Stewart represented an accused terrorist. During his trial she relayed a message from him, regarding his thoughts on a cease-fire with Egypt, to a Reuters reporter. She then clarified the statement. This was part of her commitment to committing murder in a foreign country, apparently!

If, as prosecutors argue, Stewart knowingly violated specific restrictions again passing any messages from her client to any third parties, including the media, then, whatever, press charges. (Not that those specific rules seem particularly constitutional. And not that we should be complicit in the destruction of attorney-client privilege just because we really don't like terrorists.) But "conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism" seems like more than a bit of a stretch. You shouldn't really be locking up left-wing nuts for being naive about the beliefs and intentions of their clients. (And naive about the lengths to which the Bush Justice Department would go to appear to be serious about terror.)

Stewart was sentenced to 28 months in prison. The court of appeals did not specify how much tougher they'd like her sentence to be, but prosecutors sought up to 30 years. Stewart is 70 and about to go into surgery for breast cancer. And your IndyMedia types are about to start calling Obama a fascist, just like Glenn Beck!

Via Mark Lisanti and FilmDrunk, if you guessed "terrorists," than you guessed right. Also, you're boring.

Couldn't they have saved this one for someone better? I mean, yes, listen, people who kill other people are shitty and suck, but this is just great, like, artful-great. Like, okay, if NYDN publisher Mort Zuckerman were on his deathbed, this would've been awesome. If their Boris and Natahsa-esque gossip columnist Rush & Molloy were put on trial for being communists, again: incredible. But to waste this one on terrorists just seems a little, I don't know, blase?

Anyway. We can't help but see potential in you, Post. To whoever guessed correctly, take a bow, you get nothing except the knowledge that you're an expert of New York Post headlines and/or you still have a job at the New York Post. Mazel.

After much asking and begging of the FBI, Trentadue invoked the all-powerful Freedom of Information Act to view security tapes from buildings near the federal building, which everyone thinks Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bombed way back in 1995. But we were all wrong!

Or that's what Trentadue thinks, because none of the videos have footage before 9:02 that morning, which means "the real story is what's missing."

Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995. There ain't no such thing as a coincidence.
...
The interesting thing is they spring back on after 9:02. The absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn't want anybody to see.

Considering all the time it took to get the tapes — and the fact that the tapes would have shown the truck bomb's approach — Trentadue's absolutely convinced the government's keeping secrets. The government won't say. So what does this all mean? Well, 1995 was during Clinton's White House tenure. We've come to expect shadiness from the GOP — inside job, anyone? — but the Democrats? Our world's been turned upside down. Now we only have the Green Party to trust. Fuck.

Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who sponsored the bill, boiled the issue down to that pesky Second Amendment:

Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason, particularly if they choose to travel on America's federally subsidized rail line.

Wicker's reasoning, though rational from a right-wing point of view, seems to contradict his past stance on America's safety, like post-9/11 security moves:

It is no coincidence that our country has not been attacked since 9-11. Our initiatives to protect the homeland and aggressively take the fight to the terrorists have been factors in that success.

One of those initiatives was to ban firearms on Amtrak trains.

Considering the amount of vitriol that has infected town halls, awards shows, tennis matches and even Presidential addresses, the addition of guns to travel plans, which often bring out the worst in people, gives us chills. Luckily, the House will have a chance to shoot down this legislation.

The people who chant "9/11 was an inside job," who babble about controlled demolitions, who seriously think an airplane did not hit the Pentagon (our faves!)... these people, they are crazies who are rightfully marginalized and mocked and who've never been taken seriously by anyone in any position of authority in the Democratic party. They are, in that sense, like the hardcore Birthers. In fact, Philip Berg and Alex Jones are both.

But the entire equivalence argument ignores some huge fucking differences between those nutty "left-wing" wackos and our current "right-wing" wackos.

Like, there have been a couple seemingly reasonable people who've said some variation on the following this week: If Barney Frank (it is always Barney Frank) had shouted "You Lie!" at President Bush, you stupid liberals would've applauded!

Well, here is the thing, and the problem with hypotheticals: Barney Frank would not have done that, because he's not a complete moron. And if he had done that, he would've shouted it after President Bush had actually lied about something, and not just because he's a racist moron who thinks there is a secret plot to save the lives of Mexicans.

Birtherism is tolerated by movement conservatives. (The attempt by some of them to boycott World Net Daily has been called "the elite" attacking "the grassroots" by various more established conservatives, even though actual "elite" conservatives are feeding complete garbage nonsense to the "grassroots") And Birtherism usually does not bother to hide its essential ridiculousness: Barack Obama was not born in the US, because we do not like him! No one could accidentally sign on to a Birther bill without knowing exactly what they're doing, despite the protestation of Congressmen who've done just that but claim not to believe Obama is ineligible to be president.

And, hey, it is not acceptable among actual elite liberals plotting in their liberal caves to say that "Dick Cheney plotted 9/11 himself because he wanted a Reichstag excuse to go to war against Iraq." What it is acceptable to say, because it is true, is that "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ignored the intelligence that might've helped them stop 9/11, because they were more concerned with non-threats like Iraq, and once 9/11 happened they not only completely botched their response but they then cynically exploited that tragedy to move against Iraq, which they'd been planning to do beforehand anyway." And it is also acceptable to say, once again because it is true, that "George W. Bush and Dick Cheney stonewalled and undermined the official investigation into the events of that day as part of a cover-up—not of their part in the conspiracy itself but of their breathtaking cynicism and incompetence."

And it is the popularity of those (true!) beliefs among liberals that makes the more credulous ones targets for the actual fucking crazies. If you've ever walked by Lyndon LaRouche's college student cultists, you know that they masquerade as regular Democrats who hate Bush, just like you! (Or they used to; now they masquerade as dudes who hate Obama's socialized medicine, just like you!)

And if you've ever been approached by Truthers collecting signatures you know that what they always say is "do you think there should be a complete investigation into the events of 9/11?" To which the answer is "yes, of fucking course, I want to know exactly what Dick Cheney said and did on that day, I want him and Rumsfeld under oath and on tape, and it is universally acknowledged that the Pentagon and CIA and NSA refused to cooperate with the 9/11 commission." You can want a more independent commission with more authority to compel testimony and declassify documents and not believe that BUSH DID 9/11. And multiple signatories of the famous Van Jones petition claim the wording changed between when they signed it and when it was published, with calls for an investigation suddenly supplemented with language arguing that "people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen." Which does sound like a classic Truther move.

Maybe these people who claim the conspiratorial bullshit was added after the fact are covering their own asses. But we're inclined to believe them. (You are free not to!) And in talking to Salon some of them are still saying dumb things, some of them are obviously actual truthers, some of them just still don't really understand who they're getting in bed with, and some of them have grown up, a little bit.

But skepticism of the American government based on the Gulf of Tonkin, COINTELPRO, and Iran-Contra, and skepticism of the Bush administration based on Ahmed Chalabi, faked intelligence, and warrantless wiretapping is a hell of a lot more sympathetic than skepticism of the legitimacy of the current president born entirely of racial fear.

Trutherism is particularly alluring conspiratorial nonsense because of an actual history of the government doing secret, evil things in the name of national security. But there is, as far as we can tell, no history of Foreign Nationals attempting to seize control of the nation through fraud in order to send white people to concentration camps and throw our elderly to the Death Panels. (There is, obviously, no history of the government murdering 3,000 citizens in order to justify a war, especially since governments have been justifying unnecessary wars without all that fuss and bother for some time, and that is why it is batshit insanity. But "government lies to get us into war" is not exactly as much of a stretch as "man pretends to be American in order to trick everyone into electing him president.")

That said: 9/11 was not an inside job, you morons. And you've successfully made it impossible for anyone to raise responsible and serious questions regarding the response of the government, so nice work.

It's not clear what they were trying to gain or who they were trying to serve by the stunt. Even at Fox — which repeatedly used the horror anyone felt that day as an excuse to push all sorts of ill-fated policies — they spent the morning airing live pictures from the memorial service at the Pentagon. So did CNN.

MSNBC did this last year, too. Even posting a news quiz on their site to see how much info you were absorbing. All we learned — before we quickly turned the channel — is that this is a dumb tradition that MSNBC ought to stop.

Have you finished composing your "where I was" blog post or, god save us, your #whereiwas Tweet? Have you muted MSNBC's deplorable annual encore performance of the televised deaths of thousands? Have you remembered to never forget? Good. Fine.

Shortly after (or maybe during) that day, our president at the time, a little fuckhead no one liked, handed over the reins to the most psychotic elements of his administration. In the vast national wave of jingoism, paranoia, dread, and fear that followed, he and his friends led us into an unrelated war they'd been planning beforehand, allowed the CIA to wiretap and torture anyone they liked (and encouraged the CIA to wiretap and torture even more than they were comfortable with!), and regularly insisted that our memory of that day should not be sullied with critical thinking or expressions of anything other than still-palpable fear. This played better in the sorts of places that had nothing to fear from international terrorism, but plenty of formerly reasonable-acting people in the major targets did play along, both out of personal conviction and partisan duty.

In fact an entire cottage industry of dudes who were Changed Forever On That Day thrived on the internet. Bloggers, all of whom were self-professed Former Liberal Democrats, were suddenly freed to be racist, bloodthirsty warmongers. They were rewarded with traffic and mainstream legitimacy (even as they ritually attacked the MSM as terrorist-loving fifth columnists). Most are still treated as Serious People, even though their defining characteristic was a hysterical response to a crisis.

But we don't even need to feel bad about the Joe Kleins, Chris Hitchens, Andrew Sullivans, Glenn Reynolds, Charles Johnsons, and Peter Beinarts of the media world. Because, whatever, they are as responsible in their own ways as Wolfowitz for the Iraq tragedy, but their magical ride on the patriotism express has ended.

Barack Obama is the president now. Regardless of what you think of him as a politician or a man, he admirably refuses to engage in 9/11 rhetoric. He does not operate from the cynical assumption that his audience believes that America Can Do No Wrong, that to criticize a war is to be a literal traitor, that to not worship the president is to spit on the graves of soldiers, that the correct response to a tragedy is to create a thousand more. He doesn't talk like that. And so, fucking finally, the anniversary belongs to the latte-sipping out-of-touch coastal elites who witnessed it.

On 9/12, people in New York (and DC) did not feel as "great" as Glenn Beck. They just felt like shit. They felt scared and confused and depressed. Many of them were drunk. And only an idiot or an actual terrorist would want to always feel like it was 9/12/01. And eight years later, normal people, with brains and souls, have decided that some emotional distance from that disaster is healthier and wiser than trying to recapture the dread.

So thank fucking christ that the Commander in Chief is no longer subjecting the nation to death porn.

No, this year it's limited to a nutty little cult leader on basic cable who is encouraging his radicalized band of fanatical followers to invade the cities where the tragedy actually happened in order to shock the populace back into fear.

Glenn Beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-Qaeda in America.

While we all now know that WWF doesn't endorse the ad made in its name, let's all take a moment to wonder why, oh why, Brazil-based agency DDB BRASIL thought such a thing was a good idea.... Okay, now that the moment has passed... WTF? Really? Who in their right mind would think that using a terrorist attack would drive an earth-friendly message home? Also, we don't want to be sticklers, but the 9/11 attacks killed more than the number put forth by this commercial.

DDB Brasil insists the commercial was nothing but a rough draft, but STILL... Seriously?!

UPDATE: WWF in the US is sending out a statement saying that it finds the ad "apalling" and it's "working to determine whether or not this is a hoax of some sort." It should probably talk to its Israeli office; according to Advertolog:

The advert titled Tsunami was done by DDB BRASIL advertising agency for WWF company in ISRAEL. It was released in the August 2009.

If it does turn out to be an elaborate hoax we'll let you know. Although that seems unlikely!

UPDATE 2: WWF just issued the following statement, saying the ad was a spec ad from an ad agency seeking their business, rather than an ad authorized by WWF. Spec ads generally contain wanton sex, but other forms of wanton bad taste pop up as well, as this episode indicates. The real question here: Why don't ad agencies make it clear that these are spec ads before letting them pop up on ad websites, where bloggers pick them up? Seems sensible. WWF's full statement:

"WWF strongly condemns this offensive and tasteless ad and did not authorize its production or publication. It is our understanding that it was a concept offered by an outside advertising agency seeking our business in Brazil. The concept was summarily rejected by WWF and should never have seen the light of day. It is an unauthorized use of our logo and we are aggressively pursuing action to have it removed from websites where it is being currently featured. We strongly condemn the messages and the images portrayed in this ad. On behalf of WWF, here in the US and around the world, we can promise you this ad does not in any way reflect the thoughts and feelings of the people of our organization."

Lucia Whalen, the Harvard Magazine fundraiser who called in the report of a break-in at Gates' house after she saw two men forcing the door open, makes it very clear that she wasn't sure a crime was being committed—she apparently had been urged to call the police by another neighbor she passed on the street, and didn't seem to want to be involved at all. From the call:

Whalen: I noticed two suitcases, so I'm not sure if these were individuals who work there—I mean, live there.

911: You think they might have been breaking in?

Whalen: I don't know, because I have no idea... I don't know if they live there and they just had a hard time with their key, but I did notice that they kind of used their shoulder to barge in.

911: Were they white, black, or hispanic?

Whalen: Well, there were two larger men. One looked kind of hispanic, but I'm not really sure. And the other one entered, and I didn't see what he looked like at all.

So the possibility—even likelihood—that Gates was just trying to get into his own home was present at the very inception of this whole kerfuffle, and somehow he still wound up getting hauled off to jail. We're sure that the absence of a racial description in the call will be played as race-blindness on Crowley's part—if he didn't even know the suspects were black going in, how could he be stereotyping?—but we'd remind observers that his police report made reference to "what appeared to be two black males" entering Gates' home. Crowley sources that information to Whalen, whom he met standing outside the residence when he arrived. But if Whalen refused to answer that question to the 911 dispatcher, we wonder how she came to change her mind only minutes later, when Crowley arrived. Or did Crowley try to put a thumb on the scale when he wrote the report by IDing the suspects as black, so that his initial suspicion of Gates would seem more justified?

One thing is clear: We owe Whalen an apology. Relying on Crowley's report, we called her a racist for dialing 911 just because she saw two black men struggling to open a front door. It's obvious from the call that she didn't know that they were black, that she was calling out of an excess of caution, and that she expected that if it was their home, then a police officer would simply check their ID and be on his way. Which is what should have happened.

Reports the LA Times:

Accused Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA even after undergoing punishing bouts of interrogation, according to documents made public Monday.

Mohammed made the assertion during hearings held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the militant leader was transferred in 2006 after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003.

"I make up stories," Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA that concerned the location of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"Where is he? I don't know. Then he torture me," Mohammed said. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.' "

We anxiously await Dick Cheney's comments on this as soon as he finishes sipping that glass of puppy's blood.

Detainee Says He Lied to CIA in Harsh Interrogations [LA Times]

Thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts—who never met an argument for unchecked executive power that he didn't like—and the conservative 5/9ths of the court, FBI director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft are safe from the frivolous lawsuit filed by a guy who was arrested for a non-violent, non-terrorism-related crime and then beaten and locked up in solitary for six months because and only because he was a Muslim, with a really Muslim-y name.

It's fun to remember that inhumane treatment of random prisoners happens right here at home, all the time. (This happened, for example, in Brooklyn—fugheddaboudit!) It is also fun to remember that John Roberts, who'll be the Chief Justice for another half-century or so, is an asshole. Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, yes, but he is a befuddled 72-year-old who decides whether to side with Scalia or Stevens based on which one brought him better candy that day.

Sure, 9/11 happened a thousand miles away from Albert Lea, Minnesota, and the town is in no danger of a terrorist attack, but fires and floods happen everywhere, and it is good to help children deal with them. It is even better to help the children with a dark and unintentionally hilarious pamphlet of misery and apocalyptic doom.

The vagueness of referring exclusively to an unspecified incident—"the disaster"—lends the proceedings an especially ominous tone. "Draw a picture of yourself before the disaster" is practically a late Leonard Cohen lyric. This book is the best. "You might think you made the disaster happen, but you didn't." Cormac McCarthy and P. D. Eastman entered a room and only this book came out.

This little tableau is called "The Mediated Life," or "An Evening At Dick Cheney's House."

Sadly some people (FEMA) didn't enjoy this book and it has been taken down from their website.

They just give those awards out to anyone these days.


Color your entire life as you know it washing away!



Color God's Wrath at Iowa's Supreme Court.

Not lying: we would buy a print of this page.

Obama is ordering his staff to "conduct a review" into how, exactly, the Pentagon decided to conduct a flyover of lower Manahttan—a flyover they knew would cause panic in the streets!—and further decided to keep it a secret. As Letterman said last night, if they'd just told us no one would've cared. Everyone loves picture day!

Plus, as Brian Williams pointed out last night on Keith Olbermann's show last night, we would have been more than happy to spread the word.

Obama's review will focus on Louis Caldera, the soon-to-be-former director of the White House Military Office. He approved the "mission," and didn't tell Obama.

Back here in New York, Mike Bloomberg's own review of the situation took a day or two. He blamed Marc Mugnos, the lowly manager of the Office of Citywide Event Coordination and Management. Mugnos is a marketing major who came up through the city Sports Commission. His job, as Event Coordination Manager, is basically to approve parade permits.

This flunky is apparently the FAA's guy in New York, because why would they need to coordinate with anyone actually involved in running the city? So Mayor Mike, who didn't know about this little flyover because Mugnos never forwarded the email, sent Mugnos a letter of reprimand and then forgave him, because hey, he is just some guy who made a mistake.

We don't care if this guy, New York's own Brownie, loses his job or not, but we'd like to see the blame spread around a little more. Like: what about fucking Ray Kelly? The NYPD was told about the floyover, they had to know it would cause a panic, but they didn't tell anyone because the feds told them it was a "secret."

"We would have hoped that common sense had prevailed concerning the altitude of the flights," Kelly said yesterday. "I think going forward we would never tolerate that again."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly now says he will never follow an order that dumb again, but why did he follow it that time? Shouldn't the cops have been a little more prepared for the building-evacuating panic? Shouldn't the cops with bullhorns announcing the all-clear have been ready to go at the first sign of trouble?

So. Fire Ray Kelly. Because it would be pretty funny if he went down for this.

In the memo, a copy of which was obtained by WCBS-TV in New York, FAA official James Johnston acknowledged "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes." Instead of proposing a public-awareness campaign to salve New Yorkers' lingering 9/11 fears, however, Johnston threatened federal sanctions if the purpose of the flyover — staged to create a White House publicity photo of Air Force One flying past the Statue of Liberty — leaked out.

This just gets stupider and stupider and stupider, doesn't it?

(Photo by Christopher Talbot via WCBS-AM)

The clip, circulated via email, shows a crowd in Jersey (we think) screaming and running in just one of the many cases in which New Yorkers freaked out at what looked like a 9/11-style terror attack. Yes, it really was this bad — like something out of an apocalyptic action movie.

Louis Caldera is the director of the White House Military Office, and he is Clinton's old secretary of the Army. He is very sorry.

Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.

That is one of those "I take responsibility" statements in which the person taking responsibility doesn't actually know what that term means. We really hate those! Either say "fuck, my bad" or just fucking castigate the people you really want to blame (these "state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey" maybe?).

It is sort of New York's fault, because apparently everyone did know about it, but they didn't tell anyone about it. But that is because the Defense Department made them promise not to!

The Police Department confirmed that it had been notified about the event but said it had been barred from alerting the public. "The flight of a VC-25 aircraft and F-16 fighters this morning was authorized by the F.A.A. for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it but to direct any inquiries to the F.A.A. Air Traffic Security Coordinator," the Police Department said in a statement.

Obama was reportedly furious that everyone got all a-scared of his second airplane this morning. What a hilarious military/bureaucratic fuckup, unless you were one of those people who was shaking and crying, this morning, as you evacuated your building, baffled and scared. (Get over it, America!)

9/11 Reenactment Enthusiast Louis Caldera is currently on sabbatical from the University of New Mexico School of Law, and from 2000-2008 he served as a director at Dallas Morning News publisher A. H. Belo Corporation, where, obviously, he was a firm believer in keeping the public informed.