Tom Ridge announced that the nation's alert level may be lowered back to yellow soon. I guess the imminent terrorist threat is over!

Now that the Presidents' Day sales are over with, the Department of Homeland Security is considering lowering the terrorist threat color code from orange back down to yellow. You can read about it here.

"We learned last year that if we issued warnings about terrorist attacks, we could use the warnings to our advantage and pass whatever legislation we desired," said Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. "Any opposition we could label as un-american or not tough enough on terrorism. Now it looks like we can scare the bejesus out of the american people as well and get them to buy up everything in sight, which is really going to help us get out of this economic slow down. But really, man, we had no idea how successful we would be."

The Secretary then produced a list of items that have been purchased by the american public since the terrorist threat was raised to orange. "We knew that duct tape and plastic sheeting would be a big seller, but we were surprised by some of the other products that the public rushed out to get. Surprised, and ecstatic!"

The items purchased in record quantities this weekend included flashlights, am/fm radios, surgical masks, rubber gloves, soap, and bottled water.

Ridge then said, "we were especially excited about all the gasoline that was purchased this weekend. Traditionally, this is not a big travel weekend, so we believe that people are hoarding larger than normal levels of gasoline simply because we raised the alert level!"

Ridge then went on to say that not all the news was positive. One area of disappointment was the lack of increased purchasing in some of the usual staples, such as canned soup. "We're probably still suffering from the massive purchasing of canned goods before the Y2K. Unfortunately, the people that were duped into buying months and months of canned goods still haven't worked their way through their supplies, and the people that didn't buy canned goods for Y2K aren't falling for this either."

Another area of disappointment was the fact that there actually might be terrorists out there. "That's something we're really going to have to focus on," Ridge said.