Clockwork Orange

Tim Naftali of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs makes the case in Slate that Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff should've left the terror alert level alone yesterday and just told Americans to tough it out. I'll admit to some eye-rolling after hearing that DHS was once again issuing an after-the-fact alert uptick, on the grounds that it just makes it look like the federal government gets its information about potential threats the same way the rest of us do--from CNN. But I'll give Chertoff this much: at least he couched the raised alert level in terms of fear of a copycat attack, which has some validity.