Sorry, but this sounds about as reliable to us as the old drug pretext stops--cops would actually go into court and say they stopped a vehicle for a traffic offense but when they saw that the occupants of the car had fast food wrappings in the vehicle, they got suspicious because they knew that drug dealers ate at McDonalds, so they asked for permission to search and lo and behold they got it and found 50 kilos of coke in the car.

Today, instead of drug dealers, they're looking for terrorists--and they want cops to alert on people carrying almanacs:

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.

In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning." It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.

If we're stopped for a traffic offense with an almanac in plain view and asked for permission to search the car, the only words we're saying are "Officer, Am I free to leave?"

Citizens for Legitimate Government has a list of the best quotations of the year regarding the Bush Administration's terror policies. Here are a few of our favorites:

Since his arrival, Ashcroft has rushed through the U.S. legal system with the same rampaging rage as a Baghdad looter, thoughtlessly shattering artifacts in looking for things of instant value. What remains are pieces of Americana, like the presumption of innocence and due process, that lay in shards after only a two-year period." --Jonathan Turley, Appetite for Authoritarianism Spawns an American Gulag, May 2, 2003

That is what habeas corpus was all about. That is what the Magna Carta was all about. You are talking about overthrowing 800 years of democratic tradition." --Philip Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor and a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, commenting on the 'Patriot' Act.

We haven't seen much written about this lawsuit filed by a 9/11 widow in November. From her lawyer's press release:

(Philadelphia, PA – 11/26/03) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, announced today that he, attorney for Ellen Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when United Air Lines flight 175 was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9-11 at a news conference regarding the filing of a detailed Amended Complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on 11/26/03 in the case of Mariani vs. Bush et al that he is alleging President Bush and officials including, but not limited to Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Feinberg that they:

1. had knowledge/warnings of 911 and failed to warn or take steps to prevent;

2. have been covering up the truth of 911; and

3. have therefore violated the laws of the United States; and

4. are being sued under the Civil RICO Act.

It looks like the cancellations of the Air France to LAX flights yesterday were a false alarm:

French investigators questioned seven men pointed out by U.S. intelligence but found no evidence they planned to use a Los Angeles-bound jet to launch terror attacks against the United States, French authorities said Thursday.

U.S. intelligence officials told their French counterparts that members of the al-Qaida terrorist network would try to board the planes over Christmas, said a French judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The seven questioned men, who all had tickets for Air France Flight 68 to Los Angeles, were on a watch list provided by U.S. authorities, an Interior Ministry spokesman said. But all were released after questioning Wednesday night, the spokesman said. "There are no longer any investigations," he said. France's anti-terrorism judicial unit chose not to launch a formal investigation because of a lack of evidence of an attack, the judicial official said.

While that's the news in France, U.S. officials say they believe one of the planes was to be hijacked en route to LA and crashed in Las Vegas. The article says the U.S. foiled the attack. But this article suggests Las Vegas was just a vague mention, not a specific threat.

Update: Las Vegas officials deny a threat to their city.

As the terror threat gets elevated to orange, we're wise to remember that the arrest of Saddam has not made us any safer. As Eric Alterman points out, writing for Center for American Progress:

In the meantime, the true perpetrators of 9/11 remain alive and well. We have more than 10 times as many troops in Iraq as in border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan where bin Laden is believed to be operating. And here at home, we are hardly better prepared than we were last time. Our nuclear and chemical plants remain all but unprotected; so too our ports and infrastructure. Our first responders are untrained and our cities starved for resources to defend themselves.

According to the LA Times, the Justice Department is using a flawed terrorist yardstick to inflate the number of terrorist arrests.

DOJ cites 280 cases as proof that it is winning the terror war.

The growing list has been regularly highlighted by Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials in speeches and congressional testimony, and even by President Bush. In an address to federal law enforcement officials on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush referred to the "more than 260 suspected terrorists" that the government has hauled to court.

In October, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray, the Justice Department's criminal division chief, cited the growing number of charges resulting from terrorism probes — which then stood at 284 defendants — as evidence that the department has "enjoyed key successes" in the anti-terrorism war. Last month, in a speech before a Justice Department liaison group for federal attorneys, Ashcroft cited terrorism-related criminal charges against 286 people, declaring "we have been successful."

Partly using documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the LA Times conducted its own review of the cases.

Call us cynical, but we're putting two and two together and coming up with a plan by the Administration to spin support for Sen. Hatch's much criticized "Victory Act" (pdf) which seeks to reclassify many drug offenses as crimes of "narco-terrorism" carrying even more draconian penalties than those currently in place.

Yesterday there was the news that a boatload of hash was seized in the Persian Gulf. Of ten or twelve people on board, depending on which news report you read, three or four were reported to have unspecified "links" or unspecified "clear ties" to Al Qaeda. The Administration spin is that the load belongs to Al Qaeda, is worth ten million, and the money would have been used to finance Al Qaeda's activities.

Today, a boat with meth and heroin aboard was intercepted. Watch, this will be linked to Al Qaeda as well--and then the Administration will tell us that drug trafficking is funding Al Qaeda, and if we're patriotic, we'll support the Victory Act, which likely will be introduced in January.

Once again, the Administration is becoming a master at using the media to condition us to their next power grab. But the last thing we need are more anti-terror laws that allow the Justice Department to bypass the Fourth Amendment and its required judicial oversight.

The Chair of the independent 9/11 commission says the attacks were preventable:

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean. "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Kean is the former Governor of New Jersey and was appointed to the Commission by Bush. Oliver Willis, Daily Kos and Kevin at Lean Left have more.

The LA Times reports on why finding Osama bin Laden will be more difficult than finding Saddam.

Let's keep our eye on the prize. It was Osama, not Saddam, who allegedly masterminded the 9/11 attacks. The war against Iraq is not the same war as the war against terrorism.

[comments now closed.]

The Democratic contenders for President had varied reactions to Saddam's capture. Some are now siding with Bush and criticizing Dean--dumb in our view. The capture of Saddam is an accomplishment but it is not going to make Democrats pro-war.

Gephardt:

"I supported this effort in Iraq without regard for the political consequences because it was the right thing to do. I still feel that way now and today is a major step toward stabilizing Iraq and building a new democracy."

Kerry and Lieberman:

....Kerry and Lieberman sought to remind voters of their support for Bush's war resolution, even as they criticized the president anew for not reaching out to allies.

"If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place," Lieberman said. "I consistently supported Saddam's removal for the past decade, and am prepared to do what it takes to win the war on terrorism at home and abroad."

Dean's reaction was the best--and classiest:

He deflected questions about the Democratic presidential race. "President Bush deserves a day of celebration," Dean said. "We have our policy differences but we won't be discussing those today."

Wesley Clark makes a good point:

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, another strident critic of Bush's war policy, told reporters he still stands by past statements opposing the war. "This was not a necessary war," he said. "All candidates want the U.S. mission in Iraq to succeed, and I don't want to see another American soldier injured there. But success in Iraq does not change the judgments of an administration that took us into war. I don't think that the capture of Saddam Hussein in any way invalidates those concerns."

We like Edwards', Sharpton's, Moseley Braun's and Kucicnich reactions as well:

Edwards said he wants greater international involvement in Iraq. "I hope President Bush will use this opportunity to chart a course in Iraq that will bring in our allies in a meaningful way to achieve a democratic and peaceful Iraq," Edwards said.

By T Chris

An overhaul of the FBI's counterterrorism policies in response to the Patriot Act "marks the final step in tearing down the legal wall that had separated criminal and intelligence investigations since the spying scandals of the 1970s" according to senior FBI officials. The new policies require criminal and intelligence investigators to work together in terrorism cases, opening the door to investigative tools that were unavailable to criminal investigators prior to the Patriot Act.

The result is that the FBI, unhindered by the restrictions of the past, will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts, officials said. Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance.

New York lawyer Joshua Dratel, who has filed briefs in opposition to the FBI's anti-terrorism policies, warns that the new polices "will result in a funneling of all cases into an intelligence mode" providing criminal investigators with "an end run around the Fourth Amendment."

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission) held its sixth public hearing today on Capitol Hill. The focus of the hearing was “Security and Liberty.”

Former Deputy Atttorney General Larry Thompson defended the Patriot Act and the Government's terror war:

Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general, told the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that counterterror laws should be strengthened so suspected terrorists could be denied bail and prosecutors could move with more confidence against those who provide material support to terror organizations. Thompson urged the government to make permanent several time-limited provisions of the Patriot Act, which expanded the government's surveillance and detention power.

Two law professors, Stephen J. Schulhofer of NYU and Philip Heymann of Harvard and a deputy attorney general under former President Clinton, disagreed:

[Schulhofer] countered that more than a dozen government initiatives ``are demonstrably not justified as a response to 9-11.'' Limited resources that should be devoted to U.S. intelligence are being misspent on unnecessary new legal procedures, Schulhofer said. ``The common thread that runs through these measures,'' he said, ``is the erosion, and in many instances the complete obliteration, of traditional checks and balances.''

[Heymann in written testimony] said Congress should reject several assertions of authority invoked by the Bush administration in the name of security. They include the power to order military tribunals for U.S. residents who are not citizens and the power to collect information from an individual's associates while compelling the associates to keep the inquiry secret...

The commission will submit a report to Congress by May 27, 2004:

Congress created the bipartisan commission to study the nation's preparedness before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and its response to them. It also is to recommend safeguards against similar disasters.