Police say the second device was found in a Mercedes in a Park Lane car park after it had been towed away from Cockspur Street, near Trafalgar Square.

Both devices were "viable" and "clearly linked", police said.

At a news conference on Friday evening, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, said the discovery of the second device was "obviously troubling".

A jihadi site was bragging about the bombing plot yesterday, but there's no definite connection documented yet:

CBS News found the posting, which went on for nearly 300 words, on the "al Hesbah" chat room. It was left by a person who goes by the name abu Osama al-Hazeen, who appears regularly on the forum. The comment was posted on the forum, according to time stamp, at 08:09 a.m. British time on June 28 -- about 17 hours before the bomb was found early on June 29.

Al Hesbah is frequently used by international Sunni militant groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban, to post propaganda videos and messages in their fight against the West.

I wonder if he was a Marine...

While we're doing Hillary videos ... 

I’m sorry there won’t be much blogging today. Being in L.A., I figured I owed it to myself to get my pretty face before a camera. You’ll see the results early next week. I don’t want to blow the surprise, but the end product could change the blogosphere as we know it.

We have a really big show tonight. Bill Kristol will be joining us in the first hour. In the second hour, we’ll have the Beltway Boys on, unless they’re sitting shiva for the Immigration Bill. As always, Larry Kudlow will follow hard on the heels of the Beltway Boys.

The real treat will come in the final hour when I count down the Top 10 Best Final Scenes in Movie History. Once again, Emmit remains on sabbatical, so the heavy-lifting of preparing a list falls to me. To comment on whether or not my list makes any sense, we will have as a very special guest Academy Award nominated screenwriter Roger L. Simon.

Most excitingly, I’ve convinced Salem Communications to give me a $5 bonus for everyone who makes a reference to “chowdah” when they call in!

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

He'll also avoid the VAT if this works out. Nice work, barman! Pour me another!

I was telling someone the other day that I want to visit London, as I've never been. Maybe I can make it this year, I said.  Maybe I'll have to if I want to see it, was the unspoken end of that sentence.

Luckily, the badges got the better of the jihadis today, as they did with the last British terror plot-- also known as the day the Bush administration planned a terror bust to drown out the victory cry of the Nutroots, which had just toppled the mighty Joe Lieberman in a Democratic primary. Right, Aravosis?

LONDON (AP) - Police thwarted an apparent terror attack Friday near thefamed Piccadilly Circus in the heart of London, defusing a bomb made ofa lethal mix of gasoline, propane gas, and nails after an ambulancecrew spotted smoke coming from a silver Mercedes outside a nightclub.

The bomb in the city's theater district was powerful enough to havecaused "significant injury or loss of life" - possibly killinghundreds, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said.

Britain's new home secretary, Jacqui Smith called an emergency meetingof top officials, calling the attempted attack "internationalterrorism."

"We are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to oursecurity from international terrorism," she said afterward. "Thisreinforces the need for the public to remain vigilant to the threat weface at all times."

Al Qaeda is suspected, and showed its legendary respect for women in picking the target:

The apparent target was Tiger Tiger in Haymarket, where up to 1,700 people were inside on 'ladies night'.

Because once "ladies' night" means anything other than a raucous Saturday evening of public stonings, a society is in the ol' handbasket to Hell, and Islamists are duty-bound to blow up the ladies of the discoteque and their enabling male escorts.

British officials are calling on citizens to stay vigilant, and there are rumors of an open-top bus being stopped and investigated. Looks like the driver of the Mercedes was subtle:

An eyewitness said a man had crashed the vehicle into bins near Tiger Tiger and then ran off, before the alarm was raised.

Maybe we can hope for a surveillance tape near one of the clubs on top of the eye witness.

The car, reported because it was "smoking," may have just been armed with so much gas as to make its flammable vapor visible to the eye.

Great Lowry column on how talk radio and bloggers slayed the Senate dragon on immigration:

All of that was enough to get all of 46 votes on a key procedural votethat needed 60 to pass. The fight over the immigration bill was thefirst instance of an insider parliamentary struggle in which bloggers,talk-radio hosts and citizens were able to have a major voice throughthe synergistic power of the Internet, radio waves and telephone lines.Bloggers picked apart the bill, talk-radio-show hosts broadcast itsflaws, and ordinary people jammed their senators' phone lines --blocking what had begun as a kind of legislative coup.

...

In the end, support for the bill literally collapsed. Even theimperious Voinovich voted against cloture. Now, there is really no suchthing as an "inside game" anymore, since bloggers make sure it gets"outside." Both the right and the left will take advantage of this, forgood and ill policy ends. But it's clearly an enhancement of democracy.Senators should get used to it, and buy more phone lines.

We've come to expect that bloggers will influence the populist parts of our political process, namely elections. But an august institution like the Senate is a different matter. Now, we've shown that no one is immune to the power of a little openness. They will be assimilated.

Trent Lott may call that rabblerousing. I call it democracy.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services just released a major study on drug use and sexual behavior that purportedly used more thorough, scientific means than ever before to get more reliable results than prior surveys.

One striking conclusion: our children appear to become sexually active at surprisingly young ages. A higher percentage reports first sex below age 15 (15.6%) than the percentage waiting till age 21 or later (only 14.7%) The biggest group experiences sex for the first time between the ages of 15 and 17.

The CDC survey also shows striking racial differences when it comes to first sexual experiences. Among “non-Hispanic whites” 13.9% become sexually involved below 15; among “Mexican-Americans” the figure is 14.3%, and among “non-Hispanic blacks,” the number is nearly twice as high – with a full 27.5% experiencing sex before age 15. Only 5.8% of blacks wait till age 21 or later for first sex, but among whites a full 15.0%-- nearly three times the percentage –delay sex till the traditional age of maturity. Among Mexican-Americans, the highest percentage (16.6%) waits till age 21 for sexual initiation.

Most authorities (and most parents, certainly) would agree that sex for twelve, thirteen and fourteen year olds brings a host of problems, so it stands to reason that the much greater incidence for blacks of intimacy at these tender ages correlates with a wide range of problems in high school and even middle school. If a thirteen or fourteen year old is sexually active, for many (if not most) kids this distracting intimacy can make school that much more difficult (or even irrelevant).

It makes sense, in other words, to help close the racial gaps in educational performance by working to help inner city teenagers to avoid early onset of sexual behavior. 

One more number from the new study seems difficult to explain, or even to believe: among married people, a surprising 1.9% report that they have never had sex. If this figure reflects accurately on American reality it means that close to four million adults who are currently married still qualify as virgins.

Now that Hollywood has mined comedy gold by portraying “The Forty Year Old Virgin,” the new CDC study suggests endless dramatic and humorous possibilities for a future project about “Married Virgins.” If some enterprising screenwriter hasn’t already commandeered this idea, you can hereby steal it from this blog.

Mitch McConnell stepped up today to protect us from the Fairness Doctrine.  Thank you, Senator.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

Today I introduced an amendment to the Financial Services Appropriations bill that would strip taxpayer funding for the Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission in Illinois designated for "minority and small business development and procurement opportunities”. Now I find nothing wrong with minority and small business development; I’m a businessman myself. My problem with this earmark is that Abraham Lincoln National Airport doesn’t exist. There are no long lines, crowded terminals, or delayed flights at this airport. There’s not a single passenger there. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln National Airport only exists in concept which has been developed by Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. – who requested the $231,000 for this project.

Here are some facts that you may find interesting:

? The Executive Director for the Airport Commission is Richard Bryant, who also happens to be the Deputy District Administrator for Jackson’s Congressional office.

? Congressman Jackson was the main catalyst behind forming the Airport Commission.

? From a 4/13/06 press release from Congressman Jackson's own campaign, the Airport commission "plans to launch an advertising campaign urging (Illinois) Gov. Rod Blagojevich to lease it the land the state is acquiring for the airfield." From the same press release, "So far, the commission has raised about $100,000, said Jackson aide Rick Bryant, the commission's executive director."

? Later that same year, on November 16, 2006, Congressman Jackson issued a press release from his official office where he promised to not seek federal funding for the airport. “So even with the change of leadership in Congress, I won’t pursue federal funding for the Abraham Lincoln National Airport. Chicago’s share of federal dollars is already committed to O’Hare modernization.”

Congressman Jackson’s request for $231,000 for this non-existent airport, to a commission managed by one of his top congressional staffers that so far has only commissioned an advertising/lobbying campaign, only months after Congressman Jackson himself promised to not request federal funds for this commission, are all reason's why I introduced this amendment to remove these taxpayer provided funds from the Financial Services Appropriations bill. There are some very important questions that Congressman Jackson’s constituents and all taxpayers deserve answered.