Well, not quite. But the Transportation Security Administration has placed its standard operating procedure manual for screening supervisors online—the document is marked "Sensitive Security Information" and is supposed to be distributed on a "need to know" basis, but what the hell, right? Transparency!

The TSA did have the good sense to redact all the stuff they though terrorists might use to game the screening system and get through with weapons, but because they are stupid federal bureaucrats they simply drew little boxes over the secret stuff in the pdf files. So "hackers," by which we mean "people with Acrobat Professional," simply removed the boxes and looked at what was underneath. (The stuff the TSA tried to redact is outlined in red below.)

You can read the whole thing at Cryptome. But we've distilled the unredacted manual with an eye toward whatever tricks we could find to avoid getting pulled aside for special screening and missing your flight. With that in mind, here are Gawker's rules to infiltrating our nation's airports on your way home this Christmas:

1. Don't Be From Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, or Algeria

If your passport has any of those countries' names on it, you'll get pulled aside as a "selectee" for special one-on-one screening. So if you are from Pakistan, move right on ahead!

2. Pack Your Ammo Carefully

If it's in your checked luggage, feel free to bring along any ammunition up to .50 caliber, as long as it's inside a box.

3. If the Airline Ticket Agent Wrote "SSSS" on Your Ticket, Just Turn Around and Go Home

The industry lingo for people who get pulled aside and questioned at airport security checkpoints is "SSSS," for "Secondary Security Screening Selection." We figured that airlines would use some sort of secret code to communicate to the TSA that a given ticketholder was due for the third degree, but nope—it looks like they literally just write four S's on your ticket. So now you know.

4. Be a Minor, Member of Congress, Uniformed Military Member, or All Three

If you're unlucky enough to have been tagged with the dreaded "SSSS" code, all is not lost: Members of Congress, children under 12, and uniformed military servicemembers are exempted from special screening even if they're marked for it. Which is great, because we know that, say, Army officers can't present a special security threat that might merit scrutiny. The manual also helpfully shows TSA supervisors what a congressional ID looks like, so you might want to forge one before you head to the airport, just in case.

5. Better Yet, Be a Foreign Dignitary in CIA Custody

One of the best bits that the TSA tried, and failed, to redact from the manual reveals the existence of the CIA's Worldwide Operational Meet and Assist Program (WOMAP), whereby the Agency will apparently dispatch a CIA agent to ferry foreign assets to the U.S. When they do, the subjects are fully exempt from screening—no magnetometer, no bag search, no nothing. So if you know anyone at Langley, they may be able to hook you up. Again, the TSA has helpfully presented an example of a CIA ID card—doesn't carrying one of these defeat the purpose of being a CIA agent?—so you should set yourself up with a fake before you try the WOMAP route.

Oh, and if you get caught, just run: TSA officers are instructed not to "detain or delay" anybody they suspect has presented them a fraudulent ID if they've already gotten past security.
But if you travel at peak times, the chances they'll spot the fake will go down to 25%, because regulations permit the TSA to examine IDs with a black light or loupe on only one in four passengers if traffic backs up.

6. Make Yourself a Diplomatic Pouch

Diplomatic pouches are exempt from security screening. You'll still have to go through the checkpoint, but you won't be slowed down by the x-ray machine. The manual helpfully explains how to make one, with a description of where the seal could be. Don't worry about getting caught with this one—have you ever seen a diplomatic pouch before? Neither has the 19-year-old TSA officer you'll be presenting it to.

7. Be Disabled

The explosive trace detection (ETD) process, when a TSA officer swabs your bag and runs a sample through a machine to look for trace amounts of explosives, can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Wheelchairs, orthopedic shoes, and prosthetic devices are exempt.

8. If You've Got Explosives In Your Checked Luggage, There's Only a 20% Chance They're Going to Actually Open It to Conduct a Test On It

So there's that.

9. Just Skip the Checkpoint and Go In through the Exit Door—They're Not Monitored by Trained TSA Officers

It looks like they let just anybody monitor the exits. You could probably sneak by them.

10. Print Out the Supervisor's Standard Operating Procedures Manual and Show it to the TSA Officers

They'll get distracted because that stuff's supposed to be supersecret, and while they're busy e-mailing their supervisor to report a breach, you can just walk right through.

Of course, when your job is to protect the President of the United States, and the first black one at that, it goes without saying, but "strong concern" is the default position. Early on, however, it was really, really bad: one such threat resembles most of them, and take a guess what kind it was. Ready? Yeah: White, former Marine, even had a name for it. "Operation: Patriot." Scary, much?

The Marine, Kody Brittingham, a 20-year-old lance corporal, wrote that he had taken an oath to "protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic." In a signed "letter of intent," tucked away in his barracks at Camp Lejeune, he identified a "domestic enemy" he planned to eliminate last winter: President Obama.

Creepy white domestic terrorists are the worst kind of creepy. They're not even exotic. And they're predictable in their lameness, too, all creeping out of the woodwork whenever a Democrat gets elected to office. The White House and Secret Service, before Obama was in office, started intercepting a number of threats raising "deep concern." As the Secret Service almost never comments on procedure as a matter of policy—if ever—it's probably safe to assume this was a euphemism for "record amounts."

Though the threats peaked early, they're still trying to discern the difference in how seriously to deal with, say, the Arizona pastor who prayed for Obama to die and the airport security guard in New Jersey who has an arsenal of 43 guns and hollow-point bullets at the ready. That's this charmer, John Brek, who only went to jail for 29 days.

Interestingly enough, Rahm Emmanuel is the guy Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano—whose agency has overseen the Secret Service since it was taken over from the Department of Treasury in 2003—reviews everything accumulated by their Internet Threat Desk with every week. Rahm—scary in his own right—is the one sorting through these things, which is somehow reassuring. But there've been far more and far worse ones than we've been privy to. This is where it gets interesting:

A review of dozens of court records and police reports by The New York Times uncovered an array of cases, most of which did not gain public attention even as they rang alarm bells at some of the highest levels of the government. Some involved suspects with a history of violence or mental illness and easy access to guns and explosives, while others involved men whose menacing talk was ultimately deemed to be just that by the authorities.

You know the old saying: Guns don't shoot people, gun-owners shoot people with guns. Both are subject to malfunction and are terrifying. The number of threats against the President spiked again this summer, and naturally, the Secret Service sees the depressed economy as the impetus behind the increased amount of threats. Yet between the Party Gatecrashers incident, the report of the way-more-than-we-knew numbers, and the increased likelihood of this country spawning more and more people who are scared, angry, hungry and pissed with each dollar they find themselves short, we're a long way from any security climate resembling normal.

The further we go, the deeper the hole to fall: especially after the presidency of George W. Bush, which openly encouraged and provoked fanaticism and Christian extremism from the top, electing a black president was never not going to come with these problems. The only comfort anyone can take in this is, I guess, that it didn't stop people from doing so.

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!

Ross' report yesterday that Hasan had attempted to "make contact with people associated with al Qaeda" took over the internet yesterday and sparked a furious round of speculation that Hasan's attack was part of an Islamic terrorist plot. The headline, "Officials: U.S. Army Told of Hasan's Contacts with al Qaeda," said it all. The far more mundane truth emerged today in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post: Hasan had communicated via e-mail with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric living in Yemen who formerly served as the imam of a mosque Hasan had attended in Virginia. What did they talk about? From the Washington Post:

The FBI determined that the e-mails did not warrant an investigation, according to the law enforcement official. Investigators said Hasan's e-mails were consistent with the topic of his academic research and involved some social chatter and religious discourse.

We were confused this morning, because Ross had clearly reported that Hasan had made contact with "people associated with Al Qaeda," and the only contacts that other reporters were confirming were with al-Awlaki, who is, as far as we know, a single person. We called Ross and asked him if there were more "people." No, he told us, his initial report was only in reference to al-Awlaki.

"That's how it was initially described to me by my sources," he says. "Given what they told me, that's all I could say. It's a strange use of the word 'people.' But when pinned down, my sources said it's just al-Awlaki."

A strange use, indeed. How about false, too? Especially because Ross' original story did, in fact, report that al-Awliki was among the "people" Hasan was suspected of having contacted. So he reported that Hasan contacted more than one person associated with al Qaeda, and then named one person that he was suspected of contacting. What he apparently didn't bother to do was "pin his sources down" on exactly what they were saying. The result was a clear suggestion that Hasan had tried to communicate with the al Qaeda network on more than one occasion.

So did he? Al-Awlaki is routinely described by the FBI and others as an al Qaeda supporter, and a fiery inciter of violence against infidels. And he was the imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as Hasan. But while it's clear that Al-Awlaki is a bad guy, what's not clear is whether he's simply a propagandist or someone who actually operates as a part of al Qaeda. It's one thing for Hasan to have sent e-mails to someone who vocally supports al Qaeda, and quite another for him to have sent e-mails to al Qaeda itself, or to operatives actively involved in trying to kill people. Ross told us that, according to his sources, "Al-Awlaki is considered a recruiter," which is how he justified invoking the name of the terrorist network. We'll defer to him on that point.

But without knowing what the e-mails are about, can it really be known that Hasan's communications were "attempts to reach out"? The FBI didn't consider them as such. Ross didn't know the contents of the e-mails when he described them that way, but felt perfectly justified in doing so based solely on the knowledge that Hasan had sent the e-mails.

We asked Ross if he had tried to contact Al-Awlaki in reporting the story:

"Yes."

So you reached out to al Qaeda, then?

"To al Qaeda? No. I reached out to him. Oh. I see what you're saying."

What's particularly maddening about Ross' hype is that it had already been well established that Al-Awlaki was the imam at Hasan's Virginia mosque in 2001. Hasan's mother's funeral services were held there at the time. While it hadn't been definitively established that Hasan had ever met Al-Awlaki, it was abundantly clear that the two men were in one another's orbits and that Hasan likely heard him preach. That wasn't reported as a "contact with al Qaeda," but once Ross got his hands on the fact that Hasan sent e-mails to his former imam, who had a web site with a comment form, he turned it into a blockbuster story.

Which wouldn't be the first time. Ross reported—inaccurately—after the anthrax attacks in 2001 that the powder contained a "potent additive...known to have been used by only one country in producing biochemical weapons - Iraq." He laundered CIA agent John Kiriakou's lie that the agency only used waterboarding once, for 30 seconds, when in fact Kiriakou wasn't even in the same country as the secret prison where his colleagues waterboarded two men a total of 266 times. He fell for the lies of Alexis Debat, a grifter and fraud who masqueraded as an intelligence expert. And he hyped his access to the phone records of DC madam Deborah Jean Palfrey for days, but only came up with the names of two low-level clients.

Ross' stock response to these complaints is that he only reports what his sources tell him. "We reported what we knew, when we knew it," he says. "I'm comfortable with the story." His problem, as we've said before, is that he has shitty sources. And he just repeats what they tell him. Which is how you get from "Hasan sent e-mails to his former imam, who now preaches in support of Al Qaeda. We don't know what the e-mails were about, but they didn't raise alarms at the FBI" to "Hasan tried to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda" to the headline's blunt, and thoroughly unsupported, reference to "Hasan's Contacts with al Qaeda." It would have been a good story if Ross had stuck to the first, accurate, formulation.

Before 1995, according to the Roanoke County Circuit Court clerk's office, Virginia law required a psychiatric evaluation and documented explanation for why a resident needed to carry a concealed handgun. But by the time Hasan applied in October 1995, all that was required was a criminal background check and certification of a gun safety course. For some reason proof of having completed individual infantry training in the U.S. Army (next slide) was not enough for the Commonwealth of Virginia when it came to gun safety and Hasan had to take an NRA course as well. Above is the certificate of completion of an NRA "Personal Protection Course" that Hasan filed with the court. (You can read the entire application here.)

Here is his certificate of infantry training, submitted with the application. It was completed in 1988, when Hasan was 18 years old, which serves as definitive proof that he signed up with the army immediately after graduating from high school. His family has confirmed that timeline to reporters, but Virginia Tech, where he attended college, has said it has no record of Hasan participating in the school's ROTC program, leading some to believe he signed up after college.

Here is Hasan's fingerprint card. According to the application, he passed a criminal background check conducted by the Vinton Police Department.

A photocopy of Hasan's Virginia driver license. Note the address.

Fanaticism makes strange bedfellows, and the push to link up Hasan to a wider terrorist plot has united Sen. Joe Leiberman and radical Yemeni cleric Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki in common cause. Wingnuts and neocons want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it confirms their worldview that Muslim terrorists lurk in every shadow and helps them scare the shit out people. Muslim terrorists want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it satisfies their desire to claim credit for the murders of Americans and helps them scare the shit out of people. Everybody wins.

The question of whether Hasan qualifies as a bona fide Muslim terrorist seems to be academic, and can serve as handy ideological litmus test. He clearly was motivated in part by extremist religious views, and clearly killed a lot of people. For the New Republic's Jason Zengerle, that alone is enough to call him a terrorist. But "Islamic terrorism" has a political and cultural meaning that extends beyond merely acts of violence by people who believe a certain subset of crazy religious teachings—it means jihad, Al Qaeda, spectacular violence, and a global network of people who are acting in concert to kill us all and establish an emirate. Dick Cheney is not worried about American civilization being destroyed 13 soldiers at a time by single men armed with pistols, and "the largest single terror act in America since 9/11"—which is how Fox News contributor Walid Phares describes the Ft. Hood shootings—is a label that's tailored to call up something in our lizard brains that goes far beyond lone wolves. It's about the "existential threat" we are under. No matter how extremist his views or how despicable the man, no one can argue that Maj. Hasan is an existential threat to the republic.

So the question is: How do we turn him into one, so that this horror will not pass without being taken advantage of politically? That requires making him part of, and representative of, a larger and well-known enemy for which there exists more than sufficient reserves of justified hatred and fear—Al Qaeda. Enter ABC News' Brian Ross, the notoriously unreliable investigative reporter who came out with a blockbuster this morning: Unnamed intelligence officials tell Ross that unnamed American intelligence agencies learned months ago that Hasan had attempted to make contact with "people associated with Al Qaeda" who were under U.S. surveillance. The report is a grab-bag of red flags. Ross mentions that officials are trying to find out if Hasan ever communicated with Anwar Al-Awlaki, the former imam of a mosque that Hasan attended on Falls Church, Va., who later fled to Yemen and supports violent jihad. But it's unclear from Ross' report whether Al-Awlaki is one of the "people associated with Al Qaeda" that Hasan is said to have attempted to contact, or if there are others. Within the story itself, what begins as an attempt to contact "people associated with Al Qaida"—with no explanation as to why he was allegedly trying to contact these people—rapidly becomes "Hasan's attempt to reach out to al Qaeda." These are vastly different things, and Ross' casual conflation of them, with no evidence, is an indicator that something is cooked in the story.

It wouldn't be the first time: Ross famously, and breathlessly, reported in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks that U.S. intelligence sources had specific and detailed evidence linking Iraq to the type of anthrax used. It was complete and utter bullshit, and it served to heighten the atmosphere of panic and fear in the days immediately following the attacks and to link them to a convenient enemy. So we take his latest entry in the post-massacre-blockbuster-terrorism-story sweepstakes with a grain of salt.

Even before Ross' report, the attempts to render Hasan's killings more politically effective for the purposes of changing U.S. policy toward Islamic radicalism had begun. Sen. Joe Lieberman called on Sunday for a congressional investigation into Hasan's background—which we think is a great idea—and mimed Phares' bumper sticker, calling it it "the most-destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11." The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg charitably wrote today, under the headline, "When Muslims Commit Violence," that not all Muslims are "violently unhappy with America." Whew! Good to know. Unfortunately, Goldberg continues, "elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims." The "larger meaning" here being what? That "when Muslims commit violence" we should have a different reaction, and different policy reforms designed to prevent a recurrence, than when Christians or Jews or anarchist nutjobs or right-wing nutjobs commit violence? The problem, Goldberg writes, is that since "elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism," they should apply the same standard to Muslim beliefs. Because clearly, Islamic theology has gotten a pass from journalistic and cultural establishment over the last eight years, and it's about time somebody blew the lid off the whole thing. Did you know that some of them agree with suicide bombing?

Goldberg and Zengerle both make the point that the left referred to Scott Roeder as a terrorist after he murdered Dr. George Tiller. Parity, one imagines, dictates that the same term apply to Hasan. One noteworthy distinction, though, is that Roeder fits precisely into what most people generally think of when they talk about right-wing terrorists. He worked closely with other people who sought the deaths of abortion providers. He talked about it all the time. He was an active member of an organized movement. Hasan's case is noteworthy because of the extent to which it is not like the Al Qaeda threat we've come to know. That doesn't mean there's nothing to be learned from it, or even that we shouldn't try to change the way we do things to try to prevent it from happening again. What it does mean is that it's not like the Al Qaeda threat that we've come to know, and is substantively different from the Muslim terrorism, and fear thereof, that has hijacked our national psyche for nearly a decade. As Zengerle quite reasonably acknowledges, magnetometers at airports won't prevent it from happening again, nor will invading Iran, nor will another PATRIOT Act.

What Goldberg, Ross (or his sources), Lieberman, et. al. are trying to do is establish an equivalence between "Muslim person who kills people" and "global conspiracy of Muslims who kill people," so that they can advance a political agenda that involves deploying U.S. resources in a particular way to defeat a particular threat.

The funny thing is, the terrorists agree with them. Hasan's radical former imam, Anwar al Awlaki, wrote on his web site that "Nidal Hasan is a hero" who performed "an Islamic duty." It's precisely the same ideological jump: Hasan didn't act alone, he is part of a broader struggle by religious fanatics. And it's made for the same reason: to advance a political agenda. The neocons want to keep pressure on the idea that there is a vast army of scary Muslims always on the verge of killing us. And so do the terrorists.

FORT HOOD, Texas - Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — an Arabic phrase for "God is great!" — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said officials had not yet confirmed that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment before the rampage Thursday.

And CNN has what it claims is security-camera footage of Hasan in a convenience store wearing Islamic garb on the day of the shooting:

If true, the above would seem to confirm what many on the wingnut right seemed to positively hope was the case last night—that Hasan's rampage was an act of Islamist terrorism, as opposed to the result of a breakdown or mental illness or the garden-variety insane rage and alienation that has inspired what seems like a mass killing every other month. We all know what first came to mind when Hasan's name was released yesterday. But we suppose a handy guide for finding the line that divides the Glenn Becks of the world from the rest of us is whether you reacted with dread at the idea that it may have been related, however murkily, to Islamism, or if you were filled with smug delight.

Here's some smug delight, from a horrible woman (via the Awl):

The moment I first heard about the mass murders at Fort Hood I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslims.

Call me "Islamophobic," call me "psychic," call me what you will.

It now seems that there was only a single shooter: Major Malik Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim man of Palestinian/Jordanian descent, an American citizen who is an Army-trained physician-a psychiatrist to be exact-as well as a religious Muslim.

And here, from the Corner's Victor Davis Hanson, is a new meme watch: When a Christian or a Jew or any other kind of regular American blows a gasket and kills a bunch of people, there are a variety of reasons we can investigate as to the potential cause. When a Muslim does it, it's a personal jihad:

[I call it] al Qaedism, or the spontaneous rage of disaffected Muslims, who connect their own failures in some sense to generic radical Islamist sentiments, and act out that anger by running over the innocent (San Francisco or North Carolina), shooting Jews (the LAX or Seattle attacks), or shooting up malls or sniping. These are of course different from but in addition to the 24 organized plots that have been broken up since 9/11, four of them this year alone.

Maybe Hasan killed all those people because he thought Allah wanted him to. Maybe he did it because he wanted to exact revenge for perceived slights. Maybe he was a paranoid schizophrenic and thought they were lizard people. Maybe all of the above. We don't know. But if it was Islamism, this is the lesson that Hanson and his partisans want to take from it:

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

A saner approach. No one, anywhere, has ever disputed that there is a small minority of Muslims—or any religious sect, for that matter—who subscribe to violent and extremist religious views. Make no mistake, this is an argument for legitimate fear and mistrust of "Muslims in general." Expect to see more like it.

The FBI says that two Pakistani men who lived in Chicago came up with this CODE NAME: "Mickey Mouse Project," which was to fly over to Denmark and murder Kurt Westergaard (and his editor!), who drew the dumb cartoon so long ago that made so many dumb people so upset. He is 78 years old! How about waiting and letting god deal with him, soon enough?

The master assassins left behind a few clues, according to the Chicago Sun-Times:

In October 2008, Headley used his birth name, Daood Gilani —which he changed in 2006 to avoid suspicion while traveling — when posting a message to a Yahoo group called "abdalians," authorities said.

"Everything is not a joke . . . We are not rehearsing a skit on Saturday Night Live," Headley said in the posting. "Call me old-fashioned, but I feel disposed towards violence for the offending parties."

So this dumb and pointless plot to fly overseas and kill and old man over a cartoon has now been foiled, and these guys will doubtless spend decades in jail over it, and Kurt Westergaard is understandably angry that crazy people half a world away still want to buy airline tickets in order to fly over and kill him, for this bullshit. Come on.

Conspicuously not targeted in the plot: Yale University Press.

What kind of zeal for terrorist-appeasement prompted the New York Times to commission a front-page apology to the Taliban?

That's because Rohde wrote about what his captors felt and said, instead of joining the SEALs and killing a bunch of them, which Andrea Peyser has certainly done many times, right? "I'll probably never know what the reporter experienced," Peyser writes. That's true. Maybe she should try it!

You would think a meeting between fighting tribal factions in Iran, would be a super safe place, but a suicide bomber killed at least 29 people at a "Shiite-Sunni Tribes' Solidarity Conference" on Sunday. The dead included six commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. A Sunni insurgent group took responsibility for the attack, but even with other people taking credit for the bombing some Iranian officials say there's an American conspiracy at work.

The Baluchistan truthers include Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani who said "If we review the past, there have been many secret and public reports on the US connections and aids to the terrorists in the province... and this shows Americans' enmity towards Iran's progress." In a statement released through the Fars news agency, the Revolutionary Guard said the bombing was the work of "terrorists" backed by "the great Satan America and its ally Britain." Iranian officials also promised to strike back at those responsible for the attack, which makes the allegations of US involvement pretty ominous.

Update: Now Iran is also blaming Pakistan for this bombing. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters in his best James Bond movie villain voice that "some security agents in Pakistan are co-operating with the main elements of this terrorist incident... we regard it as our right to demand these criminals from them."

Here, let CBS just clarify it for you:

"Absolutely nothing [can detect these rectum bombs] other than to require people to strip naked at the airport," said Yates.

And al Qaeda says it will share its new technique via the Internet very soon. There is nothing that can stop that either.

There you have it: there is no stopping it. Just pray that it will be quick.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The FBI set up a sting to catch Finton in the act of trying to blow up a courthouse, as that is basically the pattern of most of these terror stings: the Feds find some disaffected and incredibly idiotic Muslim youth and provide him with a target and make-believe bombs and then arrest him when he tries to detonate these make-believe bombs that they got him, outside the terror target they helped him pick out. It is usually more than a little bit ridiculous.

Federal officials allege that on Wednesday, Finton drove a van containing what he thought was explosive material and parked it directly in front of the northwest corner of the Paul Findley Federal Building at Sixth and Monroe streets.

He got out of the van, locked the door and got into another vehicle driven by an undercover FBI officer and drove away. Within a few blocks of the federal building, Finton made a cell phone call to remotely detonate the purported bomb," officials said.

He was arrested immediately after he attempted to detonate the "device."

Yes, indeed. Finton told the judge that he worked part-time in the kitchen of a local "fish and chicken restaurant." And look, here is his MySpace!

It is not actually all that interesting, except that he certainly seems to be friends with a lot of immodest ladies. I can see their necks! And hair!

Oh, and there are a bunch of kind of tragic MySpace comments from someone who seems to be Finton's niece. She does break the news that Finton's been to jail before, and that afterward he cared more for his Muslim brothers and sisters than his "really family."

According to the Associated Press, a new survey of scientific literature on stress and memory from a researcher at Ireland's Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience has found that CIA's torture techniques likely caused the agency's victims to actually forget the details that they were being tortured for—if they ever had the information in the first place—and could have also cause them to create false memories.

Prolonged stress from the CIA's harsh interrogations could have impaired the memories of terrorist suspects, diminishing their ability to recall and provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a scientific paper published Monday.

The methods could even have caused the suspects to create - and believe - false memories, contends the paper, which scrutinizes the techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology. It suggests the methods are actually counterproductive, no matter how much suspects might eventually say.

It's just a survey of other studies, rather than an actual experimental assessment of what waterboarding does to people's memories. But we'll take it as the perverse and sickening cap on the "debate" over whether American officials ought to have been instructed to inflict mock executions, calibrated drownings, and beatings on human beings in their custody: Torture doesn't work. And even if it works, it's wrong. And even if it works and isn't wrong, it still doesn't fucking work.

The Port Authority scare was just that; a rider apparently left behind two stereo speakers lashed together on the A, C, E platform. The terminal's south wing was evacuated as a precaution, but passengers were allowed back in starting about an hour ago.

Meanwhile, federal authorities are on the hunt for as many as a dozen members of the suspected Denver-based Al Quaida cell that was rolled up last weekend with the arrest of Najibullah Zazi and two accomplices. The feds believe the men may have been targeting mass transit with suicide attacks, and this morning the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin warning of terrorist interest in "sports stadiums, entertainment complexes and hotels." No specific threats were cited.

On MSNBC this morning, NBC News Justice Department correspondent Pete Williams said that the FBI actually has a bead on some of the alleged cell members: "Some of them under surveillance, they're talking to some of them."

We just don't know what to make of this: We're in the middle of what seems like an actual 24 scenario, and it's being handled calmly and with lawyers. They're talking to them! We hope this stuff works, because Dick Cheney is chuckling to himself somewhere, waiting for the explosions. Also because we don't want anybody to die.

Even during the endless campaign, Obama's opponents claimed he would be soft on terrorism, an idea that's simmered quite tenaciously on the right. Cheney only reinforced that fear when he said Obama's torture and intelligence policies make the nation "vulnerable" to attack, an argument so absurd that we can't believe people believe it. And believe it they do.

But now, after last week's raids, the feds have arrested two men — 26-year old Najibullah Zazi and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi — who they think may have been planning an attack on American soil, possibly at Fashion Week(!). The third suspect, a Queens-based imam named Ahmad Wais Afzali, allegedly tipped the Zazi men off to federal interest. All three are charged, for now, with lying to investigators.

The younger Zazi, however, admitted to training with Al Qaeda in Pakistan and had been jotting notes on how to make a bomb, which, to the feds, looks like he had plans to wreak havoc upon this dear nation.

Government spooks made clear that there's no imminent threat, but did describe the happenings as "ongoing and fast-paced." If Obama were more like Cheney or Bush, he would be playing these arrests up as a big win in our fight against terrorism. He would be cheering and making emboldened speeches celebrating his supreme powers as Commander-in-Chief. It would be nice to see a little good-natured "suck on that, Dick!" But, alas, Obama and his administration are far too classy.

Meanwhile, the right will likely remain mum, because now they look like prejudiced jerks. Again.

It's truly a new world. Remember that weird anti-terrorism raid in Queens on Monday that no one was talking about? Well, the Daily News says it was an attempt to break up an Al Qaeda cell that might be planning an attack on New York City's subways, and that the FBI has dispatched it's "elite hostage rescue squad" here to stage more raids. And the Colorado man whose visit to Queens sparked the whole thing is now back at home near Denver, chatting with reporters in his apartment and talking with his lawyer about holding a press conference to declare his innocence.

Fearful of a Madrid-style subway train bombing, authorities are poised to make more raids to seize bomb-making materials at locations in Queens, sources said Wednesday.

The FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Squad arrived in New York in anticipation of the offensive to thwart a Denver-based terror cell with ties to Al Qaeda, police sources told the Daily News.

The paper says yesterday's actions were precipitated by a visit to Queens from Najibullah Zazi, a Colorado airport shuttle driver of Afghan descent who had been under e-mail and wiretap surveillance and is allegedly suspected of plotting to attack the subway system. Anonymous law enforcement sources told the paper that they found documents on bomb-making in the rental car Zazi used to drive to New York last weekend; the FBI has warned local police departments to be on the lookout for signs of peroxide-based bombs.

So where is Zazi? At home in Denver, giving quotes to reporters at his door:

"No. Of course, I'm not a terrorist," the 25-year-old Afghan national said Tuesday.

[snip]

A bearded and barefoot Zazi, standing in the doorway of his apartment, said he's a hard-working airport shuttle driver who is married and lives with his elderly parents in the Denver suburb.

"I didn't know anything about who was following me," Zazi said of reports he is under surveillance by the FBI.

Asked why he left New York City, where he was raised since moving to Flushing, Queens, as a child, Zazi said, "I left New York because it's hard to live there; the rent is too expensive." We hear you, brother.

We don't know what to make of it. It's just so damn strange when our law enforcement institutions act deliberately, lawfully, and without sowing panic as a political strategy. It's so gratifying to know that the man at the center of a terrorism investigation wasn't immediately hooded, drugged via suppository, and strapped to the floor of a C-130 for a flight to Romania. "Given some of the course that has happened in this country in recent years, he was more worried that he would be swooped into the back of a van and that he wouldn't be able to speak to a lawyer or family," Zazi's attorney told the AP. "I told him our government doesn't have that policy any more."

We have to confess that when we hear "Madrid-style attack" and "New York City subway," we instinctively go to our inner Cheney. But this is what we've been talking about for the past eight years—a reasoned response to terror threats that doesn't throw our laws and Constitution out the window. If the FBI had the goods on Zazi, we presume they would have acted on it. In the meantime, we will get on the F train to go home tonight and hope we know what we've been talking about for all these years.

In light of the national conversation of lawmakers' — ie, Joe Wilson's — personal outbursts, the House Rules Committee today weighed in on how Congressional leaders should and should not respond to Presidential or other governmental edicts. Here's a breakdown...

First and foremost, if you disagree with general policies, it's quite alright to refer to our government as "something hated and oppressive." Hoorah!

Looking to insult our elected officials? Well, now you can say that unnamed officials are "our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs." That will come in handy.

<It is, for the record, unacceptable to call a presidential decree "intellectually dishonest." Well, for Congressional leaders, at least. The rest of you, have at it!

Has the Commander-in-Chief been sticking it around town? Well, you better shut your face, because it's inappropriate to refer to the President's "sexual misconduct." Somewhere, someway, Bill Clinton's nodding his head. Which one remains open to debate — but we can't go on...

If you're a Congressional leader and want to insult the President's message, it's totally cool if you refer to said message as a "disgrace to the country." Use said phrase wisely...

Did the President just veto something you support? Well, tough shit, because Congressional leaders cannot describe such legislative shoot-downs as "cowardly."

Do you disagree with the President's policy? Well, that's fine, but don't you dare claim that he's "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." That's just wrong and, we're sure, misguided.
END

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.

A researcher named Hans Larsson, who cites Jurassic Park as his inspiration, announced this week that he could soon to play God with Chicken genomes to create creatures with dino-like characteristics.

As we all know, dinosaurs and birds are closely related, so by pulling a DNA switcheroo, Larsson says, he can produce an army of prehistoric monsters. In an effort to lull humanity into a false sense of security, Larsson insists he doesn't have immediate plans to do so, because it would simply be too large an undertaking.

While the prospect of dinosaurs roaming the world is unsettling enough, consider where Larsson's getting the dough for his project: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs programme and National Geographic. Now, we don't want to tell the President how to do his job, but this should end.

Imagine if terrorists got their hands on the research! Osama bin Laden would be riding up and down Manhattan on a T-Rex and suicide Pterodactyls would be crashing from coast-to-coast. Something. Must. Be. Done.

First step: invent time machine. Second step: stop Jurassic Park's publication. Third step: live happily ever after.

Image via niznoz's flickr.