·:[ The (vast) Right Wing Conspiracy ]:·
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Here we go again:

The Secret Service sent agents to investigate a college art gallery exhibit of mock postage stamps, one depicting President Bush with a gun pointed at his head.

The exhibit, called “Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin,” opened last week at Columbia College in Chicago. It features stamps designed by 47 artists addressing issues such as the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal, racism and the war in Iraq.

None of the artists is tied to the college.

Hmm, picture of President Bush with a gun pointed at his head? Art!

Here’s the kicker:

The exhibit’s curator, Michael Hernandez de Luna, said the inquiry “frightens” him.

“It starts questioning all rights, not only my rights or the artists’ rights in this room, but questioning the rights of any artist who creates ’Äî any writer, any visual artist, any performance artist. It seems like we’re being watched,” he said.

Guess what kiddo, when you make (what at least appears to the naked eye) a threat against the president of the United States, you are going to be watched. The job of the Secret Service is to protect the president, and that does entail check out all of the nutcases who consider drawing a picture of the president with a gun pointed to his head. If some drew a picture of me like that, I would want them investigated too.

Free speech implications? You make a threat (however veiled) you should take responsibility for your actions. If I made a threat against the president and the Secret Service did NOT show up at my door, I would be angry that there were not doing their job.

Do people really think this nonsense is art or is the “artist” just doing it for the controversy?

Last night I attended a lecture given by James Robbins entitled “Are We Winning the War on Terrorism?”

Great lecture, very informative. As far as the “learning” was concerned, the information presented was pretty much mostly public knowledge, but presented in a coherent and connected manner. The turning point of the lecture was definitely the satellite view of the Upper West Side of Manhattan with the zones of destruction and effect of a 10 kilo-ton nuclear blast superimposed.

Scary stuff.

On the subject of a nuclear or other “big” terrorist attack, Robbins believes that terrorists are more likely use smaller attacks to create panic and essentially receive the same amount of media coverage they would if a large scale attack was used. If a nuclear bomb was detonated in New York City he said it would (with some dark sarcasm) “be a bad day” but the country would be beheaded and terrorists still wouldn’t win. He also explained that the bigger the attack plan, the more chances for things to go wrong, people to be captured, conspirators to run their mouths, etc - basically he believes that there is a larger change of al Qaeda starting a random bombing campaign of Wal Marts in a busy shopping season then detonating a nuclear device in midtown Manhattan.

If there was one point, I believe, that was hammered home, was the fact that the threat of terrorism still exists. Although we are winning the war, the war is not won just on the fact that there hasn’t been an attack on our soil in almost 4 years, but will be won (at least according to our National Strategy) when we dismantle the international, wide-reaching organizations of terror and leave them powerless.