† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The New York Times reports that “early bird specials” have made a come-back in FL, and it’s not just early-to-bed-early-to-rise seniors flocking to restaurants offering dining discounts and free desserts, but “young families, singles or hip couples - women in short skirts and men who prefer ‘dude’ to sir.’ ” One restaurateur tells The Times, “The value of money has changed in America. We’re not high rollers anymore.”

† The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II: TSA Internal Affairs investigators have a video tape of several LAX TSA agents using drugs at an after-hours party, and tested the four who could be identified from the tape for drugs, reports KNBC-TV (Channel 4, Los Angeles). One employee testing positive, has been fired. These are the folks, remember, who doing the pat-downs and checking carry-on bags for weapons and explosives.

Interestingly, LAX had asked three security experts from Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport to assess its security measures and make recommendations in 2006. The three returned to evaluate the airport's progress in improving security in 2008, reports the Los Angeles Times:

"We went to the best of the best to get the best of advice," [Los Angeles City Council members Jack Weiss] said. "They have seen significant progress in what LAX is doing and what LAX is planning to do." …

Los Angeles airport officials credit the Israelis with a number of improvements at LAX, which has been identified as a primary terrorist target. They include surveillance technology, police checkpoints, barriers to prevent vehicles from crashing into terminals, and tighter perimeter controls. In addition, the airport has increased the presence and visibility of its police force.

Clearly, the Israeli security experts need to make a third trip to LAX to upgrade the human screeners. However, because of the number of airports in the U.S. and the staggering volume of passengers who pass through their checkpoints daily (not to mention the ACLU) only some of the screening procedures used by the Israelis could be implemented here. In any case, behavioral analysis (which is the preferred euphemism for profiling in Israel) would only be effective if performed by TSA agents who are well-trained in interrogation techniques and alert to anomalies in a person’s mien or behavior (that is to say, not drug-addled).

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Is Hasan A Crazy Terrorist, Or A Terrorist Crazy?): You heard of the Peter Principle? Here is - courtesy of the U.S. Army - the PC version, the Bu'ras Standard. The Associated Press reports that “according to information gathered during an internal Pentagon review of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas … supervisors … failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist”:

As Hasan's training progressed, his strident views on Islam became more pronounced as did worries about his competence as a medical professional. Yet his superiors continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks and led to his eventual assignment at Fort Hood. …

What remains unclear is why Hasan would be advanced in spite of all the shortcomings. That is likely to be the subject of a more detailed accounting by the Defense Department. Recent statistics show the Army rarely blocks junior officers from promotion, especially in the medical corps. …

[N]o one in Hasan's chain of command appears to have challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance even though they could have because the statements raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States. Had they, Hasan's fitness to serve as an Army officer may have been called into question long before he reported to Fort Hood.

Instead, in July 2009, Hasan arrived in central Texas, his secret clearance intact, his reputation as a weak performer well known, and Army authorities believing that posting him at such a large facility would mask his shortcomings.

There is hope that the U.S. Army will draw the right lessons from the missed signals and failure to connect dots – the same problems that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to attempt a second (alleged) terrorist attack against Americans in as many months. AP reports that Spc. Marc A. Hall, 34, who was stationed at Fort Stewart in GA, was arrested and charged with five criminal counts under Article 134, “a catchall for misconduct ranging from adultery to some types of assault” because of actions suggesting he was a threat to his unit.

Hall had posted a hip-hop song on his Website expressing his anger that his four year stint in the army was being extended for a one-year tour of duty in Iraq and told other soldiers he would "go on a rampage" and that he "was planning on shooting the brigade and battalion commanders" over the stop loss policy.

Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson tells AP: "Any threat needs to be taken seriously, no matter what. Any reasonable person who listens to that song would be concerned."

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, Obama’s One-Two Cha-Cha-Cha): After Customs and Border Protection officials contradicted Obama’s assertion that no one had connected the dots by claiming that the agency had, in fact, connected the dots - only, not until after the plane with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on it was airborne - CBS News reports that the White House contradicted CBP:

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior White House official told CBS News Thursday "there was no new information that emerged when the plane was in the air."

"Customs and Border Protection followed its normal procedures and checks as it prepared for arriving passengers and by doing so they accessed the suspect's TIDE-based record which is why they were going to ask him a few additional questions after he landed before allowing him admission into the country and why they didn't stop him in Amsterdam first," the official told CBS.

[Hat Tip: Red State News, though The Stiletto's link to the original Los Angeles Times article that the site says is now "missing" still works as of this posting.]

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, The Dems’ Natural Constituency): The Washington Times details - and decries – a universal voter registration plan by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) to replace independent and moderate voters they are losing with healthcare “reform” and other unpopular legislation:

The proposal is to register everyone on every welfare list, everyone getting unemployment insurance, everyone with a driver's license, everyone who has had run-ins with the legal system, everyone owning any property - basically everyone on every list the government keeps. …

Obviously a lot of illegal aliens have driver's licenses, and many get other government benefits. Quite a few have rap sheets. People's names and other identification information are frequently recorded differently across these different lists, which means that one could be registered a separate time for every slight variation in how their personal information is kept on file. …

It speaks volumes about Democratic unpopularity that they have to look to criminals and illegal aliens to try to shore up their voting base.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Home-Grown Muslim Terrorism Discombobulates The Media): ABC News reports that Edsel Ford High School principal Hassane Jaafar reprimanded 11 Arab-American boys from the graduating class of 2011 for wearing hooded sweatshirts to the Dearborn, MI, school deemed “distasteful” by parents and school officials:

[The sweatshirts they designed] depict[ed] the numeral 11 with windows drawn on each digit, so they looked like towers. Alongside the towers is a thunderbird, the school's mascot, flying towards them. The text below the images read "You can't bring us down." …

Some 300 people showed up at a Parent Teacher Student Association meeting … at which administrators discussed the incident. Some parents supported Jaafar's decision to confiscate the shirts, but not suspend the boys, while others believe disciplinary action should have been taken, said Jennifer Browne, president of the PTSA. …

"My personal feeling is that a lot of people did overreact. People wouldn't have felt nearly as threatened if these were white girls who made the shirts instead of Arab-American boys. The messengers, not the message, were at issue for these individuals," she said.

See, it’s more threatening because white girls are not committing terrorist acts here and around the world. Guess who is? Need a hint? Well, a recent study by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans," found that compared to “other violent crime in America” the number of Muslim-Americans who have undergone radicalization since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack is “small but not insignificant”:

This study identified 139 Muslim-Americans with a linkage to terrorist violence between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2009, an average of about 17 people per year. Although many of these individuals did not actually commit acts of violence, the charges against them indicated that they were planning, or had a willingness, to do so.

The dataset contains information about both the offenders and the nature of their activity. All but one of the offenders are men. Their average age is 28. Almost two-thirds (65%) are under 30.

Almost two-thirds of the individuals are U.S.-born (63) or naturalized citizens (22). Twenty-five are legal residents and only 10 were in the United States illegally.

The ethnicity of the offenders is diverse: 32 are Arab, 24 are African-American, 24 are South Asian, 20 are Somali, and 20 are Caucasian. Just over one-third (47) of the individuals are converts to Islam. Twenty-four of the converts are African-American; ten are Caucasian; three are Latino.

Note that all the blacks in this group are converts to Islam, as are 56 percent of those who are not black (whites and Latinos) so the ethnicity of the offenders is somewhat diverse, but not their religion. Also, note that not a single white girl is amongst them.

Of the 139 offenders, nearly a third successfully executed a violent plan, but most of the terrorist acts were committed overseas.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder): The Daily Mail (London) quotes several “eminent climate scientists” who “could never be described as global warming ‘deniers’ or skeptics” as predicting a global cooling trend likely to last for the next 20 to 30 years, based on new analysis of ocean water temperatures collected 3,000 ft deep, where cooling and warming cycles originate:

Their predictions … challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 - and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’. …

Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago. …

“A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent. They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.”

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”): In a National Law Journal op-ed, Margaret Colgate Love, a U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, argues that “there are hopeful early signs that Maurice Clemmons will not become another Willie Horton, either for Mike Huckabee or for the rest of us”:

With a few notable exceptions, recently governors and presidents alike have let their constitutional power atrophy, fearful of being labeled soft on crime or of being held personally responsible for a heinous act that might even tenuously be linked to them. Pardons and commutations have become essentially unavailable in many states and in the federal system. …

The framers of our Constitution understood the unique and indispensable role of pardon when they entrusted the president with an unreviewable power to override the law. For most of our history, and until fairly recently, pardon played an integral operational part in the justice system. The Supreme Court has repeatedly relied upon the pardon power to save excessive or unjust punishments from constitutional infirmity. …

Time will tell if the prophets of doom are right about Huckabee's future in politics. A more able politician than [Michael] Dukakis, he has vigorously defended his decision to commute Clemmons' sentence. Available facts suggest that he acted reasonably, as some commentators have commendably, if somewhat belatedly, pointed out. Polls and blog posts suggest that many are persuaded by his handling of the matter. …

Lest predictions of a new freeze on pardoning become a self-fulfilling prophesy, we should be thinking about how to encourage our elected officials to approach their constitutional duties with a renewed sense of purpose.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Why Shouldn’t Illegals Get Government Healthcare?): Public hospitals around the country are breaking under the financial burden of providing free medical care for the indigent, the uninsured, the underinsured – and the illegal. Just like Atlanta’s Grady Memorial hospital, Miami’s Jackson Memorial hospital is trying to stop the hemorrhaging of money by shifting 175 dialysis patients - including a dozen illegal aliens - to the ER for treatment, reports The New York Times:

At Jackson, officials said patients could come to the emergency room for treatment, and eight have this week. “That’s the best we can do right now,” said Dr. Eneida O. Roldan, Jackson’s chief executive. …

To be treated in an emergency room, however, dialysis patients often must show up in severe distress. In an interview, Dr. Roldan said patients could be treated in Jackson’s emergency room as often as three times a week, the national standard for continuing dialysis.

Dialysis provided through an emergency room admission is considerably more expensive than routine treatment at a clinic. But while Jackson was not reimbursed for treating uninsured patients at private clinics, it can receive emergency Medicaid payments for dialysis provided through emergency rooms.

The hospital was losing more than $4 million a year on dialysis, contributing to a deficit approaching $200 million this fiscal year. Over the last year, the economy has generated a nearly 50 percent increase in uncompensated care, and the hospital is also closing two community clinics this week.