At 5:15 a.m. ET, ABC News reported that the Yemeni government has confirmed that American-born Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen.

Further ABC News reports from White House correspondent Jake Tapper reveal that there had been a “flurry of activity” on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Anwar Al-Awlaki, the terrorism suspect who was controversially placed on the United States’ kill or capture list (the first US citizen to be so “honored”), has been killed, according to reports confirmed by government officials. Al-Awlaki was killed by a US missile strike in Yemen, near the Saudi border. A high-level operative of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al-Awlaki was linked to the Fort Hood shooting, and unsuccessful underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

In a spectacular act of courage, the Yemeni woman in the below video walks unflinchingly and with her arms raised in peace towards Republican Guard forces as they shoot warning shots just over her head. She is intercepted just before reaching the guards, but shaky footage of the confrontation has since caught wind on YouTube and Twitter and the woman has been hailed as a feminist and a hero.

It’s been two-weeks of non-stop [Rep.] Weiner coverage, and many in the media are feeling the fatigue. Needless to say, as the only person physically maimed by the scandal, Jon Stewart was paramount among them today, and chose to ignore the scandal completely today and instead cover other stories that were pushed aside this week. He needed a bit of help, however, and so used a spinning wheel of hot topics to find them, with a strategically-placed dildo as its pointer.

President Obama confirmed that packages found on airplanes that originated from Yemen, contained explosive material. In a statement made in the White House briefing room, and covered on all networks, Obama called the most recent news of quarantined UPS airplanes “a credible terrorist threat” and that that he was first briefed on the threat on Thursday night.

Today’s New York Times dropped a massive piece on the United States’ expanding “shadow wars” in nearly a dozen countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa — wars that have gone on largely unannounced and unnoticed by the American public.

Today marks the auspicious launch of Tucker Carlson‘s The Daily Caller, and in light of Carlson’s insistence that they’re not out “to grind any axes,” I was a little bit surprised by a front page story that said of the Underwear Bomber “he was ‘singing like a canary’ until the Obama administration read him his rights.” I wanted to double-check the facts on that, but when I asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about The Daily Caller, he said “What’s that?”

This holiday weekend featured news of not just one, but two potential terror attacks. Had this happened during the Bush Administration, we would have had a steady diet of Tom Ridge and color-coded terror alert system bars. Under President Obama — we finally see him speak three days after news broke. Were we better off with or without the color bars (and all that came with it?) Or put another way, should we be freaking out right now or not?

It’s a good week to hate on the TSA. After thanking God that would-be terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt to blow up Northwest Fligth 253 on Christmas Day, the focus has shifted to the colossal, multiple failures of the system on that day (Flying even though he was on a watch list? [...]

Yahoo! Buzz, the search engine’s Digg-like social bookmarking site, seems to be confused about the difference between Nigeria, the country, and the racial epithet of sort of similar spelling. In a link to an AP story, the blurb used to tease the article begins: “A n****ian man’s claim that his attempt to blow up a U.S. plane originated with al-Qaida’s network inside Yemen…” N****ian, really?