Invasion Plot Foiled

A sneaky attempt by the animal uprising to infiltrate an invasion force into Thailand was thwarted by alert members of the airport staff in Kenya. 228 tortoises of the fierce and greatly feared "leopard brigade" had cleverly managed to sneak themselves into crates. Unfortunately for them, they didn't pack a port-a-potty in with themselves and the airport staff noticed droppings.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A trail of droppings led Kenyan airport staff to 228 live tortoises packed as "shells" and destined for Thailand, officials said on Thursday.

"Airport staff heard movement and funny noises in the containers," said Gichuki Kabukuru of Kenya Wildlife Services. "They notified us when they saw the droppings."

Kabukuru said the leopard tortoises, named for their spotted shells, had arrived in metal crates from neighbouring Uganda.

Kudos to the staff for their fine work in ferreting out this nefarious scheme. Who knows what slow motion havoc the fierce shelled warriors could have wrought on the unsuspecting Thai populace. Now, however, there will be cheap turtle soup available in Nairobi for months to come!

The Gift That Keeps Giving

Cynthia McKinney. Now she's hinting at sinister stolen elections and muttering about Republicans defeating her.

Is there a single leftist/Democrat in the entire world that can accept a defeat anymore? This is getting freaking ridiculous.

Over the past few years, increasing numbers of affluent blacks have moved into southern DeKalb County, the base of Ms. McKinney’s district, and many were not impressed by her confrontational and occasionally erratic style.

Alan I. Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University here, agreed that demographic shifts in Ms. McKinney’s district had favored her more moderate challenger, Henry C. Johnson, a trial lawyer and a former DeKalb County commissioner, who won the primary.

“Her base has really kind of eroded,” Mr. Abramowitz said. “One thing that has really happened in this district is a large influx of middle-class black voters into south DeKalb, and if you look at the voting patterns in those areas, they are not McKinney supporters.”

But Ms. McKinney and her supporters contend that Republicans mounted a campaign to vote her out of office, as they did four years ago when crossover voting helped elect her Democratic challenger, Denise Majette.

“We aren’t going to tolerate any more stolen elections,” Ms. McKinney said in her concession speech, though crossover voting is legal in Georgia.

“This is just like 2002,” said Nina Winfrey, 62, a resident of Rockdale County and a “die-hard Cynthia fan” who has been volunteering for Ms. McKinney’s campaign for 15 years. “We don’t need anybody down here telling us what to do who don’t live in south DeKalb County.”

Several Republican strategists acknowledged that widespread crossover voting was organized and encouraged on Tuesday.

Got that? Crossover voting is legal, but it's still stealing the election. One wonders how their heads don't burst into flames trying to follow their own twisted "logic". Folks, this runoff vote was not even remotely close. We are not talking a razor thin victory. McKinney got stomped. Compare that with the graceful concession of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut even though he could have legally challenged the results because of extreme irregularities in the absentee ballots. (Election officials did not send ballots to military personnel in time for them to be returned before election day.)

Terror Plot Roundup

Pajamas Media has an extensive roundup of news coverage from all over, so I will not even try to do my own - why reinvent the wheel?

As I said earlier, this is going to be the dominant news story of the day.

UPDATE: Donald Sensing asks a serious question: Could there be a North Korean connection to this plot?

Prepaid Cellular Phones

It's rapidly becoming clear that something very, very major is in the works by terrorists. It is also becoming clear that it may become necessary to ban prepaid cellular phones rather quickly.

MARIETTA, Ohio - Investigators in southeast Ohio said they were working to unravel how two Michigan men charged with supporting terrorism came to have airplane passenger lists and airport security information.

Osama Sabhi Abulhassan, 20, and Ali Houssaiky, 20, both of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, were being held at the Washington County jail on $200,000 bond each, which could be raised at a Thursday afternoon court hearing. Each was charged Wednesday with money laundering in support of terrorism.

Deputies stopped the two on a traffic violation Tuesday and found the flight documents along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones in their car, Sheriff Larry Mincks said.

It wasn't clear what significance the airline information might have. Assistant County Prosecutor Susan Vessels declined to comment on whether the manifests were for upcoming flights or those that already had flown. She also would not give the origin or destination of the flight or flights.

FBI spokesman Mike Brooks in Cincinnati said his office was investigating.

Abulhassan and Houssaiky admitted buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio, said sheriff's Maj. John Winstanley. They sold the phones to someone in Dearborn, Winstanley said.

Vessels declined to say how the phones, cash or flight information involved terrorism.

Investigators going through the car after the pair were pulled over in Marietta also found a map that showed locations of Wal-Mart stores from Ohio through Kentucky, Tennessee and into North and South Carolina, Vessels said.

"We got them at the beginning of their trip," she said.

I still want to know where the missing Egyptian "students" are right now.

UPDATE: AP - not much added.

Independents in Connecticut

The Washington Post has an interesting article on some history in Connecticut politics involving Lowell Weicker, the man Joe Lieberman unseated in his first campaign for the Senate. Weicker,  defeated as a Republican, turned independent and ran for - and won - the position of governor of Connecticut. It seems that state has a longish history for this sort of thing, then.

In politics, what goes around comes around, and now an eerily similar scenario is playing out for Lieberman, a three-term senator who lost on Tuesday in Connecticut's Democratic Senate primary to Ned Lamont. Lieberman says he will now run for the Senate in November as an independent.

Who would know better what it's like to run as an independent in that neck of the woods than Weicker?

Looking back on his independent candidacy, "my troubles were pretty clear," Weicker says from his home in Essex, Conn.

He says that his role in the Watergate investigation and his opposition to certain Reagan administration spending cuts "teed off a lot of Republicans."

But he says there were still enough moderate Republicans and Democrats to elect him governor.

Scott Overland, a spokesman for the Lieberman campaign, says his boss believes "deep in his heart" that he is the one person running for the Senate who can represent all of Connecticut's citizens and that he wants a chance to be reelected by all the voters.

Overland says that Lieberman has shown his independence by taking a stand on the Iraq war "that didn't help him politically."

"He believes it was the right thing to do," he says.

In 35 years of public service, Overland continues, Lieberman has built bonds with people of all political parties in the state. He says that Connecticut has shown it can elect an independent candidate. His example: Lowell Weicker.

Weicker, 75, says of Lieberman, "You have to take a look at the origins of his candidacy. And of mine. I made a decision, persuaded by Republicans, to run. But only to run as an independent."

You can pretty well write of Weicker's protestations that the situations are not identical. Weicker has a great deal of animosity for Lieberman, quite obviously. There are more similarities than differences, I think. At least they didn't trot out the tired conventional wisdom comparison of Jacob Javits and Al D'Amato. I debunked that one here.

Terror Targets

The Washington Post is reporting that the tree US airlines that were being targeted in the bomb plots were American Airlines, Continental Airlines and United Airlines.

British authorities said today they had disrupted a "major terrorist plot" to blow up passenger flights between the United Kingdom and the United States, prompting a full-scale security clampdown at U.S. and British airports and a cascade of delays in trans-Atlantic flights.

London's Deputy Police Commissioner, Paul Stephenson, said 21 people had been arrested in London and in Birmingham, England, after a months-long investigation into what he said was a plan for "mass murder on an unimaginable scale." Peter Clarke, chief of the London police department's anti-terrorism branch, said the investigation reached a "critical point" last night, requiring immediate disruption of the plot, the arrests and the imposition of heightened security measures.

There will be NO liquids or gels of any types allowed in carry-on luggage on US flights. I expect this will be getting even worse as more details come out. Expect a total carry-on ban very soon, I think.

Coordinated Waves

British Authorities have stopped a major plot to bomb a number - possibly 10 or more - airplanes. THis is going to be a dominant news story for the day. Here's a link to the BBC story. I'll be posting updates as I round up more news.

It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.

Police are searching premises after 21 people were arrested. Home Secretary John Reid said they believed the "main players" were accounted for.

High security is causing delays at all UK airports.

The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to critical after the arrests in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham.

Critical threat level - the highest - means "an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK".

Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted.

Mr Reid said had the attack gone ahead it would have caused a loss of life of "unprecedented scale".

He said they were "confident" the main players were in custody, but neither the police nor government are "in any way complacent".

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the plot was thought to have involved a series of "waves" of simultaneous attacks, targeting three planes each time.

He also said the plan "revolved around liquids of some kind".

"Officials say the explosives would have been sophisticated and extremely effective," our correspondent said.

Meanwhile, Heathrow Airport has been closed to all incoming flights that are not already in the air, while several outbound services have been cancelled.

The airport is crammed with thousands of passengers, while at Stansted more than 2,000 people are queuing to pass through customs.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson said the alleged plotters had intended "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".

This appears to be a very, very big plot and I really want to know where those missing Egyptians are right now.