War on Terrorism

Rumblin', bumblin', stumblin' . . . Trying to blame someone—anyone—other than his man Barack Obama for the security meltdown surrounding NWA 253, Ed Schultz ran head-first into history without a helmet tonight.  Seeking to shift some of the onus onto England for not having alerted us about having denied young Umar entry into its country, Ed entertainingly claimed that the UK has probably been "…

Quite the culture war on Morning Joe today . . . The combatants were Pat Buchanan and Spencer Ackerman of the lefty Washington Independent. The topic was the treatment of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab.  Buchanan wanted the budding terrorist classified as an enemy combatant in order to extract the maximum amount of information from him. Ackerman, in ACLU mode, favored having young Umar tried in…

It took a tough question from Matt Lauer, but after having laughably claimed that "the system worked," DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has now conceded the obvious: that the security system that permitted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board NWA 253 with explosives "failed miserably."On Today and in other interviews this morning, Napolitano attempted to use her own ignorance as a shield.  Each time…

Interview with Chicago Fire Chief Alden Brown two days after the Great Chicago Fire:ALDEN BROWN: One thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here: the local citizens took appropriate action.  Within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 towns and villages in the Chicago area had been notified to take some special…

Remember how outraged the left became when Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, showed President George W. Bush not issuing a public statement on the Twin Tower attacks for several minutes until after the school children finished reading the Pet Goat story? Well, it is now almost two days since the Nigerian terrorist working at the behest of Al Qaeda attempted to blow up a passenger jet and…

It has been interesting watching the Associated Press reports on the attempted takedown of Flight 253 devolve in the past 12-plus hours. In its 8:56 a.m. report (likely dynamic and subject to change), it looks like the assemblage of AP writers who worked on the story have succeeded in: As Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters noted earlier this morning in the case of the New York Times, ridding the…

Imagine that there had been a series of three incidents in which members of a [invented for present purposes] fanatical Jewish sect had attempted to bring down airliners from Arab countries.  In reporting on the latest attempt and describing the previous ones, do you think the New York Times might have mentioned the religion of the perpetrators? So do I.But with the legerdemain required to…

It looks like the PC Police will have to put out an APB for Time Magazine's Bobby Ghosh, his layers of editors, and his managers. First, Ghosh had the unmitigated gall to write an item called "Domestic Terror Incidents Hit a Peak in 2009." In it, he notes that the "2009 saw an unprecedented surge in terror 'events' on U.S. soil." Clearly Ghosh doesn't understand that we're in a new era where the…

In his swan song interview with President Barack Obama, which consumed more than ten minutes of World News, ABC's Charles Gibson couldn't have provided a friendlier or more empathetic platform to Obama on the “weight” of sending troops to war and how “devilishly difficult” it's become to pass a health care plan because of a few rogue Senators. Gibson, set to retire Friday, teased his last…

It is with heavy heart that I report the following: Two great CBS television dramas, NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, went the way of Law and Order last night (hat tip to NewsBusters reader Chris Reising).  If you’re a fan and have not seen last night’s episode, be warned that this blog contains plot spoilers. [audio clip available here]Now is the time of year when the network dramas are running the “…

On the CBS Evening News on Saturday, correspondent Kimberly Dozier reported on a recent rise in homegrown Islamic extremism in the United States and explored the motivation behind it: “... terrorism experts agree militant Islam is becoming an American problem....the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make potent recruiting tools. They’re portrayed by the militants as America’s war on Islam.” Dozier…

Managing Editor's Note: The following is a reprint of Michael Moriarty's original December 14 post to Big Hollywood. Moriarty, you may recall, played a prosecutor in the first few seasons of the long-running NBC drama "Law and Order."Well, I think I’ve been fairly calm and forgiving of "Law and Order" for about fifteen years. Living outside of the U.S. has certainly helped in more ways than one.…

With the demise of the Editor and Publisher this week, many media commentators are nostalgic for the hard-nosed trade journalism the newspaper industry publication often engaged in. E&P's strength was always in its core mission of reporting news industry trends. In its latter years, like a number of other outlets, it began to stray off-course into garden-variety, hypocritical leftist media…