This is kind of odd:

A Democratic senator said Tuesday he is closing his Washington office because of a top-secret intelligence report that made him fear for his staff’s safety.
Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., said his office in the Russell Senate Office Building across the street from the Capitol will be closed while Congress is in recess through Election Day, with his staff working out of his Minnesota office and in Senate space off Capitol Hill.
“I take this step out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise be visiting my Senate office in the next three weeks,” he said.

Other officials are saying there is no known threat to Capitol Hill. But you wouldn’t expect them to offer anything which might hurt tourism, would you?

Juan Cole, on the “war on terror“:

Bush and Cheney are cynically using the trauma of September 11 as a pretext to fight a series of elective wars against weak governments that are inconvenient for hawkish goals and some US corporate interests. Iraq was a poster child of this policy. It had no weapons of mass destruction, was ramshackle, and had no significant ties to terrorism. It was invented as a dire threat to Peoria by Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch, the latter-day Wizards of Oz.
. . .
The “war on terror” of Bush-Cheney is a smokescreen for naked American imperial aggression. The sad story of how Iraq posed no threat either to the US or to any of its neighbors, despite high-decibel claims to the contrary for two years by Bush, Cheney and their acolytes, will be repeated in the case of Syria and Iran if Bush and Cheney are reelected. They hope that their project of overthrowing governments in the region will go smoothly, but they do not really care, since even an Iran and a Syria in chaos is a net gain from their point of view. Chaos creates “terror” and justifies further US involvement, aggression and control. It is inconvenient for the rest of us, but then they insist, unlike John Kerry, that we live with the nuisances they are creating.
In actual fact, al-Qaeda is just a somewhat more successful version of Baader Meinhoff. It is a small terrorist group that has been created by a particular juncture in history. It is not a reason to abolish the US Bill of Rights, as Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft are doing. It is not a reason to invade three or four countries (precisely the few countries where it does not operate!) It is a nuisance to a free society, and should be curbed.
Bush and Cheney keep shouting that Kerry doesn’t understand the war on terror. They mean he doesn’t want to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. As for themselves, if the war on terror is so important to them, why are Bin Laden and Zawahiri at large? Why can al-Qaeda still strike at will? We now have the worst of both worlds, with a quagmire in Iraq and Palestine, and more quagmires planned, while al-Qaeda morphs and grows and continues to form a threat.

I don’t think this is quite as clear-cut as Dr. Cole is framing it; I think the administration’s motives are somewhat mixed. But I believe there is a lot of truth in his post. I agree American security was only a secondary motive for our invasion of Iraq. And there’s no question the administration is milking this ongoing terror threat for maximum political gain, both domestically and abroad. And although I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the administration want to invade Iran and Syria, I’m not sure its a given since our military is already stretched rather thin.

The Russian fallout from terrorism:

Moscow schoolchildren will soon have to wear military-style dog tags and carry special “passports” as part of a security drive in the wake of Beslan.
. . .
Mr Popov, head of the Moscow city assembly’s security and legislation committee, said children would wear the dog tags round their necks and carry the passports in their pockets, which would bear their fingerprints and other personal data.
The passport will give the child’s name, address, telephone number, blood group and details of any allergies to medicines, he said.

Actually, these measures don’t seem to have much to do with security; I think they are intended to help officials clean up the mess if security fails. I wouldn’t exactly view this as reassuring move if I was a Moscow parent.
But they’re used to weird government stuff in Russia. We would adopt any faux security measures here, right?

The Senate version of the intelligence bill includes an amendment, passed by unanimous consent on Oct. 1, that would let the secretary of homeland security decide what documents a state would have to require before issuing a driver’s license, and would also specify the data that the license would have to include for it to meet federal standards. The secretary could require the license to include fingerprints or eye prints. The provision would allow the Homeland Security Department to require use of the license, or an equivalent card issued by motor vehicle bureaus to nondrivers for identification purposes, for access to planes, trains and other modes of transportation.

There you have it. The government wants to take care of this terrorism problem. Be prepared to take carry your papers with you as you travel about.

I saw a Democratic advisor on TV make an excellent point: For a couple months we’ve been listening to Bush/Cheney ’04 and all its supporters portray John Kerry as a weak-spined “flip flopper” who bends in whichever direction the wind blows. In the last few days the GOP talking points have abruptly been revised and Kerry is now the most zealous liberal in the U.S. Senate.
How are these two characterizations consistent?

Guy Molyneux points out why Bush’s percentage of support in presidential polls may be more important than his lead (if any) over Kerry:

Almost all poll reporting focuses on the “spread,” that is, the difference in the percentage supporting Bush and John Kerry. If we take an average of the most recent ABC/Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, and NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys, it shows Bush with 49 percent and Kerry with 44 percent among registered voters. Such survey results are invariably reduced to the shorthand “Bush up 5,” which sounds like a comfortable lead.
However, in incumbent elections, the incumbent’s percentage of the vote is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he will receive on election day — even though the survey results also include a pool of undecided voters. Hence the 50-percent rule: An incumbent who fails to poll above 50 percent is in grave jeopardy of losing his job.

Why 50%? Because an incumbent tends to get what he polled, while the challenger generally picks up a few points:

There have been four incumbent presidential elections in the past quarter-century. If we take an average of the final surveys conducted by the three major networks and their partners, we find that in three of these the incumbent fell short of or merely matched his final poll number, while exceeding it only once, and then by just a single point (Ronald Reagan). On average, the incumbent comes in half a point below his final poll result.
The numbers for challengers look quite different. In every case, the challenger(s) — I include Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 — exceed their final poll result by at least 2 points, and the average gain is 4 points. In 1980, Ronald Reagan received 51 percent, fully 6 percentage points above his final poll results.

The latest Gallup poll has Bush at 48%; Zogby has Bush at 44%. Unless the race shifts, things aren’t looking good for the incumbent.