AND IN THE REAL WORLD – AT 9:25 A.M. ET:  Let us not forget what's out there, and what those elected today will have to deal with.  From Fox:

After two explosives-laden packages were sent from Yemen to the United States last week, federal authorities began to piece together what they now believe was a dry run of the plot more than a month earlier, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.

The nation’s top counterterrorism officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, have said the latest attacks bear all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the same Yemen-based group that sent Umar F. Ambdulmuttalab to blow up a jetliner over Detroit last Christmas Day.

Less than two months ago, in September, the U.S. intelligence community received a tip indicating that a suspicious package from Yemen was heading for Chicago, but when law enforcement officials tracked down and checked the package, all they found was a box from Yemen filled with religious books, according to the official.

U.S. intelligence didn’t know what to make of the tip or the package, but after a new issue of an AQAP magazine aimed at Westerners included an image of Chicago’s skyline, officials began to wonder whether terrorists could be looking to strike Chicago next, the U.S official said.

The most recent tip from Saudi Arabian intelligence, indicating two active bombs from Yemen heading to the United States aboard cargo planes, prompted federal officials to begin wondering whether the episode in September was a dry run for the latest plot, the U.S. official said. They now believe the September package was used to track how a shipment gets from Yemen to Chicago, and to help determine how long such a trek would take, as ABC News first reported.

COMMENT:  We should praise the good work of our intelligence people, while realizing that our luck won't hold forever.  We still must wonder whether last weekend's attempt was a well-timed effort at affecting our elections.  I can't believe the timing was coincidental.

November 2, 2010