Got Overseas Relatives You Don't Like?

Christmas dinner will probably be... tense.

A man in Sweden who was angry with his daughter's husband has been charged with libel for telling the FBI that the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda, Swedish media reported on Friday.

The man, who admitted sending the email, said he did not think the US authorities would stupid enough to believe him.

* * *

The son-in-law was arrested upon landing in Florida. He was placed in handcuffs, interrogated and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being put on a flight back to Europe, the paper said.

There's Such A Thing As Over-Analyzing....

Describing terrorism, Alan B. Krueger writes,

There's even a cold logic to the time of day that terrorists pick for their attacks, which also suggests a rhythm that's far from random. My analysis of U.S. government data from the National Counterterrorism Center reveals that terrorists are most likely to strike in the morning -- in time to enter the day's news cycle.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that for years now we have had a 24-hour news cycle, perhaps there is a more obvious answer. When you are engaged in furtive, criminal acts, it is easier to avoid detection at night, and with daylight and daytime activity it becomes harder to either complete a crime or get away with it.

The Ground Shifts Beneath GW's Feet

George Will published a column today, The Triumph of Unrealism, which criticizes the Bush Administration, not only without savaging the Democratic Party, but while actually endorsing the ideas of John Kerry.

In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official," insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:

"The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work."

An accidental omission, or is the ground crumbling under GW's feet?