Where's Our Brave New Technology, Brave New President?

The attempted Christmas terror attack leaves Maureen Dowd feeling that we're pathetically behind the curve on security—"patting down grannies and 5-year-olds, confiscating snow globes and lip glosses"—and the president's "listless" response didn't make her feel any safer. Obama once seemed like a leap into the future from the backwards-looking Bush administration, but he now seems mired in the past himself, and we're suckers for guys who hide explosives in their underwear, Dowd writes in the New York Times.

In a completely unreassuring twist, the president's speech yesterday wasn't even televised, Dowd writes, leaving television viewers hearing a disembodied voice talking about security deficiencies. "In his detached way, Spock was letting us know that our besieged starship was not speeding into a safer new future, and that we still have to be scared," Dowd writes. "Heck of a job, Barry." (More Detroit terror incident stories.)