Inside the Beltway

IN THEIR MIDST

Something to ponder: Shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was once an active part of the local academic community of national security advisers and insiders.

Maj. Hasan was a “participant” in George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute’s Presidential Transition Task Force, which organized a quartet of forums from October 2008 to January, according to “Thinking Anew - Security Priorities for the Next Administration,” a report on the four events from the nonpartisan think tank issued May 19.

The forums delivered “innovative strategies and solutions to current and future threats to the nation,” and they featured plenty of heavyweights.

The expansive roster of advisers, wonks, diplomats, lawmakers, journalists, academes, military and administration analysts included former national security advisers Kenneth Rapuano and Richard V. Allen; former CIA directors James Woolsey and William H. Webster; Fran Townsend, former White House adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism; Stephen Flynn of the Council of Foreign Relations; and William Bratton, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Among other nightmare scenarios, the events addressed terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Chief Bratton, in fact, “called for a ‘convergent strategy’ that weaves together community policing and counterterrorism strategies under the ‘guiding philosophy’ of intelligence-led policing,” the report said.

Maj. Hasan was listed in the report as a representative of the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine.

BUMPER PATROL

“Change is coming in 2012: End of an Error.” - spotted in Fort Washington, Md.

BUMPER CONTROL

“Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8” - spotted in multiple locations.

The biblical passage in question reads: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” But some worry this bumper sticker is really veiled hate speech, because the next verse reads, “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

It’s not in the realm of hate speech, says Chris Hansen, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, according to the Christian Science Monitor. The language is “ambiguous,” he says.

Deborah Lauter, director of civil rights at the Anti-Defamation League agrees that the bumper sticker is “acceptable political discourse.” For it to be considered hate speech, it “would advocate actual violence or cite scripture that was more clear in its message,” Ms. Lauter says.

THE PALIN FINESSE

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