As you may know, seven men — all apparently black Muslims — have been arrested in Miami and charged with waging war against the United States, among other things.
The FBI says these guys were looking to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago and the FBI building in Miami, and were negotiating with people they thought were Al Qaeda to get the resources to carry out the attacks. Of course, the Al Qaeda guys were really undercover federal agents. And so, the seven would be terrorists are in custody right now.
There isn't much else to this story. A bunch of low level thugs, who hate America, trying to do damage. Good work by the FBI in getting them.
On a more important front, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal all printed articles today outlining a counter-terrorism program that tracks money transfers to suspected bad guys. The monitoring was done through concerns in Belgium. And some Americans were involved.
Now the Bush administration asked some of the newspapers not to print the story, because public exposure basically shuts down the counter-terror operation. The papers printed the information anyway.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Obviously, we didn't want to print it, but we also wanted to make sure that as the reporters went through it, and as the editors went through it, that they were fully informed so that they could make their own judgment. It helped capture Hambali. He was responsible for the Bali bombing, which killed more than 2,000 people. It's providing information on domestic terror cells. That's a good thing. It helped identify a Brooklyn man, convicted on terrorism related charges last year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
All right, but now the program's blown. "Talking Points" will leave it to you to decide if the newspapers are looking out for you by printing that story.
I would not have because I don't believe it has any impact on the day-to-day freedoms of Americans. Right now in this country, we have a press that is working against counterterrorism measures and that puts all of us in jeopardy. Just my opinion. I could be wrong, but I'm not wrong about one thing.
The people who run The New York Times and other committed left-wing media, truly believe that the Bush administration is a danger to civil liberties. And that, in general, the president is harming, not helping this nation.
With that mindset, the anti-Bush media is using all its power to damage the administration any way it can. Even if you believe Bush is inept, trying to undermine all his policies can't help in a time of war.
"Talking Points" has said it more than once: politics and ideology are helping the terrorists. There's no question about it.
On the good news front, just 48 hours after we called for curfews and martial law to deal with terror strongholds in Iraq, curfews have now been imposed in parts of Baghdad and other areas.
Once again, now is the time for the Bush administration to step up the fight in Iraq. The brutal murders of two U.S. soldiers this week and the killing of Zarqawi have changed some public opinion. We hope the military will take advantage of that momentum swing.
And that's "The Memo."
The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day
You may remember the name Howell Raines. He's the former editor of The New York Times who was sacked because of the Jayson Blair fiasco. Mr. Blair fabricated a number of stories, and Raines didn't have a clue. He let them run [in The New York Times].
Well, now, Mr. Raines has written a book and in said book, he says, "The key to understanding FOX News is to grasp the anomalous — anomalous fact — whatever that is — that its consumers know its 'news' is made up."
There are only two words to describe Mr. Raines: "Twilight Zone." He has definitely entered another dimension.
Ridiculous? Yes!
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox