I largely agree with Glenn Greenwald that President Obama's response to the attempted terrorist attack on Northwest flight 253 was appropriate and intelligent.

I thought that the President's remarks acknowledging a "systemic failure" and promising a full investigation was the right thing to do. It certainly did not merit a "red alert" situation with meetings in the Situation Room. That said, I disagree with Glenn's description of the terror attempt as a "a lame, failed attempt to kill people by a fractured band of criminals." It was a failed attempt surely. But it was a serious threat and Islamic extremists are not just a "fractured band of criminals." The threat of terrorism by Islamic extremists is very serious. The President recognizes this. I disagree with progressives who attempt to diminish the seriousness of that threat.

Speaking for me only

The college bowl season has shattered my dream of reaching the .600 mark with my college picks. after sticking my head above water to 6-5 with my bowl picks - Miami, Bowling Green and Arizona all failed to cover. Now I am 6-8, with 19 games left. I'll need a 17-2 finish to bring my season mark to .600. Not going to happen. But there are still games to pick, including 4 today. Tomorrow, I'll be picking the New Year's Day bowls.

Houston meets Air Force. Ironically, Houston is the team with the air attack and Air Force will keep it on the ground. Houston is a 5 point favorite. The Mountain West has proven its mettle in the bowls. C-USA, not so much. I'll take the Air Force (+5). More . . .

The New York Times, in reporting on the security failures responsible for failing to detect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his failed bomb attempt, focuses on the National Counterterrorism Center -- and discloses there was electronic surveillance:

That's the agency that supposed to act as a fusion center, connecting dots in information received from various agencies, so that the failures in intelligence gathering associated with 911 don't happen again.

The remedy, proposed by the Sept. 11 commission and passed by Congress in 2004, was to place a single director of intelligence over the nation’s 16 spy agencies. At the core would be the National Counterterrorism Center.

...Intelligence analysts from one agency now routinely serve for a time in another agency, to develop personal ties. Databases of suspected terrorists are far more complete and accessible. The ban on hoarding data is strictly enforced.

So what's the problem? Maybe we're wiretapping so much and accumulating so much information, much of which is useless, it's not possible to accommodate it all and isolate the information that matters. [More...]

Somali Police Commissioner Gen. Ali Hassan Loyan said a Somali court released the suspect Dec. 12 after ruling that officials hadn't demonstrated he intended to commit a crime. The man, whose name has not been released, said the chemicals were for processing camera film.

Are the foiled airplane bomb attempts of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab last week in Detroit and the one last month in Somalia the same? The tools may have been the same -- liquid, a syringe and powdered material -- but the explosives apparently weren't:

In the Somali's attempt there were three parts with powders and liquids: [More...]

I got my H1N1 flu shot today -- at the grocery store. Probably not necessary, but for $10.00, I figured better safe than sorry.

The 8 civilian Americans killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan today were CIA agents. It happened inside a U.S. facility. How did they get in? More security failures?

The bomber managed to slip past security at Forward Operating Base Chapman in the eastern province of Khost before detonating an explosive belt in what one U.S. official described as a room used as a fitness center.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Update: Both subpoenas have been withdrawn.

When the TSA increased security after the Xmas Day foiled bomb plan, two bloggers got a copy and posted it. The TSA paid them a visit last night, serving them a subpoena, wanting to know their source.

TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public....Frischling said the agents threatened to interfere with his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines if he didn't cooperate and provide the name of the person who leaked the memo.

What was in the top secret memo? [More...]

The Al-Maghrib Institute in Houston, an Islamic learning center, confirmed today that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attended classes there in August, 2008. Authorities earlier disclosed Abdulmutallab's visa showed he was in Houston from August 1, 2008 to August 16, 2008.

The international institute is a nonprofit that teaches Islamic studies. It has a student body totaling more than 20,000, Basyouni said, and conducts seminars in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom.

It's not a radical school and its Vice President says the subjects he lectures on include "reclaiming Islam from jihadists, focusing specifically on the issue of preventing terrorism."

Abdulmutallab supposedly wanted to study Sharia law. Houston has a Sharia Law Center, but this isn't it. The FBI has already visited the hotel he is believed to have stayed at, the Sheraton Houston Brookhollow Hotel.

If you want to see a good pitch in favor of the health bill, Kevin Drum has one:

"Community rating" is wonkspeak for a requirement that health insurers cover everyone at the same price, regardless of preexisting conditions or health status. James Surowiecki says it makes private health insurance unnecessary [. . .] I agree, and it's one of the reasons that, warts and all, I support the current healthcare reform legislation so strongly. My take is that community rating at the national level can eventually lead to only two outcomes: (a) the end of private health insurance completely1 or (b) the transformation of private insurers into regulated public utilities.[. . .] I'd prefer the former, but the regulated utility model works OK too, and it's hard to see how you avoid one or the other in the long run.

If true, then hosanna. The problem is, as always, regulatory capture. Will the community ratings be enforced or will there be a new formula built to beat the system? As Drum says, a public option would have insured (pun intended) a good result. But we did not get that.

Also I agree with John Cole here.

This is an Open Thread.

[I]f you don't have a plan for how [to . . .] help lead to better outcomes, you aren't really a Democrat anymore, and your activism can't necessarily be considered progressive even if uses progressive terms and angles. That's fine. No one is compelled to support the Democrats over the Republicans or to support policies they disagree with. But we should call this kind of blogging what it is, which is anti-Obama, and anti-Democratic Party...and anti-government, really. -- Booman, (Booman's reply to my post, see also below the fold Booman's further explication on the Clintons and the DLC)

I've known Booman through the internets for about 5 years. Since I first encountered him, his detestation of Bill and Hillary Clinton was expressed consistently. the Third Way politics Clinton practiced during the 1990s represented all that was evil to Booman. I've always disagreed with that assessment, believing that Clinton, a consummate pol, adapted his politics for the times. Yes, in the 1990s some triangulation was necessary was my view. I did not believe that was true for the Obama Presidency, or for the 2000s for that matter. Like Markos at daily kos, I abhorred the DLC's drive for "values" voters and more triangulation. I fought for a Fighting Democratic Party. I still do. More . .

Joe Klein:

The denizens of the left blogosphere consider themselves the Democratic Party's base. But they are not. For Democrats, as opposed to Republicans, the wing is not the base; the legions of loyal African Americans, union members, Jews, women and Latinos are. In the end, the sillier left-village practitioners are stoking the same populist exaggeration—the idea that Washington is controlled by crooks and sellouts—that conservative strategists like Bill Kristol believe will bring the Republicans back to power. The perversity of this is beyond comprehension,"

(Emphasis supplied.) Setting aside the invective, as a defense of the health bill as responsive to the base, it seems pretty ludicrous. The health bill includes an excise tax - vigorously opposed by the unions, either the Stupak Amendment or the Nelson Amendment - attacks on a woman's right to choose, and excludes undocumented aliens from coverage -hardly a bone to Latinos. Oh BTW, it also excludes a public insurance option - favored overwhelmingly by all Democrats, base or not. The perversity in arguing that the health bill appeals to the Democratic base is beyond comprehension.

Speaking for me only

I saw this Confluence post linked at Booman (the point appears to be that Riverdaughter dakinkat is being like Jane Hamsher (and her alliance with Grover Norquist) by praising the Cantwell/McCain proposal to reinstate Glass-Steagall, though, to be honest, I am not sure what Booman's point is). It argues in favor of a proposal to reinstate Glass-Steagall. It cites this Bloomberg report:

A one-page proposal gaining traction in Congress could turn back the clock on Wall Street 10 years, forcing the breakup of banks, including Citigroup Inc. Lawmakers in both parties, seeking to prevent future financial crises while soothing public anger over bailouts and bonuses, are turning to an approach that’s both simple and transformative: re-imposing sections of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking.

Of course this sounds good to populists (and is probably good politics), but is it good policy? I addressed this issue a bit last year. The financial meltdown was not caused by the repeal of Glass-Steagall. More . . .

Just at the finish of the year, Dick Cheney puts in for the Chutzpah of the Year award:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. [. . .] He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war.

(Emphasis supplied.) As for who released the "hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists" behind this particular terrorist attack, Dick Cheney has nothing to say. Let's remind him:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. [Emphasis supplied.]

Speaking for me only. See also Steve Benen ("Dick Cheney is a coward and a disgrace.")