ROGER SIMON: Boston and America … Where the Fish Rots from the Top.

Apropos of the #BostonBombers, CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted this weekend: Big q is why FBI didnt keep an eye on/talk to Tamerlan Tsarnaev after he returned from Chechnya last year. So far from FBI: crickets.

Tapper’s right. The FBI is not looking particularly good as far as their surveillance of murderous Caucasian Islamists on our soil is concerned. And Tamerlan, evidently , left quite a trail, from domestic violence to reportedly attacking an imam for holding up MLK as someone to emulate. Not exactly subtle. They were even warned about Tamerlan by the Russians apparently.

The Feds must have been pretty clueless to ignore all this.

Probably. But I offer in their defense one of the hoariest of cliches: The fish rots from the top.

The Obama administration and most of those working for it have taken Islamic terrorism about as seriously as I am taking the Memphis Grizzlies/L.A. Clippers game currently on my TV — in other words, at best mildly interested. Not being a fan of either team, I could watch — I could switch to something else.

And when Islamic terrorism does rear its head, as in Benghazi, the administration evinces something worse than disinterest — dishonesty, lies, coverup and prevarication (sometimes aided by Tapper’s CNN cohort Candy Crowley).

And they don’t stop. They haven’t offered anything yet even remotely resembling a transparent account of the Libyan events or of their motivation. The secretary of State has told us it’s not even important. (How does that look in the light of Boston?) . . . Well, to employ another cliche that has overtones of its own, the chicken has come home to roost.

Not so good.

UPDATE: Flashback: FBI Training Manual Purged References to Islamic Terror.