† The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II: The New York Times reports that the TSA's stricter screening protocols are not just being inconsistently followed abroad, but here in the U.S. as well:

 

At airports around the country nearly two weeks after a thwarted terrorism attempt on a flight to Detroit, dozens of travelers told of remarkably different experiences with security measures. For domestic flights, many noticed little new, aside from more police dogs in terminals and, in some instances, random pat-downs and bag checks.

 

But for those traveling on international flights to the United States, changes were far more pronounced. Lines were long, triple, sometimes quadruple checks were conducted, papers were scrutinized and nearly everyone told of being patted down. …

 

Overseas, especially, the “pat down” was the norm, even for people from countries other than the 14 the United States has identified for extra screening. Still, travelers described vastly differing versions — from an awkwardly thorough, even invasive, search that included private areas to a light brush over.

 

The Times interviews one passenger who said that the screeners patting him down at Chicago’s O’Hare airport missed a bottle containing a chocolate martini in the back pocket of his slouchy pants – not only a liquid, but a flammable liquid.

 

Meanwhile, Americans are unconvinced that technology can trump terrorism. Our political leaders and national security experts are increasingly putting their faith – and our tax dollars – into technology, but Americans have concluded that that racial and ethnic profiling is the only way to efficiently use limited time and resources to enhance our chances of stopping jihadis from getting on planes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey:

 

Interestingly … 71% believe such profiling is necessary in today’s environment. Eighteen percent (18%) disagree and see profiling as an unnecessary violation of civil rights. …

 

Sixty-two percent (62%) of whites and 52% of those of other races say profiling should be used at airports. …

 

Nearly half of likely voters (46%) believe current airport security measures are not strict enough.

 

Following the Christmas Day incident, 79% said it was likely another terrorist attack on the United States could take place within the next year.

 

† Is Hasan A Crazy Terrorist, Or A Terrorist Crazy?: The Army is planning to convene a sanity board to evaluate whether accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan is fit to stand trial. John Galligan, the retired Army colonel who heads Hasan’s defense team, seeks to delay the evaluation until he has had a chance to gather "clear and convincing evidence" of insanity in case he needs to rebut the sanity board’s findings, which can be introduced at trial, reports The Wall Street Journal:

 

A 2006 study by three Army psychiatrists found that in the more than 21,000 courts-martial between 1990 and 2006, only six defendants were found not guilty by reason of insanity. …

 

Defense attorneys faced a similar challenge in the case of Hasan Akbar, an Army sergeant accused of killing two U.S. soldiers in a grenade attack in the early days of the Iraq war. Sgt. Akbar's lawyers argued he had a history of depression and was too mentally ill to be capable of premeditation.

 

In 2005, an Army jury found Sgt. Akbar guilty and sentenced him to death. The defense is appealing the verdict. Col. Michael Mulligan, the officer who prosecuted Sgt. Akbar, recently joined the team that will prosecute Maj. Hasan. …

 

The major difference between the civilian and military systems is the sanity board. This ad hoc panel, which generally includes at least one psychiatrist or psychologist, evaluates the defendant, looks at past behavior and makes a recommendation.

 

If the board rules the man is fit to stand trial, the defense can still introduce evidence of insanity. However, experts say that it is then difficult to get an acquittal, because the board's findings can be introduced at trial.

 

† Despite A Bang-Up Defense, Attorney’s Client Still Convicted: The Kansas Attorney General's Office has declined to file criminal threat and assault charges against defense attorney Sam Kepfield, who brought a dead grenade into a courtroom on November 23 during his closing arguments in a forgery and theft trial, because he does not believe local "had the specific intent to reduce the jury to terror" when he showed them the grenade, reports The Associated Press.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Obama’s One-Two Cha-Cha-Cha): After his defense attorney Miriam Siefer waived the reading of the indictment against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Magistrate Judge Mark A. Randon entered a not guilty plea on his behalf at his arraignment, which lasted just five minutes.

As The National Law Journal notes, “the last time a major terrorism trial took place in Detroit … the 2003 convictions of four North African immigrants facing terrorism charges were overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct” (for withholding evidence from the defense). However, one attorney tells TNLJ that he doubts that the case will ever go to trial:

 

"There does not seem to be many issues of actual dispute. And there are enough witnesses on the plane," said Bernard Kleinman, a solo criminal defense lawyer in White Plains, N.Y., who has represented defendants in terrorism trials. The defendant's father contacting the U.S. and British embassies about his son's "radicalism" doesn't bode well for the defense, either, Kleinman added.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Not Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due): Adis Medunjanin, 25, and Zarein Ahmedzay, 24, who traveled to Pakistan in 2008 with Najibullah Zazi, 24, - all of whom were once classmates at Flushing High School in Queens, NY - have been arrested by the F.B.I.- N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorism Task Force, reports The New York Times:

 

The charges … were not made available by the authorities by late Friday afternoon.

 

But Michael A. Marinaccio, a lawyer for Mr. Azhmedzay, said his client was being charged with one count of making a false statement during a terrorism investigation. … It was unclear what charges would be brought against Medunjanin. …

 

A lawyer for Mr. Medunjanin, a United States citizen who is originally from Bosnia, has consistently denied that his client had any role in any terrorist plot or was involved in any wrongdoing.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, He’s So Tired, He Hasn’t Slept A Wink; He’s So Tired, His Mind Is On The Blink): New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor Michael Goodwin wonders if President Barack Hussein Obama and his aides “will ever wake up”:

 

[H]is aides waited for nearly three hours after the Christmas airliner attack to wake him. …

 

When the alarm first went off - the 3 a.m. phone call - they hit the snooze button, putting the president's personal comfort ahead of the country's. …

 

The images that stick are the ones out of Hawaii, with the president in vacation mode - no tie, a perfunctory appearance on Dec. 28, no questions, then off for more fun in the sun. Behavior doesn't get less serious or more callow. …

 

If America gets hit again, it's on him. All of it.

 

Obama often complains about the problems he inherited from George W. Bush, but he also inherited a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11. If Islamic terrorists succeed on his watch, he can't blame Bush.

 

Not after he has made a series of important choices that make the country less safe than it was. Dick Cheney is hardly alone in this belief.

 

Washington Post columnist David Broder seems more optimistic that, tired as he is, Christmas Day 2009 will be “the same kind of wake-up call for Barack Obama that Sept. 11, 2001, had been for George W. Bush":

 

The near-miss by a passenger plotting to blow up an American airliner as it flew into Detroit seems to have shocked this president as much as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did the last.

 

Both presidents had had plenty of warnings in the form of threats and even incidents. But both were caught off guard: Bush reading to a classroom of youngsters; Obama on a family vacation in Hawaii. …

 

The larger question is how this affects the long-term mindset and priorities of the new president.

 

But Broder’s colleague, Charles Krauthammer doesn’t think Obama’s mindset or priorities will change, as evidenced by his suspended transfers of Yemeni detainees from Gitmo, and then in the next breath “repeating his determination to close the prison, invoking his usual rationale of eliminating a rallying cry and recruiting tool for al-Qaeda”:

 

Obama will not change his determination to close Guantanamo. He is too politically committed. The only hope is that perhaps now he is offering his "recruiting" rationale out of political expediency rather than real belief. With suicide bombers in the air, cynicism is far less dangerous to the country than naiveté.

 

Maybe so, but Goodwin fears that “Barack Obama is flirting with unprecedented disaster. His and America's.”

 

Editorial Note: With his lackadaisical attitude towards global terrorism setting the tone for his staff, Obama wasn’t the only one who phoned it in after passengers heading home for Christmas saved their own lives by stopping a terrorist from carrying out his deadly mission. CIA director Leon Panetta was on vacation in Monterey, CA, until the weekend following Jan. 1; the agency’s deputy director,  Stephen Kappes didn’t return from his vacation until after the December 30 bombing that that killed seven CIA officers in Afghanistan; and even as the National Counterterrorism Center was being blamed for missing numerous red flags in the multinational terrorist plot to blow  Northwest Flight 253 out of the sky, the agency’s director, Michael Leiter, began a six-day ski vacation with his 7-year-old son. The issue isn’t whether those entrusted with our national security can stay apprised of developments during a crisis with their high-tech gizmos – it’s whether they take that responsibility seriously enough to drop what they are doing and give the American homeland their undivided attention.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Prediction: Christians Will Be “Extinct” In The Holy Land Within 60 Years): Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly intended to commit a horrific act of terror on the day Americans were celebrating Christmas, one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar. As Egyptian Coptic Christians were celebrating midnight mass at the Virgin Mary Church in Nag Hamadi on Christmas Day (January 6^th) a Muslim drive-by shooter “sprayed a large crowd … with a hail of gunfire,” killing at least seven worshippers and seriously injuring many others, reports Voice of America:

 

[Nag Hamadi] has been racked by sectarian violence since the alleged sexual assault of a Muslim girl by a Christian man, in November.

 

Muslim residents of the town ransacked, burned and looted Christian homes and shops for five days after the alleged incident.

 

Said Sadek, professor of political sociology at the American University of Cairo, says that the region of Upper Egypt where Nag Hamadi is located has a tribal culture and that the crime, or violence, or even sex can often take on a sectarian nature. …

 

"The picking of … the Eastern church's Christmas … will carry political and sectarian messages and it can lead to a lot of tension between the communities in Egypt.  But it's not unique and we have seen cases like that before," he said.

 

Sure enough, the next day thousands of Christian mourners at a funeral procession rioted - protesting not only the murders, but growing harassment by the Muslim majority, reports The Associated Press:

 

Security officials said some 5,000 protesters shouted: "Long live the Cross," and "No to persecution." The protesters also stoned police cars, and scuffled with security. Shops shut their doors in the town to avoid the violence. …

 

Coptic Christians are limited in where they can build churches and must obtain government approval before expanding existing facilities. The government insists Christians enjoy the same rights as Muslims.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (GOP Hoping To Find A Chair That’s “Just Right”): GOP congressional leaders complain they were blindsided by the release of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s new book "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," which “outlines what he believes is a winning strategy to wrest back power from Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections and beyond,” reports The Washington Post:

 

Congressional leaders were surprised that Steele would publish such a blueprint without consulting with them or the party's candidates.

 

[An] aide said congressional leaders believe Steele should be appearing on television as "Citizen Michael Steele selling Citizen Steele's book, not as RNC Chairman Steele selling Citizen Steele's book."

 

For his part, Steele “challenged some of the most prominent critics in his party to fire him or ‘shut up,’ reports The Washington Times:

 

Mr. Steele referred to former RNC chairmen and finance chairmen who have criticized him publicly as being "the problem; they're not the solution." …

 

Many Republican officials have criticized Mr. Steele's book tour at a time when the RNC is trailing the Republican Governors Association and the Democratic National Committee in fundraising and the midterm elections are just 10 months away.

 

Rising to Mr. Steele's defense Thursday was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who suggested that Mr. Steele's critics are out of touch with the demands of modern political organizing.

 

Steele’s feistiness is a bit puzzling, since he told Dennis Miller in a radio interview that “I didn’t seek this job, I didn’t ask for it. It wasn’t part of my, you know, charted course in life to wind up as chairman of the RNC. You know, there was a convergence of moments here.” As New York magazine oh-so-drolly observes, “Michael Steele has even bigger problems than we realized, because some impersonator who looks exactly like him went around campaigning for the RNC chairmanship a year ago.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (Warning: Dining Out Is More Fattening Than You Think): Commenting on a study that found people with low-incomes ignore calorie counts posted at fast food emporia because they're more price-conscious than weight-conscious, The Stiletto thought a similar study should be done with a higher socioeconomic demographic to see whether the reverse would be true. She now has her answer, thanks to an unusual collaboration between Stanford University and Starbucks. The New York Times reports:

 

A Stanford University study has found that customers at New York City Starbucks restaurants bought items with 6 percent fewer calories after the city began requiring chain fast food restaurants to post calorie counts in April 2008. …

 

Unlike the N.Y.U. and Yale study, the Stanford study was not tailored around poor neighborhoods, and it focused on a luxury brand, Starbucks, rather than chains like McDonald’s that put a premium on low prices and whose core business is food. It covered all 222 Starbucks locations in New York City, as well as 94 in Boston and Philadelphia. …

 

Using statistical modeling, the researchers found that calorie reductions in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx were comparable to the reduction in Manhattan. …

 

[A] breakdown of the study data by ZIP code showed that the effect of calorie posting was greater among more affluent, educated consumers. And he said, people go to Starbucks primarily for coffee, rather than food, which may be the reason that they were willing to be more flexible on their food choices, with a resulting drop in calories. …

 

The study found … that Starbucks stores within 100 meters of a Dunkin’ Donuts had an estimated 3 percent increase in revenue. [One study author] interpreted that finding as suggesting that people had been frightened away when they discovered the number of calories in the staple Dunkin’ Donuts products, doughnuts.

 

Wait till Starbucks customers find out that the calorie counts listed on the menu may actually be significantly higher.

 

A study by Tufts University researchers who analyzed calorie content of 18 side dishes and entrees from national chain restaurants and 10 frozen meals from supermarkets suggests that restaurants are understating the number of calories in menu items by 18 percent and food manufacturers are understating the number of calories in frozen entrees by 8 percent, reports FoodConsumer.org:

 

"If people use published calorie contents for weight control, discrepancies of this magnitude could result in weight gain of many pounds a year," says senior author Dr. Susan B. Roberts, professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. …

 

"Because we analyzed a relatively small sample of food, additional research testing more foods will be needed to see if this is a nationwide problem," said Roberts.