Mitchell Lawrence sold a joint to an (adult) undercover cop. Now the 17-year-old is doing two years in prison for this tablespoon’s worth of grass. He’s a felon.

“Drug-free zone” laws are bullshit even in the bullshit world of the “War on (some) Drugs.” They don’t protect kids, they have no deterrent effect, and they have a disproportionately racist impact. The Drug Policy Alliance has a video about this you should watch.

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

We’re pretty sure his statement here on Iraq’s lack of complicity in 9/11 represents one of those times when his handlers have fits. This administration has been beating the drum of Saddam-Osama complicity for years; when Bush says here that no one in his administration has blamed Saddam for 9/11, he’s lying; Cheney did the talk show circuit for months touting this very canard in the runup to the Iraqi invasion.

Hey, didn’t we used to care when presidents lied, like, even about piddly shit where nobody got killed?

Via The Register, where they actually pay attention to things like “science.”

Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers. It would be tedious to enumerate the movie terrorists who’ve employed relatively harmless liquids that, when mixed, immediately rain destruction upon an innocent populace, like the seven angels of God’s wrath pouring out their bowls full of pestilence and pain.

The funny thing about these movies is, we never learn just which two chemicals can be handled safely when separate, yet instantly blow us all to kingdom come when combined. Nevertheless, we maintain a great eagerness to believe in these substances, chiefly because action movies wouldn’t be as much fun if we didn’t.

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

We’re told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner — all easily concealed in drinks bottles — and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.

Scared now? Don’t be. Keep reading. There’s a catch, and it’s a biggie.

Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.

First, you’ve got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.

But let’s assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration […]. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you’ve got them on hand.

Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It’s all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don’t forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked “perishable foods”), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You’re going to need them.

It’s best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate — especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation — to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie. Easy does it

Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you’ll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you’ll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours – assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven’t overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities – you’ll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

But! Terra! Terra! Look! Muslims! Terra!

Right. Nothing to see here. There’s certainly not an actual THREAT to see here.

We asked University of Rhode Island Chemistry Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, who has actual, practical experience with TATP, if this is a reasonable assumption, and she told us that merely dumping the precursors together would create “a violent reaction,” but not a detonation.

To release the energy needed to bring down a plane (far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha Airlines Flight 243 neatly illustrates), it’s necessary to synthesize a good amount of TATP with care.

In other words, it can’t be done, at least not with TATP, which is what the London plot apparently hinged on. (Aloha 243 was the flight in Hawaii that landed safely without a significant portion of its fuselage; we’re sure you remember the story.)

They continue, now discussing our collective reaction to this “plot:”

Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we’ve passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy.

It should be small comfort that the security establishments of the UK and the USA — and the “terrorism experts” who inform them and wheedle billions of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar hi-tech phrenology gear — have bought the Hollywood binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon it.

We’ve given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.

But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned.

Big Finish:

The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of pestilence and death. We know this because we’ve watched it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our officials have done. Based on their behavior, it’s reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to emphasize).

It’s a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire “red mercury,” and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs.

For some real terror, picture twenty guys who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic, clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.

You won’t hear about those fellows until it’s too late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven’t got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.

Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer.

Oh, and no toothpaste on the plane, and nevermind about what risk it does or does not pose. Such is our administration’s commitment to faith-based programs.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against Emiliano Gonzolez, an immigrant who has not been charged with or convicted of any crime. He was stopped by a state trooper in Nebraska, driving a rental car, and in possession of some $124,700 in cash.

Officers found no evidence of any crime. However, they’ve decided to keep Gonzolez’s money on the grounds that only criminals would have that much cash, and the Appeals Court agreed. WTF?

Gonzolez’s story — and remember: no evidence has been offered even suggesting it isn’t genuine — is as follows, reported here:

On May 28, 2003, a Nebraska state trooper signaled Gonzolez to pull over his rented Ford Taurus on Interstate 80. The trooper intended to issue a speeding ticket, but noticed the Gonzolez’s name was not on the rental contract. The trooper then proceeded to question Gonzolez — who did not speak English well — and search the car. The trooper found a cooler containing $124,700 in cash, which he confiscated. A trained drug sniffing dog barked at the rental car and the cash. For the police, this was all the evidence needed to establish a drug crime that allows the force to keep the seized money.

Associates of Gonzolez testified in court that they had pooled their life savings to purchase a refrigerated truck to start a produce business. Gonzolez flew on a one-way ticket to Chicago to buy a truck, but it had sold by the time he had arrived. Without a credit card of his own, he had a third-party rent one for him. Gonzolez hid the money in a cooler to keep it from being noticed and stolen. He was scared when the troopers began questioning him about it. There was no evidence disputing Gonzolez’s story.

Yesterday the Eighth Circuit summarily dismissed Gonzolez’s story. It overturned a lower court ruling that had found no evidence of drug activity, stating, “We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion… Possession of a large sum of cash is ‘strong evidence’ of a connection to drug activity.”

Got too much money? You’re probably a drug felon. They may not be able to convict you — what with being innocent and all, and what with the wholesale lack of actual evidence — but apparently they get to keep the money anyway. Especially, we figure, if you’re a minority or an immigrant.

Go USA!

Google has introduced an online word processor called Writely.

RyanAir is threatening to sue the British government over its unremittingly stupid airport “security” measures:

Michael O’Leary, the outspoken chief executive of Ryanair, described the new restrictions as “farcical Keystone Cops security measures that don’t add anything except to block up airports”, as he issued the ultimatum.

Mr O’Leary ridiculed the notion of searching five- or six-year-old children and elderly people in wheelchairs going to Spain. Such scenes, he said, would have “terrorists laughing in the caves of Afghanistan”.

The NSA spying program has been ruled unconstitutional:

In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, — who is based in Detroit, Michigan — struck down the National Security Agency’s program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

The defendants “are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III,” she wrote.

She further declared that the program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.”

The Justice Dept. will, of course, appeal in their quest to consolidate their power and ignore the rule of law.

Or, the Terra Plot That Wasn’t. Ol’ Rob points us at this:

So far, no one has been charged in the alleged terror plot to blow up several airplanes across the Atlantic. No evidence has been produced supporting the contention that such a plot was indeed imminent. Forgive me if my skepticism just ratcheted up a little notch. Under a law that the Tories helped weaken, the suspects can be held without charges for up to 28 days. Those days are ticking by. Remember: the British authorities had all these people under surveillance; they did not want to act last week; there was no imminent threat of anything but a possible “dummy-run,” whatever deranged guest-bloggers at Malkin say. (Correction, please.) Bush and Blair discussed whether to throw Britain’s airports into chaos over the weekend before the crackdown occurred.

Then we have the following comment from Craig Murray. Craig Murray was Tony Blair’s ambassador to Uzbekistan whose internal memo complaining about evidence procured by out-sourced torture created a flap a while back. He is skeptical. Money quote:

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth …

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why?

Oh, I dunno. Could it be plummeting approval ratings certain to get a bump if you scare the populace enough?

Andy continues:

I’d be interested in the number of plotters who had passports. How could they even stage a dummy-run with no passports? And what bomb-making materials did they actually have? These seem like legitimate questions to me; the British authorities have produced no evidence so far. If the only evidence they have was from torturing someone in Pakistan, then they have nothing that can stand up in anything like a court. I wonder if this story is going to get more interesting. I wonder if Lieberman’s defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn’t find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.

Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson.

From NYT:

In surveys conducted in 2005, people in the United States and 32 European countries were asked whether to respond “true,” “false” or “not sure” to this statement: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” The same question was posed to Japanese adults in 2001.

The United States had the second-highest percentage of adults who said the statement was false and the second-lowest percentage who said the statement was true, researchers reported in the current issue of Science.

Only adults in Turkey expressed more doubts on evolution. In Iceland, 85 percent agreed with the statement.

Science sums it up:

The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States. (emph added)

Sigh.

From this story:

Yolanda Clark, spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration, part of the Homeland Security Department, disputed criticism of the agency, saying that the screeners were well trained and effective.

More important, she said, they are “just one of many” levels of protection. There is more robust security than in 2001, she said, including more luggage X-ray machines, air marshals and chemical detection devices.

Her agency, created two months after 9/11, had a rocky start — millions wasted in the rush to hire, reliance on dubious contractors, even an inability to pay people on time, according to several government reports.

Among the most serious problems that were discovered was that the agency hired hundreds of screeners with criminal records, in some cases for felonies as serious as manslaughter and rape. Reports of thefts soared as more bags than ever were inspected by hand. [Emph. added.]

“T.S.A. was so focused on meeting the Congressional deadlines that they cut a lot of corners,” said Clark Kent Ervin, who was inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and 2004.

Ms. Clark, the spokeswoman, said those early problems were corrected long ago. But critics say problems remain with salaries, training and attrition.

The starting salary for screeners is less than $24,000, and some are hired without high school diplomas. People who do specialized work like reading X-rays are no better paid those who ask people to take their shoes off.

Each year, fewer than 20 percent of screeners leave the job, Ms. Clark said. But the agency has such trouble keeping up with those losses that this year it began paying a $500 bonus to anyone who lasts a year.

Ms. Clark said the screeners receive 60 hours of classroom training and 40 hours on the job, as well as periodic retraining. Some 18,000 of them received special training in recognizing explosives and bomb parts.

Yet the Government Accountability Office reported in April that investigators slipped bomb components past checkpoints at all 21 airports tried. The components could be combined onboard to make an explosive — the very strategy British authorities say plotters in England planned to use.

Ms. Clark declined to address the specifics of that report, but she called it flawed.

Passengers have their own tales of lapses. At Kennedy International Airport on Friday, two travelers, Lee and Annie Barreiro of Florida, said that they had recently taken a steak knife past a security checkpoint in their hometown airport. “They let a lot get through,” Mr. Barreiro said.

We repeat: THE TSA HAS ZERO TO DO WITH SECURITY. All the extra hassle added at the airport security checkpoint since 9/12/01 has been a complete waste of time and is getting no better. We are wasting resources we could be using on drastically more effective and less intrusive security measures that might actually do some good.

The Daily Show brings on a Middle Eastern analyst on the region’s “growing pains”:

Awesome.

The Axis of Nielsen-Hayden wonders how far we’ll go in banning liquids on planes, and so do we.

It’s folly to think we can keep all hazardous substances off planes. Richard Reed got on board with explosives three months after 9/11, for crying out loud. All you really need to know is that people in prison get weapons, and flight can never be as tightly controlled a prison, so what hope is there, really, of solving the problem (such as it is) with this kind of “filter?”

Via JWZ, we find this summary of the obvious and neglected truth of the London affair:

The alleged U.K. terror plot has been investigated for months by British intelligence, and the idea that the airliner attacks were planned for today seems to be nothing more than political fabrication and media hysteria.

Tony Blair and George W. Bush even planned the terror freakout in a series of phone calls that began last Friday and continued through the weekend. Blair and Bush put the finishing touches on their diabolical operation in a phone call early Wednesday, the Associated Press revealed today.

That’s right: While millions of travelers are going through absolute hell today because of the sudden terror “news,” it was last week when the U.S. president and U.K. prime minister began their cold calculations on how to get the maximum political benefit from the months-old investigation.

(There are links to wire stories in the original text; click thru.)

Mr Z also points out this spot-on analysis of the facts of the case, which really point out how hysterical everyone is being. The cops were tracking them. They were aware of their movements. There was no way they were going to let the plot come to fruition. Everything worked as it’s supposed to, and the bad guys got snatched, and nothing blew up, and none of that had anything to do with taking your goddamn shoes off in airports. Real cops caught these guys, not mouth-breathing TSA yokels.

Of course, none of this will matter at airports, where the idiot child of 9/11 will still insist we surrender our nail clippers and shampoo in gestures utterly devoid of any efficacy whatsoever.

From CNN, where they suspect that carry-on trips have just become a thing of the past:

Air travelers might have to get used to stuffing lipstick and lotion into their luggage rather than carry it with them in the wake of a plot to destroy airliners with liquid-based explosives, security experts say.

The Transportation Security Administration issued new rules banning nearly all liquids, including beverages, lotions and hair gels, from being taken on planes after British authorities arrested at least 24 suspects in the plot.

…

Jamie Bowden, a former terminal manager at London’s Heathrow Airport, said the new rules may be here to stay.

“I think certainly here in the U.K. and certainly in the States as well, people are now getting used to kind of a new way of travel,” Bowden told CNN on Friday. “So that I think, although the airlines certainly don’t want these kinds of restrictions, if they believe through government intelligence that it’s much safer to fly like this, that may be a new way that people are going to have to get used to flying.”

The TSA hasn’t indicated how long the restrictions would remain in place but said on its Web site that “these measures will be constantly evaluated and updated as circumstances warrant.”

U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan, said the plot “eliminates the days of carry-on baggage,” according to The Associated Press.

Nancy McKinley of the International Airline Passengers Association said the new rules are going to be a “huge adjustment,” especially for business travelers.

“The challenge is going to be with the airlines on all the luggage [that] is checked and can it actually get to the destination in a reasonable amount of time once you get there — how long do you have to wait for it and all of that,” she said.

McKinley said some airports are urging people to arrive three hours before their flights.

“That’s going to be difficult for business travelers, too. That takes a big hunk out of your day,” she said.

A senior congressional source said authorities believe the plotters planned to mix a British sports drink with a gel-like substance to make an explosive that they possibly could trigger with an MP3 player or cell phone.

The components of the bomb would appear harmless until they were combined aboard the planes. (Full story)

Now stop for a minute. That has always been true. They have essentially zero hope of catching a well-disguised bomb, and anything with a battery can be turned into a detonator. This is never going away as a threat, and it’s a threat you have to deal with every time you’re in a room full of people.

The TSA has not banned U.S. passengers from carrying laptops, cell phones, MP3 players or BlackBerrys onto planes.

McKinley said it would “just be a nightmare” for business travelers if they did.

“If they try to take laptops and cell phones and put them into checked baggage, that creates a whole new problem,” she said. “Because in the past, those type of things (were) not covered. If your luggage is lost and you have something like that in your luggage, it’s not covered.”

McKinley said she was confident that the restrictions eventually would be eased, once screening technology catches up with the threat.

MORE bullshit. Screening hasn’t caught anything of note — the shoe bomber, for crying out loud, was caught by his seatmate, and this UK thing was caught by good old-fashioned police work, not McDonald’s-reject TSA goons.

“I mean there are studies going on right now to get more equipment, more updated equipment that can be changed out so that it doesn’t become archaic, and I think that’s where the focus has got to go,” she said.

Great! More wasted time!

Fortunately, at the end of the story, we get a voice of actual reason:

Rafi Ron, former head of security at Tel Aviv, Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, said screeners should focus more on finding suspicious people than on hunting for potential terrorist tools.

“It is extremely difficult for people to disguise the fact they are under tremendous amount of stress, that they are going to kill themselves and a lot of people around them in a short amount of time, and all the other factors that effect their behavior,” Ron said.

The Israelis know something about terrorism and security even if they’ve become overfond of collective punishment and the bombing of civilians. We probably ought to listen here.

My earlier post stands as well. We’re behaving like idiots where airport security is concerned, and in the process allowing people to THINK we’re doing something when in fact we’re doing less than nothing. It’s like no one involved at TSA knows anything at all about security. It’s theater designed to appease the masses, and has zilch to do with keeping anyone safe.

Today, Ze Frank explains terrorism. Watch. Understand.

In response to the foiled attack today, the U.K. government has banned all hand luggage from airplanes. No laptops. No books. No MP3 players. Nothing but limited toiletries, keys, baby food, and medically necessary items.

The point of terrorism is to make us afraid. The UK response to a foiled plot is to create an unspecified period during which fliers are arbitrarily deprived of iPods, novels and dignity.

If this is a good idea now, then why won’t it still be a good idea in a year? A decade? After all, terrorist plots will always exist in potentia (can you prove that no terrorist plots are hatching at this moment?) Until they handcuff us all nude to our seats and dart us with tranquilizers, there will always be the possibility that a passenger will do something naughty on a plane (even then, who knows how much semtex and roofing nails a bad guy could hide in his colon?).

Terrorism isn’t about killing people. You’re still more likely to die in a traffic accident than as a result of a terrorist bomb in Israel; in the U.S., lightning poses a greater risk than terror attack. Terrorists know this. Their point is to disrupt our way of life, to make us afraid, and to make us overreact. And on that front, they’re winning, and have been doing so since 9/12/01.

Israel also threatened to attack UN peacekeepers if they attempted to repair bomb-damaged bridges in southern Lebanon. UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies.

According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.

Nice. And these are supposed to be the good guys? (From here.)