Kevin Drum may have persuaded me to be a blue-stater in 2008. (Hat tip: Big Lizards.)

I’ll say this about the new revelations regarding the Al Qaeda plot on L.A.’s tallest skyscraper. Jetliners come too damn close to downtown. As this Los Angeles Times story says:

One reason for the concern is that jetliners crossing the Pacific regularly make a lazy circle over downtown as they line up to land at LAX from the east. Sometimes the huge planes come in low too.

“A couple of weeks ago one came right toward us. Everyone just stopped and stared with their mouths open,” said Erol Andal, a Glendale resident who manages a sandwich shop on a plaza outside the tower’s second-floor entryway. “I had my escape already planned if it had hit. I would have run right down that escalator there and away from here.”

Up on the 56th floor, Eric Bender, vice president of a property management company, said workers pause when they glance out and see flights bound for LAX seemingly headed directly at them.

“It’s very scary to watch these planes come in very low, very slow as they make this big loop,” said Bender, whose firm is a subtenant in the tower. “I’ve often thought that they should change the landing pattern and make it psychologically less scary.”

Not just psychologically, but less dangerous as well. As a downtown pedestrian, I have often noticed how absurdly close jet airliners seem to come to downtown’s skyscrapers. I once asked a friend who is an amateur pilot how long it would take for one of these airliners to divert from its flight pattern and crash into L.A.’s tallest skyscraper. He said twenty seconds.

To me, it looks like it would take only ten. But even twenty seconds seems like a very short time. Terrorists could take over a cockpit and crash the plane into the tower before most passengers even knew what was happening.

I admit I’m not an expert in this area. But I’m not sure I trust the experts, either.

It never ceases to amaze how the Los Angeles Times can run stories like this one about Anthony Pellicano’s ties to law enforcement figures, while consistently failing to mention his ties to a man who was once the top law enforcement figure in the nation: Bill Clinton.

If Pellicano were tied to a former Republican president, whose spouse was a leading contender for the next Republican presidential nomination, do you think we’d be hearing about this?

I think so too.