One of Instantman’s readers has an interesting idea–issuing Letters of Marque on the Internet. If Congress were to do so, would that mean that if we cracked an Al Qaeda (or Hamas, or Al Aqsa Brigade, or Suha Arafat) bank account, we’d be able to keep the booty?

One of Instantman’s readers has an interesting idea–issuing Letters of Marque on the Internet. If Congress were to do so, would that mean that if we cracked an Al Qaeda (or Hamas, or Al Aqsa Brigade, or Suha Arafat) bank account, we’d be able to keep the booty?

One of Instantman’s readers has an interesting idea–issuing Letters of Marque on the Internet. If Congress were to do so, would that mean that if we cracked an Al Qaeda (or Hamas, or Al Aqsa Brigade, or Suha Arafat) bank account, we’d be able to keep the booty?

The Pentagon is finally getting around to banning the use of wireless devices in classified facilities and areas.

In honor of Bubba’s new-found love of the military, Doug from Upland over at Free Republic has come up with a song.

To the tune of “Soldier Boy“:

Soldier boy?Willy, you’re my soldier boy
I’m so hot for you

You were a coward?on you I had soured
Now that you have changed your tune?I’m so hot for you

I hear you said?you’re not scared of bloodshed?you would fight till you’re dead
Now I’m so hot for you

Iraq you’re scorning?you gave them a warning
With the Jews you’d stand and fight?I’m so hot for you

I hear you said?you’re not scared of bloodshed?you would fight till you’re dead
Now I’m so hot for you

Soldier boy?Willy, you’re my soldier boy
I’m so hot for you

Jim Crogan at the LA Weekly continues to cover the story that no one else will. The FBI shut down an investigation into domestic terrorist training camps, which trained two people from Oklahoma City in the early ’90s.

The Weekly has learned that Chicago-based special agent Robert Wright has accused the agency of shutting down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City. The apparent goal of the training camps, according to confidential documents obtained by the Weekly, was to recruit and train Palestinian-American youths, who would then slip into Israel. Recruits at these camps reportedly received weapons training and instruction in bomb-making techniques in the early 1990s. The bomb- making curriculum included the sort of explosives later used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And government documents state that two trainees came from the Oklahoma City area.

Now a Hamas representative is saying (no doubt soiling his underwear as he speaks) that they weren’t targeting Americans. They were just collateral damage. They only wanted to kill the evil Jews.

Bob Poole (with whom I discussed this issue at a Reason reception in LA last month) says that the current plans for airport security are both unachievable and useless. Of course, that’s not news to anyone with half a brain. Unfortunately, the people making the decisions don’t seem to meet that criterion, even after canning Magaw.

…deadlines are just part of the problem. The machines that TSA purchased to screen luggage give false positives, or miss explosives entirely, more than 30 percent of the time. And they’re agonizingly slow, scanning just 150-200 bags per hour under real-world conditions.

Salt Lake City International Airport used the TSA’s explosive-trace-detection machines during the 2002 Winter Olympics and averaged a paltry 76 bags per hour – a number that would bring U.S. air travel to a stop.

There are better, faster, cheaper machines available. But, in typical fashion, our government has yet to approve the most reliable and quickest screening machines now used in Europe’s airports. So instead, we are buying untrustworthy, expensive machines to meet a self-imposed deadline.

Well, this latest bombing was more of a strategic disaster for Hamas than they could have imagined–they killed three Americans. And they did it in the Frank Sinatra cafeteria.

President Bush’s moral clarity had seemed to become increasingly muddled and muddied over the past few months as he waded into the Middle East situation, which was exactly what our enemies were looking for. But his speech a few weeks ago, in which he stated clearly that Arafat was not someone with whom to deal in good faith, was the first step on his path out of the moral wilderness, and I suspect that today’s attacks have completed it, based on the Jerusalem Post article cited above. Here’s the key sentence:

…there was no call at the White House and the State Department for Israel to exercise restraint.

I’m only sad that it took the deaths of Americans to reach this point.

[Update on Thursday morning]

Now it’s five Americans killed.