New York Times:

Donald J. Trump warned of “riots” around the Republican National Convention should he fall slightly short of the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination and the party moves to select another candidate. …

“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Mr. Trump said. “I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.”

He added: “If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”

How much more of a clue to the character of the real Trump do people need?

He’s already telling us that the principle of a majority vote and the usual rules of political party nominating conventions should be set aside, just for him, or else. Not that he’s threatening anyone…

Obviously, it takes a majority vote, not a plurality, not a number of votes some hundreds short of a majority, to win the nomination. That’s how conventions work. And, the tradition has been that candidates who win a plurality, but who cannot get a majority, generally find their votes deserting them and going elsewhere on later ballots. That is precisely how the process has worked historically and the way it is supposed to work.

And, Donald and all the Trumpkins out there, this is a country of laws and we have plenty of police. Try rioting and America will throw your ass in the cooler. This isn’t Weimar Germany or some Latin American banana republic, and our political decisions are not influenced by threats of violence.

Newsbusters:

CNN’s Carol Costello admitted on Wednesday that President Obama’s staff “can be quite nasty” to deal with. Given Costello’s propensity to be a bleeding-heart liberal, her admission is all the more striking.

“I felt it first hand when I was, you know, reporting on the presidential race,” Costello noted. “I mean President Obama’s people can be quite nasty. They don’t like you to say anything bad about their boss, and they’re not afraid to use whatever means they have at hand to stop you from doing that, including threatening your job.“

F. Michael Maloof, at World Net Daily:

Fake electronic components from China have been discovered in thermal weapons sights delivered to the U.S. Army on mission computers for the Missile Defense Agency’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missiles and on military aircraft, including several models of helicopters and the P-8A-Poseidon, according to federal investigators.

Suspected electronic parts were found in the Forward Looking InfraRed, or FLIR, Systems being used on the Navy’s SH-60-B. The counterfeit parts were delivered by Raytheon, which alerted the Navy.

The new evidence comes reports that the problem with faked Chinese electronic components being installed in U.S. military systems is far more widespread that originally thought. …

The Senate panel tracked some 1,800 cases of suspected counterfeit parts through the supply chain. It found that U.S. defense contractors had purchased many of the critical components from U.S. companies who in turn obtained them from Chinese firms but never subjected them to testing before handing them over to the U.S. military as part of their contract.

The Senate unit, whose investigators were denied access to Chinese firms by Chinese authorities, said that the evidence “consistently point(s) to China as the epicenter of the global trade in counterfeits.”

To put the growing problem into perspective, Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said, “We do not want a $12 million missile defense interceptor’s reliability compromised by a $2 counterfeit part.

Richard Miniter warns that Iran have a network of sleeper cells inside the United States that could strike us if we bomb their nuclear facilities.

The consensus view among intelligence analysts, in and out of government, is Hezbollah maintains an extensive network inside the U.S. and Western Europe.

The sleepers in the U.S. may number as many as 800.

This has been the consensus view for some time. There are “hundreds” of Hezbollah members here, a U.S. official told USA Today on May 13, 2003. A senior FBI official told the paper that some 20 potential Hezbollah cells are being investigated.

Senator Bob Graham reiterated to the Miami Herald on Nov. 13, 2002: “recent warnings that Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, had a more established presence in the United States than al Qaeda, and was just as dangerous.” …

Sen. Graham told the Miami Herald that Hezbollah has substantially greater numbers in the United States than al Qaeda.

Hezbollah has killed more Americans since 1982 than any other terrorist group, except al Qaeda.

Most of those are not “operational terrorists,” one American intelligence official cautioned Pajamas Media.

Many are here for illicit fundraising. Some channel donations from mosques or peddle videos and books. Others run criminal enterprises for the terror group, everything from car-theft rings to high-end cons.

One cell was involved in cigarette smuggling, capturing the difference between the wholesale price and the high-tax price paid by consumers. Cigarette taxes range from $1 to $3 per pack. The North Carolina cigarette operation was apprehended by the FBI and prosecuted by the Justice department.

Three Yemeni-born men in Rochester, New York were charged with funneling some $15 million to Hezbollah between 2002 and 2004, according to a filing at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York on Feb. 27, 2007. They were caught thanks to a sting operation by the FBI, conspiring to send $200,000 to Hezbollah. The three owned or operated delis, mini-marts and restaurants, from which they allegedly sold fake green cards and engaged in credit card fraud.

Other Hezbollah operatives are here to gather information on potential targets, searching for weak points in schools, malls and office towers.

Still others are foot soldiers who are loaned out Mexican drug cartels, where they serve as bodyguards and enforcers. The Mexicans call them “Turcos.”

Read the whole thing.

As a much-predicted democrat electoral victory looms, Glenn Reynolds discovers a response by businesses and the media to new priorities is already underway.

Charles Johnson links to an Israeli blogger who reports that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new blog set off a series of warnings from her Norton Internet Security program.

Apparently, Ahmadinejab’s site goes after Israeli visitors, but I seem to recall that he doesn’t like Americans much either, so….

****CAUTION*****
Users without good security software and all the latest Microsoft Security updates (Norton refers to “an attempt to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer”) should avoid visiting this site.

The Personal Notes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad