PLAIN DEALER OPINION

NBA Commissioner David Stern was right to suspend Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas for bringing guns to the locker room — editorial
By The Plain Dealer Editorial Board
January 12, 2010, 4:01AM
Before he died in November, Abe Pollin was one of Washington, D.C.'s most successful businessmen and philanthropists. In 1997, upset about rising violence in the District and the earlier assassination, in Israel, of his friend Yitzhak Rabin, Pollin decided to give his pro basketball team a new name.

The Washington Bullets, he said, simply sent the wrong message -- especially to young, impressionable inner-city fans. After a contest, the team was rechristened the Wizards.

Too bad Gilbert Arenas, the Wizards' biggest star and recipient of a $111 million contract from Pollin, failed to grasp his late employer's message -- or wisdom.

Arenas has admitted that after a pre-Christmas gambling argument, he put four unloaded guns in the locker of a teammate, along with a note: "Pick one." He says it was just a joke. Prosecutors in Washington aren't laughing; they've launched a criminal investigation.

Though league rules ban weapons in the locker room, NBA Commissioner David Stern initially deferred to law enforcement authorities. But Arenas kept making light of the situation, even pretending to "shoot" his teammates in a pre-game huddle. That was too much for Stern. Before Washington played the Cavs last week, he suspended Arenas indefinitely without pay -- about $147,000 a game.

You can argue whether pro athletes should be role models; the fact is, they are. It's also a fact that some 10,000 Americans a year die from gun violence. Guns aren't funny.

Abe Pollin understood that. Because Arenas did not, his career and freedom are at risk.

Source:cleveland.com/

Peter King's "terrorism" problem

Asked, during a Wednesday appearance on "Good Morning America, "Name one other specific recommendation the president could implement right now to fix this," King responded, "I think one main thing would be to, just himself, to use the word terrorism more often."

In his defense, King did go on to offer some actual policy prescriptions. But that his first suggestion -- a "main thing," in his words -- was purely about language, well, that seems to speak volumes about the seriousness of his criticisms.

And despite King's tough-talking stance on calling terrorism terrorism (which, for the record, President Obama actually does quite often), he hasn't always been willing to do so himself. In fact, as the New Republic's Jonathan Chait and the Spectator's Alex Massie pointed out, back in the 1980's, King was very openly friendly with and supportive of some terrorists, specifically the Irish Republican Army. From a New York Sun article that Chait linked to:


He forged links with leaders of the IRA and Sinn Fein in Ireland, and in America he hooked up with Irish Northern Aid, known as Noraid, a New York based group that the American, British, and Irish governments often accused of funneling guns and money to the IRA. At a time when the IRA's murder of Lord Mountbatten and its fierce bombing campaign in Britain and Ireland persuaded most American politicians to shun IRA-support groups, Mr. King displayed no such inhibitions ....

King's support for the IRA was unequivocal. In 1982, for instance, he told a pro-IRA rally in Nassau County: "We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry."

By the mid-1980s, the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were openly hostile to Mr. King. On one occasion, a judge threw him out of a Belfast courtroom during the murder trial of IRA men because, in the judge's view, "he was an obvious collaborator with the IRA." When he attended other trials, the police singled him out for thorough body searches.


Considering how vocal King is on terror policy in his role as ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, it's rather amazing this doesn't come up more often. Frankly, I didn't know about it before this. But it really should be part of any discussions involving his frequent criticisms and his stance on counterterrorism generally.

More Alex Koppelman

Source:salon.com/

Rep. Clarke Releases Statement on President Obama's Review of Foiled Terror Plot

(WASHINGTON, DC) – This week President Barack Obama called for two important reviews of the security measures surrounding the foiled terror plot aboard Northwest Airline flight 253. The first review will cover intelligence and information sharing procedures to find out why the suspect was allowed to board a plane for the U.S., so we can strengthen the overall watch list system. The second review will cover aviation security procedures to find out how the suspect was able to board with dangerous explosives, so we can improve air travel security screening. Rep Yvette D. Clarke released the following statement:

“I applaud President Obama’s decision to review the security measures surrounding the attempted terror attack that took place on December 25th aboard Northwest Airline Flight 253. The incident has highlighted several critical security and information sharing gaps that must be closed in order to protect Americans from further tragedy at the hands of terrorists.

“Yesterday, President Obama acknowledged the missteps that his administration took in respect to aviation security, noting that ‘…a systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable.’ Thankfully, the President and his team are now taking the necessary steps to fully understand how our security infrastructure was breached and how best to correct those vulnerabilities going forward.

"I am astounded that suspected terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was permitted to board flight 253 with the chemical explosive PETN and a catalyst agent which if accurately activated, could have caused a powerful explosion. We must employ reasonable security measures that would detect chemical and biological agents. I am also concerned that no air marshals were on the flight and thankful that the President immediately ordered more federal air marshals be placed on domestic and international flights. The President also called for immediate enhanced screening and security procedures for all domestic and international flights.

“While the breach highlighted inadequacies in our physical security systems, it also showed a break down in our intelligence information sharing system. Abdulmutallab’s own father reportedly informed the State Department through the US Embassy in Nigeria that he believed his son had been “radicalized” and went to Yemen for “jihad”, yet U.S. officials did not flag the young man’s visa, which was valid through mid 2010. This is extremely troubling given that Britain recently denied the young man’s student visa renewal request and Mr. Abdulmutallab was on that country’s watch list. This breach has made it absolutely clear that we must do more to synergize and streamline our national and international counterterrorism information sharing systems.

“Even more alarming, Mr. Abdulmutallab, who claims ties to Al-Qaeda, was in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database, but was not on the Transportation Security Administration’s "no-fly" list. The database and related watch lists have long been plagued with systemic misidentification and information sharing problems. A terrorist suspect can be on the “no fly” list, but not on the list used by border patrol officers who control vehicle traffic coming into our country from our northern and southern border entry

Source:bignews.biz/