Michelle Malkin, Mark Tapscott, The Jawa Report, John Hinderaker and others are continuing to ask questions about the Hinrichs bombing mystery -- and that's in the face of recent attempts to smear and scold the blogosphere as the source of conspiracy theories about which most bloggers (including me) have been very skeptical.

Most remarkable is the criticism of bloggers for reporting and commenting on the only hard news reports they had, such as reports from local Oklahoma television. Here's Michelle Malkin:

The notion that Hinrichs might have been influenced by Islamist ideology got off the ground in large part because of information reported by Oklahoma City television stations. The story about Hinrichs' visits to a local mosque was particularly important; it was broken by a local TV station that still stands by its report. The story that Hinrichs tried to enter the stadium also was broken by the same local TV station.

Blaming bloggers for attempting to get to the bottom of this very elusive story should not distract anyone from the fact that there remain two major problems:

The latest is the flurry of reporting about the suicide note Hinrichs allegedly wrote. We are told that the "note" (text on a screen, apparently) was one of the first things that investigators saw, yet until this latest flurry, all reports agreed that there was "no suicide note."

According to this report about the note, the investigators found it as soon as they arrived at Hinrichs' apartment:

NORMAN, Okla. -- The University of Oklahoma student from Colorado who died after detonating an explosive device near a packed football stadium left a message on his computer that he was going to quit living, his father said.

The FBI read the message to the father of Joel Henry Hinrichs III on Friday, after Joel Henry Hinrichs Jr. came to Oklahoma to clear out his son's university-owned apartment.

The younger Hinrichs, 21, had a reputation as a loner and had struggled at times with his grades.

Joel Hinrichs Jr. said he understood investigators found the message on the computer screen when they arrived at the apartment.

"It was a single line of text on his computer," his father told The Oklahoman. "The cursor was still blinking at the end."

The elder Hinrichs, of Colorado Springs, said he could not recall the exact wording but said his son used profanity in the message and was obviously very angry.

I guess it's now my responsibility to try to make sense out of this "news," lest I be accused of being a "conspiracy theorist." It's amazing to me (as someone who has been skeptical from day one about every source, whether WorldNetDaily, the MSM, the "Northeast Intelligence Network") that even skepticism can be seen as conspiracy theorizing. In point of fact, I distrust every report I have seen, just as I distrust this latest one about the suicide note. This is some of the most squalid journalism I have ever seen, and whole affair resembles constantly shifting sands. To not be skeptical you'd have to be brain dead.

But let's continue:

"He wrote he was dissatisfied with the situation and was going to quit living," the father said.

Investigators have said they may never know whether the student wanted to get inside the stadium. The student did not have a season ticket.

FBI officials also have said the investigation has not found any links between the student and terrorist organizations.

Joel Henry Hinrichs Jr. said he thinks his son was committing suicide and never intended to hurt anyone else.

Am I allowed to be skeptical about both versions of this "getting inside" story without being accused of conspiracy theorizing? The fact is, I don't know what the true story is, and I don't think anybody does.

The Oklahoma Daily has a different version of the story:

The father of an OU student who died Oct. 1 when a bomb exploded outside of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium said his son left a very disturbing suicide note on his computer.

Joel Henry Hinrichs Jr. said the FBI showed him evidence that his son Joel acted alone in the explosion and never intended to hurt other people. Hinrichs said he doesn't remember the exact text.

“The line of text on his computer was short, but it was to the point, very vulgar, and it was a sort of farewell,” Hinrichs said.

I am sure that almost anyone who has ever owned a computer knows that a cursor will "blink" wherever you put it. If it is blinking at the end of a passage of text, it will remain there, blinking forever until the computer is turned off. Presumably, if, when they first visited the apartment, the FBI saw the cursor "blinking" at the end of the last line of text Hinrichs wrote, they would have noted that immediately, and informed not only the father but also the press that they'd found an electronic suicide note which appeared to be the last thing ever written by the bomber.

Or did I misspeak there? Are we even allowed to call the guy a "bomber"?

This whole thing is almost too ridiculous to take seriously, but I'm going to try to stick with it.

So I have to ask a few questions:

Last but not least,

I'd also like to know whether it constitutes "responsible journalism" to run brand new stories with headlines about a "suicide note" on such flimsy, contradictory reports. If bloggers did the same thing, I can only imagine the outcry. And it's not as if suicide is a minor detail, either. It has simply not been shown that this young man had the clear intent to commit suicide, homicide, whether his motives were mixed, or whether the bomb went off by accident. Furthermore, I have not seen one single report about how the bomb was detonated. Isn't that an important factor in determining whether it was suicide or went off by accident? Did Hinrichs set it off or not?

And why is the attempted purchase of ammonium nitrate being ignored as if it's now just an irrelevant detail?

I'll continue with the Oklahoma Daily report.

Joel “Joe” Henry Hinrichs III, 21, was a mechanical engineering junior who kept to himself and had a long fascination with ammunition and bomb-making materials, his father said.

“My son was just a disturbed young man, and he felt it was necessary to end his life,” he said. “I was shown pictures of the bench he was sitting on at the time of the explosion, as well as a backpack and photos of his body.”

Hinrichs was sitting on a bench Oct. 1 outside of George Lynn Cross Hall when the bomb went off.

The blast could be heard during the second quarter of OU-Kansas State University football game where nearly 84,000 spectators were in attendance. The stadium is fewer than 100 yards from Cross hall.

The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office has yet to make a positive identification of the body. DNA tests were performed to determine a positive ID.

It's also understandable that he'd be upset with the media:

FBI officials are still unclear as to Hinrichs’ motives for the location he chose, but Hinrichs Jr. said he was upset with some of the media and how the story has turned into a conspiracy theory.

“Joe was sitting on a bench away from the crowded stadium and away from people; it’s as simple as that,” he said. “People seem to forget that. His intentions were to end his life; he was trying to destroy himself and nothing else. I don’t like the way it has been written, especially if people can’t get the facts right.”

Hinrichs said the Internet stories have bothered him the most.

“The print media have been very accurate with what they are coming out with, no doubt about it,” he said. “The networks’ coverage has been very suspect at best, probably because they get most of their information from the Internet.”

Hinrichs insisted that the stories saying his son was involved with terrorist organizations are simply not true.

The FBI said last week they found no link between Hinrichs and terrorism and that he did not try to enter the stadium or purchase a ticket for the game.

Again, which report am I to believe? Should I just play dartboard and pick one?

What I'm halfway expecting now is to see yet another story claiming that the story about Hinrichs' attempted purchase of ammonium nitrate has been "discredited." Much as I hate to engage in what can only be called "conspiracy theory theorizing," haven't we already seen the transformation of news reports into blogger conspiracy theories simply because the bloggers dared to discuss the news reports?

Stay tuned.

I'll try to keep my cursor blinking.

MORE: Why is it that this "suicide note" report came not from the FBI, but from Hinrichs' father? Is it possible he's being used as a source in the hope of deflecting hard questions which might normally be expected to be asked? I hope not, because the implications would be troubling.

UPDATE: My thanks to Michelle Malkin and to Evolution for linking this post.

UPDATE (08/21/05): Wikipedia now has a long and quite comprehensive entry on the Hinrichs bombing (although it seems to accept the still-unconfirmed "blinking cursor" story uncritically).

MORE: Misha is also skeptical:

A single line of text laced with profanity that was impossible to remember, that is, a single line that he left blinking on the screen on his way out of the door and yet undiscovered by the FBI until now. Nope, nothing hokey about that, nothing whatsoever.

Sigh.

I guess I should be more patient. (After all, it took that same FBI office ten years to search a crawl space in the McVeigh-Nichols case.)