QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 6:52 P.M. ET:  From the great Mark Steyn:

The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate, and you can't blame the world's mischief-makers, from Putin to Ahmadinejad to the many Gitmo recidivists now running around Yemen, from drawing the correct conclusion.

For two weeks, the government of the United States has made itself a global laughingstock. Don't worry, "the system worked," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Incompetano. Don't worry, he was an "isolated extremist," said the president. Don't worry, we're banning bathroom breaks for the last hour of the flight, said the TSA. Don't worry, "U.S. border security officials" told the Los Angeles Times, we knew he was on the plane, and we "had decided to question him when he landed." Don't worry, Obama's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, assured the Sunday talk shows, sure, we read him his rights, and he's lawyered up but he'll soon see that "there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements."

Oh, that's grand. Try to kill hundreds of people in an act of war, and it's the starting point for a plea deal.

COMMENT:  While the administration moved mountains – well, molehills – to change its rhetoric toward the end of last week, I suspect that most Americans now know where the president's heart really is.  He is a leftist academic who really has no problem with a lax attitude toward terror, or man-made disasters, or whatever his latest term is.  And he has no problem with plea deals for mass murderers.  That's what he was taught in his radical upbringing, and in the chic, leftist precincts of Hyde Park, Chicago (where I used to live.)  It all fits...and it should have been explored before the 2008 election.

January 9, 2010