Via Yahoo News:

U.S. authorities told The Associated Press that the suspect came to the attention of intelligence officials in November when his father went to the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, to express concerns about his son.

One government official said the father did not have any specific information that would put his son on the “no-fly list” or on the list for additional security checks at the airport.

….

Abdulmutallab appeared on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said a U.S. official who received a briefing. Containing some 550,000 names, the database includes people with known or suspected ties to a terrorist organization. However, it is not a list that would prohibit a person from boarding a U.S.-bound airplane.

Being in a database of “people with known or suspected ties to a terrorist organization” is not enough to prohibit a person from boarding a flight into the U.S.? Being reported by your own father as a potential threat is not enough even to trigger additional security checks at the airport? And the answer is to require passengers to remain in their seats for the last hour of all international flights?

It’s both scary and infuriating to contemplate how absurd all this is, the reactions of so many of those who are supposed to be experts dedicated to protecting us. But it becomes increasingly difficult to muster any real outrage any more. At some point, hopefully before there’s another major terrorist attack, we’ll have to decide which is our real aim — to stop terrorists, or to avoid offending anyone. So far the signs have not been encouraging.

In partial defense of the people at the embassy, who among us hasn’t ignored a correspondence that starts off: “Hello, I am a prominent Nigerian banker, and I have important information for your immediate attention…”

Donald Sensing satirically suggests the passenger who subdued the UndieBomber on flight 253 will be prosecuted for injuring him. It’s truly scary how close to impossible it is to parody these things.

Via Politico,

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that “the system worked.”

…

Napolitano added that there was “no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened.”

Really? No suggestion? No suggestion at all? The fact that a terrorist brought an explosive onto an aircraft and set it off in flight (apparently the device only failed to explode because of a failed detonator) doesn’t even suggest to the head of DHS that the man was improperly screened? What is screening for? Isn’t proper screening by definition meant to keep bomb-carrying terrorists off of airplanes? This should be a question much too obvious to ask. Apparently both the question and the answer baffle Secretary Napolitano. She could hardly have been more clueless if she had replied, “Plane? What plane?”

Jonah Goldberg is right. She should obviously be fired immediately.

Michelle Malkin gives Napolitano much more of the derision she deserves in this Clown Alert.

Senator Kent Conrad was on Fox News Sunday this morning, and essentially said that the “deal” (taxpayer-funded bribe) to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is a sham, “without a whole lot of meaning”.

Via The Hill:

“No Congress can bind a future Congress” to expand Nebraska’s Medicaid deal past 2016, when expansion in other states would run out, Conrad said.

Which is of course correct. But it also shows what a cheap date Ben Nelson is. His vote was purchased essentially for nothing but an empty promise. Harry Reid promised Nelson something that both know cannot be delivered, and Nelson sold his vote any way.

It’s all just more evidence the Democrats don’t care what’s in the bill, they only care about the political task of passing something. Think about what an utter disgrace that is – they’re willing to pass almost any bill, with little regard to what’s in it, which will affect every American, purely for political reasons. And there isn’t one single Democrat in the entire Senate who’s willing to stand up and say no to this disgrace.