The Blue Dogs continue to hide behind the brand of "fiscal responsibility", with the help of this WSJ piece ("The Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats has continued to gain influence".

The article fails to explain how preservation of the bill of rights is a "liberal issue", and fails to explain how spying on the American people is a "fiscal issue".

What the blue dogs actually are is a wedge of conservatives within the majority that facilitate and enable GOP and George Bush policy. They're the GOP 5th column.

I do like the graphic though. Nice representation of what the "Democratic Majority" actually is, and means.

You can't rule out coincidence, or at least you'll have to address it.

1.This is a period of five months, over a very broad geographical area--at least three countries. Two of those countries are very large themselves. In the United States, those deaths occured over a very large geographic area within huge population centers.

2. When you take away the fact that they were involved in biological research, the actual focus of their work wasn't related in some cases. Que's field of work is not mentioned in any report I saw, which indicates a reach to me. Pascechnik was researching viruses, another intestinal bacteria. And on.

http://www.amconmag.com/pdfissue.html?page=6&Id=AmConservative-2008aug25&s=medium#p

"The FBI claims to have caught the killer. But so much evidence has been neglected or mishandled that many experts still have doubts.

By Christopher Ketcham"

He just took me to school.

I wonder now if the Russian Army will simply stay in Georgia indefinately.

Nice work. It is odd, isn't it, that most people have a far greater knowledge of the OJ Simpson and Peterson and Levy cases than of the anthrax attacks - maybe they should assign all their celebrity-chasers to the anthrax story?

After scouring a bit for the story of the Oct 9th letters, all that I could find was this:

The government says the anthrax letters were mailed from a postal mail box at 10 Nassau Street in Princeton New Jersey. The two letters sent to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy were postmarked on October 9, 2001. The post mark bore a time stamp of 5:45P. That means the letters had to have been put in the mail box during a window of opportunity - which according to the pick up schedule of the postal box in question was between Saturday Oct 6th (after 3PM) and until Tuesday October 9th. The mail was not collected on Sunday or Monday October 8, 2001 because of the Columbus Day holiday that Monday. The mail from that box was picked up on Tuesday October 9, hence the October 9th post mark on the letters.

So where was Dr. Bruce Ivins on those days? The FBI, Postal Inspectors and the full weight of the US government investigative agencies cannot determine that. Despite all the allegations and evidence presented to date, the government has not presented a single piece of evidence as to where Dr. Ivins was on those dates.

The only evidence the FBI seems to have uncovered about Dr. Ivins whereabouts at the time in question is that he was in the lab at Fort Detrick until 12:45AM on Saturday October 6th. They again provide evidence that he was again at work at the lab on October 9th in the evening.

The missing extended weekend of October 6th through the 8th is a massive hole in their case. The drive from Fort Detrick, MD to Princeton New Jersey is about 3 1-2 hours. So far the FBI and the U.S. Government have no “evidence” that they have shown where Dr. Ivins was when the letters were mailed.

So, the FBI has released zero information about the Oct 9th letters (link at signit).

Also, note that there is zero evidence that the 9/18 letters were mailed from Princeton NJ. The spores found in the Princeton box were from the Oct 9th letter, and the 9/18 letters apparently contained a less potent formulation - but since the FBI hasn't released the full forensics reports from the 9/18 New York Post letter and the 10/9 Daschle letter (or the 10/9 Leahy letter), no one can say.

And now it appears that even the targets of the attacks have become schizophrenic; evidenced by this gem of double-speak just published in the NYTimes:

"Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle -- one of the targets of the 2001 anthrax attacks -- said Monday that FBI evidence against Army scientist Bruce Ivins is convincing, but he is not completely persuaded that the investigation focused on the right person." (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Anthrax-Investigation.html)

He did report the spill:

Ivins Told Ethics Officer About Anthrax Clean-up

by Eric Umansky - August 5, 2008 6:03 pm EDT

Tags: Anthrax, Bruce Ivins, FBI, Fort Detrick

Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

When the Los Angeles Times first broke the story that the government had been "about to file charges" in the anthrax case, it pointed to a few pieces of apparent evidence against Bruce Ivins. Perhaps most damning was this:

Ivins, employed as a civilian at Ft. Detrick, earlier had attracted the attention of Army officials because of anthrax contaminations that Ivins failed to report for five months. In sworn oral and written statements to an Army investigator, Ivins said that he had erred by keeping the episodes secret -- from December 2001 to late April 2002. He said he had swabbed and bleached more than 20 areas that he suspected were contaminated by a sloppy lab technician.

The detail about Ivins' apparent failure to report anthrax contamination was picked up by too many news outlets to count.

But a tidbit buried in today’s Wall Street Journal offers a slightly different take on the episode. Countering the vast expanses of anonymice-filled coverage, the Journal talks to a named source, Col. Arthur Anderson, who it turns out says Ivins quickly told him about the clean-up:

http://www.propublica.org/article/ivins-told-ethics-officer-about-anthrax-clean-up-80

Crust1 asks why the FBI is adamant on saying Ivins acted alone. Why don't they admit if he was involved, he had to have partners? Well it seems to me that the FBI is very eager to close this case. They aren't interested in saying he had accomplices, because then they'd have to continue investigating. As Gerald Posner (investigatve journalist) said on Countdown with Olberman, Ivins had no expertise in making weapons grade anthrax and no way of making it. Ivins couldn't of acted alone (if he was involved at all), and the FBI has to know that. I just can't believe the FBI is as incompetent as they are making themselves out to be in this case. So why are they so desperate to close this case? We need to know the answer to that question. But I fear we will never get it. Anyone know if Congress will investigate?