The Democrats say they're in favor of solid law enforcement over military solutions, and yet they stand in hard opposition to most of the techniques used to bring down the Broad Strata of British Asian plotters:

In the initial stages, counter-terrorism officers watched from a distance. By sifting telephone records, e-mails and bank records, the MI5 officers built up what insiders call "concentric circles" of information, gradually connecting each suspect to others and building up a detailed picture of the conspiracy.

Sound like NSA surveillance, data-mining, and SWIFT subpeonas may have helped here?

The operation, Whitehall officials said yesterday, was "very definitely MI5-led." The men arrested had long been on the security service's list of more than 1,000 "priority" targets: people thought likely to provide active support for terrorism.

So they were monitoring a fairly large, and yet not infinite, number of people considered suspicious. Sort of like Bush tries to do. When liberals aren't trying to stop him.

BTW, money was wired to the men from Karachi, Pakistan.

Anyone want to bet that transfer was discovered through SWIFT?

Now that this plot has been exposed, and now that SWIFT will no longer yield much useful information thanks to the NYT-- now the federal investigation into the NYT and its treasonous leakers may begin.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 PM | Comments (84)
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Why of course he did. Constituent service and all. Terrorists are his chief constituents.

The non-denial denial:

A spokesman for MP Galloway, left, said: “Waheed Zaman is not a name that George is familiar with. He is not known to him on a personal level.”

Now I want you all to listen to me. I did. NOT. Have personal relations. With that man. Waheed Zaman.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 PM | Comments (26)
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Saw this a while ago.

Was talking with steve_from_hb about how utterly unwatchable CSI: Miami is, and how Caruso, in a departure from a proven formula, insists on making himself the only star of the show, as well as the too-perfect hero who really, really cares, but don't kid yourself mister, he'll kick your ass too.

And what's with him always walking off of camera on his exit line? He's decided to make the exit line mindnumbingly literal. "I'm going to nail you hard, Ricky," (he's always interrogating a punk named Ricky) and then whoosh! Walks out of frame. Every. Single. Time.

He's trying to say, "I am David Caruso. Your mere camera cannot contain me. Your petty framing cannot hold the awesomeness that is I."

And here, David Spade goofs on our favorite phone-mail Cassanova, Pat O'Brien, kissing David Caruso's ass. Or as David Spade says, "going balls-deep on David Caruso."

Is this a goof, or a real promotional short for CSI: Miami? Whichever, it illustrates everything that's so freaking annoying about the show. CSI has a cheeky macabre goofball realism to it; this piece of crap is nothing but Horatio Caine looking heroic, empathetic, and/or heroically empathetic.

I wish I could link Jay Mohr doing his David Caruso impression. He did it on Dinner For Five. Basically, the key to doing him is refusing to look at the actor you're having a dialogue with. Just look down, or away, and then, maybe, once in a while look up heroically, or empatheically, and/or heroically empathetically.

But I can't. The internet hates Jay Mohr.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 PM | Comments (26)
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What a great idea. We should have done that three years ago.

We're fighting this war to appease Turkey, which doesn't want an indpendent Kurdistan.

Well, the hell with Turkey.

There is no good reason to try to keep this artificial state together.

Give the Shiites the south, with the oil and the ports, the Kurds the north, with the oil and the hilly farmlands, and the Sunnis, the western desert wasteland.

They had their chance.

Let them eat dust.

John disagrees.

Posted by: Ace at 06:45 PM | Comments (25)
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Is this real, or the parody?

Is this the parody, or is this real?

I'm told the comments to the real one are crazy-delicious. And I do mean crazy-delicious.

Gettin' kind of hard to tell them apart, huh?

Thanks for the real one to J.T.

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (20)
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Nice guy. Out of his own pocket, he's putting up 8000 Israelis forced to flee their homes by unending terrorist buzz-bombs.

Question:

As Iran and Syria have, of course, much more than a billion dollars between them, and given that they, in fact, have started this war which has caused the dislocation of so many Lebanese--

Why are Iran and Syria not creating large-scale refugee camps to shelter the people they themselves have made homeless?

Could it be that it's because refugees living in overcroweded squalor in a hospital makes for more poignant television images?

Or is it because "those people" are just a little bit "tight with a dollar"? A little "cheap," maybe?

Probably both.

But mostly the former.

H/t to yls.

Posted by: Ace at 05:58 PM | Comments (6)
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If this is "fascism," then it's my kind of fascism:

MI5 and Scotland Yard agents tracked the plotters from the ground, while a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications.

Kevin Corke of NBCNews immediately questioned why the codeword-classified intercepts weren't shared with the media before Scotland Yard and MI5 decided to round the gang up.*

It's hysterical. These jagoffs splash our most confidential national security secrets on the front pages of newspapers, but they're positively aghast they haven't been appointed unofficial members of the NSC.

Allah Update: Allah's been skimming and excerpting his ass off. A lot of good stuff. I won't swipe so much as I'll tease it:

Only a few hours earlier the Home Secretary had been haranguing critics of the Government’s anti-terrorism measures for failing to take the security threat seriously enough. “They just don’t get it,” he said.

He could have been forgiven for thinking as he picked up the telephone to inform the Prime Minister on holiday in the Caribbean: “They will get it now.”

Sometimes you miss things when there's so much going on. I missed this; apparently it's old news. Or is it? Well, I didn't hear of it.

The Brits had an inside man-- a fairly stunning feat of counterintelligence:

They had an undercover operative deep inside the group of at least 30 terrorists...

And that man was almost certainly a Muslim, so, let me say: Thank you. Sorry I give your correligionists such grief. There are, indeed, heroes in the Islamic world as well.

And of course there are a lot of villains-- as Allah's recounting of further cries of "Islamophobia" from the patriotically British Muslim "leadership" demonstrate.

Adapting my little quote:

"Is it just me, or is your first reaction after turning on the news and hearing someone complain of 'Islamophobia' or 'anti-Muslim backlash' to wonder, 'Oh God, what did they blow up now?'"

Guys: If your fellow Muslims weren't killing people, and you weren't offering safe harbor and moral support to the killers among you, there would be nothing to lash back against.

Think about the "root causes" of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim backlash.

Root causes.

You like talking about root causes, don't you?

* Clarification: This is actually a parody of his actual remarks (scan down).

Thought it's not so much a parody as a mimickry.

Fled Egyptian "Students" Update: Six of the 11 absconders now under arrest.

Posted by: Ace at 05:21 PM | Comments (34)
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Nice.

I wish I had "sources."

I always get made fun of this, but I do believe that, if needed, the blogosphere could replace the MSM in two weeks.

No, I don't know all the ropes of journalism. But I also don't much about, say, managing a video store. And yet I'm pretty sure I have the skill-set needed to pick up managing a Blockbusters in a short amount of time.

Is a reporter's job more difficult than managing a Blockbuster's? Not much more. You need to know how to write. Covered.

Last night I did a pretty good digest on the statements coming from US and Scotland Yard officials. I quoted them. The good quotes. Wasn't that hard to figure out which quotes made for the best headlines and subheds.

Which is 90% of journalism. Listening to something someone says and then writing down the interesting parts.

Eh. Maybe I'm crazy. But I don't think so.

I would know to keep a lid on crazy conspiracy-mongering and timing-questioning. Which puts me a step ahead of NBC's Kevin Corke.

Anyway, a quick informal poll of some other bloggers confirms that there has been too much damn news lately, and we're all exhausted. As you probably are, hopping around, collecting information and posting it, yourselves.

I think I'm going to chill for at least a while.

I can't believe no one's begged me for that Pussycat Dolls link I mentioned in the sidebar. Does anyone read that thing?

Posted by: Ace at 03:30 PM | Comments (53)
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Their madness has infected the straight media now. Or, more likely, their madness has given the straight media license to say the things they've always believed but were always afraid to say before.

"Yeah well said because a lot of people here are going to be asking the question, not only today but in the days to come, if, if the administration has known about this potential plot what was the hold up in getting the word out, especially domestically? Now right now they're saying, Ann, that there's no expectation that there will be domestic arrests related to this particular terror plot but still it does beg the question how long ago did they know of this and why are we just hearing about it right now?"

I can't think of any obvious answers to that. Nothing like, "He didn't leak it because he didn't want to compromise the British investigation, which was a painstaking, massive one conducted over a period of months."

Must be something else, I'm sure. Something political. Something sinister.

NBC's Kevin Corke spends his off days
volunteering at the CERN lab in Swizerland,
splitting atoms... With His Mind.

Via Pajamas Media, who are somehow keeping up with all of this.

Notice the eagerness to toss out suggestions of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that Bush is propagandizing/staging/timing events, and yet the unwillingness of the MSM to report on substantiated propagandizing/staging by Hezbollah and its own foreign-stringer employees.

Can any media-apologist offer up a "neutral, objective" rule of journalism to explain these differing standards?

And Notice the tropes and absurd conspiracy theories propagated on leftwing blogs are so easily, fluidly incorporated into MSM reports, but they're not touching the Qana/stringer/Hajj/Hezbollywood thing with anything other than a ten-foot pole and an obligatory but stinting twenty second mention.

On CNN... Two of the plotters are believed to have met with Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan.

Posted by: Ace at 02:38 PM | Comments (32)
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Unofficial Neddy Lamont campaign staffer Jane Hamsher weighs in with her characteristic genius.

And guys? She wrote this after the terror bust news.

The national security issue boogeyman is dead, dead, dead.

"I'm not quite dead yet."

"Shut up."

But remember-- Ned Lamont has no idea who this "Jane Hamsher" person is, or even what one of these so-called "blogs" might look like.

Jane... you're playin' a game... you never can win, girl...

'Cause you're dumb.

That's not part of the song, but it should be.

Thanks to Topsecretk9.

Not Related, But Funny: Now the Green Helmet Guy has a blog.

He says, "GOOOOO, Neddy!"

Thanks to mesablue.

Big Allah Update On Plot: Just read the thing. I don't know how anybody's keeping up. I know I can't.

Especially when you geeks are sending me crap about D&D and Star Trek.

Correction: I originally wrote that Hamsher got that from a circulating email. I was wrong. She wrote it herself.

Related: Dan Riehl notes that Lieberman likened the terrorists to Nazis, and called for "unity" in fighting them.

I'm too tired to cite, but I've seen leftwing blogs mocking this sentiment.

Strong, tough, layers, yadda. yadda. yadda.

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (35)
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