Nabbing a few poor Black people from the projects who surprisingly aren’t fond of the government wasn’t scary enough. Neither was foiling a boneheaded plot to flood Manhattan by bombing the Holland Tunnel – a scheme that didn’t take into account the fact that New York is above the water level (you never know when water’s going to decide to flow up though, so thank God Homeland Security was on the ball on that one). No, the latest election-year scare has been ratcheted up severeal notches on the Rove scale.If they’ve already pulled an international large-scale plot out of their hat in August, they’re going to have to top themselves in coming months. Expect American and British intelligence to thwart an attack on Disneyland by aliens from the rings of Saturn around, oh I don’t know, late October.Still, this could all be real, of course. Even the boy who cried wolf was eventually eaten.**UPDATE: Surprisingly, the White House is seeking to capitalize on the alleged plot.

“I’d rather be talking about this than all of the other things that Congress hasn’t done well,” one Republican congressional aide told AFP on condition of anonymity because of possible reprisals. “Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big,” said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won’t “look as appealing” under the circumstances.

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Israel is our ally, and rightly so. And any nation has a right to defend itself. Almost everyone agrees about those two precepts. I believe Israel has a right to exist, and just as with the U.S., I’m going to speak out when I think their tactics are either inhumane or counterproductive. The best way to ensure your nation’s longevity is to avoid behaving in a way that costs you the support of the world and causes much of the Arab world, which increasingly held Hezbollah in disfavor, to change its mind. Today’s Candorville questions the wisdom of Israel putting a rush order on cluster bombs that have a wide radius of destruction if what they were trying to do in the Lebanon War was be precise and avoid civilian casualties. One of my favorite newspaper editors received a phone call about that, and passed it on to me (I’ve removed the names):

Promised the reader I would pass this along. Just received a telephone call from a reader regarding your strip today. (name redacted) called to request that you write an “equally hilarious strip about Palistinian suicide bombers” —

My response:

Hi (name redacted), If you wouldn’t mind, please suggest to the reader that he check out yesterday’s equally-hilarious strip about an Iranian president who wants to wipe Israel off the map. I’m always intrigued at how people can completely ignore the strips they agree with but zero in on the one they find objectionable.You might also tell him that responsible, rational governments such as Israel’s should behave with more restraint and wisdom than a suicide bomber. We shouldn’t excuse either our own actions or those of our allies by comparing them to the despicable actions of terrorists. Otherwise, what makes “us” better than “them”?

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Nice try, Chicago Sun-Times:

Barack Obama’s week-old presidential campaign has been hit with a smear. Hillary Clinton’s White House bid, launched Saturday, has been attacked with an unfounded accusation. Contrary to what was reported in Insight magazine and then repeated on Fox News and in other news outlets, including a column that ran in the Sun-Times by free-lancer Mark Steyn, Obama was not educated in a radical Islamic school when he was an elementary student in Jakarta.And there is no evidence whatsoever that Clinton’s campaign had anything to do with spreading the damaging rumor that Obama hid a Muslim background.The source for both slurs started in a report posted on the Web site of Insight, a conservative magazine published by the Washington Times. The article with no named sourcing alleged that researchers connected to Clinton dug up information about Obama as part of a “background check.”

You mean Obama didn’t attend a radical Islamist madrassa when he was six? Are they trying to tell us he didn’t plot the destruction of America between nap-time and Play Doh lessons? Next the Lib’ral Media’s going to try telling us he never actually burned the flag while cross-dressing when he ran that abortion clinic in San Francisco. They must think they’re dealing with idiots.

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Like alcoholic parents trying to disavow their crack-whore son, the Washington Times is attempting to distance itself from the bogus Obama-madrassah story — a story that they and Fox News had amplified.

The Washington Times, which is also owned by the Unification Church, but operates separately from the Web site, quickly disavowed the article. Its national editor sent an e-mail message to staff members under the heading “Insight Strikes Again” telling them to “make sure that no mention of any Insight story” appeared in the paper, and another e-mail message to its Congressional correspondent instructing him to clarify to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama that The Washington Times had nothing to do with the article on the Web site. “Some of the editors here get annoyed when Insight is identified as a publication of The Washington Times,” said Wesley Pruden, editor in chief of The Washington Times.

But can the Washington Times disavow itself?

Barack Obama announced last week he was forming an exploratory committee to explore whether he can really be as fabulous as the media say. And happily the answer is: Yes. He is young, gifted and black, and white and Hawaiian and Kansan, and charismatic and Congregationalist, and Muslim. He rejects the way “politics has become so bitter and partisan,” he represents “a different kind of politics.” He smokes, which is different.He was raised in an Indonesian madrassah by radical imams, which is more than John Edwards can say. …The madrassah stuff was supposedly leaked to Insight Magazine by some oppo-research heavies on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s team. If true, that suggests Hillary is losing her touch. It’s certainly the case that a foreign education doesn’t always assist in electoral politics: John Kerry didn’t play up the Swiss finishing school angle. But look at it from a Democratic primary voter’s point of view, the kind who drive around with those “CO-EXIST” bumper stickers made up of the cross and the Star of David and the Islamic crescent and the peace sign. Your whole worldview is based on the belief that deep down we would all rub along just fine and this neocon fever about Islam is just a lot of banana oil to keep the American people in a state of fear and paranoia. What would more resoundingly confirm that view than if the nicest, most nonbitter, nonpartisan guy in politics turns out to have graduated from the Sword of the Infidel Slayer grade school in Jakarta?

Maybe someone at the Washington Times needs to circulate another memo.CNN, through the rare implementation of something called “journalism,” debunked this nonsense last week::

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