England’s top counterterrorism official resigned today after being photographed carrying — in public and in plain view – top secret documents related to a major government operation against terrorists. The Times reports that the snafu “provoked a hasty flurry of arrests and raids on properties by hundreds of antiterrorism officers around Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire late on Wednesday.” What invariably happens when investigations like this get pulled down prematurely is that there will not be enough evidence to proceed against some of the main players, who will live to jihad another day – er, I mean, conduct anti-Islamic activity.

Speaking of anti-Islamic activity, the woman who coined the phrase, Jacqui Smith, is also in the news. You may remember Ms. Smith, the Home Office Secretary, as the British official who denied Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders entry into the country (to screen his anti-terror film Fitna at the invitation of the House of Lords) at the same time the Labour government was demanding the release and repatriation to England of several non-Briton Gitmo terrorist detainees (like Binyam Mohammed, now at liberty and living on British public assistance). She has also run interference for al Qaeda muckety-muck Abu Hamza, delaying (perhaps forever) his extradition to the United States.

Well, it seems that while Ms. Smith was away on business, her husband, Richard Timney, was home watching porn movies on cable TV, the cost for which Smith billed to British taxpayers. (Mr. Timney, by the way, is also on the public payroll, the Times of London reports, “as a parliamentary assistant to his wife.”) This was especially unwelcome news given that “Ms Smith is already being investigated by John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, over her decision to designate her sister’s house in London as her ‘main home’. This allowed her to claim £116,000 on her Redditch constituency house, where her family live, as her ’second home’.”