Max Cleeland, the quadrapeligic veteran who was ousted as Democratic Senator from Georgia after a well-funded campaign painting him as unpatriotic for questioning Bush's plans for a Homeland Security Department, said today of Bush's refusal to release vital documents to the 9/11 commission: It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here...It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting. He's among a slew of prominent Democrats and Republicans on the Comission who expressed indignation today in the Times. Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the panel who served in the Senate from Washington from 1982 to 2000, said that he was startled by the "indifference" of some executive branch agencies in making material available to the commission. "This lack of cooperation, if it extends anywhere else, is going to make it very difficult" for the commission to finish its work by next May, he said. Timothy J. Roemer, president of the Center for National Policy in Washington and a former Democratic member of the House from Indiana, said that "our May deadline may, in fact, be jeopardized — many of us are frustrated that we're still dealing with questions about document access when we should be sinking our teeth into hearings and to making recommendations for the future." Who's unpatriotic now?