ABC has announced that "US Astronomers record biggest supernova ever recorded." This PM brief brought to you by The Department Of Redundancy Department.

Of the six "Islamic radicals" involved in a plot to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were arrested Monday night,

One of the suspects was born in Jordan, another in Turkey, the U.S. attorney's office said. The rest are believed to be from the former Yugoslavia, "either U.S. citizens or living illegally in the United States," the office said in a statement.

Note that any time a Serb is involved in something sinister they are immediately branded a Serb, because everyone KNOWS they're evil. Whenever a Bosnian Muslim or Albanian Muslim ends up involved in terrorist activity they're "from the former Yugoslavia." I mean, we spent considerable money and killed a lot of people to show our friendship to the beleaguered Balkan Muslims, we dare not mention ingratitude on the part of some of their number ...

Does anyone remember the Bosnian Green Berets? How about the KLA? Why would we be so shocked to find out that some members of the groups playing the role of innocent victims weren't so damned innocent after all? Wake up people, a lot of the US' provisional allies and coalition partners aren't really our little fuzzy buddies, they're in it because the partnership is "useful" to them at the moment. Now re-read the oft-criticized passage on coalition "usefulness" from the 1992 DPG draft and tell me if it's starting to make more sense.

Everyone, if you disagree with the REAL ID Act and have read DHS' NPRM on the subject, go here and read instructions on how to comment. You have precious little time in which to do so. My email is below.

Department of Homeland Security
Attn: NAC 1-12037
Washington, D.C. 20538
RE: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking DHS-2006-0030

Dear Secretary Chertoff,

I am submitting this comment email in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking DHS-2006-0030. I have thoroughly examined the Act in question, NPRM DHS-2006-0030, and, pursuant to 6 CFR Part 37 I am taking this opportunity to voice my objections to this program. I am a security professional with almost two decades of experience directly relevant to core issues of this program.

In short, after careful analysis I have concluded that implementation of the REAL ID Act:

1. Violates Title XV Sub B Sec 1514 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which states, in whole, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the development of a national identification system or card",
2. Potentially suborns the violation of several provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974,
3. Has grave implications for established safeguards for private citizens' data as defined in the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act of 1999, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, not to mention countless privacy components of regulatory and business contract standards in place throughout corporate America,
4. Centralizes private identifiable information without appropriate security safeguards such that participants' information can (and most undoubtedly will) be exposed to stalkers, identity thieves, pedophiles, domestic abuse convicts, criminal organizations, and worse, and
5. Opens heretofore unavailable avenues for fraud and abuse to criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants wishing for a identification document one-stop shop.

Further, the REAL ID Act was passed without adequate public review, and scarcely afforded the public time to review and comment on the Act to their lawmakers in Washington.

It is for the above reasons, and more, that I add my voice to those calling for the rejection of this unnecessary, illegal, and potentially dangerous national identification system.

Respectfully,

[stickyboy]
Somewhere, TX

According to federal complaints filed today in U.S. District Court in Camden, the Fort Dix Six's names are Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, Dritan Duka, Shain Duka, Eljvir Duka. We're missing one, and there are another four on the video detailing the plot that haven't been located by authorities.

I can tell you right now without reservation that the three Duka brothers are 100% Albanian, which would mean that they are the bulk of the group from "the former Yugoslavia."

Dritan may be the same Dritan Duka that travelled with his wife and child from a Kosovo refugee camp to the UK in 1999 requesting asylum on the grounds that he would be persecuted by his fellow Albanians for giving information and assistance to Serbian police during the war there. The Secretary of State refused his claim to asylum, and on February 13th, 2001 his final appeal was denied, as the adjudicator didn't not believe his story. He and his wife and child were detained and deported back to Kosovo.

Shnewer might be the Jordanian the authorites refer to, possibly a relative of the Mohammad Shnewer who represented the Amman Stock Exchange in Europe in 2005.

EDIT: The sixth man's name is Agron Abdullahu

In February of last year, a video duplication store clerk was confronted with an odd sight. A foreign man had dropped off a series of video cassette tapes that he wished to be dubbed to DVDs. This is normally a set-it/forget-it kind of process, but initial calibration has to be done, and the clerk was shocked to see recordings of men shooting machine guns and yelling "Allahu Akhbar" over and over.

It might have been a prank, but then again ...

He called the Mount Laurel Police Department, who quickly contacted the FBI field office in Cherry Hill, just off the New Jersey Turnpike. The FBI spent the next year slowly infiltrating the group with at least two different informants, and made the discovery that the men were hatching a plot to attack soldiers at nearby Fort Dix with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and other weapons, and had already set events in motion to acquire the ordnance.

Now the plotters are in jail, and the authorities are jealously guarding the identity of one person above all: the ordinary video store clerk that noticed some shenanigans and called the cops. He had no special training, he didn't tap any phones, he didn't compile terrorist databases, he didn't examine any stupid REAL ID cards. He exercised common sense, and he called in the dogs.

That's all we need. All that other stuff: pfeh. Some of it is useful sometimes, some of it is stupid, and much of it makes liberty advocates nervous. But none of it came into play this time, and that should tell us all something.