Boom Sooner: Shut Yer Mouth

A number of blogs continue to take a beating from some in the mainstream media for daring to suggest something amiss with the Oct. 1 suicide bombing of Joel Hinrichs on the University of Oklahoma campus. Nope, acts of self-destruction such as this one -- held right outside the college stadium on game day -- are more commonplace than anyone thought.

At least you'd think so judging by the tsk-tsking of some self-appointed arbiters of news value. After The Wall Street Journal weighed in with a hatchet job against what it dismissed as conspiracy-mongering blogs, here comes Cathy Young with a "me, too!" for The Boston Globe:

"One fact did understandably trigger suspicion: Two days before his death, Hinrichs had tried to buy ammonium nitrate -- the fertilizer Timothy McVeigh had used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing -- at a local feed store. This had brought him to the attention of the police, and after his suicide, the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force were brought into the investigation. While the investigation is still ongoing, the FBI said on Oct. 4 that it had yet to find any evidence of a terrorist connection.

[...]

"... there were numerous unfounded allegations: that Hinrichs was a Muslim convert and a regular at the [Norman, Okla.] mosque; that he had tried to enter the stadium but run away when a guard wanted to search his backpack; and that Islamic extremist literature and a one-way plane ticket to Algeria had been found in his apartment.

"These claims have been debunked in an Oct. 13 article in The Wall Street Journal ..."

Wrong, Cathy. Saying something is debunked doesn't necessarily make it so. As the FBI apparently told U.S. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, investigators could not determine whether Hinrichs had tried to enter Owen Stadium. Meanwhile, one fact is indisputable: a ticket-taker did tell a local TV station that a young man trying to get into the football game that evening scurried away when he was told his backpack would be checked.

Was that Hinrichs? We might never know if that mystery man was Hinrichs or just some poor schlub trying to smuggle booze into the game. But the fact remains that there is no official "debunking" of that possibility.

Why is it inappropriate to raise questions?