and then the President said some things that are simply not true.

Watch it:

Rove made similar comments this morning again on Fox News, pointing out that it took Obama “72 hours after the event” to issue a statement from Hawaii, where the President is vacationing. This criticism rings hollow coming from Rove, a former top official in the Bush administration — which waited even longer to comment on a failed airline plot in 2001. As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein notes:

On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid — known more infamously as the shoe bomber — failed in his attempt to blow up a Miami-bound jet using explosives hidden in his shoe. Coming less than four months after September 11, there already were deep concerns about a potential attack during the upcoming holiday break. Nevertheless, President Bush did not directly address the foiled plot for six days, according to an extensive review of newspaper records from that time period. And when he did, it was only in passing.

Two days after the incident on Dec. 24, the Boston Globe noted Bush’s silence: “White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that President Bush continued to monitor the situation and receive updates at Camp David. Bush has not issued any statements about the incident.”

Conservatives have also been hammering the Obama administration for treating the Christmas Day plot as a law enforcement issue and for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s remarks that the “system, once the incident occurred, the system worked.” However, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also brushed aside questions about the shoe bomber by saying the matter was “in the hands of the law enforcement people,” and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft made comments similar to those of Napolitano.

Since the Christmas Day events, Obama has been consulting with his top advisers and administration officials have been actively speaking with press, including appearing on the Sunday public affairs shows. Today, Obama again made public comments on the incident while in Hawaii, stating, “But what already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security. We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix the flaws in our system, because our security is at stake and lives are at stake.”

Even as the Senate argues whether to pass clean-energy legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally moving to regulate global warming pollution. One of the leading opponents to the EPA’s proposed regulations, slated to go into effect in March, 2010, is Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA). On Monday, Jindal “and the secretaries of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Louisiana Economic Development filed objections with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson,” claiming the Supreme-Court-mandated standards “will certainly have profound negative economic impacts“:

There is no doubt this change will certainly have profound negative economic impacts on the state of Louisiana, as well as the entire country.

In reality, regulations to limit greenhouse gases would reward business investment in labor instead of pollution, in new technology and development instead of reliance on 19th-century fuel sources. An analysis by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute found that strong regulation and standards would create billions in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs:

Louisiana could see a net increase of about $2.2 billion in investment revenue and 29,000 jobs based on its share of a total of $150 billion in clean-energy investments annually across the country. This is even after assuming a reduction in fossil fuel spending equivalent to the increase in clean-energy investments.

Whereas regulation of pollution will likely benefit Louisiana’s economy, there is actually “no doubt” that unmitigated climate change “will certainly have profound negative economic impacts” on the state of Louisiana. “The letters say nothing about the cost of inaction,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune notes, “as Louisiana’s coastline is ravaged by rising sea levels, jeopardizing business investment in the state’s most populated areas”:

In 2005, the global-warming-fueled Hurricane Katrina devastated Jindal’s state, costing this nation $80 billion, killing thousands, and displacing a million people. Katrina and Rita caused $1.6 billion in agriculture damage in Louisiana alone.

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav “was the largest agricultural disaster in Louisiana history,” according to Jindal, as he announced the distribution of $54.8 million in federal taxpayer aid this month.

In 2009, this summer’s “record-setting heat wave and simultaneous dry spell,” followed by extreme “late-season rains,” buckled roads and further damaged crops, driving even more farmers into bankruptcy.

According to a recent analysis published in Nature, “an additional 2 degrees of global warming could commit the planet to 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) of long-term sea level rise,” which would “permanently submerge New Orleans and other parts of southern Louisiana.”

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee and a candidate for governor of Michigan, is continuing his efforts to score political points off the attempted Christmas day airline bombing. In a fundraising letter acquired by the Grand Rapids Press, Hoekstra writes, “Barack Obama’s policies may impress the ‘Blame America First’ crowd at home and his thousands of fans overseas, but they sure don’t do anything to protect our families in Michigan or the rest of America.” To justify this attack of treasonous presidential behavior, Hoekstra claimed Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said “the system worked”:

They just don’t get it. The system didn’t “work” here. Far from it! It is insulting that The Obama administration would make such a claim, but then again, these are the same weak-kneed liberals who have recently tried to bring Guantanamo Bay terrorists right here to Michigan!

In fact, Napolitano said that “the system” worked “once the incident occurred” — referring only to the post-incident response — a comment similar to ones made by the Bush administration. She has since made clear that the system of preventing such attacks “did not work.” “If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security,” Hoekstra writes, “please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.”

On Sunday, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich was on NBC’s “Meet the Press” where he said he suspected that “every Republican running in ‘10 and again in ‘12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal” the health care reform legislation. The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen points out that Gingrich has been the show’s most frequent guest in the past year:

[Sunday]was Gingrich’s fifth appearance on “MTP” just this year. In fact, Newt Gingrich, despite not having held any position in government for over a decade, was the single most frequent guest on “Meet the Press” in 2009 of any political figure in the United States. Literally.

From March to December, Gingrich appeared on “MTP,” on average, every other month. No one else in American politics was on the show this often. [...]

Keep in mind, “Meet the Press” didn’t have the actual Speaker of the House on at all this year. It also featured zero appearances from all of the other living former House Speakers (Hastert, Wright, Foley) combined.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has also appeared on more than a dozen Sunday talk shows this year even though he “is not president, he chairs no Senate committees, he represents two percent of the U.S. population, he lacks a strong constituency even among his own party.”