Conspiracy frenzy

Another shocking display of unprofessional reportage. It's pretty clear that once it became known that the suspect who took hostages at Hillary headquarters in New Hampshire was mentally unstable and a conspiracy theorist the race was on among cable and bloggers to find out the brand of nutter he might be. Such is the state of things in America today.

The nonsense wasn't limited to cable and bloggers, though. As the situation was unfolding Rush Limbaugh hinted that Hillary and Bill never do anything by accident, ie, they just might be involved in a publicity stunt. While the Clintons might be perfectly capable of high trickery, to suggest they planted some guy with a fake bomb who then took hostages is pretty conspiratorial itself.

Not to be outdone, after an initial name was floated by a witness the HuffPo actually tried to contact the erroneous suspect, this after just complaining that right wingers had been "stalking" the You Tube Democrat plants. Real champions of privacy they are.

All along the guy was in contact with CNN, still stinging from the You Tube debate criticism. They haven't released the content of those conversations, in other words, we still don't know whether he's a right wing kook or a left wing kook. We can only guess, knowing how the wind blows down there in Atlanta.

Ironically, our mystery conspiracy suspect was in the news in New Hampshire back in March because he was protesting the following intrusion of privacy by the local police:

The plan: checking car doors, and if unlocked, leaving behind a warning flyer.

"It's an outrage, it's an absolute outrage," said Eisenberg in one report. He claimed the intrusion into his Chevy violates the Fourth Amendment, and raised such a fuss that his picture appeared in a local newspaper.

"That's a crime. They violated my civil rights and the rights of many citizens in this city that are not even aware of it," said Eisenberg, who was now asking state and federal authorities to investigate the Rochester police.

Sounds like a reasonable beef from a man with a lot of problems. But to the gotcha artists, just another potential tool.

MORE 12/1/07

A lot is being made out of this AP story. Geez, it's hard to believe this could have been a choreographed stunt as Rush suggested, but c'mon. Do we need to keep a watch on how the justice system treats this guy, or monitor whether he makes a Hsu-like donation?