Ray Suarez is interviewing Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch. Around Hatch's neck is a Hawaiian lei of purple flowers.

While ongoing terror in Iraq and the sudden horrors of Chechnya have been dominating the news, al-Qaeda, despite ongoing crackdowns, appears to be back in the ring for another round of terror.

First, earlier this week the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC - the name is French so the acronym does not match the translation) appointed Abou Mossab Abdelwadoud as its new leader. Abdelwadoud, a renown bombmaker, replaces Nabil Sahraoui who was killed in the Algerian army's June offensive.

Adbelwadoud was one of the signatories of last year's declaration of a GSPC-al-Qaeda alliance. But GSPC and al-Qaeda go way back. Al-Qaeda helped fund the GIA, the original Algerian Islamist terrorist group (the GIA broke off from the Islamic Salvation front in the early 1990s over whether the ultimate goal was elections or immediate establishment of an Islamist state.) The GIA has the horrible distinction of being so evil (both for mass murder of Muslims and for finding a religious justification for rape under the auspices of "forced temporary marriages") that bin Laden repudiated them.

Because the GIA was becoming so unpopular, bin Laden funded factions opposed to the GIA leadership. In 1998 this group split off from the GIA and formed the GSPC. The GSPC included the extensive support networks among the Algerian diaspora in Europe (and beyond.) This network has been critical to al-Qaeda's operations worldwide.

No doubt, Abdelwahdoud will attempt to establish himself through a renewed terror campaign. There has already been a reported uptick in Islamist activity in Algeria

Watching the parade of white guys known as the Republican Convention on Public TV one absence strikes close to home.

I really miss Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In the Ken Burns baseball series she told a story about how as a little girl in Brooklyn she had a good-natured disagreement with the neighborhood butcher over the Dodgers and Giants. One year, when her favorite stumbled at the end of the season she was so embarrassed that she could no longer show her face there. After a week, they sent a note through her father, "Come back Red, we miss you."

I know Goodwin was taken off PBS for some plagiarism, but I miss her - she was the only one who could steal the stage from the pompous Michael Beschloss.