Considering the lack of any new information (and the near total media blackout), I expected to find nothing new about Joel Hinrichs or the Oklahoma University bombing today.

But surprise, surprise! This morning, first I found an editorial opinion by Michelle Malkin, who has pursued this story more tirelessly than anyone in the media. (I apologize for the longish quote, but I know people don't click links and I think the concerns expressed by a journalist to Ms. Malkin are important.) :

....many of my readers wonder why the MSM won't touch the strange and troubling story of the University of Oklahoma bomber, Joel Henry Hinrichs III. On Oct. 1, Hinrichs died on a park bench outside the school's packed football stadium when a homemade bomb in his possession exploded. The Justice Department has sealed a search warrant in the case. The university's president, David Boren, is pooh-poohing local media and Internet blog reports of possible jihadist influences on Hinrichs. The dead bomber was, we are being told, simply a depressed and troubled young man with "no known ties" to terrorism.

Never mind that, according to local news reporters, the bomb-making material found in Hinrichs' apartment was triacetone triperoxide – the explosive chemical of choice of shoe bomber Richard Reid and the London 7-7 subway bombers.

Never mind the local police department's confirmation that Hinrichs had attempted to buy ammonium nitrate a few days before his death.

Never mind the concerns of Oklahoma University student journalist Rachael Kahne, who told me this week in a call for the media's help:

"I've been working on this story since the night it happened and have been stonewalled at every turn. ... Minutes after the explosion, police busted into a student's apartment and arrested four Muslim students who were there for a small gathering (the president of the Muslim Student Association assures me this was in no way a 'party').

"Among those arrested [and later released] was Fazal Cheema, Joel Henry Hinrichs' Pakistani roommate. I was baffled when I heard this. I didn't know how police would be able to identify who Hinrichs was, where he lived, who his roommate was, and then find where his roommate was in a matter of minutes. Something isn't adding up, and I've been wracking my brain for the past week trying to figure out what happened here. OU isn't saying anything more than the typical PR spin, and the FBI won't talk."

Nothing to see here. Move along. Islam is a peaceful religion. Stop asking so many damned questions.

Such is the attitude of the national media, which seems to believe that 'tis better to live in ignorance and indulge in hindsight later than to offend the gods of political correctness.

For that, she's being stymied just like the rest of us. Being force-fed a preordained "depression-and-suicide" story that defies common sense.

Imagine. A conscientious journalist is being treated like some uppity blogger!

My kudos to Rachel Kahne (and of course to Michelle Malkin). Whether they succeed or not, I like it when journalists attempt to do their job. And this one is an uphill battle. Not to expose any grand conspiracy, but just to tell us what happened.

Another dissenting journalist is Mark Davis, radio host and Dallas Morning News columnist. In his column (titled "Media might be missing a story and ignoring a terrorist"), Davis wonders whether the story would have been treated any differently had the same man's bomb gone off in front of an abortion clinic:

(WARNING: you can only click and read the whole story once without registering.)

....Mr. Hinrichs is now the subject of understandably intense scrutiny, virtually none of it from the mainstream media. You might think the story fizzled because there was, in fact, no death beyond the bomber. True enough, but I'd suggest that if a raid revealed some radical plan to bomb an abortion clinic anywhere in America, the suspects would be household names by nightfall without a single fuse lit.

Something about the nature of this event has swallowed almost whole the normal curiosity one would expect from the usual sources.

Is it political, because acknowledging a terror threat on our soil might bolster President Bush's war logic? Is it economic, out of fear of scaring people away from football games? Is it geographic snobbery because it didn't happen on either coast? Or is it a PC fear of seeming to lunge toward a jihadist angle?

I said "might have." Because even in the case of the abortion clinic hypothetical, I see a longterm problem posed by terrorist denial syndrome. As I pointed out yesterday, under the emerging standard, Timothy McVeigh himself might not now be considered a terrorist. After all, it was a single bomb, he was said to have acted alone, and there were "no connections to terrorist groups."

I hate to think what will happen if a fanatic Islamist bomber ever managed to take out his psychotic religious wrath on an abortion clinic or a gay bar.

Would conflict managers and grief counselors be enough?