Subject: Al Qaeda

• Requiescat in Pace, IVth Amendment

  FOURTH AMENDMENT: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." If you're surprised in any way that once a month our government downloads so-called secure banking records to monitor the financial transfers of Am

  June 23, 2006

• A Bad Day for Bush, and maybe waterboarding

  The Supreme Court today ruled the Bush administration must do one of those things it is always extremely reluctant to do: obey the law. By a vote of 5-3, the Supremes said the administration can't proceed with its plans to try prisoners at Guantanamo Bay before military tribunals. Writing for the majority, John Paul Stevens (appointed by President Ford) declared the planned tribunals were illegal under both US law and the Geneva Conventions. Over at SCOTUSblog (SCOTUS may sould like a skin dise

  June 29, 2006

• Wanted (sort of)

  Remember President Bush's steely determination to get Osama bin Laden Dead or Alive? Turns out he meant we'll get him, if we happen to bump into him. The New York Times reports this morning that "The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants". The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said. The decisio

  July 4, 2006

• Goat Boy on TV!

  You remember Goat Boy, don't you? The former Orange County resident who might have been part of an OC Al-Qaeda cell but now spends his days making scary videos about our impending doom? He's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

  July 6, 2006

• War Games

  Meant to blog this yesterday, based on something we saw on ABC's Nightline, but it's also reported on by InfoWorld. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a hearing on May 4. Among the speakers was a specialist whose company we taxpayers are paying more than $7 million a year. Their job: to scour the Internet for instances where al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are recruiting new members online. So this specialist tells the committee that his group had recently discovered t

  June 23, 2006

• LAFF 2007: Lost Girls and Mighty Black Men

  One of the ideas the festival is heavily pushing this year is that for every movie you attend that you planned on seeing, you should go to another one you don’t know anything about, or might not be inclined to go to normally. I tend to do this sometimes when I attend something simply because it’s playing at the right time, and thus found myself in BAJO JUAREZ, a movie with the all-lowercase secondary title of “the city devouring its daughters.” It’s a documentary about Juarez, a Mexi

  June 23, 2007

• Monday's Headlines

  Under the influence: The Times runs a multi-faceted feature on the power drug manufacturers have in the prescription process. Not you again: Former Garden Grove resident and al-Qaida member Adam Gadahn made new video threats Sunday. Rats! Angel Stadium's got a rat infestation 13 times worse than Petco Park and Dodger Stadium combined, reports the Reg. New record for OC Fair: 1,069,052 were in attendance this time around, notes the Daily Pilot.

  August 6, 2007

• The Continuing Story of Goat Boy, the Pesky Terrorist

  If there's anything funny about the U.S. War on Terror and its hunt for al-Qaeda, it's the fact that nearly six years after 9/11, we still haven't been able to capture or kill Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam the American, a.k.a. Goat Boy. At least that's what we've come to call Gadahn around the newsroom, ever since ABC reported in late 2004 that the masked al-Qaeda terrorist who'd appeared on videos that summer—in which he babbled about infidels and threatened America with a second 9/11—wa

  August 7, 2007

• Monday's Headlines & Surprises: Ass Slapping Fun!

  Worm Attack in Dana Point? TMZ reports that Orange County police are investigating former Los Angeles Laker/Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman for allegedly committing a “crime” inside the Hennessy's Tavern near PCH in Dana Point. The celebrity website says Rodman was accused of slapping a female customer's ass so hard it left a “major mark.” No word on what part of his anatomy did the slapping. Jim Amormino, sheriff's spokesman, said dicks in his department's “sex crimes unit” are on

  September 24, 2007

• Fake CNN Site Blames Fires on Mexicans

  When a bogus post went up on a fake CNN website late last week with the headline: "Separatists Claim Responsibility for California Wildfires" and which included a "confirmation" by Gov. Schwarzenegger that MECha (the Aztlan-loving student group) had claimed responsibility for the fires, anti-immigrant websites spread the story, well, like wildfire. Bloggers eagerly jumped at the fake bait and swallowed the hoax whole, calling for armageddon, a new Mexican-American war and anything else violen

  October 29, 2007

• Officer, is that dandruff under your nostril?

  It’s the last week of 2007 inside Orange County’s Central Justice Center, and the place is dead except at each of the three public entrances. A half-dozen young bailiffs have forgotten security fears (Al-Qaeda!) but collect pay and perks while they chat happily about the electronic toys they received for Christmas. Moments later, a well-dressed, polite, non-English-speaking man stops me, displays a court document and asks me if I speak Spanish. Nope. I scan the document he’s holding and d

  December 26, 2007

• Goat Boy Gone?

  NB_C News is reporting that Goat Boy, Orange County's favorite terrorist nutball, seems to have disappeared. Goat Boy would bed Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the former death-metal fan turned Muslim convert who grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County be fore moving to Garden Grove, where he became a radical M%uslim before heading to Pakistan in the late 1990s. He unveiled himse#lf in a 2004 videotape distributed by al-Qaeda as Azzam the American. Ever since, he has pestered the western world with dire

  February 14, 2008

• Celebrate Record Store Day April 19

  Currently on the endangered species list: your local record store. (You remember those, right?) In a valiant attempt to raise awareness of their existence and importance (and perhaps move some stock), hundreds of independently owned music emporia throughout North America are celebrating Record Store Day by holding special events and sales Friday April 19. Close to OC, Long Beach's Fingerprints and LA's Amoeba are participating. I highly recommend frequenting a shop or two Saturday and showin

  April 18, 2008

• Dead Again!

  For the second time in a year, a terrified American public has received the reassuring news that Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. "Goat Boy," is dead. Probably. As far as we know. Seeing as how we haven't heard much from him lately and he likes to harangue his former countrymen with annoying lectures about U.S. imperialism and the merits of al-Qaeda's feudal interpretation of Islam. Yesterday, England's Daily Telegraph added a few more mysterious details to a story that first appeared earlier this year sug

  September 9, 2008

• Goat Boy: Not So Dead Edition

  With the global economy teetering on the brink of self-destruction, America still fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Pakistan, the LA Times about to fire the 75 people who somehow haven't been fired yet, and the Angels out of the race for the pennant, it's about time for a feel-good human interest story to raise our spirits, isn't it? Good news, folks: according to CNN, Adam Gadahn, the goat farm-bred, Orange County-raised American face of Al Qaeda is still alive and well, despite rumors

  October 7, 2008

• November Surprise?

  August 29, 2002

• Special Screenings

  Movie of the Week: The Power of Nightmares

  January 10, 2008

• Ashcroft Hypes a Dirty Bomber

  June 20, 2002

• That Other Quagmire

  May 17, 2007

• So I Married a Terrorist . . .

  Saraah Olsons strange trip through the U.S. war on terror

  April 19, 2007

• 'I've Never Been to America. America Came to Me'

  September 21, 2006

• You Make Us Feel

  February 9, 2006

• Whirlybird Brained

  LA Sheriffs plan to PLOP air fleet in OC infuriates locals

  March 10, 2005

• F. Yoo!

  February 10, 2005

• Burning Bush: The Issue

  A year in Dubya-dumping by his conservative critics . . . and Howard Stern

  October 7, 2004

• 59 Reasons Why Bush Sucks

  Why youd have to be a freaking idiot to vote for this guy

  October 7, 2004

• Burning Bush

  September 30, 2004

• Terror-Fied

  July 8, 2004

• Hide & Go Deek

  June 17, 2004

• Burning Bush

  April 1, 2004

• Letters

  March 11, 2004

• George Bush on Ecstasy

  December 18, 2003

• Graham Drubs Dubya

  June 5, 2003

• Oiling the Colonial Gears

  May 29, 2003

• War College

  March 6, 2003

• Conspiracy Theories

  February 20, 2003

• Pocket Rocket

  December 19, 2002

• Terror Threads

  October 10, 2002

• The Partially Informed Alarmist

  July 4, 2002

• Court Jousters

  June 27, 2002

• More Fuelish War Talk

  March 28, 2002

• World Wars III, IV and V

  March 14, 2002

• Thats Evil Goin On

  March 14, 2002

• Bushwa

  February 21, 2002

• The Snake of the Union Address

  January 31, 2002

• OC Mans Ties to Terrorism Only Skin Deep

  November 8, 2001

• Does Al Qaeda's Infamous Goat Boy Read the Weekly?

  In April, the Weekly published this story about Craig Monteilh, a self-described FBI mole who spied on Orange County mosques and claimed that he foiled unspecified terrorist plots. No evidence has ever surfaced to bolster Monteilh's claims, and in that story, I noted that only two OC residents have ever been linked to Al Qaeda, the most famous of whom is the terrorist group's American spokesman,  Adam Gadahn, aka "Azzam the American," whom I identified as a "Jewish-American."Gadahn grew up on a

  June 19, 2009

• Padilla vs. Yoo: First of Many Such Cases to Come?

  Nick Schou blogged last week about a San Francisco federal judge having ruled that John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who just finished a stint as a visiting professor at Chapman Law School, can "be held personally responsible for the indefinite military detention and alleged torture of an American citizen who was suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda." The U.S. citizen in question, Jose Padilla, is the alleged "Dirty Bomber" who was arrested in Chicago on May 8, 2002 and charged with plot

  June 22, 2009

• CAIR's Hussam Ayloush Makes the Media Rounds

  CAIR-LA's Hussam Ayloush comes out strongly against profiling, entrapment and extremism.​Nick Schou posted yesterday about the Al Jazeera news service interviewing Orange County Islamic mosque infiltrator and FBI informant Craig Monteilh of Irvine, but he is not the only local who turns up in the piece. Along with some local Muslims who Monteilh apparently approached (and, they say, tried to entrap), Al Jazeera catches up with Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Anaheim-based, Southern C

  August 18, 2009

• Al Qaeda's Goat Boy: Back from the Dead and as Annoying as Ever

  Goat Boy: I'm Ba-a-a-a-a-a-ack!​ Apparently, your teabagging grandma isn't the only person who thinks the election of Barack Obama spells doom for America. In celebration of the eighth anniversary of 9/11, Al Qaeda has just released a video called "The West and the Dark Tunnel." In the video, Ayman al-Zawahri  predicts that the "Muslim nation" will bring down the Obama presidency, the AP reports today.Just how the "Muslim nation" will do that isn't clear. Is he talking about the Natio

  September 23, 2009