RON ROSENBAUM looks at paranoia, planning, and NSPD-51. He’s right to downplay the paranoia, but I suspect he’s also right to observe that “If you ask me, setting aside any paranoid fantasies, it is clear on the most basic level—read it yourself—that NSPD-51 is the creation of irresponsible incompetents, bulls in the china shop of our constitutional framework. It is a recipe for disaster.”

We’ve had a series of continuity-of-government plans, more or less like this one, over the past 50 years or so. They’ve pretty much all been lousy. Congress doesn’t seem to want to get too involved in this process, and I don’t think it attracts the best minds in the Executive Branch either.