In response to today's news that the Republican National Committee is selling pictures -- for fundraising purposes -- of the President aboard Air Force One immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who represents the area where the World Trade Center once stood, released the following statement:

"On September 11, I watched in horror as America, and part of my district specifically, was attacked and destroyed.  The extreme sense of pain and loss I felt as a New Yorker and American doesn't even begin to match the pain that the families of the victims of that attack must have felt.

For the Republican Party to use this event and all the related sense of pain for financial gain is possibly one of the most morally reprehensible political tactics I have ever seen.

Even ebay.com -- a site that is currently allowing the sale of such items as a purse made of a kangaroo scrotum -- deemed that memorabilia from the World Trade Center destruction was just too tasteless to put up for bid, and banned all items from September 11th from their website.

That the Republican Party sees no problem with their "profit from pain" scheme says a lot about the state of the party.

I implore them to suspend the sale of these pictures, to respect the feelings of all those who were sent reeling after September 11th and, at the very least, for the RNC's own self-respect."

Rep. Nadler has served in Congress since 1992.  He represents the 8th Congressional District of New York, which includes parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, including the site where the World Trade Center once stood.

Ebay's current auction of the previously mentioned purse can be found at: https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1730602905