Sears Blowback and Co.

As we get closer and closer to the November elections, there's little doubt we will go deep into "terrorist bustin'" season, too. Now the AP reports: "US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that 'domestic terrorists' could become as big a threat as Al-Qaeda." And upon hearing that line, don't tell me that I'm the only one with an image of terrorists dressed as French maids in my head. Perhaps they just need a good spanking.

Of course this is nothing new--when leadership has nothing else to offer, its last grasp on power is power itself. Basically the credo goes like this: first we'll scare you witless, then we'll sell you insurance.

The Miami group arrested as terrorists, which called itself the "Seas of David," evidently hoping that people might just think they're the latest Royal Caribbean line super ship, were cooking up a plot that was "more aspirational than operational," according to FBI deputy director John Pistole. Sort of like that old Catholic notion that if you think of the sin, you've already committed it. Or, to paraphrase Tom Edison, "Terrorism is 99% aspiration, and 1% perspiration."