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Times Square Is Evacuated in Bomb Scare The scene at Times Square on Saturday night after police found a suspicious package inside a Pathfinder on West 45th Street. RAY RIVERA and KARIN HENRY May 1, 2010 A bomb in Times Square led to the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers from the area on a warm and busy Saturday evening, the police said. There was no explosion. “It appears to be a car bomb left in a Pathfinder between Seventh and Eighth,” said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. The device, he said, contained “explosive...

Obama amputates our nuclear arms By: Charles Krauthammer ...snippet...Under President Obama’s new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is “in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” explained Gates, then “the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it.” Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker...

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it will provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents. After days of negotiations, the Defense and Justice departments informed a Senate committee that they will not comply with congressional subpoenas to share investigative records related to the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex., which killed 13 people. The agencies said divulging the material could jeopardize their prosecution of Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the alleged gunman. Leslie Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Senate committee, said the refusal...

On December 25th, 2009 a 23 year old Nigerian Muslim boarded Northwest Airlines flight number 253 with explosives hidden in his underwear. His name: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. His mission: to kill as many Americans as possible. His training came from Al Qaeda after he was recruited by Anwar al-Awlaki. The same Anwar al-Awlaki who had ties to the shooter in the Ft. Hood massacre, Major Nadal Malik Hassan. Abdulmutallab (ab-dool-moo-tal-ab) is an enemy combatant. He donned no uniform, and carried no insignia of any standing army. He wore civilian clothes and attempted to perform a terrorist act upon the citizens...

War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on? From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser. We may now have a clue as...

Like it or not, one of the advantages that al Qaeda does have is an ability to change strategy without their leaders mulling it over for four months, the way President Obama did when he was trying to figure out Afghanistan. The Washington Times is reporting that during the underwear bombers second wave of talking he admitted meeting some other English Speakers at terrorism school in Yemen. Thank goodness his parents talking him into speaking, because this was all well after he shut up upon being read his Miranda rights.

Once again, the liberal, clueless media goes where they shouldn't. Via Newsweek's aptly named blog, Declassified, we learn for the first time that: "U.S. intelligence officials appear to have obtained access to what could turn out to be a significant trove of phone numbers, photographs and documents detailing the links between Al Qaeda's leaders in northwest Pakistan and the terror group's increasingly menacing affiliate in Yemen, two counter-terrorism sources tell Declassified." The arrest, made in late January, had not been made public until now...until Newsweek spills it:...

While not every airplane flight can have a federal air marshal on it, it may be possible that every flight could come equipped to disable potential air bombers like 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit-bound Christmas Day bomber who has been indicted on six criminal counts including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted murder of 289 people. According to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA(AFA-CWA), alert flight attendants were able to thwart Abdulmutallab’s terrorist intentions. This week another flight attendant was able to use her highly trained skills and alertness to disable a possible mid-air threat from...

The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America are up in arms over the new body scanners at airports: “The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) emphasizes that a general and public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty,” the group said in a Feb. 10 statement posted at Islam Online. "It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women," FCNA explained. The group noted that Islam emphasizes modesty,...

The Obama administration has a nearly flawless record on the economy. When President Barack Obama or one of his senior minions, such as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, launches a rhetorical offensive on protecting us from the perils of capitalism, we have learned to expect an instant stock market nose dive followed by higher unemployment rates and talk of greater government spending and debt and higher taxes. That's bad enough, but now the O-Team is talking about protecting us from terrorism. Last Sunday, in a surreal "warm-up" for the Super Bowl, Mr. Obama told CBS News' Katie Couric that putting 9/11...

Padilla is actually the case that best shows the limitations and inadequacies of the civilian justice system as applied to enemy combatants. This fact is obscured because, as the Left keeps repeating, he was eventually transferred from military custody to the civilian justice system, where he was convicted. Here's what they never tell you: He was not convicted of the most important plot we had against him — the conspiracy with KSM, Binyam Mohammed, and others to carry out a second wave of post-9/11 attacks inside the United States. He was never indicted on that plot because he could not...

The White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is still on the job spilling wisdom during the daily briefings. Today he attacked those in Congress who demanded the President’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan to be fired........ First, Mr. Gibbs, the Obama administration doesn’t even have an established High Value Interrogation Unit. The HIG was not operational when Abdulmutallab exploded his butt. I agree that the American people would feel safer if the Obama administration have those trained interrogators in place, but since they didn’t on Christmas (as evident in the testimony of the National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair) the Congress is...

The Obama Administration is vindicating Bush antiterror policy. Dick Cheney is not the most popular of politicians, but when he offered a harsh assessment of the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism last May, his criticism stung—so much that the President gave a speech the same day that was widely seen as a direct response. Though neither man would admit it, eight months later political and security realities are forcing Mr. Obama's antiterror policies ever-closer to the former Vice President's. In fact, the President's changes in antiterror policy have never been as dramatic as he or his critics have advertised. His...

This past week gave us an interesting insight in how the Obama Administration is politicizing terror; ironically, something they accused the Bush Administration of regularly during the campaign. This week, the intelligence services told the White House and Congress that Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab is now speaking to interrogators...a full 5 weeks after his initial arrest. The information was given to Congress in closed door meetings. However, the White House, primarily their political and communication wings (led by Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod), immediately went on the attack in public forums, exclaiming how well their strategy worked in obtaining...

In a breathtakingly cynical example of playing politics, the White House just accused Republicans of playing politics over its Miranda-rights Christmas gift to the crotch bomber. With fumbling terrorism czar John Brennan walking point, administration spokesmen attacked those who believe that treating would-be suicide-bomber Umar Abdulmutallab the way we handle shoplifters harms our national security. The White House position is a PR blend of lies, half-truths and ignorance. Let's strip out the politics and lay out the facts from an intelligence professional's perspective:

The Obama administration has found a new angle to justify its decision to treat Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab like a civilian criminal: Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber was tried in a civilian court during George W. Bush's presidency. However, as Mike Sullivan - who prosecuted Richard Reid in federal court - noted in a recent interview with Fox News: Military tribunals had only been established a few weeks prior to the attempted shoe bombing incident. Sullivan expressed confidence that "had Mr. Reid's plane landed at Logan Airport in Dec. 2003, versus Dec. 2001, we would have had the discussion and made...

Congressional Republicans lashed out at White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan, who said Sunday that the lawmakers were told the Christmas Day terrorist attacker was taken into FBI custody. Brennan said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) were all briefed on Christmas Day and that they raised no objections.

Top Obama counterterrorism official John Brennan is blasting Republican lawmakers, accusing them of hypocrisy and of making a "political football" of the administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Appearing on "Meet the Press," Brennan said that on Christmas night, just hours after Abdulmutallab tried to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253, Brennan called top Republican lawmakers, telling them that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody. "None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point," Brennan said. "They didn't say, Is he going into military custody? Is he going to...

On February 2nd, NBC correspondent Pete Williams announced Breaking News during the 5 PM ET edition of Hardball: the Christmas Day Bomber, Umar Abdul Mutallab, was giving fresh, actionable information to the FBI which the United States is in turn "aggressively chasing down." Less than an hour later, this NewsBuster [AKA FReeper governsleast] blogged on the matter, wondering whether by leaking the news, "the Obama administration compromised national security," in an attempt to deflect the criticism it had been receiving for mirandizing Mutallab rather than treating him like the enemy combatant he is. On today's Fox News Watch, panelist Jim...

Holder's decision to Mirandize the Christmas bomber was bad enough. Telling the world he was talking again waseven worse Security: The administration says the Christmas bomber is now cooperating with authorities. We thought they got all the information he had in a 50-minute chat. So just why are we letting our enemies know he's talking? In any war, it's vitally important that you know what your enemy is planning and doing, just as it's important that your actions and plans remain secret. And when you know about your enemy's plans it's important they don't know that you know. We were...