The LA Times is currently running this breaking news headline: “U.S. learned about alleged extremist links of airline bomber as he was in the air.”

Good bet that that’s a leak from the report the White House is going to release tomorrow about the preliminary investigation into the incident.

Should be an eventful day.

Late Update: The Times piece is up now. The gist is that US Border enforcement officials figured out that Abdulmutallab might be a problem once the flight had already taken off. And they were actually planning on questioning him once he landed in Detroit. Here’s a key passage:

“the window for identifying a passenger as a potential threat before boarding is limited, according to a senior homeland security official. Although U.S. border enforcement officials have access to passenger data based on reservation lists and use them for preliminary assessments, the in-depth vetting by Customs and Border Protection only begins once the flight manifest has been generated, just a few hours before takeoff, and focuses on potential actions to take at the U.S. border, the official said.”

As noted below, Chris Dodd’s departure leaves Democrats in a very strong position to hold the Connecticut senate seat. If yesterday was a dismal day for Democrats in general, as I explain in the post below, it was an even worse one for Rob Simmons.

But there’s another odd and paradoxical beneficiary: Joe Lieberman. Read More

Think Dodd’s withdrawal was a good thing for the Dems.

The PPP poll out today had Dodd losing narrowly to Rob Simmons, former House Republican and most likely GOP nominee, by a margin of 40% to 44%. And that’s actually an improvement on where he had been.

When they slotted in Richard Blumenthal, the state AG who’s now almost certain to get the Democratic nomination, he outpolled Simmons by a margin of 59% to 28%. And he had actually did slightly better against Linda McMahon, the only major contender for the GOP nomination.

Why are we giving these terrorists the honor of being called ‘criminals’ when we could really stick it to them and label them ‘warriors’?

If you’re a crooked sheriff, dealing weed out of your Sheriff’s Dept SUV, one good way to make your drug dealing partner flip on you and become a snitch for the DEA is to threaten to kill him and ask for a percentage of his drug dealing profits.

As you know, it seems there was some level of intelligence failure in the Xmas Bomber case. Our key intelligence agencies didn’t piece together several different shards of evidence which may at least have led to Abdulmutallab to get a closer screening in Amsterdam and maybe caught before he boarded. But as I’ve read more into this I’ve found that there’s been at least some level of media failure, in that I’ve had a hard time finding in one place all the different things that we allegedly knew.

Now, clearly, it’s going to be very hard to find out officially and on the record just what was known. But I’ve wanted to find in one place all the things that credible news organizations have claimed this or that arm of the US government knew. And here are two examples of things I’ve come across in the last couple days but had not heard more widely. Read More

Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), the state’s only congressman, won’t be running to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Byron Dorgan.

Yet another great moment from the Global Phrase War. Asked for one specific recommendation for what President Obama could do to make the country more safe from terrorism, Rep. Pete King (R-NY) said his main recommendation would be to use the word ‘terrorism’ more.

Clearly he’s reading from the Rudy playbook.

I mean, I’ve always had a hard time not kind of liking Peter King, partly because of his really brave stand against impeachment back in 1999, and also because he’s just this really outspoken, old-fashioned Irish-American pol who’s sort of a throwback from another age. But man, that’s gotta be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

The Florida attorney and Charlie Crist pal who vigorously denied charges that he was running an elaborate Ponzi scheme out of his law office and continued to live it up in public after being charged has decided to plead guilty.