When would-be terrorists speak in court, they reveal themselves to be criminals, not masterminds.
In a courtroom sketch, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man who tried blowing up a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day 2009 is sentenced to life in prison / AP Images
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, otherwise known to the world as the "Underwear Bomber," was sentenced to life in prison Thursday afternoon for trying to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day in 2009. He thus becomes another one of the hundreds of terror suspects who have been successfully prosecuted in America's federal civilian courts since September 11, 2001 -- a grace note the Justice Department surely will want us to remember today.
It doesn't matter what Abdulmutallab said or didn't say when the public chapter of his life ended in a federal courtroom in Detroit. And, aside from her pronouncement of the sentence itself, it doesn't really matter what U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds said either. From men like Abdulmutallab, we've heard this song and dance before. And nothing Judge Edmunds was going to say could ever top what U.S. District Judge William Young said at sentencing to the so-called "shoe bomber," Richard Reid, a little over nine years ago.