By Andrew L. Jaffee

Despite the fact Clinton and his former entourage are laying the heavy politics on ABC/Walt Disney — even threatening to revoke the media giant’s broadcast license if it doesn’t censor ABC’s mini-series, “The Path To 9/11″ — E! Online sees the glass half-full. E! opines that “ABC’s “Path to 9/11″ Still Clear:”

Don’t believe the hype. Or believe it. Either way, don’t decide either way until you’ve watched all five hours.

That’s pretty much the gist of ABC’s message to potential viewers of the network’s two-part miniseries The Path to 9/11, which airs commercial-free Sunday and Monday. (Ironically there will now be a 20-minute break Monday at 9 p.m. to accommodate a speech from President Bush.)

While ABC has stated that the $40 million production is still in the editing process and is being slightly tweaked in response to concerns that it unfairly attacks the Clinton administration for failure to act on terrorist threats in the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the network has not bowed to pressure from former Cabinet members and left-wing groups to “dump,” “yank” or otherwise pull the movie from the schedule.

The Democratic National Committee, for one, submitted a petition signed by 200,000 people calling for ABC to drop the “right-wing, factually inaccurate mocudrama.” The Center for American Progress Action Fund announced it had collected 25,000 letters asking for either a heavy edit or a cancellation. “The miniseries presents an agenda that blames the Clinton administration for the 9/11 attacks while ignoring numerous errors and failures of the Bush administration,” the advocacy group said in a statement.

Conservative blogs, meanwhile, are putting up a spirited defense. And Rush Limbaugh seems to have high hopes for the miniseries, saying during his radio show last week: “From what I’ve been told, the film really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration.” He said today, “What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a mob-like reaction from partisan hacks to intimidate an American broadcast network.”

And let us not forget the focus and pressure that netWMD and FreeRepublic have put on ABC, counter-acting the left-wing sludge.

Please help support free expression by asking ABC to go ahead with its docudrama.