​No surprise here: Spying on Islamic communities might make Muslims mistrust police, creating difficulties in gathering intel, the FBI's top cop in New Jersey says.

Religion News Service (via Washington Post) reports that Muslims are now wary of law enforcement after reports revealed that the NYPD carried out extensive surveillance, going so far as to stakeout entire neighborhoods.

"They're not sure they trust law enforcement in general, they're fearing being watched, they're starting to withdraw their activities," Michael Ward, director of the FBI's Newark division, told reporters.

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​As the fallout over NYPD's Muslim spying scheme continues -- even prompting Chicago's top cop to pledge against blanket monitoring of Islamic communities -- some have taken a drastically different approach to the issue.

While Mayor Mike Bloomberg has defended the NYPD's controversial practices, Asra Q. Nomani, author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam and co-director of the Pearl Project, has outright promoted the department's techniques in a new Daily Beast op-ed.

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​Mohammed Wali Zazi, whose son Najibullah plotted to bomb the subway, could get up to 40 years in prison for destroying evidence and lying to cops, according to the Associated Press (via Wall Street Journal.)

Najibullah earlier admitted that he started making bombs in his Denver house and plotting attacks several years ago, after coming back from a trip to Pakistan.

In September 2009, he drove to New York and planned on attacking the subway in an Al Queda-sanctioned "martyrdom operation," but ran back to Colorado when he released he was being tailed by the FBI.

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​The Doomsday Clock, a very appropriately named metaphorical timepiece that predicts the possibility of nuclear apocalypse, says that the world is a figurative minute closer to radioactive catastrophe than it was in 2010, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The clock, run by the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, was started in 1947 and symbolically set at seven minutes to midnight -- basically to make people realize that nuclear power ain't fuckin' around.

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​If you are reading this, it means you have withstood the first assault of the War on Christmas. We have taken the words of various talk show hosts and politicians to heart and are currently in our Christmas bunker, waiting for the unrelenting attacks from the sinister pleasantry, "Happy Holidays" to end. Unlike most wars, the War on Christmas is so subtle, people may be participating in it without even being aware. That's why we've made the following quiz, which will help you determine whether or not you are currently fighting in what was Christopher Hitchens' second-favorite war.

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​60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney died yesterday in New York at the age of 92. Rooney retired from 60 Minutes last month after 33 years of closing out the show with short, observational essays. Over the years he recorded 1,097 of the segments, which often focused on small gripes about the mundane aspects of daily life. CBS News reports Rooney "died after complications following minor surgery." [CBS]

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​The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers 6-2 last night to win their 11th World Series. After letting up 2 runs in the first, the Cardinals scored 6 unanswered to take the series. They were down 2-3 in the Fall Classic after losing game 5 to the Rangers. David Freese was the World Series MVP and hit the tying RBI in Game 7 with a double in the bottom of the first. Freese had hit the game-tying and walk-off RBIs in Game 6, which the Cardinals won in 11 innings. [ESPN]

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​The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, or CLASS, has been cut from the health care bill signed by Obama in 2010. The program relied on monthly premiums and would offer protection to those who signed up. CNN reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced CLASS had to be removed because it was determined to be unviable in the long-term. In a letter to Congress, Sebelius wrote, "This could have led to a vicious cycle where premiums would have to be set higher and higher to cover the likely costs of benefits, leading fewer and fewer healthier people to sign up for the program." [CNN]

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via Wikipedia

​Protesters in D.C. tried to enter the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum yesterday, resulting in the pepper spraying of at least one demonstrator and the closing of the museum. The Washington Post reports about 200 people tried to enter the building to protest "against the U.S. military's use of drones in overseas wars." The Post reports that the protesters consisted of demonstrators from Occupy DC, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and another group called October 2011. One protester was pepper sprayed after a guard was reportedly pushed "up against a wall." D.C. and Park Police were called to intervene. The museum reopens today. [Washington Post]

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​Sunday night's 60 Minutes interview with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly included the slightly frightening, maybe sort of soothing information that, if necessary, and in a very extreme situation, the NYPD had the "means and training" to take down an aircraft. But after speculation that he meant consumer planes like the ones that hit the World Trade Center, an NYPD source has said that's not the case, exactly.

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