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Paul Krugman points out the obvious with the attempted airline bomber slipping through the cracks... too much information for anyone to sort through. That's the problem with this data mining they think is such a woderful idea. Sweep everyone in, open possibilities for abuse if the information gets into the wrong hands, and miss the stuff you ought to actually be worried about.

KRUGMAN: I think we do want -- I mean, someone's head ought to roll over this. Something needs to be looked at. But if you read your military history, every major military surprise that ever happened, there were ample warnings. You go back to the record; you find out there was information.

The trouble is, there is so much information. You know, there's 500,000 people on this list we're talking about. Stuff is going to fall through the cracks. Ultimately, you do what you can, but someone who is prepared to die while killing a bunch of civilians, that's going to happen now and then. In fact, we're quite lucky it didn't happen now.

But, you know, I think -- I think we are using a lot of 20/20 hindsight. What was the kind of thing that always happens whenever anything goes wrong.

(CROSSTALK)

DOWD: Well, to me, OK, so the situation now is, what do we do in the aftermath of this?

So what it looks like we usually do is we profile an article of clothing, not the person.

(LAUGHTER)

And so we're reluctant, because of politically correctness, to profile a person, but the shoe bomber happens and now we all have to put our shoes on the conveyer belt for it to go through, and we're not going to profile a person.

This guy's underwear is on fire...

(LAUGHTER)

I'm afraid what we next have to profile...

(CROSSTALK)

(UNKNOWN): Everyone's going to have to wear their underwear on the outside.

(LAUGHTER)

Sadly they may not be that far off the mark with how much worse airline security is going to get now.

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Has this man ever found a war he didn't love or a country he didn't mind saber rattling against? From Fox News Sunday, Holy Joe thinks we need to be acting 'preemptively' in Yemen, whatever that means. And of course he agrees with wingnut Pete Hoekstra that we shouldn't close Gitmo.

WALLACE: We’ve got about a minute left and I want to ask you both a quick question about Yemen.

This is not the first time that we have seen possible ties between Yemen and terrorism. We’ve got the U.S. with Obama attacking -- air strikes in Yemen. On the other hand, the Obama administration sent six Guantanamo detainees back to Yemen.

Your thoughts about Yemen and what the U.S. role should be, attitude should be, towards that country?

HOEKSTRA: Yemen is a hot spot. We need to do everything we can to work with that government. We have about 90 Yemenis left in Gitmo. They should stay there. They should not go back to Yemen. If they go back to Yemen, we will very soon find them back on the battlefield going after Americans and other western interests.

WALLACE: And, Senator Lieberman, final 30 seconds?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I agree with Pete on this. I know the president made a promise that he’d close Guantanamo because of what it represented in world opinion.

But today it’s a first-class facility. It’s way above what’s required by the Geneva Convention or our Constitution. It would be a mistake to send these 90 people back to Yemen, because based on the past of what’s happened when we’ve released people from Guantanamo, a certain number of them have gone back into the fight against us.

Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight. I was in Yemen in August. And we have a growing presence there, and we have to, of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence. We’re working well with the government of President Saleh there.

I leave you with this thought that somebody in our government said to me in the Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face.

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So far no reports of the President clearing brush or reading My Pet Goat before reacting to this. From CBS News--Passenger Lights Explosive on Delta Flight:

A Northwest Airlines passenger landing in Detroit on Friday tried to blow up the flight but the explosive device failed, two U.S. national security officials said.

The passenger, who was traveling on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam was being questioned Friday evening, according to one of the officials, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

The motive of the Christmas Day attack was not immediately clear.

"He appears to have had some kind of incendiary device he tried to ignite," said one of the U.S. officials.

A senior law enforcement source speaking to CBS News has identified the suspect as Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23.

As the plane was on final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the suspect lit and set off what were at first described as fireworks or firecrackers but may have been another type of explosive.

The explosive material was apparently taped to the man's leg and lit the lower part of his body. He was immediately subdued and restrained and was later transported to a hospital burn unit.

Two other people suffered minor injuries.

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If this was an attempted terrorist attack, it sure wasn't very sophisticated. Thankfully it sounds like he was the only one harmed very badly. I feel for all of the people trying to fly with this going on. It's going to make the lines worse than ever. I'm sure we'll have more on this later as we learn more.

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Ron Reagan slams Ron Christie for his defense of Dick Cheney's recent attack on President Obama accusing him of 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy'. Just how much self-loathing does Ron Christie have to a) be a Republican to begin with and b) to carry that much water for Dick Cheney? God what a tool.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis.

MATTHEWS: Ron, you`re an attorney, and I respect your professionalism, but let`s take a look at the Constitution, Article 3, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, treason against the United States. Here`s how it`s defined. According to the Constitution, the United States shall consist -- it shall consist only in levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. The very language of the Constitution which defines treason he has now leveled against the president of the United States. You don`t have a problem with that?

CHRISTIE: I...

MATTHEWS: "Aid and comfort" is a particular constitutional set of words, "aid and comfort to the enemy" in this case. You don`t have any problem with him charging the president with doing that?

CHRISTIE: We are giving...

MATTHEWS: You don`t have any problem with that wording?

CHRISTIE: No, I don`t.

MATTHEWS: ... that wording.

CHRISTIE: We are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. And to my friend, Ron Reagan, I would say, no, this has nothing to do with our justice system. It has everything to do with our justice system. The Bush administration didn`t condone terrorism. I don`t understand why you would condone a system where people who are terrorists, who are captured on the battlefield, who were not given Miranda rights, would then be allowed to come into open court, be able to challenge the evidence against them.

It would make a mockery of our system, to say nothing of the fact, Ron, that the president of the United States and the attorney general have said, Oh, they`ll be convicted and executed. As a defense attorney, I can tell you those attorneys are going to say, We can`t get a good jury pool because the president and the attorney general have already condemned the well. It`s ridiculous!

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Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the lone liberal voice during the panel discussion on This Week pointed out the obvious about our war on terror and what we're doing in Afghanistan.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... let me put the counter… and let me put it, the question, to you this way. If they see us leave Afghanistan, wouldn't the Pakistanis say, "We're next. They're going to abandon us again"?

VANDEN HEUVEL: No, I think it's much more complicated, and our occupation of Afghanistan is going to deepen divisions in Pakistan and destabilize an already fragile civilian government.

I mean, we are already engaged in a secret war in Pakistan. The Nation's cover story this week, based on multiple sources, shows that Blackwater is working with the Joint Special Operations Command, planning targeting assassinations and drone campaigns. This is fundamentally destabilizing. We need another policy.

The larger overlay of all of this, in my view, is our overreaction to the terrible, horrible tragedy of 9/11 has led us to wage war against terrorism. You cannot wage a conventional war, which we are doing in Afghanistan, against an odious, horrifying set of ideas or tactics. And until we end that, we are, as an American people, going to have a de facto policy of permanent warfare. Do we want that in our country?

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Russ Feingold reiterated what he’s been saying all week, that our troop escalation in Afghanistan doesn’t make any sense and will only increase instability in the region and Pakistan. When asked if there was anything that could be done to stop this now Feingold said this:

FEINGOLD: Well, that's difficult. And what's going to happen here is that it's probably going to be difficult to stop it now. We'll do whatever we can. We're already working with members of both parties in both houses to question whether this funding should be approved. We're going to fight any attempts to use sort of accounting gimmicks to allow it to be funded. If there's an attempt to have an emergency supplemental, I think that's something we're going to oppose, not only on the grounds of it being an unwise policy, but also being fiscally irresponsible.

Full transcript via ABC News.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You heard Secretary Gates there. Even though you've called the president's decision an expensive gamble, he says the United States must escalate because this is the epicenter of extremist jihad, and that's why our vital national security interests are at stake.

FEINGOLD: Well, Pakistan, in the border region near Afghanistan, is perhaps the epicenter, although Al Qaeda is operating all over the world, in Yemen, in Somalia, in northern Africa, affiliates in Southeast Asia. Why would we build up 100,000 or more troops in parts of Afghanistan included that are not even near the border? You know, this buildup is in Helmand Province. That's not next door to Waziristan. So I'm wondering, what exactly is this strategy, given the fact that we have seen that there is a minimal presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but a significant presence in Pakistan? It just defies common sense that a huge boots on the ground presence in a place where these people are not is the right strategy. It doesn't make any sense to me.

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Tom Hartmann does something you never hear him do on his radio show. Completely loses his cool with a wingnut caller who insulted him a number of times before he'd finally had enough of him. I agree with the second caller completely. It's easy for people like that wingnut Jason to care less about these useless wars and the toll they take when you don't even look at the people who's heads we're dropping bombs on as human beings. One of the commenters over at DU where I saw this posted said Thom apologized on the next show for this outburst.

I don’t think he needed to. I think the bigger problem is that more people are not as equally outraged about the human suffering that’s gone on in our name and that too many Americans could care less about the number of refugees and widows and orphans that have been created from Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. I’m not any happier with the Obama administration for continuing way too many of Bush’s policies, but Obama didn’t make the decision to invade either Afghanistan or Iraq. Bush did. Now Obama is stuck trying to figure out how to clean up Bush’s mess. That’s one job I sure as hell would not want and don’t envy anyone else having to take on.

I’m just so disgusted right now with what’s happened in both countries that I’m exhausted from it. I’m tired of the killing in our name and with our tax dollars and wondering when it’s ever going to stop. I don’t think we should be escalating in Afghanistan and think we should be getting the hell out of Iraq. I’m grateful there’s someone like Thom Hartmann out there expressing how much all of this pisses me off as well and how outraged anyone should be over the death and destruction the invasion of Iraq has caused if you’re willing to actually take a look at the numbers as Thom did here. It’s just appalling. And our media in this country has completely ignored it. As far as they're concerned, the "surge" has worked and we can move along now. Never mind the carnage we've left behind.

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(Brian Jenkins - in 1977 terrorism was an abstract concept to most Americans)

As part of its weekly program "Options", National Public Radio in 1977 ran a lecture given by terrorism expert Brian Jenkins of The Rand Corporation on the new dimension of power garnered by the terrorists of the world. How technology had made it possible in the recent decade to make bolder and more costly strikes possible, hinting at how America was no longer isolated from these attacks.

Of course, in 1977 it seemed an abstract concept. Terrorism was something that happened in Europe or the Middle East, or even Japan. But not the U.S. - no, we were too powerful and too isolated for that. That's what we thought. Naturally, we were wrong - we just didn't know how wrong at the time.

Brian Jenkins: “What really are the major sources of the terrorist power today? First, it is the value, the high value that society places on human life. Faced with the option, faced with any sort of an option, governments are extremely reluctant to allow hostages to be killed. Despite, in many cases, popular pressure that a line must be drawn, that the thing must stop here, governments are extremely reluctant to have people killed, to have the blood on their hands. So the tremendous value we place on human life, and certainly I would not argue for the contrary, is one of the vulnerabilities in our society, and a vulnerability that terrorists can exploit and one which gives them tremendous power. That terrorists recognize and exploit this can be seen in the frequency in which the terrorists use the tactic of seizing hostages. Indeed, approximately a third of all incidents of international terrorism involved taking hostages. By hijacking airliners, taking over embassies or kidnapping individuals. Terrorists seize hostages whether diplomats, corporate executives, tourists; sometimes just anybody handy, to deliberately heighten the drama of the episode by placing human life in the balance, and thereby increasing their own leverage. In return for the release of hostages, terrorists have received millions of dollars in cash. In one single episode in Argentina they received sixty million U.S. dollars. I want to point out that is the equivalent to one third of that country’s national defense budget.”

Something that happened somewhere else, under someone else's watch, with someone else's government. The irony is that, in less than two years, we would be in the same situation so many else had been for so long. And a little over twenty years later, we would suffer the shock and horror of 9/11.

But in 1977 it seemed too absurd to imagine. Even though there were warning signs back then.

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John a.k.a Mr. Nuke Chicago, and Mr. If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference Bolton does a bit of concern trolling for the safety of New York with no acknowledgement of how the Bush administration brought us to this place to begin with. Why Fox News and Van Susteren thinks anyone should care what war mongering embarrassment to the United States Bolton thinks is beyond me. Van Susteren was happy to give Bolton a format to keep that fear ratcheted up over heaven forbid the trial of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed taking place in New York instead of a kangaroo court military tribunal.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, like it or not, they are coming here. Five 9/11 co-conspirators, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, are coming to New York City for a trial in a federal civilian court. Opposition is loud and fierce.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton joins us live. Good evening, Ambassador. And Ambassador, you're not wild about this idea, are you, sir.

JOHN BOLTON: No, I think it's a major strategic mistake by the administration. I think it reflects a pre- 9/11 mentality that you can treat terrorism like it's a law enforcement matter, rather than what it is, a war on the country. And I think the signal that it sends to the terrorists overseas is very, very dangerous for the country down the road.

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There literally is no end to the extent by which Republican politicians will lie, distort, and manufacture statements in their efforts to disrupt, deny, and destroy the Obama administration's attempts to govern. At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on 9/11 trial, the Fort Hood shooter, and terrorism, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) decided to flip-flop on the designation of the Gitmo detainees. Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war"?

SESSIONS: The enemy, who could of been obliterated on the battlefield on one day, but was captured instead does not then become a common American criminal. They are first a prisoner of war, once they're captured. The laws of war say, as did Lincoln and Grant, that the prisoners will not be released when the war - until the war ends. How absurb is it to say that we will release people who plan to attack us again?

Sessions seems to be saying that because these detainees were captured by the military, they have become prisoners of war and should not be released - even if found not guilty or after serving a prison term (assuming less than a life sentence) - until the "war on terror" is over (which, under a Republican point of view, will never be over). But on the other hand, SecDef Don Rumsfeld and the other fun-loving bunch of Bushites were very firm about NOT calling them "prisoners of war" because they were not supposed to get rights under the Geneva Convention (or any other form of legal writs - see waterboarding, justification of).

In fact, as one of the commenters at the TPM post notes, there was public law developed to explicitly designate any non-US citizen who was accused of supporting terrorism or acting against the United States as a terrorist as being eligible for military commissions.

I thought like you until I read this, from the Military Commissions Act: "‘(e) Geneva Conventions Not Establishing Private Right of Action- No alien unprivileged enemy belligerent subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a basis for a private right of action."
See: here.

This discussion becomes quickly complex with legal passages as a debate over whether the military tribunals should take KSM or if the federal court system has adequate jurisdiction. But it's just so interesting how Republican politicians adroitly jump back and forth as to the question of the detainees' status to how it best fits their argument of the day - are we talking about Geneva convention rights, or are we talking about the process of legal courts?

And because I want to give credit to the interesting comments over at TPM, I will close with the following observations by the commenters:

"I guess when the Right/GOP can say, print (Palin's myth filled book), promote anything without any accountability by the Beltway Press, the GOP has no need for intellectually honest consistency in their claims."

"When did Sessions stop playing the banjo?"

UPDATE: Clarified the guilt point.

Truly, Republicans have no shame. They have a culture of lies and emotional manipulation, and they recognize no boundaries of decency. From Media Matters:

After the Department of Justice announced it would move toward convicting 9/11 terrorists in a New York City courtroom, Congressional Republicans raced to condemn the decision.

Because Republicans believe that their political fortunes improve when the country is fearful, party leadership jumped at the chance to scare people. Yet as is often the case, the House Republican Caucus' overzealous, far-right members crossed the line.

As Media Matters Action Network first noted yesterday, Rep. John Shadegg declared the decision meant Mayor Bloomberg's daughter would be "kidnapped at school by a terrorist."

Not to be outdone, Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas suggested yesterday that Democrats may actually want another terrorist attack because rebuilding the city would create jobs.

As Republican Congressman Peter King of New York put it to the New York Daily News, "in some parts of the country, I guess anti-New York remarks still pay off."

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Oh lovely. More fear mongering on another Sunday bobble-head show, this time from Bob Schieffer. Pat Leahy sets him straight on why the United States is perfectly capable of prosecuting terrorism cases.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you heard what the congressman said, Senator Leahy. Tell me why you think he’s wrong.

LEAHY: I think that Eric Holder, our attorney general, is right. I think the president is right in holding the trials of these murderers in New York City.

What we’re saying to the world is the United States acts out of strength, not out of fear. I know when I go around Vermont, people say, let’s try criminals. Let’s try criminals like KSM. Let’s get them convicted. We’re very much a law enforcement type of state here.

I was a former prosecutor. I’d like to just see them prosecuted. In the same which way we prosecuted Timothy McVeigh. We’re not afraid to do that. We’re the most powerful nation on earth. We have a judicial system that is the envy of the world. Let’s show the world that we can use that power. We can use our judicial system, just as we did with Timothy McVeigh, and send the people -- and convict the people.

SCHIEFFER: But Timothy McVeigh was an American. He was not what some people would call an enemy combatant.

LEAHY: But...

SCHIEFFER: Won’t this be a circus of sorts, though? That’s what the congressman is saying. He says it’s going to just turn into a propaganda show.

LEAHY: I have a lot of faith in our judges. They know how to run a trial. They know how to keep decorum in their court. If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wants to stand up and say, as he did in Guantanamo, I committed all these murders, I did all these things, fine. If I was a prosecutor, I would just sit there and let that jury hear it, because he’s going to be convicted.

That’s the important thing. And we show the world that our judicial system works. I think that’s why people like Ray Kelly, who is the commissioner of police, one of the finest commissioners of police anybody has ever had there in New York City, said we’re prepared, we can handle this.

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This is rich coming from the likes of Liz Cheney. She's worried about the terrorists having "a public platform where they can spew venom". Well the "mainstream media" has given you and your daddy one, so what's the problem? Pat Leahy explained why this fear mongering is utter nonsense on Face the Nation today. What she's worried about are her father's pesky war crimes coming to light. Not that Chris Wallace would ever ask her about that, would you Chrissy?

WALLACE: Liz, what do you worry about most, the security threat to New York, the possible danger that intelligence secrets will be disclosed, the possibility one of these guys will get off, or something else? What's your biggest concern?

CHENEY: You know, I think it is absolutely unconscionable that we are a nation at war and that the president of the United States simultaneously is denying our troops on the ground in Afghanistan the resources that they need to prevail to win that war while he ushers terrorists onto the homeland.

He's going to put these terrorists in a courthouse that is six blocks from where over 2,000 Americans were killed on the worst attack in history on the American homeland.

He's going to give them a public platform where they can spew venom, where they can preach jihad, where they can reach out and recruit other terrorists. And it is totally unnecessary.

When the attorney general says that he's bringing them to justice, he's ignoring the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed asked 11 months ago to be executed for Allah. He asked to plead guilty and be executed. We should have said, "All right, you've got it."

Instead, we're bringing him and his cohorts to America. We're giving them the constitutional rights of American citizens. And the attorney general throughout the day on Friday talked about this as a crime.

He said in that same interview Mara is talking about that this will be treated like any other crime.

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Video courtesy of Media Matters

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Rush Limbaugh has some serious issues. I mean, we knew that already, but the anger he uses to mask his blatant fear is quite stunning, and not a little Freudian.

Going after an admiral and counter-terrorism specialist like Joe Sestak? Not so smart, Rushbo:

Following an appearance on Fox News Channel to discuss the federal prosecution of terror suspects, radio host Rush Limbaugh attacked former 3-star Navy Admiral and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Congressman Joe Sestak as a "dangerous left wing radical ideologue."

"Rush Limbaugh's attacks on a Veteran for supporting our American values shows a lack of understanding and respect for the very people who serve our country to defend those values," the campaign said. "Instead of helping to bring about justice for the families who lost loved ones on 9/11, too many on the right seem interested in politicizing the issue of prosecuting terror suspects."

Joe Sestak voiced his support for the Administration as part of his continuing call to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Attorney General Holder announced that five high-value Al Qaeda suspects --including the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed-- will be tried in federal court, rather than be held indefinitely or tried via military commission. Current legal procedures are in place to ensure that sensitive information used to support our national security efforts are kept private.

"As an Admiral, I led this Nation's fighting men and women into harm's way in defense of the United States -- in defense not only of American citizens, but of the beliefs that we hold dear and that define us as a nation, Joe" said in his statement on Friday. "I have watched the legal black hole at Gitmo erode our moral standing in the world -- weakening our hand in diplomacy in all corners of the world and providing Al Qaeda and other extremists propaganda for a new generation of terror. The last thing we should do is allow these terrorists to cause us to abandon our American principles."

Sestak points out some statistics for the WATB Republicans: As of December 2008, there were still approximately 250 detainees in custody. Federal courts have convicted 195 terrorists since 2001 in contrast to just three convictions by military commissions. Here's Sestak on The O'Reilly Factor trying to explain why there is nothing to fear from these trials. My suggestion for next time, Congressman, is to use smaller words. That fancy book-learning elitism is as scary to them as dem Islamofascists.

You know, you have to appreciate that guys like Anthony Weiner and Joe Sestak will go on Bill O'Reilly's show to try to bravely counter his nonstop deluge of right-wing talking points. But as he demonstrated last night when he had them on to talk about the New York City terrorism trials, he just proved once again why it's never a winning proposition to go on his show, no matter how hard you try.

O'Reilly only invites liberals on to set them up for a shoutdown, really -- and that's what he did last night. Both Weiner and Sestak pointed out the absurdity of O'Reilly's fears about the civil court system setting the terrorists free -- and worse still, in O'Reilly's view, actually being permitted to stand up and voice their beliefs as part of their defense.

O'Reilly just wound up shouting at them about the four-year trial of Zacarias Moussaoui -- who in fact was convicted. But to O'Reilly, what was intolerable was that Moussaoui was able to use the trial as "propaganda" for radical Islam.

O'Reilly just doesn't believe in the American way of justice, and is afraid to let the world see our justice. Fortunately, many more of us are not so cowardly.