Let me be blunt: I believe Eliot Spitzer not only knew about the scheme, I believe he approved it and maybe even ordered it. His denials Monday that he knew nothing ring as hollow as his earlier claim that "we have never asked the state police to do anything that wasn't standard operating procedure, nor would we." Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's report, despite its important findings, falls short. Spitzer's office says the governor was never questioned about the sordid plot against Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. And two of the four known participants in the plot refused to answer questions by the attorney general. They submitted only brief sworn statements that Cuomo said he disregarded. Given those lapses, the hasty conclusion that no laws were broken is troubling.

 

Two patterns suggest Spitzer was directly involved. First, volcanic anger at targets, followed by leaks to the media, both of which happened here, was standard operating procedure for Spitzer as attorney general. Virtually every Wall Street case he brought was first previewed in newspapers, often with evidence such as key e-mails released by anonymous sources. Notwithstanding that the evidence was often damning, the tactics were more thuggish than professional.

 

The second argument for Spitzer's involvement is that he is a micromanager. The notion that his A team - his chief of staff, his communications director, the deputy head of homeland security, the head of the state police - conspired to target the powerful Bruno without Spitzer's knowledge defies belief. Had the target been a minor critic from Podunk, maybe. But Bruno is Public Enemy No. 1 to Spitzer, and no way would underlings dare go after him without the governor's knowledge.

 

But we won't know the whole truth until a prosecutor summons the spine to find it. If the Albany district attorney won't, then a federal prosecutor must. Either way, we have to know what Spitzer knew and did. Only then can Albany return to its routine scandals.

Leanne Greer, 36, had gone on "lock down" — no television, radio or Internet — after buying her copy of "Deathly Hallows" at about 7 a.m. on Saturday. She said she finished reading page 306, then discovered the next 33 pages of the book were missing.

 

"I just kind of freaked out," said Greer, a Purdue University graduate with degrees in elementary education and English. "My husband said, 'Why are you screaming?' He said 'I thought one of the kids was hurt.'"

 

Luckily for Greer, she had a backup for her store-bought copy; she had ordered another copy online.

 

"I'm just that psychotic about it," she said.

Most Britons understand that terrorists wage war on them and their freedoms--and are not, per the fashionable left, voicing opposition to British policy in their own way. This weekend's plotters intended to kill partygoers at popular nightclubs in London's West End and school children departing Glasgow for summer holiday. These cities are thriving, cosmopolitan, tolerant and open--which is a main reason the Islamists want to bomb them.

 

On Thursday, his first full day in office, the Prime Minister sought to distance himself from just-retired Tony Blair's unpopular commitment to the "global war on terror" by unveiling a cabinet with prominent Blair critics. But Mr. Brown appears to be a quick study. Yesterday, in an interview with the BBC, he was nothing if not resolute: "We will not yield, we will not be intimidated, and we will not allow anyone to undermine our British way of life." Welcome to the fight.