Some Good News.

New Yorkers got some good news this week. The Obama Administration's hare-brained scheme to prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan has apparently been reversed.

It was a terrible decision to begin with; vainglorious and utterly unworkable. Had the trial (and others like it) gone forward, the cost to taxpayers would have been well north of $250 million. The United States does not have $250 million to waste on the prosecution of enemy combatants like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Willfully wasting that kind of money (and shutting down lower Manhattan in the process) isn't just irresponsible, it's crazy.

But it's hardly a one-off. Former CIA Director Mike Hayden's piece in today's Washington Post reminds us that on matters relating to terrorism, the Obama Administration seems strangely disconnected from the reality of the threat. One hopes that the KSM trial reversal is the first of many such policy reversals.

This is not a game.

PS: See also: Richard Cohen.