A WARNING – AT 10:19 A.M. ET:  We're getting a lot of terror warnings, and doing very little about them.  The president wants to talk about almost anything else.  From Reuters:   

(Reuters) - Al Qaeda militants in Syria are plotting attacks to inflict mass casualties in the West, possibly against transport systems or "iconic targets", the head of Britain's MI5 Security Service said on Thursday.

Speaking after gunmen killed 12 people in an assault on a French satirical newspaper, MI5 boss Andrew Parker warned a strike on the United Kingdom was highly likely.

"A group of core al Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West," Director General Parker said in a rare public speech at MI5 headquarters in London. His last public speech was in October 2013.

In the speech, planned before the killings in Paris, Parker said seasoned al Qaeda militants in Syria aimed to "cause large-scale loss of life, often by attacking transport systems or iconic targets" in the West.

Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people by attacking the United States with hijacked passenger planes on September 11, 2001. Militants inspired by the group killed 52 commuters in London on July 7, 2005 with suicide bombs.

COMMENT:  The world has a way of surprising American presidents.  Things are getting very tense all over, as we start to realize that the war on terror isn't over.  It's just starting.  This is a multigenerational conflict, as was the Cold War.  Someone tell the White House, and any number of college professors.

January 9, 2015