All I meant was that the otherwise-iffy McBride raised several valid points about the infrastructure here, and your repeated reply was that these are "comments" as opposed to a "forum". To me, this ignores the salient part of the criticism, in favor of an argument based on a prescriptive definition of those two words - thus, a semantic argument. Not particularly powerful or incisive - but also not a big deal, and I didn't mean it as any sort of insult. (BTW: don't even get me started on Symantec bloatware.) -- arrenfrank

I am sorry you took it that way. I was writing for the benefit of Salon itself as well as you. My sad little point was that the bastards like the software this way and that they are not incompetent.

By the way, I hope you will post more now that you have broken cover and no longer lurk about. Many here are old BBS men and we need yet another strong voice to drown out ... :-)

PS: I guess you already have read that Friday's are ladies night and they post naked pictures of themselves as long as no one writes about Ron Paul. ... Opps! Damn.

"I've been watching the cable news channels all day the past few days (your tax dollars hard at work) and no matter who reports on it, no one ever asks what Mr. Ivins's motive was, nor do they ask why Daschle and Brokaw were targeted. Certainly they never report about how the anthrax attack was blamed on Islamist terrorists (or Iraq) back in '01. Oh and by the way, these attacks that used a biological agent created in our own military labs was the biggest reason why I was forced to recieve a potentially harmful vaccine against said substance last year."

---

This is a great point by the active duty yet anonymous marine. The msm (they deserve no capitalization) has not asked many of the hard questions.

I have one that they should ask of themselves. How the hell did the media allow the attacks to be justification for the blatant murder of so many innocent Iraqis? How did they just take Bush's line and spew it forth as gospel 24/7 without ever looking to see if they were a party to a war crime?

Glenn, if you are reading this mess still, I think a post on the msm responsibility for their reporting back then might be in order. It would be great if you could interview a media expert on the radio about that subject.

@sean, we don't know if it was Ivin's or his wife that was interested in the AFA. I donate to NOW and other organizations that my husband is more neutral on...but because it's NOW, they write the requests for donations to me directly, not my husband (g). On the other hand, if my mother-in-law wanted to sign up for something, like a magazine, she always called herself either "Mrs. Husband's Father" or sometimes "Mr. & Mrs. Husband's Father", she didn't use her own name, even twenty years after his death.

The AFA in the late 90's were mainly railing against indecency in the media (particularly rap lyrics) and many people at the time strongly agreed with them. I seem to remember Tipper Gore getting on the bandwagon, even if she didn't join AFA. One of the AFA's tried and true ways to raise money in the old days was to regularly quote, and be offended by, Howard Stern.

I guess that I read Ivin's letters to the editor and see something else, like the fact that Ivin's thought women should be able to be priests and that homosexuality had a genetic component. The latter in particular would not sit well with the fundie Christians.

I read Ivin's comment about Muslims was a "Did you hear Osama has anthrax...." holy shit type comment, a "those guys really hate us and Jews" freak out. Many people at the time were scared of that news, a neighbor of mine even opened her mail with rubber gloves on outside. Here's this guy, who worked with anthrax being shocked to think a terrorist had access to it. The media was reporting that falsehood and it appears that Ivin's, like many others, believed the media's reports.

Again, Ivin's very well may have done it and the technical, physical evidence would be/will be what convinces me. But this stuff (letters and emails) being presented as evidence of a motive or instability seems unconvincing at best.

Most people will reach verdicts guided by their general views on America's federal institutions - if you are inclined to trust government agencies, then you will accept their view on Ivins' sole responsibility for these terrible crimes. If you are not, you will probably be sceptical.

Says the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7548490.stm

Seems to me the FBI is operating in the 9/11 mode, when a majority of the country would believe whatever the government said and would actively shout down as traitor anyone who didn't agree.

But seems the country has moved beyond that (how I hope!) and e.g. today's NPR lead story was Ivins' lawyer Paul Kemp's skepticism about the whole government case.

That was the title and subject of an email that I received this morning. The address and domain were as follows:

Seattle.division at FBI dot gov

I didn't open it. I blocked the domain name. Anyone else get such an email? Anyone have any clue as to why an email such as that would be sent to me, or if the email is bogus or not?

I didn't open it. I blocked the domain name. Anyone else get such an email? Anyone have any clue as to why an email such as that would be sent to me, or if the email is bogus or not?

-- Kitt

Have you been posting on that evil Greenwald's blog? :-)

If you want, you could forward it to me and I'll look at it while using one of my test OS partitions. In Linux, we usually have little to fear from a worm or virus from the letter if it is a scam.

Let me know.