(Off my post this morning)

The case against that guy arrested in New York City yesterday and charged with plotting to blow up U.S. targets, including American soldiers returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of preparing to launch a one-man holy war in New York City — 27-year-old unemployed ‘lone wolf‘ Jose Pimentel — was apparently considered way-too dicey and not serious-enough for the FBI.
Hence, Pimentel was arraigned on state, not federal charges.

From TPM this afternoon:

The 27-year-old accused of plotting to attack New York with pipe bombs was operating a website that espoused his beliefs in committing terror against the U.S. and was relatively well known in law enforcement circles.
Federal authorities passed on the case — with one source telling TPM on Sunday night that the FBI passed several times, and an official telling the Associated Press on Monday that Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own.”
That’s leaving observers wondering what exactly the feds didn’t like about the case and setting up another squabble in the long-running turf war between the New York Police Department and the FBI.

In the scope of modern life, hard to imagine anything more dangerously dumb.
And incompetently useless.

The tale sounds like the bullshit in September when Mansour Arbabsiar, a naturalized US citizen with an Iranian passport from Corpus Christi, Texas, a failed used-car salesman, “sort of a hustler,” though, “no mastermind,” and “was likable, albeit a bit lazy,” was charged this time by the FBI with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in a Washington DC restaurant.
And Mr. Arbabsiar was supposed to do this via a complicated plot involving murderous Mexican drug lords and Iran.

On more occasions nowadays, reality seems to have taken a holiday.