Discounting 3 for now, would a normal, healthy innocent man kill himself for being hounded and falsely accused, like Hatfill, after he has seen Hatfill collect 5 million bucks?

Because he's not as strong as Hatfill. Because he gives a damn what his colleagues and neighbors think about him. Hatfill has been branded a white supremist and all sorts of things and took it and fought back.

Ivins is a guy that gets vanilla porn delivered to a private mailbox. A girl wearing a blindfold in one magazine article hardly makes for kink, and we know if there was anything really weird in the magagzine, we'd have had that tidbit released, just like the blindfold story.

This was a devout Catholic that had a overly developed sense of shame.

A guy like that could easily kill himself over the embarassment to come.

L.W.M., actually no, I don't see similarities.

Hansen was an egomaniac and thought he was much smarter than everyone else. It appears he enjoyed playing people and being sadistic. He used to send out videos (taped secretly) of himself "subduing" his masochistic wife, who was the very devout Catholic.

IANAP (shrink), but don't people with sociopathic tendencies tend to do all sorts of things that make themselves "look" normal? That includes attending church with their spouse. It makes them appear good to the outside world and that's what matters, not being good, but looking good. This is how I see Hansen.

I've seen no evidence that Ivins was that kind of guy, if anything he appears to be the polar opposite. Insecure, depressed, paranoid and full of shame.

In other words, the kind of guy that kills himself, whether he was guilty or innocent.

I think that both lcr and J.C. Miller said it better than I could.

Nothing presented hints that Ivins was an egomaniac. That Ivins was troubled, depressed, creepy, maybe, but not a brilliant sociopath, and that is the major difference with him and Hannsen.

As far as bucking up and taking what's given to you, that's easy for someone who has a decent ego and solid self esteem. I can be screamed at in a meeting by a client in a rage and it rolls of my back, others I know can't handle it so they don't go to those meetings. On the other hand, my husband can sometimes make me cry with just a slight... We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

Ivins doesn't come off as strong and we all have different breaking points. His was much lower than Hatfill's.

The fact that you don't "get it" probably means you've got a healthy ego (in a good way) and are not in the slightest bit suicidal. You can't rationalize irrational behavoir.

I remember a friend that went to Berkeley. She was having a hard time not always being the smartest in the room and it shook her. She was always the smartest when she was younger, but now she was competing with all straight A students, high achievers, etc. It was an adjustment, but a good one. As a rule, she still was/is one of the smartest in any group. But I know a few that are smarter still.

I remember reading Richard Feynman, in my opinion, one of the smartest men ever (and I wonder if Cargo Cult is also a fan?) paraphrasing here, that no matter who you were, there is always somebody out there that might be better, even in your field of expertise. He was once suprised by an audience member that took an idea from him and went a couple of steps further than Feynman, the Noble prize winner had thought out.

It's okay that L.W.M. knows he smart, he sounds that way to me. It's just that the bar set here by some of you posters is set super high.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I got your snark. I was being sincere, I think that many (most) here are very smart, some here are even "over the top" type of smart. They still need to be questioned, sometimes even they are wrong or can get sidetracked.

So far, what I've seen, the leaked evidence hasn't begun to make me convinced. Frankly, the stuff released about Hatfill was more convincing, yet they've backed away from that theory.

p.s. re: Chris Cooper, I heard him once describe himself as the Oscar winning actor you think you might have seen before. I tend to like his movies myself.

It's a good thing I don't have geliophobia.

I'm actually okay with them not having huge, overpriced affairs.

It would be hypocritical for Libertarians to have the government pay for them to have the spotlight and at the same time provide them lavish food and drinks.

I don't want the Dems to stop "first", but I'd be good with both major party's not getting to spend over 130 million dollars on chest thumping.

It's funny, my husband always gets a bit annoyed when everyone he meets explains to him that they were also going to be a pilot just like him, but their eyes weren't perfect, etc...

I tell him that people just want to share something in common, to be friendly.

Yeah, when I was 12, like so many other girls, I either wanted to be a gymnast, an astronaut or an actress. Heh. I still can admire those fields and think how cool it would have been, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect what it took to be successful, no matter how different the requirements.

And the damn ice trick wasn't that successful either.

And now anything done in my car is frigging uncomfortable, no matter how normal it was at 18....