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Northern California pot growers bomb a car and a bus, then take over Shasta Dam in a bid to free an imprisoned comrade. It sounds like the plot to a very cheesy Grade-B thriller, but it was actually the premise for a day-long terrorist attack drill conducted by 20 state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies Wednesday.

Over at Jeff Stein's Washington Post spy news column, an item on a counter-terrorism drill enacted by federal, state and local agencies in Northern California this Wednesday, November 17. During the exercise, participants playing the roles of local pot farmers set off bombs and took over the Shasta Dam, the nation's second largest, to free an imprisoned comrade.

In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland. Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force.

Step 1) The city opted out of the JTTF. Step 2) The JTTF instigated a bomb plot with a useful idiot. Step 3) City thinks about opting into the JTTF.

Nice.

A 22-year-old Lebanese man was arrested by the FBI for attempting to detonate in improvised explosive device left in a trash can near Chicago's Wrigley Field during a Dave Matthew's Band concert. Some have dubbed the attack a Jihadist plot, and an act of a lone wolf terrorist. But Sami Samir Hassoun did not act alone. His terror cell consisted of two undercover FBI agents posing as financiers, and long time friend who turned out to be an FBI informant. In fact the FBI were the ones who gave him the bomb, and paid him to deliver it.

How’s this for an ill-conceived emergency preparedness drill? An off-duty cop pretending to be a terrorist stormed into a hospital intensive care unit brandishing a handgun, which he pointed at nurses while herding them down a corridor and into a room.

There, after harrowing moments, he explained that the whole caper was a training exercise.

At first, it looked like Quazi Nafis, the man accused of plotting to blow up the Federal Reserve in New York, had only the help of the FBI in allegedly delivering a van full of what he thought were explosives to the door of the downtown building. But on Thursday authorities said he had an accomplice, who also just happens to be an alleged child pornography fan. There are some legitimate questions to ask about the ethics of helping someone hatch a terrorist plot just to bust him for it, as apparently happened with Nafis.

After weathering the fear of federal prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California's medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the "Wal-Marting" of weed.

In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence.

Strapped U.S. Police Turn to Marijuana Busts for Cash - The reason is simple: If the California lawman steps up his pursuit of marijuana growers, his department is eligible for roughly half a million dollars a year in federal anti-drug funding, helping save some jobs.