Iraq War Hinders Domestic Crime Fighting

Matt Yglesias observes that, "one effect of the Iraq War has been to take a lot of cops out of the field fighting crime at home and send them to Iraq as Army Reserve and National Guard members instead. That's hardly a knock-down argument against the war, but it's a reminder that these visions of endless 'strategic patience' don't come ...

State Dept. Contractors Caught Snooping Obama Records

Via Marc Ambinder and reporter Bill Gertz of the Moonie Washington Times, three State Department contract employees were recently caught sneaking peeks at Barack Obama's passport records. The relevant particulars from Gertz's piece: The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department's consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, ...

Times Square Recruiting Station Bombed

An Armed Forces Recruiting Station in New York's Times Square was hit with an improvised explosive at 3:45 this morning. Investigation is still underway but, as of this writing, The police have attributed the blast to an improvised explosive device, and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the device had been placed in an ammunition box like the kind ...

Hezbollah Leader Imad Mughniyeh Killed

Imad Mughniyeh, the man behind the the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut and the TWA Flight 847 hijacking, has been killed. A senior Hezbollah commander suspected in some of the highest-profile international terrorist attacks of the last 25 years has died in an explosion in Syria, Hezbollah TV said Wednesday. Imad Mughniyeh died Tuesday in an explosion in ...

Trading Essential Liberties for Temporary Safety

Cato's Tim Lee wonders, "Why are today’s Democrats less concerned with civil liberties than Republicans were a decade ago?" Jim Henley retorts, “Why are today’s Republicans less concerned with civil liberties than Republicans were a decade ago?” His guess is that its because 1996 Republicans were trying to protect "their voters, the right-most fringe of exurban ...

Keystone Kops Terror Plots

Bernard Finel, noting the recent string of highly touted terror plot arrests that have ultimately proven to be the work of crazies rather than genuine terrorists, wonders, "Where are the real terror plots?" At some point, you’d figure we’d bust open a ring where there is actually hard evidence of wrong-doing. Where are the weapons caches? The bomb factories? ...

Abolish The CIA?

Although it's not a new idea, Christopher Hitchens has seemingly united the blogosphere with his suggestion the it's time to abolish the CIA and start over. His argument, in a nutshell, is that the Agency is simultaneously incompetent and venal. Its turnaround on the Iran weapons program is just the latest instance of it proving spectacularly wrong and, ...

Does a Muslim Belong in the Cabinet?

Mansoor Ijaz reports that Mitt Romney has announced he would not appoint a Muslim to the cabinet were he elected president. His reasoning is a mite peculiar: I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal ...

DC Area’s ‘Terror High’ Still Under Suspicion

More than six years after the 9/11 attacks, the debate over whether a Saudi-sponsored school operating in the National Capitol Region is preparing students for jihad continues. Its most virulent critics have dubbed it ''Terror High'' and 12 U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down. The teachers, administrators and some 900 students at the Islamic Saudi ...

Blackwater Killers Immune from Prosecution

The State Department offered limited immunity to Blackwater contractors involved in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians last month, despite having no authority to do so and an ongoing FBI investigation. A front page piece in today's WaPo by Karen DeYoung discusses the problems this has caused. FBI agents called in to take over the State Department's investigation two weeks ...