MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“Scared Yet?” Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, November 15, 2009
Here’s the strange geography of terror fear: The farther you are from any real danger, the more jitters you are likely to feel.
Doubt me? Consider some of the political reaction to New York’s coming terror trials.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be brought to federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. There, on high-security lockdown, they will face American justice in the form of a felony jury trial.
And the news was greeted with apoplexy in towns so tiny international terrorists couldn’t find them with a platinum MapQuest account and a GPS.
The move will put “Americans at unnecessary risk,” Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell fretted. “America already gives terrorists more constitutional rights than any other country,” said Texas Rep. Lamar Smith.
It was New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who actually understood.
We have to take precautions. These are dangerous people accused of dreadful crimes. We live, all of us do, with the pain of that horror every day. But it’s the rule of law – isn’t it? – that makes us different from our enemies, a uniquely American ability to be stern, secure and just all at once.
“It is fitting,” Bloomberg said, “that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler, whose district stretches into lower Manhattan, issued a plain-spoken challenge to the distant scaredy-cats. “I invite any of my colleagues who say that they are afraid to bring detainees into the United States to face trial to come to New York and see how we handle them.”
Added the New York congressman: “Any suggestion that our prosecutors and our law enforcement personnel are not up to the task of safely holding and successfully prosecuting terrorists on American soil is insulting and untrue.”
CHOOSE, PLEASE
1. Carrie Prejean: family-values spokeswoman or sex-tape star
2. Andre Agassi: tennis legend or meth-head
3. Lou Dobbs: Straight-arrow newsman or opinionated blowhard
4. Tom Suozzi: exec or ex-exec
5. LI weather: summer, winter, spring or fall
ANNIVERSARY ALERT: “On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence; that request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that some day he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his friend, Oscar Madison. Several years earlier, Madison’s wife had thrown HIM out, requesting that HE never return. Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?” Unlikely.
ASKED AND UNANSWERED: Will the big Facebook exoneration encourage Facebook-ers to share even more boring details from their mundane lives? . . . Wanna build an ark? . . . The Who will perform at Super Bowl XLIV. Will everyone under XLIV have to ask, “Who?” . . . Is Wal-Mart ready for Black Friday? Let’s hope so . . . Does naming a bill after a child really shame legislators into voting for it? Keep an eye on “Leandra’s Law,” making DWI-with-kids a felony . . . If the cops really found Raymond Clark’s and Annie Le’s DNA on a sock in the ceiling near her body, what defense can he offer to the Yale murder charges? . . . Was that a hardball a Nassau jury threw at Great Neck North baseball coach Michael Lewis? Give the coach’s defense team a swing and a miss . . . Why would New York’s smoking rate decline compared to other states’? Can’t be less stress here . . . Wasn’t it nice on National Signing Day at Hauppauge High to see the young stars of tennis, lacrosse and other “minor sports” get fussed over too? . . . If Northport’s Kyle Orent could raise $115,000 for charity selling lemonade at age 11, will he please take care of the national debt by 21?
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