Free Republic

Trump’s Nuclear Experience In 1987, he set out to solve the world’s biggest problem. Donald Trump with his finger on the nuclear trigger. Donald Trump with the nuclear “football,” the so-called black briefcase of doom, always within reach. The briefcase with the nuclear targeting codes: China yes? Moscow no?

You know . . . the one that looks like a suitcase bomb? I want to remind you of a story that emerged in the aftermath of 9/11, because it demonstrates something about how people process information they’re given. When the first of the Twin Towers collapsed, or so the story went, there was a man standing on the roof. As the building went down, the man “surfed the building to the ground” and walked away. This circulated for a couple of days and was widely accepted as true. But of course, it wasn’t true. No one can “surf” a...

Keith Ellison, First Muslim Congressman, Carries Clock In Solidarity With Ahmed,” by Michael McLaughlin, Huffington Post, September 16, 2015: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim member of Congress, began carrying a clock around Capitol Hill on Wednesday to show support for the ninth-grader whose homemade clock was mistaken for a bomb earlier this week.

A Muslim teen, fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, bought a strange ticking device to his school, MacArthur High School. His device caused alarm and fear, and he was detained for having what his teacher perceived as a bomb. Police officers said the electronic components and wires inside his Vaultz pencil case (which is the size of a briefcase) looked like a “hoax bomb,” according to local news station WFAA.

A UNITED State Federal judge ordered the detention on Monday of an Ethiopian-born U.S. citizen who was arrested at Detroit's airport last week for carrying nearly $79,000 in cash and articles on suitcase bombs and the Sept. 11 attacks. Sisayehiticha Dinssa, 34, was arrested on Nov. 14 on arrival in Detroit after a dog smelled narcotics on his cash, according to federal prosecutors who had appealed a decision for him to be released on bond as a threat and a flight risk. Dinssa is charged with failing to declare he was bringing more than $10,000 into the United States, a...

Ressam at times defiant in 2 days of questioning By Mike Carter Seattle Times staff reporter After more than a year of cooperating with federal prosecutors, Ahmed Ressam has become a sometimes difficult and defiant government witness. Ressam was at times surly and evasive during two days of closed-door questioning this week in Seattle by German lawyers who need his help prosecuting Mounir el-Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of helping the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. Ressam, convicted of conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism, might be endangering his deal with federal prosecutors to serve as few as 27 years...

German police on Saturday arrested a 22-year-old Lebanese student suspected of placing a suitcase holding a bomb made of gasoline and propane gas on a train last month. Police arrested the man at a train station in Kiel, a northern German port city where he lives, early Saturday, interior minister of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Ralf Stegner, said at a televised press conference. He has been in Germany since 2004 and studies mechanical and electrical engineering, Mr. Stegner said. Another man, suspected of placing a similar bomb on a train the same day, is still at large. The man being...

Chechen rebels could have the atomic bomb, Boris Berezovsky, the Russian tycoon living in self imposed exile by way of Great Britain, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily in a telephone interview.Russian security officials refused to comment on Berezovsky's allegations. 'We do not believe it is necessary to comment on statements made by people on international wanted lists,' a security offcial told Komsomolskaya Pravda.Berezovsky cited 'credible sources' that rebels have come into possession of an atomic bomb.'It is a small portible device which had not been used until now for only one reason: because some necessary element was missing.'

<p>Prevention is a game of odds, not certainty.</p> <p>I'm standing near a row of deserted loading docks in Billerica, Massachusetts, and George Kinsella hands me a vial of cesium 137. "This," he says, "is the kind of radioactive material you might see in a dirty bomb."</p>