about those terror alerts...

Remember those terror alerts under the Bush administration? You know, that delightful color-coded warning system whose meaning seemed to run something along the lines of: "FYI: there may be an increased chance of some heinous attack somewhere in the US at some point. There's nothing you can do to protect yourself (and we're certainly not going to give you any useful details about the threat), but we think you should go about your day with a little more fear in your heart."

Evidently, this scientific approach to fear-mongering was, in fact, politically motivated (who would've thunk? well, you know, other than the busloads of liberal journalists who have been decrying the system for years). In his new book, Tom Ridge, former homeland security secretary, admits that Rumsfeld pressured him to raise the terror alert on the eve of the 2004 election in an effort to improve W.'s reelection chances. Tom Ridge (to his credit?) quit three weeks later because he "wanted to spend more time with his family." On the flip side, of course, Ridge had been vehemently denying that politics played any role in the system up until now (which, out of sheer coincidence, happens to be two weeks before the release of his book "The Test of Our Times"). So, as often happens with the secrecy-shrouded Bush administration, it remains difficult to determine exactly who is lying about what when.