I'm trying to piece through how this could have been done without hacking either salon, or the Army's email systems.

The Col's email is guessable, since it follows a fairly conventional first.last@domain.com format.

And the email headers might be spoofable if Salon's mail server doesn't do reverse DNS verification on incoming mail (seeing as it has some kind of antispam system running, I would guess that it does)

And assuming that, someone could figure out the Army's external mail gateway in the header. That's the 214.x.x.x address.

But what couldn't be spoofed or guessed is that 10.70.x.x IP address. That, as many point out is a necessarily internal IP address to the Military's private network, behind its firewall. There is no standard for where on a 10.x internal network an organization must locate its email servers, so that is not guessable with any kind of detailed general knowledge of networking or email.

So it would have to involve internal knowledge of the Army's mail, either through capturing the original emails Glenn was sent or maybe from some other email the Colonel sent.

Even then, this is so unlikely which is why Salon's IT can confirm (at least to Glenn) the security settings on Salon's email, which probably will rule out any kind of spoof.

Most likely answer is still that this is genuine and came from the Col's email account.

This keeps coming up, there is no point to searching out the 10.x addresses on any public web site.

10.x addresses always exist solely as internal IP addresses to organizations. Most large companies will use them. That's why the class A 10.x.x.x block of IP addresses is reserved and not routable on the public internet.

For non-network savy types, when you mail something to a company, and address it like:

3rd Floor

12 main st,

Anytown, NY

11122

The "3rd Floor" is the equivalent of any 10.x IP address. Lots of buildings have 3rd floors. You don't go into a phone book and search on "3rd floor" to find out who owns the address.

That's used by the building's internal mail room to route your mail once it gets past the front door from the US postal service.

Glenn, you are holding back from coming out and saying "Boylan sent the damn email" even though it is blazingly obvious that he did. Particularly with Mona's insight as to his petulant complaint that you are not an adherent of the Russert school of journalism/sycophancy.

And I commend you on your reserve, because the moment Boylan comes out with some kind of categorical denial (however implausible it is now), we will all have to pretend the unstable man didn't really send that disturbing email because he says so and he wears a green suit with shiny things on it, and therefore never lies. Just like his boss, who also never must be accused of dishonesty at risk of congressional sanction.

At this point at least, in my mind the onus is on Boylan to provide evidence he didn't send that email. It is remotely possible he didn't but it requires some unlikely scenarios to have occurred, such as some third party having full knowledge of all your correspondence with the colonel.

Inconcievable!

Honestly, rejecting Mukasey might not be the best thing here. The Solicitor General continues in the job, perhaps behaving better than Gonzales, but certainly not fixing the wrongs of his era.

After Mukasey's defeat, who does Bush nominate? Someone worse. Are the Democrats really prepared to reject nominees until Bush relents and nominates someone willing to actually uphold the law, oppose torture and prosecute contempt of congress?

The real issue is that rejecting Mukasey becomes some kind of proxy for punishing Bush and Cheney, who should be the real targets. So in the absence of a dedicated campaign to roll back all of the Bush abuses, either through impeachment or at least through inherent contempt trials, and refusals to fund objectionable activities - What is the point of rejecting Mukasey, other than a symbolic, and possibly Pyrrhic victory.

If they do it, they have to follow up. Doing it in isolation is actually worse than confirming him (he should not be confirmed with more than 51 votes in any event).

Don't get me wrong, I want that dedicated campaign, and I endorse impeachment tomorrow, but if that isn't going to happen, Mukasey is the best we're going to get.

There is no middle option on this one, if I have read the situation correctly.

That's true. But the effect would be lost if the Dems don't follow up and persist in this.