As time has passed, remembering Sept. 11, 2001 may have hurt a little bit less this year. But for many, those gashes have not completely healed. For many more, those wounds were reopened during the summer when, after months of emotional hearings from family members, the Sept. 11 Commission released its report in July.

A harsh criticism of the disgraceful lack of national security before the attack, the report lists the changes needed to protect the country from a repeat of that event — 41 changes in all, including the call for a national intelligence director to oversee all of the nation’s spy agencies.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked the U.S. Senate last week to turn those changes from suggestions into national policy. They introduced a bill on the first day of the congressional session to enact all 41 of those changes — including the bit about the national director of intelligence.

Sept. 11 Commission Chairman Robert Keen said, according to The New York Times, that the bill could “make the American people genuinely safer.”

Who could vote against that? Especially now, mere days after the anniversary.

Therein lies the problem: It’s not the bill itself, but the timing of its introduction.

Simply mention Sept. 11, and emotions become charged. Mention the possibility of it happening again, and things become frantic. Yes, the findings of the Sept. 11 Commission should be taken seriously. And yes, Congress should do something to make sure those recommendations become policy changes — if they will actually improve national security.

But this, almost two months since the report was released and days after a still-emotional anniversary, is not the time to do that.

In the crazy push before a heated election, lawmakers are hoping to prove to an emotionally damaged country that they are taking the commission’s report seriously and doing something to prevent what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, from happening again.

The assurance would be nice, to be sure. But it needs to come from leaders who are looking rationally at the drastic changes presented in the bill and weighing and debating things — like whether it’s in the best interest of the country to appoint a national intelligence director.

Congress cannot push drastic changes through when emotions are running high. If it does, things will fall by the wayside; important details will be missed; loopholes will be created.

We know what happens when they let emotion get in the way of reason. We’ve all seen it before.

That’s how the Patriot Act passed into law.