So here's the premise: Any time the news is bad for George W. Bush, federal officials up the Terror Alert Level and say they have evidence of "credible threats." This is intended to distract us and to perhaps scare a certain kind of person into being more loyal to the White House occupant.
Do you buy that premise? I don't know that I do, but I also don't believe it's inconceivable. In my lifetime, I've never seen a presidency that I was sure wouldn't do something like that, and the timing of recent alerts is making it more difficult to disbelieve about this presidency. I'm especially conflicted because I just watched a strong case made for the premise by Keith Olbermann this afternoon on his Countdown show on MSNBC. He didn't convince me completely but…well, he went through a list of ten instances where something occurred that the White House probably wanted off the front pages and then, by apparent coincidence, terror alerts (which were not followed by terror attacks) bumped the bad news over to Page A-17 where nobody sees it.
You can see Olbermann's presentation at this site. It's a bit over 13 minutes so don't click 'til you're comfy. And you can read a weblog posting that he made about it here. Unfortunately, I can't find a link to the interview that Olbermann did immediately after on the program. He talked with Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson and it was a very refreshing and rare instance of a TV news/commentary host giving airtime to an opposition viewpoint and discussing matters with him like a gentleman. I think I respected Olbermann's view a bit more because he allowed Hutchinson to deny it and didn't try to shout him down or put him on the defensive.
If you're as unsure about this as I am, you might want to watch and/or read Mr. Olbermann's editorial. We link…you decide.