Anthrax suspect a member of conservative group

This is a story I've seen only in an Eau Claire, Wisconsin, paper. Most of the media refuses to pick it up.

It turns out Bruce Ivins - the suspect in the deadly 2001 anthrax terrorist attacks who committed suicide last week - was a member of Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, a Religious Right hate group that supports censoring media materials that fail to reflect its values.

Ivins donated heavily to the AFA, especially after the organization defended a Baptist school in Greendale, Wisconsin, that was under investigation over its use of corporal punishment. Investigators think a return address used on the anthrax envelopes may be a reference to that school.

Ivins's letters to the editor of his own local paper espouse very conservative politics, which investigators believe are related to the anthrax mailings to several Democratic senators.

Keep in mind though that Bruce Ivins was an anthrax suspect - not a convict. But if it can be ascertained that he did indeed send anthrax through the mail, the media is going to look awfully stupid for denying what was obvious all along - namely that the series of attacks were right-wing domestic terrorism. I could see that from day one. Instead, the media chose to blame everyone except right-wing domestic terrorists. This is exactly like how the media scapegoated environmentalists for the arson of a new subdivision in Maryland (which turned out to be the work of a white supremacist gang) or how it scapegoated antiwar activists for the Times Square bombing.

Why should I have concluded that the anthrax mailings were right-wing domestic terrorism, while the media was wrong to jump to its conclusions about this and other incidents? It's simple: For one, America's Far Right had a strong track record of lethal terrorism. This is the strain that produced Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, and Eric Rudolph. (If you doubt that the Unabomber was right-wing, his manifesto was strongly critical of the Left.) For another, why would anyone but the American right wing target so many Democratic senators?

I go by evidence and past performance. The other side goes by innuendo and scapegoating. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it. When the pop-up media is wrong, it never corrects itself.

I think the media has some explaining to do.

(Source: http://www.leadertelegram.com/story-news.asp?id=BHDSS6M9EoM)