... as the result of the expiration of the PAA (Protect AT&T Act), why hasn't Homeland Security's color coded threat level been raised to Magenta or Puce or some such thing?

Very clearly, the warnings about an increased threat to the Heimat are all rhetoric (read "bullshit").

If there is actually an increased threat to the US beginning at midnight, then clearly the Hiematsicherheitdienst is remiss in its duties to ensure that the country is ready for the increased risk of attack.

Clearly the administration, despite what it says, does not believe that there is any increased risk of attack. Either that, or they are totally incompetent. Oh, wait ...

Just so you won't have to feign mock surprise and say "what incompetence?" the next time the subject is raised:

Great moments in Bush administration incompetence:

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."
<http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/>

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/18/attack/main509488.shtml>

As a reward for her incompetence as National Security Adviser, Rice was promoted to Secretary of State where she has been able to demonstrate truly magisterial incompetence, particularly in encouraging Israel to invade Lebanon and in blocking international efforts at a ceasefire ("birth-pangs of a new Middle East").

Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the time of the quote, in a December 31, 2002 New York Times article "White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War with Iraq," was quoted as saying during a telephone interview that the:
"...cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion..."
Mr. Daniels would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said that the administration was budgeting for both, and that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high.
<http://www.usiraqprocon.org/bin/procon/procon.cgi?database=5-H-subs-1.db&command=viewone&id=6&rnd=128.03970255025226#Daniels>

"Peacekeeping requirements in Iraq might be much lower than historical experience in the Balkans suggests. There's been none of the record in Iraq of ethnic militias fighting one another that produced so much bloodshed and permanent scars in Bosnia." Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and now [but no longer] president of the World Bank, Feb. 27, 2003
<http://esquerda-republicana.blogspot.com/2006/07/20-barrel-for-oil.html>

"Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits for the region. ...Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced." Vice President Dick Cheney, Aug. 26, 2002
<http://esquerda-republicana.blogspot.com/2006/07/20-barrel-for-oil.html>

"[W]e really didn't see the insurgency coming." L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, Proconsul and Viceroy for Iraq 2003-2004, January 6, 2006
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10740033/>

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." George W. Bush, September 1, 2005
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4204754.stm>

This is just the tip of a very large iceberg. So the next time you are tempted to say "what incompetence?" just remember that there is a record of all of it (except, of course, for the bits that are hidden behind "state secrets" labels or that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a busy little corps of shredders in the OVP and DOJ and CIA have destroyed).

Nice one, sysprog.

Let's take Kristol at his word:

[...] If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

— William Kristol

If this is the case, then the following is a good synopsis of the current state of American politics:

[...] It is no use pretending that Republicans' view of life, as a whole, can be accepted or even forgiven by any civilized person. [...] there is a definite strain of sadism in them, over and above the brutality which a Republican of that type has to have. Republicans are jingo imperialists, they are morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting.

[...] Republicans' 'message' was one that the big public did not want, and, indeed, has never accepted. The mass of the people, in the nineties as now, were anti-militarist, bored by the Empire, and only unconsciously patriotic. Republicans' official admirers are and were the 'service' middle class, the people who read THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Works for me — although, in fairness, it might be more appropriate to substitute Neocons for Republicans. I know some Republicans who are actually decent people (something that I can't say of Neocons).

Good point Ché. Obviously Kristol didn't read the Orwell essay in its entirety. Otherwise he wouldn't have gratuitously provided Glenn with the lede for his next article:

Kristol says Republicans are "morally insensitive" and "aesthetically disgusting".

I don't doubt that Kristol lionizes Kipling, but I doubt that he sees himself as a Nobel Laureate. Rather he sees himself, like Kipling, as the spokesman for Empire. I have often tried to point out that the Project for the New American Century sounds an awful lot like the British project for the 19th century: British hegemony maintained by force of arms manifested by more or less continuous war in various corners of the world (see Byron Farwell, Queen Victoria's Little Wars for a nice summary). As Kipling was the apologist for this policy, so Kristol sees himself as the justifier of nearly identical PNAC policy.

Sadly, however, Kristol is just an equal-opportunity warmonger. He will support anybody's war.