Another arrest for show...

... meanwhile, let's let Osama go!

From Raw Story, the less than shocking news that the "aspirational" (that word again) terrorists behind the "Holland Tunnel Plot" were, in the words of Phillip Girardi, "not professionally trained terrorists ... and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed."

Other than that, pretty gol danged dangerous.

And, no, no, no, the arrest had nothing at all to do with the closing of Alec Station, the CIA's Osama Bin Laden unit!

And the Leftcoaster asks, isn't it ironic that "someone inside the White house has blow[n] the cover off an active investigation, and reveal operational details less than two weeks after the same administration blasted the New York Times for reporting on a story that was already known?"

Even the Times, usually reliably somnolent in the face of Homeland Security shenanigans, notices something crucial missing in this and the Miami-based Sears Tower "plot": The two cases, it opines, "are inspiring a new round of skepticism from some lawyers who are openly questioning whether the government, in its zeal to stop terrorism, is forgetting an element central to any case: the actual intent to commit a crime."

And read here for Alexander Cockburn's account of the Sacramento "terrorism" trial this spring that not only lacked a crime but an aspiration as well:

What actually emerged in the trial, where both [Hamid and his father Umer Hayat] were fortunate to have good lawyers, was the usual saga of FBI chicanery. It became very clear from videotapes of the FBI's questioning that the men have very poor English. Their native tongue is Pashto. They understood little of what they were being asked and were mostly concerned with pleasing their interrogators. In the words of one courtroom reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, "they gave many answers that had been previously suggested by the agents--who did most of the talking."

In spite of the good lawyers, Hamid, a simple man who picks cherries for a living, faces up to 39 years in prison.... FBI agent James Wedick has called the Sacramento trial the "most derelict and juvenile investigation" he had ever seen the FBI put its name to.

Read all about Wedick and that ludicrous trial in this excellent L.A. Times piece, "The agent who might have saved Hamid Hayit."

The Sacramento proceedings have set the bar pretty high for show trials of overblown terrorist threats. Here's betting the prosecutions of the "Liberty Seven" and the Holland Tunnel plotters will clear that high bar with ease.