Mr. Ridge, I Question Your Timing

You give the administration the benefit of the doubt, thinking "No morally sound human being would put the nation on alert for political reasons. The Bush Administration might be misguided, but they're certainly not evil." And then you find out the terror information they cited as a specific, impending danger turns out to be at least three years old.

Yes, I believe in erring on the side of caution. But to cry wolf yet again when the information predates the attacks of 9/11/2001 is alarmist. No, there weren't any dry runs and nothing indicates that anything was underway.

Federal authorities said on Monday that they had uncovered no evidence that any of the surveillance activities described in the documents was currently under way. They said officials in New Jersey had been mistaken in saying on Sunday that some suspects had been found with blueprints and may have recently practiced "test runs'' aimed at the Prudential building in Newark.

I'm just appalled. Chalk this one up in the "contributing actively to the Culture of Fear" column.

Eric Porres, Certified Repair Tech

So while I was working remotely on Friday, alternately cranking out insertion orders and preparing for Sposbash, I get this e-mail from Eric:

Subj: Your phone took a tumble:
Body Copy: The wire got caught in the wheel of a chair here...the speakerphone works, but i've had to jerry-rig a way to use the handset until i can get someone from m5 to have it repaired/replaced.

This morning, I come in to find this. Everything looks normal on my phone, except there's this orange screwdriver jammed into it. Much like those construction workers who accidentally shoot themselves in the head with their nailguns, I'm afraid to remove it, out of fear that it will stop working altogether and I'll be without voice communication today.

Specific Chatter

Something was bugging me quite a bit about the recent specific terrorist threats and how they're being handled, but I couldn't put my finger on it until I watched some of the news coverage last night, as well as an episode of "Command Decisions" on the History Channel. News commentators were asking whether or not giving the specifics of threatened buildings and institutions would force the terrorists to go to Plan B and pick new, unknown targets. Coincidentally, the Command Decisions episode was all about Nimitz and how he knew the Japanese were going to attack Midway with aircraft carriers. Instead of warning Midway that there was an attack coming, he positioned his forces and lured the Japanese fleet into a trap.

With no information, it's tough to know what's the right choice here, but I wonder if making public the knowledge that we know where the terrorists are planning to attack robs us of an opportunity to catch them and round many of them up. I don't want to suggest that we should use people as bait, but is there a better way to do this than to warn everybody very publicly that we know about this stuff? Maybe we should have warned just the financial institutions that have been targeted and worked out something on the QT so that we might catch some of these terrorists and interrogate them. Maybe that's right and maybe that's wrong - maybe we could make more informed decisions if we knew more.

Sposbash 2004

I lost at BeerBall 8-1. John Allen's assistant from work and I lost at Beirut to John Allen and Danny. And I seem to have lost most of my guitar-playing ability due to lack of practice time. But in the end it was all good - 4 kegs kicked, no visits from local law enforcement, and a good time was had by all.

For those of you not in the know, BeerBall is played just like Wiffle Ball, except the ball is made from plastic shopping bags wrapped in duct tape. Also, you have to carry a 12-ounce beer with you around the basepaths and you're not allowed to cross home until you've killed your beer.