BOOM - AT 8:22 A.M. ET:  North Korea has conducted a nuclear test, not announced in advance.  Washington Post:

TOKYO, May 25 -- North Korea exploded a nuclear device Monday morning, startling the world with its second underground test in three years and vexing the Obama administration, which has said it wants to solve the nuclear impasse with North Korea.

The test, described as "successful" by the communist state's official Korean Central News Agency, escalates a pattern of provocation that this spring has included a long-range missile launch, detention of two U.S. journalists, kicking out U.N. nuclear inspectors, restarting a plutonium factory and halting six-nation nuclear negotiations.

Well, the North Koreans apparently looked at the White House and saw nothing to deter them.  Hate to be so blunt about it.

North Korea said that its second nuclear test was more powerful and better controlled than its first, which was conducted in October, 2006, and which many experts characterized as a semi-failure.

Early evidence suggests that may be true. The explosion produced a 4.7-magnitude tremor, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was measured in South Korea as a 4.5-magnitude quake. The previous nuclear test registered 3.58 on the Richter scale.

The Richter Scale is logarithmic, meaning that a 4.5 is not a third larger than a 3.58, but is dramatically larger.  This is not good news.  They have the bomb.  They know how to set it off, and now we must ask whether they will share this information with other regimes around the world. 

Suddenly, Iran looks, potentially, even more dangerous, and North Korea itself is a clear and present danger.

May 25, 2009