One Nation Under Fear

Permanent Fear

The new terror warning system maintains a perpetually elevated threat level. In fact, the lowest threat level is "elevated."

• An elevated threat alert, the lowest warning, would be issued if a credible threat were determined, but it likely wouldn’t detail any timing or terrorist targets.

• An imminent threat alert, the highest notice, would be triggered if there were a credible, specific and impending threat or ongoing attack.

So after six years of permanent orange alerts, they're just making orange the lowest level of two -- a credible threat all the time. It's like Homeland Security is just saying, "We give up. No matter how well we do our job, there's always going to be a credible threat of a terrorist attack. Be afraid."