WTF Is It Now?!?

How very....convenient:

Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart. In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it. A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats
against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

- - - more bullsh!t at cBS News

Gee, boss, I've been feeling threatened lately...what say I use the company jet to fly me to my vacation in Florida and back. And can you send your limo to pick me up at the airport? Thanx.



As for the rest of you, continue cowering in your closets:

Things must be going pretty well in the Homeland Security Department. Yesterday, the day after he announced that the country is on "yellow alert" and facing a "significant risk" of terrorist attack, security chief Tom Ridge put himself on green alert. According to The Post's Leonard Shapiro, Ridge arrived in Florida on Tuesday night for old friend Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Invitational golf tournament in Orlando and yesterday went into the press room to sit in the back row with sportswriters and listen to Palmer field questions. Then he hit the golf course in Isleworth, a posh gated community. Well, at least it's gated.
- - - Washington comPost

It's so good to see our officials taking their own alerts so seriously -about as seriously as most of the thinking public, who long ago figured out these "terra 'lerts" were their way of scaring the sheep into a state of pseudopatriotic stupor. You gotta wonder how notochords manage to wave flags so well, especially when they're on hands and knees.