In a story today, Knut Royce of Newsday -- who's no water carrier for the administration (he's helped expose the Plame leak and Chalabi's Iran ties) -- claims an al-Qaeda operative is telling British intelligence that an attack (perhaps against financial institutions) is planned for September. And both Royce and the L.A. Times think the current terror alert is based on a mix of new and old intel, not just old news with a smattering of sort-of-new.

OK, here's a heretical thought: Maybe the Bushies are actually doing the right thing -- and it's such an anomalous occurrence that a lot of us don't recognize it. Maybe they've finally decided that priority #1 is tracking down al-Qaeda operatives (rather than nonexistent Iraqi WMDs) and maybe they're finally gathering and connecting dots (in a way they didn't in the first nine months of '01). That's another way of looking at the "July surprise" scenario -- stuck in a tight election, the Bushies finally focused on al-Qaeda, because they had no other choice.

Perhaps this wouldn't be such a dreadful presidency if we had elections every six months. Of course, if what the Bush people are doing now is the right thing, we still know it's absolutely not a predictor of what they'll do if we give them four years' free rein.