OK, then, did HE choose the targets -- or did someone else?

Pardon me if my Spidey-sense starts tingling just a little bit with this news:

A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.

OK, let me first ask this; How did he get a massive dose of prescription Tylenol with codeine? Anyone who's ever been prescribed codeine in any form knows that you only get the bare minimum that you need.

OK, I'll buy that the government's claim after settling with Steven Hatfull that they were "making significant progress" means they were closing in on this guy. I'll even buy that a scientist would commit suicide before going to prison for sending anthrax-laced letters to Americans. But what gets the Spidey-sense going is this: Why these targets?

A quick Google search reveals almost nothing on Bruce E. Ivins other than articles about his suicide and some research papers on post-exposure vaccination. No ties to wingnut groups, nothing suspicious -- except that nagging problem of the nature of the targets of the attacks. Not a conservative in the bunch, and all of them people or buildings associated with people vexing to George W. Bush. I'm not going to put the tinfoil on just yet, but there is a very slight odor coming from this news.

UPDATE: Richard Blair isn't afraid to don his tinfoil chapeau, and makes a compelling case that something about all this doth stinketh to high heaven.