I just put up a post on Achieving Our Country with more information on Ivins and the anthrax vaccine he was working on. Turns out he is the first named inventor on a patent held by the government and licensed to Vaxgen, which got a contract of over $800 million to produce the vaccine in response to the anthrax attacks.

So yes, I buy that the anthrax attacks were meant as an opportunity to test the vaccine, but the only evidence I see so far is that the government was ready very quickly to throw a lot of money at that vaccine. I'm not yet convinced Ivins was the one who mailed the spores.

Click my name for the full post.

Instead we get Tracy Clark-Flory's sexual escapades and Stephanie Zacharek reviewing "The Mummy 3: TP Your Pee-Pee"?

Stories like this are why Glenn Greenwald needs to be paid double his salary at Salon.

How many stories has Salon done in the past two weeks that are bat themed? This is really quite crass marketing given the target audience.

For some reason I thought that Glenn's column was typical of Salon. Since then my browser directed me to Salon's homepage instead of Greenwald's column a couple of times.

I see he is not. Oh well. I guess that makes us all the luckier to read him here.

(Why doesn't salon allow urls????)

AP article:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hoIfsuWqM7DNKzhcHdaSNvdfQ9ggD929OB981

Ivins could frequently be seen walking around his neighborhood for exercise. He volunteered with the American Red Cross of Frederick County, and he played keyboard and helped clean up after Masses at St. John's the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, where a dozen parishioners gathered Friday after morning Mass to pray for him.

The Rev. Richard Murphy called Ivins "a quiet man ... always very helpful and pleasant."

Imam Yahya Hendi addressed the Roman Catholic community, but in February 2007 (Ivins' letter, which I suspect was Amity-style sarcasm was written in August 2006.)

http://centralmdcatholic.org/calendar/2007/February-07.html

Feb. 25 6PM Adult Faith Formation Imam Yahya Hendi presentation, “Islam & Christianity: Confrontation or Cooperation,”St. Katharine Drexel, McElroy Hall, Frederick. All welcome. $5 donation requested if not enrolled in parish TGIF program.

Maybe the anonymous who knew Dr. Ivins can find out if Dr. Ivins attended, and what he thought about it.

I'm curious. With not one, not two, not three, but four highly-placed sources at the lab that was apparently the source of the attack, I think we have to ask: just how chummy was the ABC journalist with them? Was the communication only one-way and after-the-fact? Or, did their journalist use the neo-cons' well-documented violent rhetoric before-the-fact, suggesting that prominent figures at a rival TV network deserved to die? "Only joking," of course (in the "but really, I think that would be awesome" sense).

If I remember right, some Haloscan commenting systems had a problem with long URLs, either because they had a character limit, or because long URLs interfered with the line-breaks.

Length of URL does not seem to be a factor here, and although your suggestion is kindly and valid, there doesn't seem to be a need for tiny url here.

And I believe it says on the write-a-letters page that not allowing, wait a minute, I'm there: "We do not allow HTML links within the body of the letter (this is to discourage spam postings)".

It's clear that a crime was committed by the anthrax attacks. if it is now known that the anthtrax attacker was employed by the US Government in Maryland, there should be a grand jury investigation and ABC should be subpoenaed to compel disclosure of what they know. ABC's "source" here could very well be the culprit.

The (long) Dark Knight (of the Soul).

Actually, I came to Glenn the exact opposite way. There are a couple of great areas of Salon which I have been visiting regularly. How the World Works always has something interesting, Atoms and Eden is just unparalleled in terms of discussing the endless and often ridiculous (on both sides) science and religeon debate, WarRoom (which used to be a lot better) as a hyper political gossip rag. And once in a while they;ll have a good cultural analysis that isn't stinking with academic ejaculate. But other than that, yeah, its pretty freakin bad. Especially Joan Walsh's column-Democratic shill you may be, but at least be honest about it.

Or you'll find it appearing as a Salon headline by Monday. Unless it has already. I can't keep up.

It's the same reason Ivins did what he did.

And the same reason that he's dead now.

And the same reason he was killed.

And the same reason "congressional Democrats" will NEVER find the "testicular fortitude" to stop any of this madness.

What's the reason? Well, about 400 billion of them have been flushed down the Iraqhole so far, into the waiting pockets of industrialists and their congressional Democrat/Republican/whatever buddies (everyone single one of whom owns plenty of defense industry stock, guaranteed).

What I really want to know is, who here is still desirous of the government confiscating everybody's guns? At the risk of sounding kooky even by Salon standards, I disassociated myself from Obama's campaign based on a single piece of info: his desire to outlaw concealed-carry permits nationwide.

Not that a couple pistols would actually stop whoever will be sent to start rounding us up, but I'd hate to be the first agent who busts through my door.

I just find it curious that Steven Hatfill was paid over $5 million just last month to settle with him over wrongly suspecting him in the attacks. Then Bruce Ivans ends up dead this week, just as he was about to be charged with the crimes. Makes me wonder what would have been brought up in court and how his defense might contain information that would implicate the Bush Administration. There are just too many what-if's swirling around topic. And a big thank you to Glenn for some wonderful writing.

but the story is on Salon's five things, relatively and arguably well placed for notice on the upper right hand side of the screen (story 1) They don't seem to have done their own writing on it, outside of Glenn, however.