Things Can Change In A New York Minute

Needless to say, today's news is all about the car bomb the NYPD located in Times Square last night.

A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.

“We are very lucky,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said at a 2:15 a.m. press conference. “We avoided what could have been a very deadly event.”

Homeland Security is treating this as a failed terrorist attack, and not a very good one if it was using gasoline and fireworks.  Still, I've seen enough Mythbusters to know that gasoline and propane explosions can be deadly if you're close enough, say like, the width of a city street.  The shockwave can kill, and the shockwave when contained in a small space like an SUV cabin becomes even more deadly when it does emerge.  Treating this a s a terrorist attempt is absolutely the right thing to do.

In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Napolitano said it was too early to know who was responsible for leaving a vehicle laden with explosives in the symbolic heart of the nation's most populous city.

"We're taking this very seriously," Napolitano said, noting that the New York police, FBI and federal Joint Terrorism Task Force were involved in the investigation. "We're treating it as if it could be a potential terrorist attack."

A T-shirt vendor who noticed smoke coming out of a tinted, dark green sport utility vehicle alerted police to the situation Saturday evening.

I would have flagged down a cop too if I had seen that.  Somebody tried to kill a whole bunch of New Yorkers last night.  They failed, luckily.  Too early to point fingers and assign blame. But this is turning out to be a hell of a weekend for America.