EGYPT UPDATE – AT 7:24 P.M. ET:  President Obama, who was on a nothing trip to Michigan today, hurried back to Washington and huddled with his national security team.

You can be sure that Item One on his agenda was the fact that, once again, we had bad intelligence information.  A speech given by Mr. Obama earlier implied that Mubarak would be gone and joining AARP late in the day.  It didn't happen, once again making the president look foolish.

Oh, by the way, our heroic national intelligence director, James Clapper, who recently didn't know about a critical series of anti-terror arrests in Britain, appeared before a congressional committee today and announced that the Muslim Brotherhood was essentially a secular organization.  That begs the question:  Why is it called the Muslim Brotherhood?

Within a few hours the administration, in a rare rebuke, corrected Clapper's whackiness in a statement issued, obviously under direction, by his own office:

"To clarify Director Clapper's point, in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood makes efforts to work through a political system that has been, under Mubarak's rule, one that is largely secular in its orientation. He is well aware that the Muslim Brotherhood is not a secular organization," DNI spokesperson Jamie Smith said.

I'm not so sure he's aware at all...of that or pretty much anything else. 

"They're as secular as Billy Graham and the pope are secular," former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said.

In Egypt, public anger over Mubarak's failure to step down remains strong, with commentators looking toward tomorrow.  As we've noted, that's the start of the Egyptian weekend, and it's prayer day.

Some members of the regime, like the Egyptian ambassador to Washington, are seeking to soften the Mubarak non-resignation by saying that he really doesn't have any power left.  The demonstrators aren't buying the line. 

February 10, 2011