The Unit Kills Osama bin Laden

Good!


*The Unit

"The Undies Bomber"

Not to condone the Daily News' style (well, maybe a bit in this instance), but just to say that I agree with the substance:

WASHINGTON - The system worked, in the cover-your-backside world of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Baloney.

The system worked, if you don't count the parts that deal with airport security and screening, and the $50 billion intelligence apparatus that is supposed to keep track of terrorists and terror wanna-bes.

No, Janet, none of that stuff had anything to do with the happy ending for Flight 253. What worked was sheer luck, combined with the incompetence of the undies bomber and the true grit of the passengers and flight attendants.

I'd also ad to the list of incompetents the State Department employee who issued Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's visa.

A Question About the Northwest Airlines Plane Terrorist Attack

How does a man whose name is in a database indicating "a significant terrorist connection manage to board a plane with a fairly sophisticated explosive device on his person?


ETA: Corrected the airline's name and added a link.

Dr. Leroy Carhart Death Watch

I'm disgusted and I'm saddened, and I hate it that [Dr. LeRoy Carhart]'s here in Nebraska and I hate it that he's in America. I mean, this guy is one sick individual.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, a Nebraska Ob/Gyn who covered Dr. Tiller at his Wichita clinic before it closed following Dr. Tiller's assassination on May 31, plans to open a reproductive health clinic in Kansas that will provide therapeutic late-term abortions.

The obligation to provide patients with proper medical care and to care for them comes with the territory and is nothing remarkable. Thousands of Ob/Gyns do it day in and day out all over the country.

Dr. Carhart's commitment to provide care to patients and to stand by them in the face of domestic terrorism and a high likelihood that he'll be assassinated is extraordinary and humbling.

Dr. Tiller's Assassin Pleads Not Guilty

The lawyer for Dr. Tiller's assassin thought it significant to elicit testimony from the eyewitness to the murder that he heard the assassin say something along the line of "Lord, Forgive me."

Since Dr. Tiller's assassin did nothing wrong why would he need to ask for forgiveness?

In any case, I wonder if this is an indication of the strategy the defense might plan to use. Something along the lines of: The Lord told him to do it, so, since he's taking instructions from voices in his head, clearly he's mentally incompetent. We shall see.

The man accused of killing Kansas late-term abortion provider George Tiller has pleaded not guilty.

Authorities say anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder (ROH'-der) also threatened two ushers who tried to stop him during the May 31 shooting in the doctor's church in Wichita. Roeder is charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the slaying.

He pleaded not guilty to all charges on Tuesday after witnesses gave chilling testimony at a preliminary hearing. A judge ordered Roeder held on $20 million bond and set a trial date for Sept. 21.

...

An usher at the church where abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was shot to death testified Tuesday that he and the doctor were chatting when a man walked through the door, put a gun to Tiller's head and shot him.

Gary Hoepner was the first witness called at a preliminary hearing for Scott Roeder, a Kansas City, Mo., man charged with murdering Tiller on May 31 at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, where Tiller volunteered as an usher.

...

Hoepner, who testified for about 90 minutes, said he wasn't sure if the weapon used to kill Tiller was real until he saw Tiller fall to the ground. He said he followed the shooter, whom he identified as Roeder, out of the church but stopped after Roeder warned him.

"`I've got a gun and I'll shoot you,'" Hoepner recalled the gunman saying. "I believed him and I stopped."

He said he later called police to give them the license plate number on the shooter's car.

Defense attorney Steve Osburn said some of Hoepner's testimony was based on assumptions, including whether the gunman spoke directly to the other usher.

Osburn also asked Hoepner if he told police he heard the gunman say something along the line of "Lord, Forgive me."

Hoepner said he did.

Lenin Quote on the NYC Subway

Here are the facts.

This morning at around 9:30 AM I caught the Uptown A train (#5302) at 14th Street, on my way to Columbus Circle. This 10 minute trip took about 30 minutes, what with being stuck in the tunnel for quite some time and having to wait for the crack MTA team to fix some switch and all that.

Like the alert citizen that I am, I started looking around the subway car for the evacuation instructions. I figured a quick refresher wouldn't hurt, just in case. And that's when I saw this ad:

Terrorist Quote on the Subway

The text of the ad reads:

If I keep listening to Beethoven's Appassionata,
I won't be able to finish the revolution.

Vladimir I. Lenin

At the bottom of the ad, from left to right, we have:

www.rivernyc.org.....COULD CHURCH bring peace?.....river.....Christ (something I wrote down but can't read) to be me.....greenwhich village.....wall street

(you can see the ad here, at the top of the page)

The ad is for a NYC church, The River.

Here are my problems with this ad.

A) I don't think religious ads on public transport are appropriate.

First, there's that separation of Church and State thing that we must strive to safeguard. [The MTA is partly funded by the federal government.]

Second, and more importantly, it's cruel and unusual punishment (not to mention counterproductive) to taunt post-9/11 bus and subway riders in NYC with religious slogans, vivid reminders that religious zealots want to blow us all to bits.

B) I know quotes from murderous terrorists [are there any other kind?] don't belong on subways.

This one's self-explanatory: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Here's what I did.

I called The River church and spoke with the senior pastor, a Mr. Charles Park. He took full responsibility for the ad (they did work with an ad agency, but he said the church ultimately had final approval).

According to Mr. Park the intent of the ad was to "raise awareness" (?!), to ask if spirituality (listening to Beethoven) could bring about peace by stopping people (Lenin) from, you know, murdering tens of millions.

It's a shame I don't approve of profanity because I so should like to use a certain expression (rhymes with What The Duck) just about now to describe my reaction to Mr. Park's explanation. Is Mr. Park dense or what?

I quickly provided Mr. Park with the answer to his most challenging and unknowable devoid of any sense of reality question: No, listening to classical music does not bring about peace and it does nothing to stop the massacre of tens of millions of people, not to mention the nonimpact it had on establishing communism, one of the most malignant, despicable and destructive political systems ever to be invented. [No way to tell what I really think of communism, no?]

Mr. Park assured me that his church's intention was not to be offensive and I suggested to him that using quotes from mass murderers is not the way to go about it at all.

I also called the MTA customer service line (718-330-3322) and asked to talk to the person in charge of approving ads on the subway. I was transfered to CBS Outdoor (212-297-6400), a division of the CBS Corporation, a "media agency responsible for placing ads on the subway" according to the woman who answered the phone.

I explained to her that I saw an offensive ad on the subway and wanted to talk to the person responsible for approving it. She told me the only way to go about it was to send a letter to the legal department. She also said, and I quote, "I cannot give my name at this time." What can I say, CBS Outdoor and, by extension, the CBS Corporation--International Outfits of Mystery(TM).

Here's the address, should you feel inclined to write to them:

CBS Outdoor, 405 Lexington Ave., NYC, NY 10174, Attention: Legal Department.

My bottom line:

Shame on The River church for choosing to disseminate its message by stepping on the memory of tens of millions of corpses.

And shame on the MTA for allowing this ad on its subways. I guess there's just nothing like drawing ad revenue from the wisdom of a terrorist and from making light of the deaths of tens of millions of people.

What's next for The River church and the MTA, ads featuring Osama bin Laden's musings on the impressionist masters and Kim Jong-il's bromides on the shape of fluffy clouds?

Unverified Radiological Threat Made Against NYC

Channel 4 is reporting that an unverified radiological threat was made against New York City Friday:

The New York Police Department released the following statement:

"While the threat remains unverified, our counterterrorism posture, which is reconfigured daily based on intelligence from around the world, has been modified to include increased deployment of radiological sensors, including vehicle, marine and helicopter-mounted, as well as those carried by NYPD personnel."

Additionally, vehicle checkpoints were established in the city, including lower Manhattan, and at certain approaches to the city from neighboring jurisdictions.

Hmm, not sure what to make of this. The vehicle checkpoints with the specialized equipment are a new development, but on the other hand the only source cited by Channel 4 was a Debkafile report. In any case, if there really is a truck with a radioactive bomb cruising the city streets it's too late for reconfiguring deployments (ah, the bureaucratspeak, don't you just love it).

Bottom line: If my blog goes glowy all of a sudden, you'll know why.

City-Wide Smell of Gas

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A powerful, mysterious smell of gas wafted through much of Manhattan and parts of New Jersey on Monday, forcing building evacuations and a temporary suspension of commuter train service before dissipating by mid-afternoon.

Officials were quick to stress that the natural gas-like odor was not dangerous, but at least 19 people went to hospital suffering minor complaints and its wide extent provoked jitters in a city that is constantly reminded of the September 11 attacks.

...

Seven people went to the hospital seeking treatment in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York, although New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the odor was not dangerous and no unusual gas leaks had been found.

"It may just be an unpleasant smell, but at this point we do not know any more than that. The one thing we are confident about is, it is not dangerous," Bloomberg told a news conference.

"The city's air sensors do not report any elevated level of natural gas," he said.

The natural gas-like smell permeated lower Manhattan and was detected as far north as Central Park, across the width of the island, and in New Jersey.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman said there was no indication of a terrorism connection.

Don't know where the smell of gas was coming from. What I do know is that I definitely noticed it in my apartment (quite a few blocks North of Times Square) when I stopped by, around noon, to drop something off. The odd thing was that the smell was concentrated in a hallway and the kitchen [both towards the inside of the building], and not so much in the rooms with the open windows, the ones facing the street. [Since my stove basically serves as a storage cabinet, I knew it wasn't the culprit.]

My (somewhat conspiratorial) theory is that this incident represents a terrorist probe. Better make sure I find one of those buses with the God ad to insure I'm protected in case of a real emergency.

ETA:

More dead birds, this time in Australia:

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australian authorities are investigating the mysterious deaths of hundreds of birds that dropped from the sky over a small coastal town in a period of a few weeks.

Residents of Esperance in Western Australia found their suburban properties littered with the bodies of honeyeaters, wattle birds and yellow-throated miners, local media reported this week.

...

Hamilton, chief executive of the country's main bird conservation group, Birds Australia, said he had never heard of bird deaths on the scale seen in Esperance.

"Certainly several hundred birds have been reported dead to the department of the environment but it may be up to several thousand as not every dead bird would have been reported."

He said the only possible explanations would be a sudden epidemic of disease or a natural or manmade toxic substance.

"No other animal groups seem to be affected, we're not turning up dead cats and dogs and marsupials," he said. "It's a mystery."

The states' department of food and agriculture has conducted autopsies on several birds.

"It doesn't appear to be an infectious cause. Certainly, one thing that is being considered is a toxin," said acting chief veterinary officer Fiona Sunderman.

"The birds are dying around sprinklers, water tanks, bird baths. They're seeking water and they're dying around those water points," said district nature conservation co-ordinator Mike Fitzgerald.