By Mande Wilkes || The United States’ national security is under imminent threat, according to top intelligence officials, with an attack attempt “certain” within the next six months.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Al Qaeda remains a significant threat to the U.S., the officials said, and the group’s recent evolution in tactics includes dispatching individuals who can enter the U.S. without arousing suspicion, such as the man accused of attempting the Christmas Day attack.

Such tactics have created “a new degree of difficulty” for U.S. spies seeking to thwart the next attack, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Al Qaeda’s many affiliates are also of great concern to the spy agencies. The Yemeni affiliate, which is believed to have directed the attempted Christmas Day attack, will continue to attempt additional attacks on the U.S., Mr. Blair said.

So, basically, Muslim extremists pose a “certain” threat to the United States, a threat that could manifest itself at any given moment.

Hey, Mr. Top Ops Guys?  That’s hardly news.  Jihadism has, in fact, imminently threatened America for years. Seriously, it’s not like Al Qaeda has suddenly gotten really mad at the West, and super-motivated to do us harm.

So why the spastic headlines? Here’s what I think …

Somebody’s threatening America, alright – somebody other than Al Qaeda.  U.S. intelligence officials, in an attempt to reengage the public’s fears, are deliberately hyping the threat of terrorism – a threat that’s neither new nor any more pressing than usual.  By conspiring to freak out the public, officials get to centralize the issue of terrorism – conveniently shoving aside intractable economic woes.

Besides the primary purpose of distracting voters from the state of the economy, the government has an embedded, more insidious angle: A fearful populace is a faithful one, a compliant one.

By Mande Wilkes || As the two major political parties have continued to merge in practice if not in ideology itself, Ronald Reagan has crystallized into Republican exemplar extraordinaire. The former U.S. president has, in the decades since he left office, cemented into the very symbol of conservatism.

Just ask our founding editor about that …

It turns out, though, that Reagan’s legacy is largely undeserved and wholly inaccurate. Today he’s held up as an unflinchingly Republican leader, but his presidency was in fact markedly more centrist than conservative.

Let’s have a go at the way-back machine, shall we?

1. Fiscal conservatism is the foundation of Reagan’s legacy. But guess what? He was responsible for several tax increases, some of the revenues from which – beginning in 1983 – went toward the funding of Medicare. So, not only did Reagan raise taxes, he raised taxes to pay for what today we refer to as “socialized medicine.”  As if that weren’t enough, there’s even further proof that Reagan was hardly the fiscal conservative he’s chalked up to be. Not only did he not decrease the national deficit, he didn’t even manage to stabilize it. During each of his eight years in office, the federal deficit grew significantly.

So much for Reagan’s storied fiscal conservatism.

2. Limited government is the second foundational principle of “Reaganomics.” Here, too, homeboy hardly practiced what he preached. While Reagan was president, more than 60,000 workers were added to the federal payroll.

So much for Reagan’s storied commitment to small government.

Now, moving on to social issues. It turns out Reagan was no social conservative, either …

3. Today we label it “xenophobia,” but Reagan’s regard for the rule of law as it applies to immigration comprises another chunk of his legacy. Yet it was Reagan himself who, upon signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, provided for the amnesty of more than 2.5 million people.

So much for Reagan’s storied opposition to amnesty.

4. Reagan was caustically committed to pro-life principles – but two of his own Supreme Court appointments were pro-choice. Squandering his ostensible commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, Reagan’s judicial appointments consistently voted to preserve reproductive choice.

So much for Reagan’s storied promotion of the pro-life agenda.

So … Ronald Reagan has gone down in history as a Republican legend. But history proves him to be anything but a legendary conservative. He is, in a nutshell, a fable: The myth looms far larger than the man himself.

By Mande Wilkes || Barely a month into this semester, it’s already just about time for college students to register for next fall’s classes. Within the scope of “liberal arts” curricula, the choices are boundless. Students can choose from among courses like “Macroeconomics & The Sex Industry,” “Dialect Suppression in Film,” “Darwinism & Cosmetic Surgery,” “Utopian Societies,” and “Sociology of Social Control.”

“Liberal” arts, no doubt . . .

And just when you thought the courses couldn’t get any flimsier, here comes along a pair of gems offered this semester at our own University of South Carolina: “Black Masculinity” and “Geography of Popular Music.”

That last one in particular completely confounded me. In an attempt to explain the intersectionality of geography and music, USC’s course catalog describes the class thusly:

“Concepts of regional identity, spatial diffusion, culture change, regional economic growth and change as illustrated by U.S. popular music and the contemporary music industry.”

If USC can marry geography with music, then certainly some cinematic allusion is welcome. So, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Ace Ventura, all I can say about that course description is … alrighty then.

And what is it that they teach in that “Black Masculinity” class? Apparently USC itself is unsure, considering that there’s no available course description. Even though I’ve nothing concrete on which to base this assumption, I’m going out on a limb to suggest a study of “black masculinity” is a protracted Barack Obama biopic. It’s apropos of Black History Month, at least, so there’s that.

Having sat through my share of frivolous, woe-is-we lectures, I’ll admit that they’re useful in the sense that they’re “easy A’s.” Basically, you just have to be down with O.P.P.: Oppression, Patriarchy, & Privilege.

Shamelessly name-drop those foundational “liberal arts” concepts and you’re surely good to go … especially if your “Geography of Popular Music” professor happens to be a Naughty By Nature fan.

By Mande Wilkes || Yes, this is our obligatory Lady-Gaga-does-the-Grammys post. Predictable, indeed.

She’s a showstopper, and anyway it’s not like we’ve got anything else to say about the 2010 Grammy Awards. We tuned in solely for the Lady’s performance, and, occurring as it did within the first ten minutes of the show, we watched nary a second more.

So how’d she do?

From her duet with Elton John to her solo performance, she didn’t disappoint.

And of course her costumes – Gaga comes packaged in costumes, not in dresses – dazzled as do they always. The coolest ensemble of the whole night was her pastel dress – a whimsical confection, swirling with lavender orbits. And the shoes!

The shoes are really the point of this post. They’re heelless, by which we mean that they lack any sort of stabilizing feature in the back. Seriously, they have no heel.

Don’t believe us? See for yourself . . .

If this no-heel concept isn’t new, it’s certainly new to us. And it’s just one more reason why Lady Gaga rocks our worlds.

By Mande Wilkes || At the same time as he purports to peddle small-business survival incentives, U.S. President Barack Obama presents yet another employer hurdle.

In an attempt to get people to save money even in spite of themselves, the President has proposed that employers be instrumental in encouraging workers to save. Specifically, businesses that don’t offer a retirement plan would be required to enroll workers in an IRA.

Obviously, small businesses would bear the brunt of this legislation – which is funny, because Obama has lately been giving to small businesses a proverbial blow job in an effort to stimulate hiring.

Of course, the President justifies this manifest inconsistency by offering a tax credit to offset employers’ related administrative costs.

A tax credit? So what?

The cost of compliance – itself an oblique tax – is smothering businesses small and large. Employers can hardly manage to comply with yet another governmental mandate.

All of which is to say nothing of the ideological bigotry implicit in requiring businesses to “help” workers save money. Workers are supposed to help employers, after all (that’s the idea, right?), but more and more often it’s the employers themselves who are commissioned by the government to be workers’ guardians-ad-litem.

By Mande Wilkes || Apparently more concerned with gesture than with justice, a handful of officials are seeking a change of venue for the 9/11 terrorist trials.

September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists – all of them Guantanamo detainees – are set to stand trial in lower Manhattan.

Since Attorney General Eric Holder announced the venue, there has been vague opposition to it.  Now that opposition is gaining steam, as several elected officials – including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and South Carolina’s own Lindsey Graham – are petitioning Holder to try the five terrorists elsewhere.

Elsewhere?

How about Iraq? Yes, try the 9/11 terrorists in Iraq. Sure none of the defendants is Iraqi, nor is Iraq at all material to the case, but that didn’t stop the government from making Iraq singularly answerable for 9/11 anyway.

Frankly, the trial venue itself seems insignificant. That there is finally a trial, nearly a decade after the commission of the crimes, is what’s important. Is a military commission more proper a venue than federal court? Perhaps. But that’s neither here nor there. To bicker about venue is to stomp on the spirit of the trial itself.

That notwithstanding, the administration of Barack Obama is quietly caving to the pressure. Said to be looking into “contingencies,” Obama appears likely to change the location of the trial.

So why not move it to Iraq? I hear they like us there. And if nothing else, it’d be a good way to demonstrate to Iraqis that commitment of ours to a little thing called the “rule of law,” you know?

EDITOR’S NOTE: For the record, the foreign policy of our founding editor is to strap terrorists who are convicted by military tribunal to cruise missiles – and then to indiscriminately launch those cruise missiles into the country of their origin.

By Mande Wilkes || The emerging Tea Party – which bills itself as the nation’s answer to bipartisan fiscal irresponsibility – is spending itself into turmoil.

It’s the coming-out convention itself that’s threatening to upend the Party. Just days before the convention, Tea Party organizers and activists are withdrawing support amid charges of outrageous spending on the event.

From the New York Times:

A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”

So is the Tea Party set to be just another party that undermines its own platform even as it holds it up as gospel? The only – only – thing the Tea Party’s got going for it is its declared commitment to fiscal restraint. Populism is its central tenet, and yet, at almost $600 per ticket, the average American is excluded from the convention.

So-named for its pledge to reacquaint the country with its roots, already the Tea Party organizers have lost touch with those very ideals. Rather than distinguishing itself from the two major parties, the Tea Party is blending right in.

A rose by any other name …

By Mande Wilkes || One of eleven states in which independents outnumber Democrats or Republicans, Massachusetts is hardly the liberal haven it is reputed to be. In fact, with more registered independents than registered Democrats and Republicans combined, “uncommitted” is the most accurate description of the state.

Of course try telling that to our founding editor, who slaps the liberal label around like a used car dealer slaps numbers on windshields. Sic Willie can’t

Consequently, whoever becomes the next Massachusetts Senator – whether the liberal Martha Coakley or the conservative Scott Brown – will owe the victory not to liberals or conservatives, but rather to independents.

If Massachusetts – a political sure thing if there ever was one – can be swayed to this extent by Independent influence, what of the “swing states” themselves?

A Republican win today in Massachusetts would elevate independents to “determinant demographic” status, which would consequently establish the independents as a viable political party. And that could change the very essence of American politics, the face of which has been heretofore characterized by polarity – the duality of a two-party system.

Then, maybe, change would have some hope.

Hey, Massachusetts independents: No pressure or anything, but today you can ignite a revolution. Let’s call it “Independents’ Day” …

By Mande Wilkes || Just the sort of thing I’m going to have to answer for when I’m a politician, Scott Brown’s centerfold days have come back to haunt him.

Brown – the Republican candidate who is expected today to win the Massachusetts Senate held by the late Ted Kennedy – once posed provocatively for Cosmopolitan magazine.

Huh?

Back when he was a twenty-something law student, Cosmo named Brown “America’s Sexiest Man” in its June 1982 edition – and he posed for the magazine with nothing but a strategically placed arm.

Now, maybe I’m missing something – that did occur well before I was even born – but one look at Brown’s Cosmo spread tells me he surely can’t have been America’s Sexiest Man. Surely not. (But then I also find it impossible to believe that Johnny Depp is perennially America’s sexiest man. Ick.)

Anyway, I’ll come right out and say Brown’s pose is hardly news. In fact, Cosmopolitan itself reported it way back in September. So why hasn’t the media covered it? Perhaps Sarah Palin – herself no stranger to less-than-professional photoshoots – was right to call out as sexist the media’s coverage of politicians.

So … with regard to sexual expression, do male politicians get a free pass from the media while female candidates get the, um, shaft?

I’ll let you know.

UPDATE: At our founding editor’s insistence … “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na …”

By Mande Wilkes || Destroyed this week by a massive earthquake, shell-shocked Haiti has found salvation in American goodwill. In addition to Barack Obama’s $100 million pledge, U.S. corporations and citizens also continue to commit extraordinary resources to relief efforts.

A testament to our humanitarian spirit, Americans – even when in dire financial straits at home – understand intuitively the theory of relativity: We have it so, so good, and, even now, we can afford to share. And because we can share, we must. So we do – to an astronomical extent.

That’s America at its most flattering angle, and it’s a most welcome sight.

But we also need to see that other angle … the enterprising, opportunistic side.

Here we all are repairing from the ground up a place that’s been destroyed and a people who have been devastated. But while goodwill has its place, this must be about something beyond charity. This – like any red-blooded American endeavor – is an investment. American dollars – tax, corporate, and charity – will piece together the jagged shards of a shattered place. It’s the unofficial purchase of a fifty-first state, and, if we’ve the guts – the vision – to make it official, it’s a chance to expand our influence, ideals, and sovereignty.

It’s timely to such an extent that it could be considered fated: The Haitian government, too, was wiped out by the earthquake. Now, then, Haiti is ripe for adoption as the next American state.

It sounds seismic to suggest it, but why? Nobody said we have to stop at 50 …