This is making me nuts. I really think all this mucking about with IP addresses and speculation is nonsense. Glenn published the letter in good faith: for all practical purposes and by any reasonable standard, there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the original email. If it was fabricated, the onus is certainly on Boylan to say so clearly, in which case a clarification should be published. Absent such a direct denial, there is no reason to provide this level of cover for him. One does not, for example, question whether a phone call originated from false number where someone is using a voice synthesizer. That is is an extraordinary assumption--as is the doubt about the email. By what reasonable standard do reporters need to be computer hackers every time they receive a statement?

In the meantime, I don't know why Glenn is tolerating waiting for Boylan to come clean or relying on his statements to third parties. Go over his head: the Army has a responsibility to address this, and they should be pressed to do so. It was actually a terrible mistake even to raise the possibility of a "faked" email, since it gave Boylan an excuse on a silver platter. Of course he took it. Again, he could have sent an alarmed email, and no doubt would have, if the message had been faked, Absent that, it should have been left to stand and the discussion could have focused on the content--not this useless speculation.

-Joe

Enjoy it--and then get the heck out of town. It's not cooler than cool Austinites who disparage this festival, it's those of us who have to live with, drive around, wait for, and generally avoid the ever increasing number of "cultural" festival disruptions year after year so the bars can rake it in. There ought to be more to a place than going along with every Chamber of Commerce scheme to prostitute the city's image for one sector of the economy.

Have to agree with Glenn. A great NYT article, but I felt let down by the failure to follow up harder on the media itself. Only a fool would have trusted those Generals in the first place as far as objectivity--though some, like McCafffery seem to have gotten quite a ride as such. The real story is the complicity of the media in psychological warfare against US citizens.

...at this address:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/alec+macgillis/

It's the link to email the "reporter" Glenn references.

Frank Luntz organized the focus group? Do you even know who he is? It's no coincidence that Luntz, a GOP functionary, should pop up in yet another inane discussion about what "undecided voters" are thinking (I count exactly 1 as the basis of this lightweight article). Anyone who can't make up their mind at this point between the policies of these parties (excluding for the moment the very reasonable choice of refusing both corrupt corporate entities) is so wretchedly imbecilc there really aren't words for it--and that goes double for those who couch their confusion in these moronic emotional terms. The real GOP strategy , of course, has long been to lower political discourse to the level of these marginal, slow-witted and late to react cretins. Way to play into that dismal trend.

Glenn deserves huge credit for covering this story. I don't see why his many readers, with Glenn's organizing help perhaps in terms of posting some contact info, should not mount an organized response: phone calls to Minnesota officials, filing of FOIA requests (plus whatever the MN statute is for release of records), letters to editors of local papers, calls to the police department itself...

It's too bad the Obama campaign has decided to go this route. There's no excuse for lending an air of credibility to what is nothing more than a GOP-corporate propaganda outlet. There's a responsibility to public discourse that goes way beyond whatever problems the campaign itself may have with Faux News. It's a betrayal, plain and simple.

Friedman found another parade to jump in front of? So fucking what? Who cares if this one's got some use...this billionaire is as phony as as they come.

It's probably wise, despite the temptation, never to mention O'Reilly's show or what happens on it. He's not even a right-wing pundit; he's a sad sack with a narcissistic personality disorder. Can we just stop paying attention to these pathological types?

...jumps from the thinking ship. Buckley's sad little rundown of his political "philosophy"--ridiculously at odds with very modern Republican administration (balanced budget?)--shows just how corrupt conservatism has become. Forget about the GOP, can we just drop the idea that there is some mythical "true, good" old conservatism. What do they refer to? Supply side economics? Opposition to the New Deal? When have these plutocrats ever done anything but back a few narrow capitalist interests, for the sake of the own wealth, then wrap it up in T.S Eliot's culture bullshit or now "libertarianism"?

When that stopped flying at the polls they tied themselves to the radical faux-populist evangelist movement, and now they've been eaten by the wolf they rode in on. Fuck this boarding school loser, and fuck his daddy too.

What else do you call a presidential candidate who hired the team that, when they worked for Bush in S. Carolina, smeared his own *wife and daughter*? What else do you call a man who pretends to repudiate the Ayers slur even as he keeps disseminating it? He won't take responsibility for bringing it up even now--it's Obama's fault--even as he says he's doing to defend his would-be honor. And even then hedges on whether he will or not.

Either he won't do the right thing because it costs him or he won't stand up for what he says he believes. He's as weak as they come--and I don't see how his POW experience proves otherwise.