When It Is And When It Isn't

This morning on Fox And Friends, the three stooges of morning television took after the failed NYC bomb plot with predictable fervor. They teased the Napolitano segment with a paranoid tirade from Peter Johnson Jr about how terror is everywhere and we all have to be afraid and that The Dept. Of Homeland Security isn't protecting America - you know, typical Fox"News" stuff.

When Napolitano finally got on, she did her best to let the facts be known and that the police and Homeland Security are handling this carefully and as a real threat. The main problem that the Fox crew had - she wasn't forceful enough with the word terrorism.



here's what she had to say on Sunday.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday morning that the administration is "certainly considering" that the car bomb found in New York's Times Square could be an act of terror.

"Luckily, no one is hurt, and now the full attention of city, state and federal law enforcement will be turned to bringing the guilty party to justice in this act of terrorism," New York Gov. David Paterson said in a statement.

When asked about Paterson's characterization of the incident, in which a T-shirt vendor noticed smoke coming from the back of an SUV and notified police, Napolitano said forensic evidence plus video footage from the area was being analyzed.

"We're certainly considering it now that it could be an act of terrorism or was intended to be an act of terrorism," Napolitano said on "Fox News Sunday."

Napolitano said they were "not ruling anything out."

Reports are coming in that the person that made the bomb didn't know what he was doing and the wingnuts at Free Republic are already starting to spin this as someone trying to frame the Tea Baggers.

From the New York Times:

Law enforcement officials offered a more detailed description of the makeup of the failed car bomb found in Times Square on Saturday night, and said they were reviewing surveillance footage that showed a white man who appeared to be in his 40s walking away from the area as he looked over his shoulder and removed a layer of clothing.

Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, said the materials found in the Nissan Pathfinder — gasoline, propane, firecrackers and simple alarm clocks — also included eight bags of a granular substance, later determined to be nonexplosive grade of fertilizer, inside a 55-inch-tall metal gun locker.

Aside from the non-explosive grade fertilizer, the trigger mechanism was an old-style clock and the ignition system was 20-30 M88 firecrackers.

And while the NYC police say that the fire produced from the gas and the vehicle alone would have produced a fireball enough to kill someone, this bomb wasn't going to do the type of damage the designer had hoped for.

Michelle Malkin concludes her internet shrieking with a not-too-thinly-veiled accusation that the bomber is some left-wing anarchist.

You see where this is all going, right?

Much in the same way that conservative refused to call Joseph Stack a terrorist after he flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, I'm thinking that once all the info is in, you won't hear the words "terrorist" because the suspect the police are looking for is white. And we all know that you have to be non-white and between the ages of 18 and 29 to be considered a terrorist.