Moving On

The McCain campaign wants to move on:

By the day’s end, Mr. McCain proclaimed that he did not want to dwell on the issue either, although he repeated his campaign’s central charge that his probable opponent had injected race into their battle.

But we should also remember who started it:

“He brought up the issue of race; I responded to it,” Mr. McCain told reporters in Panama City, Fla. “I don’t want that issue to be part of this campaign. I’m ready to move on. And I think we should move on.”

So when McCain forced to run negative ads with racial overtones, it's because they had no choice, you see.

Tin-Foil Hat Theatre

If this were a movie:

1. Bruce Ivins didn't kill himself.

A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

2. Bruce Ivins didn't send the anthrax.

In her July 24 petition, a copy of which you'll find below, Duley referred to Ivins as a "client" who "has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats & actions towards therapist." Duley added that Ivins's psychiatrist called him "homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions," and that "FBI involved, currently under investigation & will be charged w/ 5 capital murders. I have been subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury August 1, 2008 in Washington, D.C.."

3. If Bruce Ivins did send the anthrax, it wasn't his idea.

In the early days after the letter attacks, in September and October 2001, Dr. Ivins joined about 90 of his colleagues at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in a round-the-clock laboratory push to test thousands of samples of suspect powder to see if they were anthrax. Later, in April 2002, he came under scrutiny in an Army investigation of a leak of potentially deadly anthrax spores outside a sealed-off lab at Fort Detrick. He later admitted he had discovered the leak but not reported it.

Of course, if this were a movie, a packet should be arriving at the New York Times right about now, but I'm sure they'll want to first check with the White House to make sure it's okay to run the story.