Thomas Merton, Christian Mystic

http://www.mertoncenter.org/

Nothing abominable about him.

Lawyers and Religions. If they ask you for money just for a consult - walk away fast.

I raised the question of handwriting here on Monday.

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/04/anthrax/permalink/98f64e343965784e48575ff80be1e92f.html

I am glad to see that this issue has gotten more notice. It certainly seems from the press conference that FBI was NOT able to match the Anthrax letter handwriting with Ivins' handwriting.

But, I sure would like a lot more information than in the statements at World Net Daily http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=71721

~~Casting further doubt on the FBI's anthrax case, accused government scientist Bruce Ivins passed two polygraph tests and a handwriting analysis comparing samples of his handwriting to writing contained in the anthrax letters, U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say.

[snip]Also, officials confirm that FBI handwriting analysts were unable to conclusively match samples of Ivins' handwriting with the writing on the anthrax envelopes and letters,~~~

WHO exactly are these officials? What is the source of the information provided in the World Net Daily? Is this a repeat/ reprashing (re: the handwriting) of what Taylor and others said at the Press Conference, or is there a separate, independent source for the handwriting information?

@Derbig

What are you up to?

I was basically saying, given the fact that your link was so wacky

That's not me, LWM. I love wacky links. And I'm totally immune to anthrax. Brucellosis, now that worries me. Damn buffalo!

And I am the very last person to doubt that Hebrew has a powerful effect on things and people.

Shut up already

I have enough experience of you to know that if I say anything else, you'll pull out the victim card and start blubbering so fast it'll make my head spin.

You might notice, oomex, that the more qualified and educated the poster, the less they talk down to, make summary judgements on, or attempt to dominate the conversation. They also don't make wild trolling accusations. At least imitate someone like that, or give us your name and vitae and I'll be suitably impressed. You can count on it.

does it again.

Monday, August 4, 2008
Serious

http://insideoutthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/08/serious.html

Personal favorite:

Suddenly, he jumps up to his feet, and the circus bugles erupt with a "ta da!" A stadium monitor above McCainzo suddenly cuts to a shot of the audience of journalists and pundits - seeing themselves, they explode again into applause.

@seanmcbride, I think GG does a good job in an update of this article of addressing the whole "Death to America" thing. Especially when you see the email in question Ivin's wrote was a "I just heard..." kind of thing regarding an area of his particular expertise.

By the way, if you redact most of this post, this too has the same offending phrase.

@omooex, I had a friend who was seriously harassed by a nutjob. She kept wanting to know "why?, why her? what did he want?". Finally the counselor told her to stop trying to rationilize irrational behavoir. As I see it, suicide is usually irrational, too.

@yablonowitz, please stop staring at the floor, even if the image makes me smile. For some reason I have to spell the word "from" as "form" 50% of the time. I usually don't find a way to work in the word circumcized, so it's not as big of a problem.

seems to me that we could spend the rest of our lives deconstructing this fbi amatuer sideshow. maybe we sould start thinking about other narrative possibilities

http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/anthrax_espionage.html

or maybe, not let the sideshow distract us from Suskind's crucial link to the BushFelons...

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2008/08/07/barnicle-suskind-book-charges-bush-cheney-4000-murders

bottom line: do you think that the fbi is NOT going to close this case? are we wasting our time with this or what?

Does anyone know when the first anthrax letter was reported to authorities? Not when it was tested postive for anthrax, but when the first person opened it, read it, and called authorities?

I want to know if it was before or after Dr. Ivins' Sept 26 email. Regardless, I think the email is not particularly suspicious (as long as one doesn't cut the phrase "I just heard tonight" and lie about its timing). I would like ot know if the feds have lied not only about the email's timing, and deleted an important phrase, but also knew that the authorities already had known about an anthrax letter by then.

The mail room in the publishing complex was found to be contaminated.

Similarly 2 of the network letters were never recovered.

So we don't know what they said or what, if any, identifiers they or their envelopes contained.

I believe additionally no one "remembers" opening them ...

Handwriting analysis or graphology with forensic or questioned document analysis and examination. There is a difference. I wouldn't think this is such a big deal that they can't conclusively match the the anthrax letters, limited as they are, to exemplars of Ivins' known writings, cursive or print. The question is did they ever ask him to print out the messages on the anthrax letters.

The first letter that was recovered was found on October 12, although several infections were known by that time. A good summary of the letters is here:

http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/detect/antdetect_letters_a.htm

The FBI's "evidence" against the deceased is (a) selective, (b) entirely circumstantial, (c) thinner than toilet paper, and (d) answers none of the critical questions that would reassure us that more anthrax-laced mail won't be popping up in the future.

There's a lot of technical aspects to the case and material that don't translate easily for those without a background in either forensics or chemistry. And gods know neither the FBI nor the DOJ nor the entire Executive Branch have earned the slightest bit trust on this or any other issue.

Perhaps the critical question is whether these 'revelations' are actually going anywhere, or is this a case of the tail wagging the dog?