Nice try, but Glenn asked me not to engage an idiot like you on that subject as it detracts from the work.

So, I'll just ask what other country of that time period needed a bloody war of brother against brother to end slavery? No historian has ever found one yet, perhaps they are also idiots.

Does the figure 600,000 mean anything to you Lincoln worshipers? Lincoln violated the constitution, just like Bush. I guess you love them both.

PS: Glenn, just this one and I'm done on the fool's Lincoln fantasies.

Thank you for the detailed and ongoing analysis of this case. This is the sort of connecting the dots work everyone touts you for and it is refreshing to see in a case that is so clearly screwed up and suspicious in the MSM.

I'm interested in all of the facts and pertinent characters but particularly how this affects ongoing events in politics. Tying the attacks to Iraq beefed up the case for war and an early drum beater on this was McCain (as seen in that video clip you posted yesterday.) With this whole mess it is not just a matter of figuring out what happened and the FBI case but about our ongoing political future and the leaders who exploited the horrible crimes to build a case for war against a country that did not attack us and was not an immediate threat.

Since the government's case is reportedly all circumstantial, I assume there was no evidence he wrote those "anthrax letters," which would exonerate him. Absolutely, the perp may have altered his style, but the consistency of handwriting in all the letters makes me think that's not the case.

That site: www.teachingamericanhistory.org/

Is part of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University.

http://www.ashbrook.org/

It must be an iniquitous den of rabid, warmongering neocons or leftists! Same difference!

It is to laugh.

Later.

I may have missed it, there have only been three bilion posts here since Friday, but...

Putting to one side, momentarily, all the other intriguing unanswered questions, I have this one:

Did the FBI ask Ross to identify who supposedly told him that there was bentonite in the anthrax?

I see where Ross asked the FBI to "release" him from a "confidentiality" pledge regarding Hatfill, but that appears to involve the suspicions over Hatfill. I see where the FBI has been so very diligent in its "investigation". I also certainly see where the false information provided to ABC News about a supposed "bentonite/Iraq link" was as, if not more, disastrous for the United States than even the anthrax attacks themselves were.

So does Ross contend that he has refused to disclose the "sources" of the bentonite lie even when requested to do so by the United States government during the "official" investigation? GG's initial post here actually says only that ABC News is continuing not to disclose the answer, and rightly points out that whoever said this to Ross was not a "source" so much as a criminal [fraudulent propagandist?].

And if Ross has never been asked, by the FBI or other government investigators, what four (four?) "informed government sources" told him there was bentonite in this anthrax, suggesting Iraqi origin, why not? Not interested in knowing the answer to this? Maybe they can mention the answer to the "bentonite lie" when they give their "closing briefing" in the Ivins matter?

If I missed this information, sorry.

The Baltimore Post

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/crime/bal-te.md.ivins03aug03,0,1282203.story

or click on sig

"Members of the Ivinses' immediate family hadn't lived in Lebanon since the early 1980s. According to Bruce Ivins' eldest brother, Tom Ivins, he came to town to move their father, T. Randall Ivins, to Maryland after he wrote a $10,000 check to a woman who had befriended him."

"After completing his doctorate at the University of Cincinnati, Bruce Ivins is believed to have returned to the county seat of about 20,000 only to sell the house and attend his father's funeral.

"Bruce Ivins was so seldom present that the "Memory Lane" columnist for the local weekly newspaper, The Western Star, once erroneously reported that he had died. The author corrected the error in a subsequent column.

"Bruce Ivins' mother died in 1970. Tom Ivins said that Bruce was at her side in the hospital. Randall Ivins closed the drugstore soon thereafter, and Bruce sold the family home - which locals say his father had built to resemble a house he saw in France - in the mid-1980s.

----

and from the beginning of the article:

"The agents said Bruce Ivins, 62, the youngest son of the town's long-deceased druggist, had faked his death. And they wanted to know everything about him and his family."

Go, Glenn! The geography sure hasn't hurt your work. Great writing and exemplary sourcing. Can you give us a sense of the mass information scene and civil liberties vis a vis the US, if the language barrier isn't too much of an impairment? Are you talking to local bloggers and indy media folk? Talk about being in the hot scene. Forget Beijing. Give us Rio! And all the other hemisphere got was boring old Obama.

There has certainly been an air of "holier than thou" among all branches of the military. The stench of this affair should at least cause some of those uniformed and non-uniformed military servants to take time to pause and think. If they are not at least going to ask some questions about this affair, they could at least cut the "patriotism" crap and say, "hey, we are just here for a paycheck to pay the mortgage." That's really all I ask.

I actually think you may be more intelligent than hu-hu.

He is a person that hates government so much, he will believe any fantasy, revisionist junk history or conspiracy theory that puts government in a bad light. He goes so far as to call Abraham Lincoln a "Tyrant," a monster and a champion of oppression by making up myths to create false heroes out of the tyrants and oppressors Lincoln crushed.

He saw newspaper reports of the period that prove his assertions! And we all know how reliable the press is.

I just look at the words of his heroes:

Alexander H. Stephens, Jefferson Davis' Vice President's infamously revealing and aptly titled Cornerstone Speech, delivered on March 21, 1861 in Savannah, Georgia in which he stated that the American Revolution had been based on a premise that was "fundamentally wrong." That premise was, as Stephens defined it, "the assumption of equality of the races."

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth... They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=76

John C. Calhoun's ridiculous attack on the Declaration of Independence in the odious Oregon Bill Speech:

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=944

And Calhoun in another speech: "With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black..."

With our convictions and our strength, emancipation here is an impossibility to man, whether by persuasion, purchase or coercion. The Rock of Gibraltar does not stand so firm on its basis as our slave system.

James H. Hammond, U.S. Senator from South Carolina from a speech delivered at Barnwell Court House, Oct. 27, 1858

And confederate currency of the period, replete with depictions of slavery featured prominently on it. Both sides.

http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/beyondfacevalue/beyondfacevalue.htm

But he is a champion of freedom and liberty. I say he is a nutbar. You are welcome to join him. Makes no difference to me.