THE WHITE HOUSE JOINS THE NATION – MAYBE – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  There are things you read that makes you wonder if the Obama administration is partially detached from the United States, a country in the Western Hemisphere.  From the Washington Post:

The president and his top advisers now believe there is "some linkage" with al-Qaeda, and the administration is "increasingly confident" that the terrorist group worked with suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to secure the deadly chemical mixture that he took aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, a senior administration official said Tuesday.

Some linkage?  Some linkage?  They're out there bragging about it.  The perp's daddy visited the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria twice to warn us.  And these guys are talking about "some" linkage.

White House officials also said the government had intelligence suggesting a possible attack on the United States by al-Qaeda around Christmas, although the reports were not specific.

They could've warned us.  They could have raised the threat level.  But that would have meant using the threat-level system developed by BUSH (!!) and CHENEY (!!!!).  Can't do that.  Of course the reports weren't specific.  If they were specific, we could have stopped the plot in its tracks.  But the public could have been alerted, assuming the White House wasn't focused on planning the president's vacation, with accompanying menus.

Obama has now admitted a "systemic" failure.

Obama's stark remarks came two days after his homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said information provided by the suspect's father before the failed bombing plot was so vague that it did not merit further investigation. Napolitano also said that "the system worked" in this incident, drawing a political outcry from Republican lawmakers and national security experts.

As the Obama administration reviewed the government's actions, investigators in Yemen on Tuesday visited an Arabic language institute attended by Abdulmutallab and asked about his ties to a mosque in the capital's historic section.

That's nice.  I'm glad they're visiting.  They should take pictures for their travel scrapbook.  Even Yemen's foreign minister admits the country is crawling with terrorists, and we're now just waking up.

Yemen is where the USS Cole was attacked...nine years ago.

December 30, 2009