Mark your calendars! Intelligence sources, including CIA Director Leon Panetta, say "Al Qaeda is almost 'certain' to try a major attack on the U.S. in the next three to six months," reports the Daily News. Panetta and others appeared before the Senate with the grim news.

If it sounds familiar, that's because you heard something similar from U.S. officials last month, and from everyone else at all times since 9/11. "I believe that between now and 2005, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida will attack the U.S. with [stolen] nuclear weapons," journalist Paul Williams told Newsmax in 2004. "If al Qaeda survives," said Bruce Riedel in Foreign Affairs in 2007, "sooner or later it will attack the U.S. homeland again," etc.

(In fact Reliapundit is today congratulating himself on his prescience for saying the enemy is "PROBING AND LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR A MAJOR OFFENSIVE... IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND HERE IN THE USA." He adds: "I DID IT LAST YEAR, TOO.")

The new claim is that Al Qaeda has picked up operatives who are not on our radar, says Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. He believes they plan "a large-scale operation that would cause mass casualties, harm the U.S. economy, or both."

Republicans, meanwhile, are assisting in the nation's security efforts by trying to block funds to the Department of Justice so they can't prosecute terrorists in civilian courts. "The military judge can protect classified information much better" than civilian judges, says GOP Senator Lindsey Graham. "We're not trying to win a court case, we're trying to win a war."