Tom Ridge has lowered the terror alert level, from orange to yellow (whatever that means).

I think that this color scheme business has as much to do with the desire of the government to manage the public mood as it does to any actual perception of the threat. In a sense, it's a signal that the war is over.

Saturday is the 10th anniversary of the government raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and the resulting 88 deaths. This may not have a direct tie-in with the terrorist alerts that Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security have been focusing on, but given what happened two years to the day after this, hopefully they have paid at least a little attention to any possible activities by your bacis domestic whackjobs that could come down to mark the date.

Saturday is the 10th anniversary of the government raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and the resulting 88 deaths. This may not have a direct tie-in with the terrorist alerts that Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security have been focusing on, but given what happened two years to the day after this, hopefully they have paid at least a little attention to any possible activities by your basic domestic whackjobs that could come down to mark the date.

"Where Are The Thousand Osamas?"
A lot of them, in their graves in Iraq, courtesy of Coalition forces.
And others, considering career options with more attractive long-term prospects, and without the "no longer sucking air" retirement plan.

My remembrance of the way that Homeland Security was supposed to work is that it coordinated info up from tipsters/local police all the way up the line to the federal government, where strategic decisions were made regarding the overall threat level and then that information was pushed back down to everyone (the public/local police). That's how I recall Ridge and Bush describing the office when it was created soon after 9/11/01.

The feds came under fire for not giving us all the information they had re: possible threats on 9/11, and rightly so. They have a problem - they can't reveal all the specifics without compromising their sources and their solutions, so they cover their asses by saying "uh, there is a possibility that some stuff might happen".

Fear of lawsuits combined with intelligence concerns is the source of this whole silly system.