At yesterday's daily White House news briefing, I asked Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer:

QUESTION: Last July, Robert Shultz of "We The People," began a hunger strike … to petition the government for a redress of grievances with the IRS. When this got national media coverage, both the Justice Department and IRS promised to meet with Shultz and his advisers and hold open meetings, which promises they have refused to keep since 9/11. And my question is, will the president direct them to keep that promise, or not?

FLEISCHER: Lester, I'm not familiar with the specific case, and these questions are decided by the people involved.

My second question was:

Q: In 1995, Texas Gov. Bush signed a bill allowing anyone over 21 without a criminal record to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. And my question is, how can President Bush allow Messrs. Mineta and Magaw to keep disarming all pilots when the head of the 62,000-member Airline Pilots Association had pleaded for the right to be armed, because if terrorists take over one of our planes, it's now Bush administration policy to have jets shoot it down? And could you please tell us, Ari, what the president thinks, rather than trying to direct me to Democrat Mineta and Clinton appointee Magaw?

FLEISCHER: Lester, the President thinks that there should be one standard, and that is public safety. And that is why he signed that measure in Texas, to enhance public safety. And that is why relying on the security experts who came to the conclusion that allowing airline pilots to carry weapons aboard airplanes would not represent public safety, and so he supported that recommendation.

Q: Air marshals carry them.

This Fleischer answer raises another question (which I was unable to ask, being limited to two): "Were there in all Texas no gun-control-advocating scientists who objected to concealed-weapons carrying, or were just such Texans less important than Democrats Norm Mineta and John McGaw of the Bush administration?"

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