Like actress Sally Field, I am a mom. Unlike Sally Field, I do not live in La-La Land. We breathe a different brand of oxygen. We hold diametrically opposed worldviews. We have nothing in common but stretch marks.

“If only.” Those are the verbal crutches America must discard in a post-9/11 world.

If only the State Department hadn’t been so sloppy in issuing visas to the 9/11 hijackers. If only police and state troopers had been able to check the immigration status of the hijackers who were pulled over for speeding before the attacks. If only universities had been more diligent in monitoring the hijackers’ whereabouts. If only the feds had listened to alert agents’ recommendations to profile young Arab students in our flight schools. If only someone, anyone, had said something when they saw the suspicious behavior of the jihadists on dry runs.

Here’s a peculiar thing about the holier-than-thou Campaign Finance Reform crowd.

Whenever the stench of dirty money starts wafting from Democrat Party coffers, the clean election lobbyists are nowhere to be found.

The dog days of August have drawn to a close. This is the calm before the gathering political storm.

On Sept. 15, the far-left group ANSWER (“Act Now to Stop War and End Racism”) will descend on the nation’s capital to demand what they’ve been demanding for the last six years in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan; immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and immediate release of every last suspected al Qaeda operative in American custody; immediate impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney; and immediate capitulation to our enemies at home and abroad.

Everything you hate about the culture of Washington is symbolized in two recent altercations involving two obnoxious Beltway buttinskis, one Democrat and one Republican.

Will the execution-style murder of three young students in Newark, N.J., finally turn the tide in the immigration enforcement debate? Will we at last abandon the deadly, chaotic, lawless sanctuary nation experiment and restore America’s lost status as a sovereign nation under the rule of law?

The tale of Army Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the discredited “Baghdad Diarist” for the discredited New Republic magazine, is an old tale:

Sen. Joe Biden is the embodiment of snide. Snide is the embodiment of the left-wing attitude toward gun owners. So when snide Joe Biden confronted a YouTube user who asked Democrat presidential candidates about gun control during a debate Monday night, what unfolded was a Teachable YouTube Moment — the caught-on-tape embodiment of ideological snideness toward the Second Amendment and those who defend it.

Sen. Joe Biden is the embodiment of snide. Snide is the embodiment of the left-wing attitude toward gun owners. So when snide Joe Biden confronted a YouTube user who asked Democrat presidential candidates about gun control during a debate Monday night, what unfolded was a Teachable YouTube Moment — the caught-on-tape embodiment of ideological snideness toward the Second Amendment and those who defend it.

My fellow Americans, we have a problem. We spend billions of dollars on homeland security, but our government can’t even track and deport convicted criminal aliens.

Amnesty is dead. Now, let’s talk about the other “A” word. It’s the word and the concept completely abandoned during the immigration debate: assimilation.

Harry Reid boasts of his compassion for “undocumented Americans.” President Bush wants understanding for “newcomers” without papers. The so-called Grand Bargainers on both sides of the aisle in the Senate are pushing forward this week with their massive plan to “regularize” the unregularized and bring in hundreds of thousands of extra foreign guest workers on top of the ones who are already here or have been waiting for approval for years.

Jihadi’s Guide to Etiquette Rule 11: Never leave home without your matches, effigy-hanging sticks and death threat placards. You never know when they’ll come in handy.