[**My Terror Gap Segment on The Big Picture w/ Thom Hartmann begins at 6:47 of this video]

Like most New Yorkers (where I grew up), other Americans, and sentient beings throughout the globe, I am elated that Osama bin Laden will no longer be able to ply his trade. It's been a long process, but the man who turned that beautiful September day back in 2001 into a nightmare for me, as I was watching from Delancey Street, and the rest of the world whether watching from the streets or on their television set, has finally been truly held accountable for his actions.

But now is not the time to simply celebrate and forget that there are many more out there like him. They may lack his funding or charisma, but they do not lack his ambition. This is why it was ironic that the same week we finally got our man, we learned that 90% of those on the Terror Watch List who have tried since 2005 have successfully purchased guns (to say nothing of explosives, which they also have legal access to).

This is a serious gap in our law that needs to be addressed. To quote from a report by Senator Frank Lautenberg:

In June 2009, Sen. Lautenberg and Congressmen John Conyers (D-MI) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) released a new GAO report finding that, from February 2004 to February 2009, there were 963 cases in which a known or suspected terrorist attempted to buy a gun. In 90 percent of those cases -- a total of 865 times -- they were cleared to proceed with that purchase. One of those cases involved the purchase of explosives.

According to the report, which the lawmakers requested in July 2008, only 10 percent of the time were terrorist suspects denied weapons because of disqualifying factors, such as a felony conviction or illegal immigrant status. Being on the Terrorist Watch List is currently not a disqualifying factor for buying firearms.

In response to this report, Sen. Lautenberg has introduced legislation to close the "terror gap" in the nation's gun laws by giving the Attorney General authority to stop the sale of guns or explosives to terrorists. Under current federal law, there is no legal way to stop someone on the Terrorist Watch List from buying guns and explosives.

We should push for Senator Lautenberg's legislation to be passed now. It has had bipartisan support in the past, including the strong backing of former President George W. Bush.

If you don't think we should get on this forthwith, just remember, there are those who will want to take revenge for bin Laden's killing. And there are those who will continue to plan attacks on the United States because it is such a tempting target. They may not have the capabilities to pull off a large scale attack like the one on 9/11. But by allowing them to purchase Jared Loughner's Glock with an assault clip, or (God help us) explosives, we are asking for trouble.

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Pakistani security forces have begun a crackdown on the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group that India has blamed for the outrage, arresting its commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhwi and 19 other fighters.

This is the post where I willingly eat some crow,which will no doubt please some critics of my earlier posts on the recent terror attacks in Mumbai.

Right from the first, India blamed the Lashkar e-Taiba, a primarily Kasmiri-separatist terror group, for Mumbai. I felt that they had insufficient evidence to do so, even based upon the testimony of one captured attacker who was almost certainly tortured into confessing what Indian interrogators would have been already pre-disposed to hear. The Mumbai attacks represented a change in tactics more reminiscent of purely internal Indian terror groups such as the Naxalites and there'd been no shortage of internal Muslem-Hindu tensions to justify an indigenous group being behind the attacks. But the LeT had certainly been behind earlier attacks in Mumbai in 2006 and, if the LeT were involved, then the Pakistani ISI intelligence agency had to accept a great deal of culpability as the LeT have been their creature all along. Still, I cautioned against leaping to premature conclusions and using the LeT as an excuse to gloss over internal Indian ethnic strife. However, new details, independently gained, are now surfacing which give Indian accusations fresh impetus and in the light of those details I have been forced to re-evaluate my thinking on the whole issue.

First, an excellent bit of investigative journalism from Saeed Shah, a freelancer who often writes about the region for McLatchy but on Sunday had a piece in the UK's Observer in which he recounts tracking down the family of the captured attacker and placing him firmly as a Pakistani from a tiny village, one of four hamlets all called Faridkot in Pakistan's Punjab province. He also confirms that the man, Mohammed Ajmal Amir, had been a member of the LeT and has obtained national identity numbers for the whole family. Shah also alleges that there's been a careful attempt at a cover-up, orchestrated in part by ISI agents who were supposedly feverishly looking for Amir's roots, which is why other journalists couldn't track Amir's home and family down.

While sometimes confirming that Amir did live in the village, and had a son called Ajmal, on other occasions locals claimed to know nothing.

Finally one villager confirmed what was going on: 'You're being given misinformation. We've all known from the first day [of the news of the terrorist attack] that it was him, Ajmal Amir Kasab. His mother started crying when she saw his picture on the television.'

Attempts to meet Amir, the father, however, were not to be successful. Villagers eventually told us that he and his wife, Noor, had been mysteriously spirited away earlier in the week.

'Ajmal used to go to Lahore for work, as a labourer,' continued the villager who feared being named. 'He's been away for maybe four years. When he came back once a year, he would say things like, "We are going to free Kashmir."'

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Dittoheads on CNN's Late Edition, Sunday. Sajjan Gohel agrees the Mumbai culprits are the Lek, even though he told the WaPo the day before it was definitely Al Qaeda, and former CIA DDI John McLaughlin, with a straight face and without challenge, says Pakistan's ISI is "very responsive" to civilian authority.

The international community and media appear to have accepted India's allegations of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai bombings, via an ISI proxy terror group. Yet no-one is mentioning India's atrocious record of widespread torture or the questionable nature of confessions gained by such methods.

The Washington Post's editorial today leads:

WITH EACH passing day, suspicions of a Pakistani link to the slaughter of 174 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai grow stronger -- and more plausible. A captured terrorist has reportedly confessed to Indian officials that he received training in Pakistan from Lashkar-i-Taiba, a guerrilla organization that was nurtured by Pakistani military intelligence to fight India in the disputed Kashmir region.

But really, that confession by one captured terrorist is the only evidence thus far advanced, and (until late Tuesday) everything we know about it has been leaked by unofficial officials rather than with the full backing of the Indian government.

We only have this detainee's alleged word that all the attackers were from Pakistan, that there were only ten of them, that the attacks were funded with Saudi money, that they trained at an LeK camp inside Pakistan, that they hijacked a single Indian vessel to transport then to Mumbai or that they had hoped to kill 5,000 rather than the 200 or so they did murder. All of this relies on the confession of one man, presumably not one of the attacks leaders because that possibility hasn't been mentioned at all and certainly would have been if it were there. The leaked details of his confession have then been amplified and added to by rumor and speculation, particularly by the understandably angry Indian press.

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C-Span coverage of the attacks - and Deepak Chopra points out that the War on Terror turns moderates into extremists.

With more than 100 dead and reports of up to 900 injured, the horrific events in Mumbai have now moved into a second day. Attacks by well-armed and organised Moslem terrorists, who targeted UK, US and Israeli nationals in particular and took hostages at top hotels in India's financial capital, have catapulted India's boiling sectarian feuds and regional tensions into the news this Thanksgiving. Some of the most up-to-date reporting can be found at India's NDTV.com.

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NewsHog: The Mumbai bombs and Pakistan...recently, Cernig called the Indian sub-continent the Most Dangerous Place In The World and a month ago predicted that America's next big foreign policy disaster was brewing there.

Senate Majority Project: After being implicated in two election crimes, and serving time in prison, Alan Raymond's phone-jamming company is back in business...under a different name.

War and Piece: Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra has suggested some unauthorized leaks could have been deliberate attempts to help al-Qaeda. That kind of reckless talk sounds familiar...

Attytood: A plea to America's news directors and editors: Cancel Bush's "Fear Factor"

The Brad Blog: California election official facing 43 criminal charges...

Media in Trouble: NPR's Steve Inskeep parroted GOP talking points, Senator Leahy slapped him down.