Who Cares About The Ports When They Already Control That Perfect Likeness Of Whoopi?

Chuck Schumer and Peter King will be bummed to hear that sensitive New York landmarks are already compromised:

Dubai Holdings, the state company of Dubai, already owns the Helmsley Building, the Essex House, and Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, which boasts American-as-apple-pie wax renditions of eight presidents—and self-appointed national conscience George Clooney. Dubai International Capital is the third-largest investor in DaimlerChrysler, and through investments with the Carlyle Group and JPMorgan, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has dollars and dirhams in a wide range of U.S. companies. Each Dunkin’ Donuts’ coffee, Baskin-Robbins sundae, Hertz car rental, and Alain Ducasse dinner New Yorkers buy makes the sheikh richer.

You may be more concerned that the Carlyle Group now owns Dunkin’ Donuts, in which case New York Magazine buried the lede here . . .

Sir, Your Shoes

I’m sure this will amount to nothing, right? Please say “right”:

The Delta terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York was evacuated Friday after a man who had been targeted for additional screening left the screening area, the Transportation Security Administration said.

The man sat down, took off his shoes, then left the area without them, said TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis.

“TSA Security and Port Authority Police are searching for him now,” she said. “He’s going to have to come out at some point.”

The incident occurred at 2:50 p.m., she said. All outgoing flights from terminal D have been stopped until the man is found.

Yes, Your Work-Issued Laptop Is Probably The Kind Of Thing You Should Remove From Your Vehicle At Night

An interesting 24 plot twist reveals itself on Staten Island:

A crook broke into a Department of Environmental Protection employee’s vehicle on Staten Island and swiped a laptop computer with a disk containing information about the city’s water-distribution system, police said yesterday.

Not to worry, though — there’s nothing sensitive on the computer, because if there were, there wouldn’t be an article in the Post about . . . never mind, don’t go there:

Sources said the information was not classified or confidential and the car apparently was not singled out, since other vehicles on the block, Devens Street in Westerleigh, were also burglarized.

Prada! Hezbollah! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

Alternatively, you could always try not supporting organized crime and international terrorism by avoiding buying counterfeit items in Chinatown:

Trish and Kim didn’t realize how dazed they were until they were standing in line at the Chinatown Starbucks on Canal St.

“I’m shaking now,” Kim said Tuesday. “I didn’t realize how scared I was.”

The two Connecticut women, who declined to give their last names, were on their biannual ritual trip to the big city for a little shopping and lots of talking. They always make a point of hitting Canal St., where they stock up on fake Coach, Prada and designer purses for a fraction of what the real bags would cost. On Tuesday, however, their experience was unique.

“Usually, the purses are right on the street. But this time they took us into a small back room behind a hidden door. That’s where the bags were,” said Trish.

While they were in the room, the store attendant who had accompanied them began receiving calls on his cell phone. As he was communicating in Chinese, he urged the women, “Shh, quiet, police, police. Anything you want, cheap. Please, quiet.” Trish and Kim tried not to move for 25 minutes while the attendant spoke on his phone. Finally, he ushered them out of the room and led them to a back door that led into an alley. “Come back to pay, one hour,” he said. “Good price.”

Recounting her adventure as she recoverd in the nearby Starbucks, Kim said if they hadn’t been ushered out so quickly, she would have taken all the bags in the room for the $10 price per bag the attendant was asking. “But I can’t fit any more bags in my closet,” she said, “so it’s probably a good thing.” Prices for the fake bags usually range between $30 and $50.

See also: Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble’s testimony to Congress on the links between intellectual property crime and terrorist financing (July 16, 2003).

If They Can’t Stop A Drunk Holiday Reveler, They Certainly Won’t Be Looking For My Rental Truck Full Of Fertilizer And Gasoline Now, Will They?

America’s utilities and vital infrastructure are well-protected and impenetrable:

After Con Ed largely ignored NYPD pleas to beef up security at the city’s largest power plant, a drunken holiday reveler managed to break into the massive facility and stumble around for two hours in an embarrassing breach that has outraged some lawmakers.

“If they can’t stop a drunk from wandering into the site, how will they stop a well-organized terrorist?” asked Democratic Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, an outspoken critic of security at the Charles Poletti power plant, just blocks from his office.

Officials will meet tomorrow for a security sit-down at Queens Borough Hall, where they’ll hash out the incident involving the boozed-up buffoon coming from a Christmas party who somehow got past security at the energy complex on Dec. 19 at about 1 a.m.

He was confronted by a plant worker, ran away, and then wandered around the sprawling site in Astoria, the site of massive power and transmission equipment and a huge tank of highly explosive liquefied natural gas.

A security guard finally grabbed the trespassing tippler about 3 a.m.

“We’ve taken appropriate steps,” said Michael Saltzman, a spokesman for the New York Power Authority, whose security finally spotted the man and called police.