Avedon Carol at Sideshow weighs in on the new terror alerts. She disagrees with Kevin Drum but agrees, in part, with Lambert. She says,

Don't you guys get it yet? Why do you think that the most secretive government in our lifetime is constantly announcing to the media the one thing that everyone has always agreed government should be secretive about? The color codes, the showy Homeland Security apparatus, the whole bunch of it is just a charade - they are doing it instead of doing their jobs. It's all political. Good security is not showy; it happens where nobody sees, and nobody knows until the threat is over.

Update: Left Coaster says Bush and Ashcroft knew of current terror threat information three years ago.

Except it now turns out that John Ashcroft’s Justice Department had in its possession as far back as March 2003 video evidence of Al Qaeda casing out landmarks here in the US.

The Washington Post has a long article on truck bombs, and how the U.S. is ill-equipped to catch them.