A North Carolina father who led an unobtrusive rural life as a drywall contractor had militant roots dating back to 1980s Afghanistan and Pakistan and secretly led a U.S. group plotting international terrorism, federal prosecutors said.

Certain hotels become not only places to stay but monuments. They enter civic lore. Luxury properties project glamour and have stories to tell. The Plaza, the Waldorf, Raffles, the Ritz, and their like are visited by travelers who could not or would not stay there. Locals patronize hometown hotels for food and drink, and for parties and conferences. Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel captured the scene and the sensibility. The movie version starred Garbo.

Off the injured list and back on the world stage, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday gave an impassioned defense of American demands that India and other countries do more to tackle terrorism and global warming.

The blasts at the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, located side-by-side in an upscale business district in the capital, reduced the facades of both buildings to twisted metal.

Police say they have charged a suspected white supremacist with having the deadly poison ricin, explosives, bomb-making manuals and inciting terrorism.

The Richmond metropolitan area’s historically black colleges—Virginia Union University and Virginia State University—form a “radicalization node.“ Similarly, the presence of historically black Norfolk State University and Hampton University and evangelical Regent University increase the terrorist threat in Hampton Roads. These assertions are among the findings of a report published last month by the Virginia Fusion Center, a 10-person unit of the Virginia State Police and the state Department of Emergency Management that was created to improve the sharing of anti-terrorism intelligence.

With the Obama administration’s plans to shut down the Camp Delta detention facility at Guantanamo Bay presumably moving forward apace, some detainees might end up in the commonwealth—perhaps in a detention facility in Northern Virginia to await trial there. Last week Virginia Reps. Eric Cantor, Frank Wolf, and Randy Forbes called on Gov. Tim Kaine to join them in opposing the idea of moving any detainees to any facility in Virginia.

The Supreme Court dismissed a challenge Friday by suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent Ali Al-Marri to the president’s authority to detain people without charges.

Last year’s attacks against the Taj Mahal Hotel and at other sites in Mumbai were carried out by terrorists who trained and plotted in Pakistan. The kidnapping and beheading of Daniel Pearl occurred in Karachi. Regions within Pakistan lie outside government control. Passions seethe; hatred is preached; blood flows. Pakistan bestrides a crossroads troubled and troublesome, where grim reality lacks the playful romance of movies about Indiana Jones. Wee Willie Winkie will not save the day, either.

In their 2000 platforms neither Republicans nor Democrats addressed national security until the final paragraphs. The issue belonged at the top.

Israel is acting in self-defense, as any country in its position would. If Gaza had not served as a launching pad for terrorism, then Israel would not have struck at the source.