Over at Human Events, a Professional Pilot for a Major Airline named Randy Plante has put together a handy cheat-sheet for what you, the ordinary American, can and should do in the extremely likely event you get on an airplane infested with terrorists. Essentially he says that if only everyone who flies on airplanes would follow his helpful tips and minutely scan all of their fellow passengers for signs of evil wicked foreignness as soon as they get to the airport, the terrorists would be foiled in their diabolical plan to make Americans paranoid about flying on airplanes.

Harold Ford wants the people of New York to know that he’s just like Sarah Palin: a commonsense lone wolf who will not toe the party line. Also, a grifter.

In case you haven’t noticed, it looks like there are three women lining up to run for New York’s senate seat. Oh yeah, and some guy might be thinking about it.

I’ve been writing for weeks now that the threat posed by al-Qaeda to the U.S. is a potent-but-diminished one; that al-Qaeda’s capacity for destruction reduces the further one goes from Waziristan; and that ultimately al-Qaeda is doomed by its lack of appeal to Muslim aspirations and interests. I could do this all day.

Don’t let the subject matter of this book throw you off — this is much more than a true-crime book about a gruesome murder-suicide in post-Katrina New Orleans. The actual murder-suicide is the least of what this book is about. It is the story of undiagnosed and untreated PTSD, Katrina, the failures of the American safety net, the ever-increasing violence in post-Katrina New Orleans as the city struggles to survive, and the writing of the story itself. All of these intersect at the crossroads of these deaths. Ethan talked to those who knew Zackery Bowen and Addie Hall, their family, friends, co-workers, and the soldiers Zack served with — to try to find out the why.

As you may have heard already, yesterday was kind of a rough day for Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, capping a pretty rough week.

The New York Times published a very harsh correction today, based largely on FDL reporting about MIT professor Jonathan Gruber’s failure to disclose a financial relationship with the Obama Administration while writing op-eds and giving quotes for stories in support of key elements of health reform preferred by the White House.

Harold Ford really does look like he’s going to take a run at New York’s US Senate seat currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand. He’s staffed up with a spokesman and a pollster, as well as Rod Blagojevich’s old campaign manager (!). And the spokesman is already running with an angry statement:

Harold is not going to be bullied or intimidated. It’s good for New York to have a dialogue. It’s good to have credible candidates exploring this race. So what are they so afraid of?

Martha Johnson’s nomination to head up the General Services Administration has been waiting for a Senate vote since June. Meanwhile, the acting administrator has tired of being away from his family in Denver, and the agency chief of staff has tired of waiting for a new boss to arrive.

There’s a price to be paid when an administration doesn’t push to get its nominees confirmed — and the price is only going to go up.

A lawyer for the New York Federal Reserve Bank is out with a statement claiming that Timothy Geithner played no role in the incident where lawyers instructed AIG to hide key elements of their payments to counter-parties.