The Thomas Chronicles

London is sitting on edge today. Another wave of terrorism strikes the UK.

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) - Two men rammed a flaming sport utility vehicle into the main terminal of Glasgow airport Saturday, crashing into the glass doors at the entrance and sparking a fire, witnesses said. Police said two suspects were arrested.

The airport - Scotland’s largest - was evacuated and all flights suspended, a day after British police thwarted a plot to bomb central London, discovering two cars abandoned with loads of gasoline, gas canisters and nails.

“One has to conclude … these are linked,” Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of Britain’s joint intelligence committee, told Sky News. “This is a very young government, and we may yet see further attacks.”

Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, who took office only Wednesday, was being briefed on developments by his officials, Downing Street said.

In Glasgow, the green SUV barreled toward the building at full speed shortly after 3 p.m., hitting security barriers before crashing into the glass doors and exploding, witnesses said. Two men jumped out of the burning vehicle, one of them engulfed in flames, they said.

“The car came speeding past at about 30 mph. It was approaching the building quickly,” said Scott Leeson, who was nearby at the time. “Then the driver swerved the car around so he could ram straight in to the door. He must have been trying to smash straight through.”

I’m going to keep an eye on these events in the coming week.

We can now add seafood to the growing long list of suspect products from China. The FDA has consistently discovered traces of unapproved drugs that had apparently been pumped into farmed catfish, basa and dace.

The Chinese government, however, assures us that their products are safe. Yeah, tell me another one.

Federal health officials said Thursday they were detaining three types of Chinese fish - catfish, basa and dace - as well as shrimp and eel after repeated testing turned up contamination with drugs unapproved in the United States for use in farmed seafood.

The officials said there have been no reports of illnesses nor do the products pose any immediate health risk. They stopped short of ordering a ban on the fresh and frozen seafood.

The Food and Drug Administration announcement was the latest in an expanding series of problems with imported Chinese products that seemingly permeate U.S. society.

Beyond the fish, federal regulators have recently warned consumers about lead paint in toy trains, defective tires, and toothpaste made with diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze. All the products were imported from China.

China, meanwhile, insisted Thursday that the safety of its products was “guaranteed,” making a rare direct comment on spreading international fears over tainted and adulterated exports.

If you remember earlier this year, the pet food recall that had cats and dogs dropping dead all across the United States was brought about because of a vegetable protein in the food which were derived from China. However, what you probably don’t remember is about 100 people keeling over dead because of a medicinal drugs exported from China.

You probably didn’t hear about that one because it happened in Panama.

Last month, The New York Times reported that at least 100 people had died in Panama after taking medicine containing diethylene glycol that had been produced in China and exported as the harmless syrup glycerine.

And a spokesman for the European Commission said on Wednesday that food safety officials there were investigating after Greece and Poland reported finding traces of melamine in corn gluten and rice protein imported from China, forcing the rejection of one shipment and the withdrawal of tainted feed from the market.

While Beijing has strongly defended the quality and safety of its food and drug exports, and even denied that the toothpaste it exported was unsafe, government regulators at the same time have stepped up safety inspections and shut down companies accused of producing unsafe food or counterfeit drugs.

China, who people have been praising to high heaven as the next industrial superpower for 10 straight years, can’t even produce pet food and simple medicine without cutting corners and threatening the lives of others.

What remains to be seen is if this is just the cheating incompetence intrinsic to the Chinese way of doing business or if this was deliberately malicious with the intent to harm.

Perhaps some time in the near future, the ubiquitous label, “Made in China”, won’t just mean cheap labor anymore.

You might well think to yourself, “Now, why in would anyone want all that ice? I enjoy a cold beverage just as much as the next joe, but this is crazy.” Apparently, Russia’s president, big bad Vlad, has just annexed it into Mother Russia. Being that Russia is virtually in a perpetual freeze, the likes of which we cannot really fathom, Russia doesn’t want the North Pole for another refrigerator.

They want it for all its potential oil and minerals.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is making an astonishing bid to grab a vast chunk of the Arctic - so he can tap its vast potential oil, gas and mineral wealth.

His scientists claim an underwater ridge near the North Pole is really part of Russia’s continental shelf.

One newspaper printed a map of the “new addition”, a triangle five times the size of Britain with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

The dramatic move provoked an international outcry. The U.S. and Canada expressed shock and environment campaigners said it would be a disaster.

Observers say the move is typical of Putin’s muscle-flexing as he tries to increase Russian power.

Under current international law, the countries ringing the Arctic - -Russia, Canada, the U.S., Norway, and Denmark (which owns Greenland) - are limited to a 200-mile economic zone around their coasts.

… and they accuse us of being imperialistic.

Since I’m going video happy right now, I thought I’d present this video of Rudy Giuliani. Unlike many conservatives who have issues with Giuliani because he is liberal on abortion and other domestic matters, I find those particular points illuminating to his character in a very positive way.

His stance on abortion has been a sore in the side of many pro-life Republicans because, as we all know, the Republican Party is mostly committed to being pro-life. I also believe abortion is absolutely morally wrong and am pro-life myself.

However, the fact that Giuliani won’t bend on this issue tells me that he has the strength of his convictions. In this case, Giuliani believes that abortion is morally repugnant, but doesn’t believe that the government should be telling people what to do with it. Fred Thompson takes a similar stance on the issue of abortion as well.

Combing through Thompson’s archive, Newsweek found several files on his campaign strategy on abortion that could roil his 2008 bid. On a 1994 Eagle Forum survey, Thompson said he opposed criminalizing abortion. Two years later, on a Christian Coalition questionnaire, he checked “opposed” to a proposed constitutional amendment protecting the sanctity of human life. In a campaign policy statement filed in the archives, he also said he believes “the decision to have an early term abortion is a moral issue and should not be a legal one subject to the dictates of the government.” During an interview with the Conservative Spectator, a Tennessee newspaper, he claimed to be pro-life but also said that, “The ultimate decision on abortion should be left with the woman and not the government.”

I don’t like these stances, but I can live with them. What I can’t live with in a President is a weakness on foreign policy and national defense. For myself, I trust Hillary Clinton with our national security just about as much as I trust a coiled rattlesnake.

And Barack Obama? Well, he’s becoming more rabidly Leftist by the speech and is mostly devoid of content. The fact that he’s black doesn’t buy diddly with me.

The only candidate on the scene right now that I think I can trust is Rudy Giuliani.

Fred Thompson is coming on strong, but I want to see more of him on the campaign trail pandering to the run of the mill American instead of hanging back on the internet. I personally want the Presidential candidates to go through all 50 states and stump. They are interviewing for the most prestigious job in the world. I think they’ve got to show they can handle the rigors of the office, and kissing babies and shaking hands of people they’ll never ever see again gives a window into what kind of men they are.

One question: How?

How does a man like this, holding his views, become elevated to such an august position in our government?

Like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, most of his views are contrary to the bulk of America, and still he holds one of the most powerful positions in our government as Senate Majority Leader.

Again, how?

(hat tip: Hot Air)

I am continually astonished that Libby was convicted at all for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby was convicted of crimes that didn’t have anything to do with the prosecutor original charges. The fact that he was sentenced to two and a half years on top of this obscene miscarriage of justice just makes matters worse.

Everyone knows this is a political hanging.

The judge knew it when he sentenced Libby. The jury knew it when they convicted him. The prosecutor knew it from day one after his cursory question of Richard Armitage, the then Deputy Secretary of State. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell knew if after Armitage told him that he leaked Valerie Plame’s name, if “leak” is the appropriate word here— Valerie Plame was NOT a covert CIA agent according to the law. The news media sure as hell knew it since they were the ones stoking up the flames toward this lynching.

Now Libby is given an inmate number: 28301-016. Just another step toward the gallows.

Libby, who was convicted in March of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, faces 2 1/2 years in prison.

The assignment of an inmate number by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons represents another step on the road to prison. Inmate numbers stay with prisoners even after their release.

Libby, however, is hoping that an appeals court will intervene and put the sentence on hold before he is ordered to surrender.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has not indicated how quickly it will rule. Lawyers in the case said Libby had not yet been assigned to a prison or given a date to surrender.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald opposes Libby’s bid to delay his prison term. He says Libby does not have a good chance of having his conviction overturned and should begin serving prison time immediately.

Libby’s friends have asked President Bush to step in and pardon him, a request that Bush has sidestepped while the legal case drags on.

Libby, 56, is the only person charged in the leak scandal, which erupted after CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity was revealed in a 2003 syndicated newspaper column. Libby was not the source for that leak and neither of the two Bush administration officials who provided the information were ever charged.

It almost feels like President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney threw him to the wolves for the sake of political expediency. I am sure they thought that the federal prosecutor could touch him since Libby didn’t do anything wrong.

But now that he’s been convicted and sentenced, I hope the President will now do the honorable thing and pardon a man who should never have been at the butt-end of this injustice.

Well, it’s all over the news by now and it’s the first good news I’ve heard in weeks.

The comprehensive immigration reform bill that has dodged attacks from the left and right for weeks, survived “poison pill” amendments, and was once pulled from the Senate schedule failed its most important test Thursday. Passage of the legislation now appears unlikely.

The bipartisan coalition that had shepherded the measure through so many obstacles failed to get the 60 votes necessary to end debate. The final vote was 46-53

Until Thursday morning, it was unclear whether the bill would survive the cloture vote. But in the end, opponents of the measure from both sides of the political spectrum gained enough support to derail the legislation. Liberals felt it did not go far enough in protecting illegal immigrants, while conservatives rejected the bill because they felt it would grant amnesty to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.

Republican foes of the measure argued that the American public was broadly united in opposition to the bill and had made its views known by flooding Congress with phone calls and e-mails.

“What part of ‘no’ don’t we understand?,” asked Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who said the immigration fight had “reengaged the American people.”

I’ll have more thoughts on this whole debacle later.