Blowing Smoke Up Your Tailpipe Yesterday, Tom Ridge, our illustrious Homeland Security Czar, appeared in a press conference raising the terror alert for specific targets in New York's financial district. The St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all prominently featured images of heavily armed security at Wall Street and other venues. There must be some heavy duty new intelligence, right? Wrong, say 6--count 'em 6 government officials interviewed yesterday. The intelligence was THREE YEARS OLD! More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older. "There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that." Lieberman's response: "I don't think anybody who has any fairness or is in their right mind would think the president or the secretary of homeland security would raise an alert level and scare people for political reasons," Lieberman said. "That's outrageous." What's outrageous, Joe, is that you still claim to be a Democrat. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35466-2004Aug2.html