presidents' day has, like, 44 dicks

It’s an oldie, but a goody. I actually thought Brad Neely’s JFK cartoon might have been more, oh, apropos for this year’s president’s day, but Neely doesn’t allow for embedding, so you’ll have to click to watch. (Warning: people who find cartoon references to assassination in poor taste might not like this quite as much as GW. People that think some presidents. . . or, maybe, candidates. . . are magical panaceas for all of our nation’s ills might also want to avert their eyes.)

what she said. . . Moore or less

I suspect that Kelly Anne Moore and I wouldn’t see exactly eye-to-eye on every issue. . . I mean, I don’t really know, I don’t know her, but. . . Ms. Moore served as chief of the Violent Crimes and Terrorism Section in the Brooklyn US attorney’s office from 2002 to 2006, and that term of service has me wondering if she came in with Bush appointee Roslyn Mauskopf, the USA for that Brooklyn office. Mauskopf was a protégé of former New York Governor George Pataki and a favorite of former New York Senator Al D’Amato who was viewed as unqualified for her post when her nomination was put forward back in 2002. Her current case against the “JFK bomb plot” “suspects” does nothing to convince me otherwise. Mauskopf is one of those US attorneys that Paul Krugman warned us about a while back—you know, one of the ones that weren’t fired by AG AG and his band of partisan White House brothers.

But I digress. . . .

on lameness

Unlike with other papers in the region, the so-called JFK “terrorist plot” did not make the front page of the New York Times. In fact, it didn’t even make the first section—the Times decided to run it on the front of its Metro section (hey, that’s the front of something, ain’t it?). New York Times national editor Suzanne Daley, answering questions this week over at nytimes.com, took some heat from a hopped up public, no doubt jonesing during their commuter time for a little more “all hysteria, all fear, all the time” tabloid or tabloid television coverage.

In artfully defending the editorial decision made by the Times, Daley as convincingly denigrates the prosecutorial (and you can’t spell “prosecutorial” without “PR”) decision made by the government:

Here's the basic thinking on the J.F.K. story: In the years since 9/11, there have been quite a few interrupted terrorist plots. It now seems possible to exercise some judgment about their gravity. Not all plots are the same. In this case, law enforcement officials said that J.F.K. was never in immediate danger. The plotters had yet to lay out plans. They had no financing. Nor did they have any explosives. It is with all that in mind, that the editors in charge this weekend did not put this story on the front page.

In truth, the decision was widely debated even within this newsroom. At the front page meeting this morning, we took an informal poll and a few editors thought the story should have been more prominently played. Some argued it should have been fronted, regardless of the lameness of the plot, simply because it was what everyone was talking about.

And yes, I have mixed feelings about the introduction of “lameness” as used above into the officially sanctioned lingua franca of the Gray Lady, but when it is used to describe this “plot”—and so, by association, this episode in the Bush Administration’s “war on terror”—how can I do anything but heartily approve?

look ma—I’m a terrorist!

This is apparently pretty much all it takes.

According to Justice, all you need is Google and a dream. . . and an idiot or two to dream it.