The vindication of Clay County, Ky.

Y'all remember Morgan Bowling, right? Well, she gave me a call yesterday afternoon from Kentucky, and so I mentioned her in my American Spectator column:

Thanks to an anonymous source in an Associated Press story and a flurry of speculation by bloggers, however, this quiet community was imagined to be a seething cauldron of hatred stoked by Fox News, talk radio and Republican politicians. Clay County's state Sen. Robert Stivers told the Lexington Herald-Leader that "many in the media owe the county an apology." As Morgan Bowling said Tuesday afternoon, at times it seemed as if pundits were trying to turn Bill Sparkman into a "sacrificial lamb for ObamaCare."
At the height of the national media glare, the Manchester Enterprise's young editor received an e-mail from New York: "What are you people, backwoods ignorant freaks?" the e-mailer wrote. "This crime is a reflection of all the residents of Clay County. . . . You are all disgusting pigs, and if one could level a curse at a community, then I curse the whole lot of you."
Morgan Bowling is only a few months into her journalism career, but she got a crash course about what can happen when irresponsible reporting leads to unfounded speculation.

You can read the whole thing. And you should also read Michelle Malkin's rejoinder to Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Well played, Charles Johnson!

Since this news came out, I've received several angry emails demanding that I apologize for saying Sparkman had been murdered by a right wing extremist.
The problem is, I never wrote anything like that. For the record, this was my post when the story broke, and I don't apologize for a single word:
"There's not enough information yet to say for sure what was behind this killing, so let's not jump to conclusions. But the description of the circumstances and the timing (around the time of the Washington DC tea party) raises a strong suspicion that anti-government sentiment may have been the motivation."

Right. And the connnection between the two phenomena -- the murder and the 9/12 March on D.C. -- was entirely imaginary, so long as we assume that Bill Sparkman didn't have something like that in mind in choosing the date of his demise.

Nevertheless, don't apologize for your suspicion that the Tea Party movement represented the sort of "anti-government sentiment" that could motivate a murder.

By the way, Tea Party: The Documentary Film will have its Washington premiere next Wednesday, Dec. 2, at the Ronald Reagan Center.

UPDATE II: Perhaps it would help to explain that my interest in the Sparkman case -- what inspired my spur-of-the-moment urge Sept. 26 to light out for Kentucky -- was not so much a matter of ideology as of people.

Some have seen the debunking of the "right-wing lynching" meme as a vindication of conservatism, but I see it as the vindication of the people of Clay County. Having worked for 10 years as a journalist in the small towns of north Georgia, I was all too familiar with the yawning chasm between the perception and reality of such places and such people. Go back to my Sept. 29 American Spectator article:

MANCHESTER, Kentucky -- Rodney Miller has lived nearly all his 56 years in Clay County, the only exception being when, as a young man, he moved to Indianapolis. He lived in the big city for two years without ever knowing his neighbors' names.
"The best people in the world live here," says Miller, sitting in the office of the Manchester Enterprise, where he directs advertising sales. "Down here, everybody knows everybody else." . . .

Those are the kind of small-town people I know. It was their good names, and the reputation of an entire community, that were being smeared by the implication that they were a bunch of hateful yahoos who had lynched Bill Sparkman.

The good people of Clay County have been vindicated, and their know-it-all accusers (inter alia, the Harvard-educated Andrew Sullivan) have been exposed as credulous fools.

UPDATE III: Speaking of people who have been vindicated, this is as good a time as any -- on the eve of Thanksgiving -- to express my gratitude to our readers, especially those who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund.

Several people -- including Da Tech Guy -- have expressed congratulaions to me on the denouement of the Sparkman case, validating the reporting I did here, at the American Spectator and in the Hot Air Greenroom, but I would never have been able to do that reporting without the generosity of the tip-jar hitters. When I got the wild notion of traveling to Kentucky to cover the Sparkman case, I wrote:

Figure 1,200 miles travel round-trip, at 25 cents per mile, that's $300. Five meals at $5/each, that's another $25. A carton of smokes, $50; ten cups of coffee, $20. If you add $125/night for a hotel room, I could make it a two-day trip for $500. . . .
So if the tip jar contributions between now and Sunday evening reach $300, I'll take it for granted that the rest will come through while I'm on the road. I could be filing reports with a Kentucky dateline by Monday noon.

That $300 threshold was reached within a matter of hours, and it is to you people -- too numerous to name, lest anyone be omitted from the honor roll -- whom the congratulations are owed. The honor roll can be extended to include all the bloggers who have linked my reports on the Kentucky case, and to Smitty, whose labors and skills deserve so much praise.

You who have contributed should are invited to take a bow in the comments, and you who have not yet hit the tip jar -- well, what the heck are you waiting for?

My wife just spent $90 at the grocery store, including $12 for a turkey. We've got six kids to feed, including 17-year-old twin boys, and you know how teenage boys can eat. You know those $4 frozen pizzas? Last night our family ate four of those -- that's $16 worth for one meal.

Now try to imagine feeding this brood three times a day, 365 days a year. Like they say: Do the math. And the Christmas shopping season starts Friday.

When I came up with this blogging idea, my wife told me I was crazy -- and my wife is always right. But somehow crazy has always worked for me. So I am thankful for being crazy, and thankful that there are so many of you who (like Mrs. Other McCain) actually like my craziness. God bless you!

Kentucky Census right-wing lynching fake hate-crime suicide schadenfreude update

Let's start with this: If Bill Sparkman really did commit suicide and stage it to look like he was murdered by demented right-wing Kentuckians, he's a bigger loser than Andrew Sullivan. And that's quite an achievement.

So now that conservatives are in the post-vindication gloat zone, we ought to at least pause to reflect on the tragic dimension of Sparkman's death. There have been many fake hate-crimes over the years, including the Sharpton-abetted Tawana Brawley hoax, but to kill yourself in pursuit of politically-correct glory . . . well, this is truly sad.

High fives, anyone?

UPDATE: If you expected Sully to be gracious and admit he got carried away with his "Southern populist terrorism" rant. . . well, think again:

Notice Malkin's formulation: "pointed his finger" or "immediately fingered." I said the "possibility" remained real and that "we'll see." How can you finger someone when you simultaneously say we do not yet know what happened for sure?

This, from a post entitled "Correcting Michelle Malkin," as if Malkin -- who was right all along about the Sparkman case -- needs corrections from Dr. Andrew Sullivan, M.D., OB-GYN. Tell you what: We'll let Sarah Palin's Uterus be the arbiter here. We're not laughing with you, Sully, we're laughing at you.

UPDATE II: One thing that made the "right-wing crazies run amok" angle credible to the national media was the setting in the rural South, and Old Reb reminds us that the MSM relied on the usual suspects:

Both the Department of Homeland Security and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have warned of a dramatic spike in antigovernment militia activity.

Lower Glennbeckistan gets a shout-out from that dangerous redneck Michael Moynihan at Reason, who quotes some of the original lefty fear-mongering:

If conservative politicians and opinion leaders keep stoking fears about the government using census data to steal from or perhaps even round up law-abiding citizens, I am concerned that mentally unstable individuals will commit further acts of violence against census-takers next year. Republicans should condemn the hatemongers and make clear that the census is not only permitted, but required under the Constitution.
MyDD

The gruesome lynching of this Census worker seems to bear a disturbing similarity to some of the worst hate crimes committed across this country. Regardless of what the motive for the killing may have been, why would a murderer(s) take such pains to so blatantly convey anger, fear, and vitriol towards a Census employee? Perhaps because some on the right have created an impression that Census employees are terrifying.
Earlier this summer, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) waged a high-profile, wildly-dishonest campaign against the Census.
ThinkProgress

Others, namely the type to kill a Census worker and string up his body as message to the government, may call it a retraining camp run by the "Feds."
This is the kind of violent event that emerges from a culture of paranoia and unsubstantiated attacks.
Huffington Post

From this profile of the cancer survivor and volunteer, it appears suicide is unlikely. We'll find out. But at some point, unhinged hostility to the federal government, whipped up by the Becks, can become violence. That's what Pelosi was worried about.
Andrew Sullivan

Send the body to Glenn Beck…Is it possible that the time has come for the FCC to consider exactly what constitutes screaming fire over the publicly owned airwaves? And what if Mr. Sparkman’s murderer(s) is never found? How many other lunatics will be emboldened to make their own anti-government statement as the voices of Beck, Limbaugh and Dobbs echo in their ears?
Nobody ever intended our public airwaves to be turned over to irresponsible voices. Maybe the time has come for the FCC to worry a bit less about wardrobe malfunctions and a whole lot more about those who would use our airwaves to make a name for themselves at the expense of the public they are suppose to serve–particularly when the expense comes in the form of blood.
True/Slant

We'll keep this in mind, next time the lefties accuse conservatives of fomenting paranoia.

UPDATE III: Donald Douglas at American Power calls out some lefty fearmongers, including the genuinely demented Larisa Alexandrovna, who seems to be trying to cheat Sully out of his Batsh*t Crazy Blogger Of The Year honors.

UPDATE IV: Bob Belvedere has a roundup at Camp of the Saints, and Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom links a McClatchy story that gets it wrong:

The bizarre details of the death caused a firestorm of media coverage and widespread speculation on the Internet, including that someone angry at the federal government attacked Sparkman as he went door to door, gathering census information.

That is wrong. It wasn't the "bizare details" that caused the "widespread circulation," it was an anonymous source -- an unauthorized federal law enforcement official -- who fed the "anti-government sentiment" meme to Devlin Barrett of the Associated Press D.C. bureau.

The Sept. 23 AP article (lead byline for Barrett, with Jeffrey McMurray reporting from Kentucky) was the spark that ignited the "media firestorm," and if the Associated Press doesn't name the source of that bogus leak, maybe Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell can call for a congressional investigation.

The First Amendment doesn't grant federal officials the right to lie to reporters. A good reporter never burns his sources, but a good source never burns a reporter, and this unauthorized leaker fed Barrett a lie.

UPDATE V: Drew M. at AOSHQ accurately predicted the liberal blog reaction:

They'll pretend it never happened or better yet they knew it all along and this is just a rightwing attempt to smear them. The poor dears are always correct and the victims.

Dave Weigel linked me (good) but couldn't resist taking another shot at Michelle Bachmann (bad).

Clayton Cramer kept his powder dry. Reaganite Republican says the left was actually "hoping for a case of reactionary violence against a federal employee to exploit for propaganda purposes."

Exactly. Democrats wanted Bill Sparkman to be to Fox News what Matthew Shepard was to homophobia -- a symbolic victim of right-wing media to justify re-implementation of the Fairness Doctrine.

Of course, you'll never get them to admit that, but we know it's true, in the same way the Left knew that Glenn Beck and the 9/12ers were responsible for Sparkman's death.

UPDATE VI: Da Tech Guy mentions the ugliest thought about this sad story:

Mr. Sparkman was counting on the media blaming the right for his death for his scam to work. He intentionally tried to frame us for his murder!
As a rule it isn't proper to speak ill of the dead, but I'm just amazed that the dead was trying to speak ill of us. What a dishonorable act!

Stop the ACLU has a round-up and I'm pushing deadline for the American Spectator, so let's let a Clay County resident have the last word:

Many people felt the speculation and coverage of the death played on Appalachian stereotypes and gave Clay County an undeserved black eye.
"Everybody was saying, 'It's bad, but why are they saying this without letting the investigation go forward?' " said state Sen. Robert Stivers, a Republican who lives in the county.
Many in the media owe the county an apology, Stivers said.

Good luck collecting that apology, senator. Being liberal means never having to say you're sorry.

NEWS ALERT: Kentucky State Police Will Announce Sparkman Investigation Result UPDATE: Official: It Was Suicide

UPDATE 2:15 p.m.: It's now official: Bill Sparkman committed suicide. So much for "Southern populist terrorism" -- and the credibility of Andrew Sullivan. So much for "Send the body to Glenn Beck" -- and the credibility of Rick Ungar.

UPDATE 2:40 p.m.: The official report:

Frankfort, Ky.) -- The Kentucky State Police Post 11 in London, with the assistance of the FBI, the U.S. Forest Service, the State Medical Examiner's Office and the Clay County Coroner's Office, has concluded the investigation into the death of William E. Sparkman, Jr.
The investigation, based upon evidence and witness testimony, has concluded that Mr. Sparkman died during an intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide. While all the details of the investigation will not be released at this time, the unusual level of attention and speculation attributed to Mr. Sparkman's death necessitates this release of information.
The investigation indicates that Mr. Sparkman died of asphyxiation/strangulation at the same location where he was discovered in Clay County, Ky.
Despite the fact that Mr. Sparkman was found hands, feet and mouth bound with duct tape, rope around his neck and the word "FED" written on his chest, analysis of the evidence determined Mr. Sparkman's death was self-inflicted. A thorough examination of evidence from the scene, to include DNA testing, as well as examination of his vehicle and his residence resulted in the determination that Mr. Sparkman, alone, handled the key pieces of evidence with no indications of any other persons involved.
Witness statements, which are deemed credible, indicate Mr. Sparkman discussed ending his own life and these discussions matched details discovered during the course of the investigation. It was learned that Mr. Sparkman had discussed recent federal investigations and the perceived negative attitudes toward federal entities by some residents of Clay County. It was also discovered during the investigation that Mr. Sparkman had recently secured two life insurance policies for which payment for suicide was precluded.
All tips and leads, including those from the public, were thoroughly investigated but were found to be inconsistent with any known facts or evidence.
It is the conclusion of the Kentucky State Police, the FBI, the U.S. Forest Service, the State Medical Examiner's Office, and the Clay County Coroner's Office that Mr. Sparkman died in an intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide.

UPDATE 2:50 p.m.: Michelle Malkin hasn't forgotten, and Dan Riehl says Sparkman may even have faked cancer.

UPDATE 5:30 p.m.: With perfect consistency, Allahpundit (a) arrives three hours late to the story and (b) doesn't link me, even though (c) I filed a 4,000-word article about my Kentucky trip in the Hot Air Green Room.

That report, you'll note, was intended to be Part 1 of a series, but I never finished the second part. Why? Because under no circumstance will Allah ever headline or front-page anything I do in the Green Room. At some point, the perpetual non-linkage sends a message: "Don't even bother trying."

Allah Hates Me. Because I Suck.

PREVIOUSLY (1:05 p.m.): A 2 p.m. press conference has been announced. It is believed that KSP and FBI have concluded that census worker Bill Sparkman's death was suicide. My friend Morgan Bowling of the Manchester (Ky.) Enterprise, who has covered this story from the beginning, sent me the KSP press release.

UPDATE 1:27 p.m.: Associated Press and CBS report the press conference, without mentioning how their own irresponsible reporting effectively libeled Clay County, Ky., as a dangerous hotbed of right-wing violence:

An Associated Press report said the FBI was "investigating whether anti-government sentiment" played a role in Sparkman's death. Law enforcement officials criticized that story, but the liberal blogosphere seized on it as proving that conservatives had fomented a killing rage among the yokels.
"Send the body to Glenn Beck," Internet pundit Rick Ungar proclaimed Thursday, also indicting Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann (a Republican who had warned that census data could be abused) among right-wingers presumed complicit in Sparkman's murder.
Saturday, the Atlantic Monthly's Andrew Sullivan fretted over "the most worrying possibility," namely that Sparkman's death was "Southern populist terrorism whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts."

Well, you biased bastards, I have not forgotten the perfidious role you played here, and you will not escape blame for your journalistic malpractice.

UPDATE 2 p.m.: Yes, we remember all those headlines at Memeorandum. Yes, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Ungar we remember all your irresponsible speculation. The people of Clay County, Ky., await your apologies.

'Investigators have grown more skeptical that Bill Sparkman died at the hands of someone angry at the federal government'

Skepticism, wow! Who would have thought that the Associated Press might know a skeptic or two?

Investigators probing the death of a Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest increasingly doubt he was killed because of his government job and are pursuing the possibility he committed suicide, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. . . .
There were no defensive wounds on Sparkman's body, and while his hands were bound with duct-tape, they were still somewhat mobile, suggesting he could have manipulated the rope, the officials said. . . .
The strange case attracted national attention when it first came to light, prompting worries that it may be a sign of increased anger toward the federal government in the first year of Barack Obama's presidency. . . .

Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Dan Riehl.) Since we've now got official permission from the Associated Press to start asking skeptical questions, I say we begin with this one:

• For whom did the case "prompt worries" other than AP reporters Devlin Barrett and Jeffrey McMurray?

The original URL is no longer active for the Sept. 23 AP article -- also by Barrett and McMurray -- that went a long way toward "prompting worries" in this regard, but it happens that I quoted it in my Hot Air Green Room report:

The FBI is investigating whether anti-government sentiment led to the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word “fed” was scrawled on the dead man's chest.

After quoting that tendentious lede, I went pointed out how the AP article described the source:

The article said this official "was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity," and went on to cite David Breyer, a spokesman in the FBI's Louisville, Ky., office as saying that "the bureau is helping state police with the case."

That article had a dateline from Washington, D.C., where Barrett is based, so you can bet money that it was Barrett's unauthorized source at the Justice Department -- and not McMurray's sources in Kentucky -- who leaked the tidbit about "fed" scrawled on the chest and the "anti-government sentiment" motive.

OK, so here's the deal with anonymous sources: The source who gives a reporter bad information automatically forfeits his right to anonymity. Barrett's source misled him, so that the entire premise of that Sept. 23 article was bogus.

C'mon, Barrett: Name your source.

High time we made an example of some of these less-than-reliable sources, I say. And if you won't name your source, I can think of a few people on Capitol Hill -- hello, Mitch McConnell -- who might be willing to give me a quote or two for a story about how there needs to be an congressional investigation of leaks from unauthorized sources at DOJ.

Because you see, Devlin Barrett, I'm thinking this anonymous source of yours isn't FBI or regular DOJ bureaucracy. No, sir. My hunch is you got this tip from one of Barack Obama's political hacks over at Justice, which just happened to provide the White House with a story that fit their narrative arc:

These Tea Party people and folks asking health-care questions at town-hall meetings -- they're dangerous! Kooks! Wingnuts! Extremists! Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann have got the wool-hats whipped up into a lynch-mob frenzy!

Name your DOJ source, Barrett. Expose the culprit. Turn on the light, so we can watch that cockroach scurry away under the refrigerator.

Meanwhile, somebody send out a search party and try to find Andrew Sullivan's credibility.

Wisconsinians can't spell

It's a hateful stereotype, I know, but when a cheesehead Republican wants to sing your praises, don't expect him to spell your name right . . .

Kentucky Killing: More Sparkman theories

BTW, I've seen the fax that contains this theory and figured it was from a complete nut, but JSH at Unusual Kentucky decides to fisk it anyway:

Things just keep getting weirder in the case of Bill Sparkman, a U.S. Census worker whose corpse was found tied, naked and asphyxiated by a rope in Clay County's Hoskins Cemetery.
The Times-Tribune is reporting that they've received a fax regarding Sparkman titled "I Did It" which seems to state that he was killed because he was working for the Federal Government. The fax has been turned over to the FBI. . . .
Fascinating as it sounds, I really can't buy the theory that Sparkman was romping around naked in cemeteries performing acts of Carradine-style sexual self-asphyxiation. . . .

SPECIAL REPORT: Death in Clay County, Part I

Death in Clay County: The Green Room Goes Gonzo, or Fear and Loathing in Lower Glennbeckistan

When the going gets weird -- and let's face it, things have been getting pretty damned strange lately -- the weird get going to Clay County, Kentucky:

Crossing the stream and reaching the gate down by Arnetts Fork Road, I paused to look around for just a minute. This was the scene of the crime, and having come all this way to see it, I wanted to have a clear image in my mind. I put my camera and notebook back in the car, fired up a Parliament Light and thought about the situation as I stood by the gate and listened to the stream trickling past under the bridge.
If Bill Sparkman hadn’t just driven up here to Hoskins Cemetery to enjoy the scenery, but rather had been lured up here or brought here by his killer, then whoever killed him was almost certainly a local resident, someone familiar with the area. No way somebody from out of town, a stranger to the area, would have driven past many other possible places to dump a body in order to reach this isolated location.
Rodney Miller at the Enterprise had pointed out the significance of the location in our conversation Monday afternoon, just after I arrived in Clay County. This cemetery was far away from town, and even farther from Sparkman’s home in Laurel County. Sparkman’s truck had been parked up here when his body was found. How did the truck get here? Did Sparkman drive up here, or had he been kidnapped by someone? . . .

That's 228 words of a Hot Air Green Room special report that's nearly 4,000 words long.

And that's just Part One. I've got piles of notes, photos, videos and copies of local Kentucky newspapers that don't have Web sites, so I'll be posting Part Two in a couple of days. Plus, I've got all kinds of phone numbers for sources as this story goes forward.

Track-a-Crat recalls that moment a week ago, while en route to the American Spectator Pig Roast, when he received a phone call from a notorious madman "in an attempt to convince [him] to hire a convertible and join him on a trip to Kentucky."

Well, you blew that chance, didn't you, old buddy? We could have been cruising around east Kentucky in a rented Chrysler convertible, but you punked out, you gin-soaked Limey twit.

Never mind all that. I'm reasonably sure I'll be going back to Kentucky soon and Tuesday will be my 50th birthday, so if everybody will hit the tip jar, we'll start planning our next shoe leather trip. We might even take a detour on the way back, but I'll leave that part to your twisted imagination . . .

Sometimes you have to wonder . . .

. . . about the Sullivanesque lack of self-awareness over at Little Green Footballs, where Charles Johnson reacts to Dan Rieh's post and my link to Dan by declaring that I'm "right on board with the 'ghey child predator' murder theories," provoking classic LGF comments like these:

5 Sharmuta
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:12:55pm
Riehl needs professional help. This is beyond depraved.

6 Cathypop
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:14:46pm
How dare this POS do this to an innocent man.
Pay-back is hell and I hope Riehl enjoys hell. . . .

9 Guanxi88
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:18:32pm
I said before - this fellow, and guys like him, will do anything in their desperation to remove the blood they see on their hands. Anything.

14 Killgore Trout
Sat, Oct 3, 2009 5:19:43pm
re: #7 Conservative Moonbat
I'm guessing that story might not be true. I think it's just an effort to discredit him.

At which point, the overwhelming irony caused my eyes to roll completely out of my head. Readers who've followed the story of the Little Green Meltdown can only laugh at the thought of Killgore Trout pretending to be appalled by "an effort to discredit" someone.

Dan Riehl is a friend I've worked with often, and disagreed with from time to time. I linked his original "child predator" post last weekend, but of course, I linked Sully's "Southern populist terrorism" post, too. If I only linked things I agreed with 100%, I'd mostly be linking myself. Blogospheric onanism is not a productive commercial traffic-enhancement strategy.

Remember that Dan's done a lot of true-crime blogging (he made a big splash with the Natalie Holloway case) so he's not a rookie in this regard. His flame-baiting with Pandagon might have been unnecessarily provocative, but I don't tell Dan Riehl what to do. (In case you haven't figured it out yet, nobody tells Dan Riehl what to do.)

There is no evidence of any child predation by Bill Sparkman, but Dan's interest in that angle caused him to spot a Tampa Tribune story crammed with gaydar-tingling hints that "Fe Fe" -- the nickname Sparkman picked up in his native Florida -- was gay. And so I linked Dan's post and the Tampa story and said:

[T]he speculation that Sparkman was gay has been bouncing around all over the 'sphere for days. Dan e-mailed to mention this to me, and I replied that many people in Clay and Laurel counties suspected that, at the very least, Sparkman had homosexual tendencies. NTTAWWT.
As I told Dan, the problem is that we have no idea whether Sparkman's sexuality (whatever it was, and all I know is what people in Kentucky told me) had anything to do with his disappearance and death. It might be relevant or not.

Because a good reporter doesn't burn his sources, I'm not going to get any further into what I heard in Kentucky or who I heard it from. But if the Associated Press or some Kentucky media outlet decides to jump on that angle, I've done enough background preparation that I'm not going to be scooped too bad or for very long.

What fascinates me is the intense desire to control the "narrative frame" of this story in terms of political symbolism. Left-wingers like MyDD's David Empsall pushed so hard to turn Sparkman's death into "Lynching in Lower Glennbeckistan" -- some kind of feral right-wing madness unleashed by Michelle Bachmann, Eric Cantor, talk radio and Fox News -- that I was inspired to drive more than 500 miles to Clay County and spend three days checking it out.

As a result of that trip, I can report that what might be called the consensus view of well-informed area residents is that some local drug operator -- a pot grower, a meth cooker or a dealer -- was most likely to have killed Sparkman.

At the hotel in London, Ky., where I stayed (after checking out of the Best Western in Manchester because I couldn't get the Wi-Fi connection to work), there were two marked Kentucky State Police patrol cars in the parking lot, as well as an unmarked SUV with government tags and all kinds of radio aerials.

The night clerk at the hotel was himself a former law-enforcement official, retired on medical disability, who explained to me that these KSP officers weren't in town for the murder investigation. Rather, they were participating in the annual crackdown on the local marijuana harvest. (See this 2007 USA Today article for background.) KSP brings in officers from other parts of the state, so that local officers don't have to bust their friends, relatives and neighbors.

Meanwhile, in August, a big undercover investigation ("Operation Borrowed Time") headed up by Clay County Sheriff Clay Johnson and Manchester Police Chief Jeff Culver resulted in more than 50 drug arrests in Clay County.

Which is to say, Sparkman turned up dead at a time when illegal drug operations in Clay County were coming under some very heavy law-enforcement pressure. It's very easy to understand why a dope grower or meth cooker might have been paranoid about somebody with a federal ID asking a bunch of questions. And if that somebody was Bill Sparkman, the motive for his death isn't a big mystery.

Where do the rumors about Sparkman's sexuality fit into this story? I don't know that they do. If it's a 75% chance that Sparkman was killed just because he "knocked on the wrong door," as one Kentucky source put it, then his sexuality is irrelevant.

I'm trying to get to the facts here, and don't have a lot of patience with idiots wasting my time by pointing fingers at Dan Riehl (or Michelle Malkin or Glenn Beck) and screaming hysterically about "blood on their hands." For myself, you can go ask Kelsee Brown what a horrible homophobic hatemonger I am.

Whoever killed Bill Sparkman -- and I agree with Sparkman's son Josh that suicide and accident can be practically ruled out -- the killer or killers are still on the loose. Until they're brought to justice, this politicized finger-pointing is just a waste of time.

UPDATE: In regard to the shortage of people willing to do actual reporting, Patrick at Alexandria writes:

The harvest is vast, but the laborers are few.

Exactly. While I was checking out the story in Kentucky last week, I had an interesting conversation with Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers who asked me, Where are all these laid-off journalists who've lost their jobs in the Great Newspaper Meltdown of the past few years?

There is clearly an opportunity for entrepreneurial online journalism by resourceful reporters who can find a way to operate indepedently on a shoestring budget. And yet it's hard to see where any of the people laid off from the big metropolitan papers have actually taken advantage of this opportunity.

UPDATE II: You've got to laugh at the mind-numbing idiocy of "Cato the Elder," a damned fool who doesn't even get my Cousin Brian's jest about "the new black," a pop culture reference which means that something is the latest vogue, e.g., "taupe is the new black."

The Fool Cato construes Brian's remark as a "whine," when in fact it was a shrug of indifference, a dry acknowledgement of contemporary reality. The Fool Cato is so inextricably wedded to the liberal victimhood narrative -- where every problem ever suffered by anyone who isn't white can be understood only as a result of white racism -- that he can't even realize what's happening when his game is busted by an Atlanta bar bouncer.

Here you see how The Vision of the Anointed blinds people to reality. It's "The Irrelevance of Evidence," as Sowell called it. Envisioning the world categorically, with prefabricated explanations for every phenomenon, the anointed loudly proclaim their open-mindedness and tolerance while fanatically pursuing vendettas of narrow-minded zealotry.

When the anointed encounter anomalous phenomena that don't fit their rigid mental molds, they become frustrated. When you try to explain that they might have stumbled onto evidence that their categories and prefab explanations are invalid, this provokes a vengeful rage. And that's when you realize that you're not actually arguing about whatever it was that provoked the argument.

Their own infallibilty -- the awe-inspiring authority of their opinions -- is the actual subject of their argument. The anointed worldview is an incomprehensible mish-mash of self-contradiction and error, which is why the liberal furiously denounces as guilty of bad faith (mala fides) anyone who persistently criticizes the validity of the worldview.

No person of good faith could fail to agree with liberalism, you see. Therefore, when you disagree with the liberal, you are not merely mistaken, but evil.

The Fool Cato doesn't need to know anything about my Cousin Brian in order to conclude that Brian is inferior. And Brian's inferiority -- his status as some hick on whom Cato is qualified to pronounce judgment -- is the entire point of what Cato calls a "Socratic" rant.

Grab a cup of hemlock, Socrates. Cheers!

UPDATE on the Kentucky Killing: 'We Don't Even Know What We Don't Know'

Because law enforcement officials are being extremely circumspect in discussing the death of Bill Sparkman -- whose nude body was found Sept. 12 in the Hoskins family cemetery near Arnetts Fork Road in Clay County, Ky. -- the absence of information has led to extremely irresponsible speculation.

I'm working on a very long, detailed account of the case based on my trip to Kentucky, but I had to lay that aside for a while today when I saw a grossly misleading story in Newsweek. This prompted me to whip out a quick 861 words for The American Spectator:

"He knocked on the wrong door," was the way one resident described what most locals familiar with the case consider the most likely scenario for Sparkman's killing. As the Newseek story notes, eastern Kentucky is known as a haven of marijuana growers. The weed growers plant their crops in Daniel Boone National Forest, which sprawls across the mountainous region and encompasses half of Clay County.
What would be proven if we knew (as we do not) that Sparkman was engaged in Census work at the time of his disappearance -- most likely Sept. 9, three days before his body was discovered in the Hoskins family cemetery some 30 miles east of his home -- and "knocked on the wrong door"?
If the fatal door he knocked on was at the home of a marijuana grower or a drug dealer (methamphetamine and other drugs are also problems in the region), who killed him after mistaking Sparkman's federal identification as evidence that the stranger was a narcotics agent, is that an "anti-government" or "anti-Census" motive? Or is it merely a criminal seeking to prevent detection of his crimes -- the kind of killing that happens with unfortunate frequency in America all the time?
That, however, is strictly a hypothetical scenario. The haste of some journalists and bloggers to attribute Sparkman's mysterious death to a particular motive -- to give it a political meaning -- based on speculation and assumptions, is irresponsible in the extreme. . . .

Read the whole thing. A smart reporter never burns his sources, so I can't identify the Kentucky journalist who this past week exclaimed to me in exasperation: "We don't know anything. Hell, we don't even know what we don't know."

Which is why it was perhaps a fortunate coincidence that a "top Hayekian public intellectual" drove more than 500 miles to spend three days gathering information about the Sparkman case. Students of Friedrich Hayek know how the Nobel Prize-winning economist emphasized that information is diffused widely among the population, so that no "expert" or group of experts can ever claim to have complete knowledge in any given field. The failure of intellectuals to recognize the limits of their own expertise leads to harmful preconceptions and myths, as Greg Ransom has explained.

The Hayekian insight has utility far beyond the field of economics. Appreciating the value of unknown facts -- information beyond our immediate knowledge, which may actually be more important than the facts we do know -- is essential to a genuinely objective pursuit of truth.

The lazy assumption that we know all we need to know, that there cannot be any unknown facts that contradict the beliefs we form on the basis of partial information, is the basis of far too many mistaken beliefs. I've already reported how stereotypes of rural Kentuckians as backward, ignorant and impoverished have resulted in a misleading portrayal of the decent, hard-working, law-abiding citizens of Clay County. (Let's don't even get into the Kelsee Brown angle.) And now we see how a too-eager desire to cast Bill Sparkman's death as a political symbol is leading to assumptions that may be equally misinformed.

It's a free country, which means everyone is free to speculate how and why Bill Sparkman died. But ill-informed speculation and assumptions are no substitute for facts, and there are still too many unknown facts for anyone to pretend to know the motives of whoever put Sparkman's body in that cemetery.

If the editors of Newsweek don't want to pay for solid, sensible, accurate reporting, they need to grab themselves a fresh, hot cup of delicious STFU.

Hit the tip jar, y'all. My wife won't like this one bit, but if I can collect another $500 in the Shoe Leather Reporting Fund, I'll go back to Kentucky and keep after this story until folks in Clay County award me honorary hillbilly status.

UPDATE: Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack calls the Newsweek story "Another Steaming Pile of MSM Journalism," and we've got ourselves a Rule 3 opportunity with a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE II: Yehuda the Rhetorican:

Newsweek -- like much of the Legacy Media -- needs to become re-acquainted with the importance of shoe leather to quality journalism. And I don’t mean it needs a kick in the @$$, although it certainly does.

Speaking of which, how about some kicking rock 'n' roll?

UPDATE III: Linked in Left Coast Rebel's roundup and . . . Well, the Tampa Tribune had an interesting profile of Bill Sparkman. I didn't want to "go there," but as Dan Riehl points out, the speculation that Sparkman was gay has been bouncing around all over the 'sphere for days. Dan e-mailed to mention this to me, and I replied that many people in Clay and Laurel counties suspected that, at the very least, Sparkman had homosexual tendencies. NTTAWWT.

As I told Dan, the problem is that we have no idea whether Sparkman's sexuality (whatever it was, and all I know is what people in Kentucky told me) had anything to do with his disappearance and death. It might be relevant or not. At any rate, that Tampa story is full of very strong suggestions that my Kentucky sources have reasonbly accurate "gaydar."

We await Andrew Sullivan's next hysterical post claiming that Sparkman was a victim of hillbilly homophobia.

UPDATE IV: Paco points out exactly why the Newsweek story sticks in my craw: While I'm driving more than 1,300 round-trip in a 2004 KIA to report this story, Eve Conant gets paid a full-time salary to sit around writing a 1,700-word essay that concludes:

The Census Bureau field-training manual advises employees on everything from walking only in lighted areas to staying away from political issues, especially when someone is hostile: "Do not defend yourself or the government with respondents who say they hate you and all government employees. Indicate that you regret this opinion and express a desire to provide them with a positive experience." Perhaps Bill Sparkman wasn't given the time to follow that sage advice.

Perhaps. And perhaps the staff of Newsweek could take up a collection at their office, so they could buy a clue as to why they're losing credibility.

UPDATE V: Speaking of "losing credibility," Charles Johnson and the few remaining unbanned denizens of LGF Lizardland are going bonkers over Dan Riehl and "the ghey."

Thanks to Bob Belevedere for his latest aggregation.

MURDER IN EAST KENTUCKY UPDATE: 'Neither confirm nor deny'

WESTON, W.Va.
Stopped here on my way back from Kentucky to check on the blog and update the latest on the Sparkman murder investigation. The most important development is that law enforcement officials are coming under increased pressure either to solve the case or to start explaining why they haven't solved it.

There is evidently a killer or killers at large in eastern Kentucky. Given the brutal nature of Bill Sparkman's death, the particularly stubborn official insistence on a "neither confirm nor deny" stance toward key details of the case is beginning to annoy people in Clay and Laurel counties, including public officials.

Because I'm once again using the lobby computer at a hotel -- the new Holiday Inn Express here beside the I-79 exit is very nice -- and because my wife is already angry at my delayed return, there is only time for a brief update, highlighting key points.

• First, I don't know if this has been reported anywhere else, but according to today's edition of the Manchester (Ky.) Enterprise, Kentucky State Police and other investigators re-visited the Hoskins Cemetery last Friday, Sept. 25. According to the Enterprise, investigators thoroughly re-examined the remote Clay County site, about 12 miles east of Manchester, where Sparkman's body was found Sept. 12. And, of course, officials refused to confirm that report. However, if the Enterprise staff doesn't know what goes on in that neck of the woods, nobody does.
• Second, Sparkman's 19-year-old son Josh -- whom Sparkman adopted as an infant -- is furious that police are refusing to rule out suicide as a cause of his father's death. However, the state medical examiner has officially confirmed that Sparkman died of asphyxiation.
• Third, readers interested in this case should be aware that many people in east Kentucky are angry at the Associated Press -- and whoever the AP's source was -- for an article last week which the Kentucky State Police spokesman, Don Trosper, has characterized as "misinformation" that is "damaging to our investigation."

It is strongly suspected that this misinformation came from a U.S. Justice Department source, either in Washington or Louisville. Considering that it is because of the FBI's involvement that other officials are under "marching orders" not to discuss the case, if the AP's bad source was federal . . .

Well, perhaps I don't need to point out the irony: The feds are, on the one hand, big-dogging the investigation and forbidding anyone else from talking about it while, on the other hand, some federal source is feeding wrong information to the AP. At least, that's the very strong suspicion of people familiar with the situation.

Tempus fugits, and I really need to get home -- we're a one-car family, and my wife needs to go buy groceries -- but I want to take a minute to address a recent troll problem here. Some persistently "anonymous" critic has repeatedly attempted to leave comments derogating my reporting abilities. At one point, this critic accused me of being a "cub" reporter.

How many times do I have to repeat myself about this? Just because you don't know what I'm doing, don't assume that I don't know what I'm doing. I've got a file folder full of notes. I've got photos and recorded interviews. I've got the phone numbers of plenty of sources. There are sources I've interviewed whom I have neither named nor quoted, and there are good reasons for everything I've done or haven't done in covering this story.

Because I've sometimes used my personal blog to highlight particular incidents or personalities -- like Kentucky's most amazing journalist, Morgan Bowling -- does not mean that this is The Big Story. What I've tried to do is to give readers some insight into how I do my job and the wonderful people I've met along the way.

Considering that it has now been 20 days since Sparkman's body was discovered, there is the distinct possibility that this investigation won't produce The Big Story for a long time, if ever. (Remember that Morgan Bowling's father was gunned down 16 years ago, a crime that is still a cold case in the files of the Kentucky State Police.)

Which is to say I didn't feel any real competitive pressure in recent days, so I've done the blog updates as I have, rather than trying to "chase" other media. Yet because of the depth of my work during my first reporting trip to East Kentucky, I'll be ready when The Big Story breaks. Also, I've talked to other journalists -- as a matter of fact, I just got off the phone with one long-time associate whom I won't name -- who might like to come along on my next trip to Clay County.

So, to our anonymous troll, I would like to explain that you don't know what tips I've checked out, or how I've checked them out. Those reports that a journalist rocked the house Wednesday during karaoke at a pub in Richmond, Ky.? That the man who sang a Hank Thompson classic made inquiries which led him to the vicinity of Main and Limestone streets in Lexington, Ky., in the wee hours this morning?

Sorry. I can neither confirm nor deny.

PS.: Yes, I know the headline says "murder," and the police say they haven't ruled out other causes. But reasonable people can conclude that when a man is found dead, blindfolded, gagged and bound with duct tape -- naked except for his socks -- suicide and accident are nearly as far-fetched as "natural causes." Somebody killed Bill Sparkman, and excuse me for not pretending we don't know that. This is my personal blog, so please feel free to convene the Blogger Ethics Committee and expel me from the club.

Laurel County, Ky.: Just like old days, I'm told to report to the principal's office!

That's what the sign on the door of Johnson Elementary School said: "ALL VISITORS MUST REPORT TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE."

Johnson Elementary is the school where Bill Sparkman worked part-time as an instructional assistant in an after-school program for about a decade.

Donna at the front desk of the Laurel County Public Library -- where I've been using their computers today -- gave me directions: Take a left on 192, go down to the light, turn left (west) on 80 and go back into town. Before you get to the railroad tracks, there will be an IGA store on your left. McWhorter Street is on the right, across from the IGA. Take McWhorter Street until it crosses the parkway, at which point it becomes McWhorter Road, and the school is a little more than a mile down, on the right.

The principal of the school is a tall, bespectacled man with jug ears named Tyler McWhorter, although he said he's not sure if the road was named for his family. McWhorter has only been at the school a couple of years and didn't know Sparkman. He gave me the cell-phone number of someone who could be more helpful.

Having figured out the computer set-up here at the library a bit better, I can now link Joseph Deal's article in Monday's London (Ky.) Sentinel-Echo, which I think may be the most important news story yet about the Sparkman case.

Joe Deal is a smart, tough, experienced journalist, a native of Wisconsin. Like most good newspapermen, Deal feels a real responsibility to his community and to the truth. It's important for people far away from eastern Kentucky to understand that misinformation from certain media outlets has resulted in the defamation of an entire community. But the entire 25,000 people of Clay County can't bring a class-action suit for libel, can they?

There seems to be a lot of craziness going around online lately. Brooke Shields is nude, Roman Polanski's been arrested, Gore Vidal is warning about "dictatorship," Bette Midler is talking "civil war," and there are even dangerous crackpots alleging that I'm somehow involved with Sarah Palin. (Let me make one thing perfectly clear to Dave Weigel: I did not have political relations with that governor, Mrs. Palin.)

When the going gets weird, the weird get going, and pretty soon I'm going to have to hit the road back up toward Washington. My wife's worried about me, down here with all these Kentucky women -- 19-year-old short-order cooks and 20-year-old journalists and so forth. Little Miss Attila suspects a "scam," a term that my Samoan attorney says might be considered defamatory per se.

As always, the vital question to ask is, "What Would Hunter S. Thompson Do?" And the blindingly obvious answer in this case is: Get the heck out of this library and go east on the parkway, very fast, before anyone even suspects I've gone.

Maybe I'll stop and talk to more sources -- Judge Garrison was at the Huddle House on Tuesday night, and gave me his cell-phone number -- and could possibly even make another post or two before I leave Kentucky. But I've done what I came here to do. I've got enough notes and pictures to lash together 10,000 words if I had to, and plenty of sources I can contact if this story heats up again, as it may at any moment. Let's see, if I head southeast toward Bristol, then hit I-81 . . .

Laurel County, Ky.: It's kind of hard to cover a homicide investigation . . .

. . . when the police aren't saying anything. On the one hand, I perfectly understand the concerns of law enforcement, who are conducting an important criminal investigation, and don't want to compromise the case.

Let's face it: Criminals can read newspapers, too. Although police haven't officially ruled out an accidental cause of death, this would be the most bizarre case of self-asphyxiation in history. So if somebody killed Sparkman, the killer is still out there somewhere.

For all I know, the killer is right here in the Laurel County Public Library, where I'm using this computer. That little old lady over there . . . well, she doesn't look suspicious, but you can never tell, here in Lower Glennbeckistan, where there are thousands upon thousands of Republicans.

The cops have to do their job, and reporters have to do our jobs, and I'm trying to be as responsible as possible about this story. I just had a brief meeting -- little more than a handshake, really -- with Joseph Deal, managing editor of the local London (Ky.) Sentinel-Echo., whose Monday article about the Sparkman case should be must-reading for anyone interested in this story.

Deal's article Monday was an attempt to clear up "misinformation" -- that's Kentucky State Police spokesman Don Trosper's word -- created by the Sept. 24 article that made this case a national sensation. The Sept. 24. story was clearly flawed, in more ways than one, but the problem is that law enforcement is saying so little about the investigation that nobody can tell exactly what is true or false.

Ergo, we don't even know what we don't know. This is when it's helpful to have a reporter on the scene who's also a "top Hayekian public intellectual," given F.A. Hayek's theories about the diffuse nature of information and the importance of unknown data.

BTW, this public library -- build in 2003 -- is large, beautiful and ultra-modern. However, the reason there are no links in this article is that they've blocked the "open new windows" function on there PC terminals, effectively rendering their computers useless for a blogger. Sigh.

There are other people and places I need to see here in Laurel County, which was where Sparkman lived. Ever since I arrived here, I've been struck by the fact that Sparkman's body was found more than 30 miles east of his home. Although he was employed part-time as a Census worker in Clay County, one of the things we don't know is whether he was actually working the day he disappeared.

By the way, Sparkman apparently disappeared Sept. 9, missed an appointment Sept. 10, and his body was found in the Hoskins Cemetery on Sept. 12. So that's a four-day time span that the police will have to examine very closely.

Will have more later. Ciao.

VIDEO: Kelsee Brown is not -- repeat, is not -- a right-wing extremist

MANCHESTER, Ky. -- Having a late dinner Tuesday with Manchester Enterprise news director Morgan Bowling at the Huddle House here, our interview was interrupted by the cook.

"Are you a reporter?" she asked, and when I replied that I was, she said: "Hi, I'm Kelsee, the Huddle House Killer."

Her jocular introduction was answered with a joke of my own, but the young lady -- Kelsee Brown, 19, from Corbin, Ky. -- then told us an amazing story, explaining how she was misrepresented by another reporter covering the Bill Sparkman story. Here is how that Sept. 24 article portrayed Miss Brown:

Kelsee Brown, a waitress at Huddle House, a 24-hour chain restaurant in Manchester, when asked about the death, said she thinks the government sometimes has the wrong priorities.
"Sometimes I think the government should stick their nose out of people's business and stick their nose in their business at the same time. They care too much about the wrong things," she said.

In a brief interview Tuesday night, Miss Brown said that her words were misquoted and her sentiments misconstrued. She said what she was actually trying to tell the reporter -- who had asked her what she thought about the Sparkman killing -- was something entirely different.

Miss Brown said she told the reporter that all she knew about the apparent homicide of the 51-year-old Census worker in the vicinity of Big Creek, about 12 miles east of Manchester, was what she learned from media accounts. Therefore, she was hesitant to pass judgment on the case. Miss Brown says she didn't mention government, and instead was saying that the news media should not "stick their noses in people's business."

However, her words -- which she insists were misquoted and misinterpreted -- were subsequently cited on an Internet discussion board under the headline, "Ignorant red state morons defend lynching of census worker."

Miss Brown says she is not a Republican, but is a registered Democrat and, during her 2008 senior year at Corbin High School, was actually a leader of students supporting Barack Obama for the presidency.

Miss Brown then recounted her story for my camera. Here is the world-exclusive video:

Miss Brown emphasized that she does not speak for her employer and that management of Huddle House share her deep sympathy for Sparkman's friends and family. Having spoken at some length to Miss Brown, I can testify that she is very friendly and cheerful, with a keen mind and a warm smile. Anyone wishing to learn more about this interview should contact Morgan Bowling (e-mail) at the Manchester Enterprise, (606) 598-2319.

-- Robert Stacy McCain

UPDATE: Check out this article from Monday's London (Ky.) Sentinel-Echo about the "pure speculation" and "misinformation" in the national media.

UPDATE 10:15 a.m.: Linked by Jimmie Bise Jr. at Sundries Shack, Moe Lane at Red State, and Dan Riehl at Riehl World View, and at Memeorandum.

Killing Ground in Clay County: The Mystery on Hoskins Cemetery Road

MANCHESTER, Ky. -- No time to do a complete report yet, but I wanted y'all to know that today I visited the Hoskins Family Cemetery, where the body of Bill Sparkman was discovered Sept. 12. Because I have more appointments later this evening, I must hurry and do a brief report. I'm filing from the computer lab at East Kentucky University's Manchester Regional Campus.

The entrance to Hoskins Cemetery Road, off Arnetts Fork Road, about 12 miles east of Manchester. The gate is always locked, although a 4-wheel drive vehicle with high clearance can ford the stream just to the right of the culvert. The cemetery is about 100 yards past the gate. I walked up there alone. When you drive 570 miles to get the story, you'd doggone better get the story. "Yea, though I walk through the valley . . ."

A grave in the Hoskins cemetery. Notice that Kathleen was 14 years old when she married 18-year-old Harvey Hoskins in 1946, and they were married for 43 years, until Harvey's death in 1989.

The historic Peabody Ranger Station about a mile from the Hoskins Cemetery. Park rangers there are under orders not to speak to reporters about the Sparkman murder.

Sam, 18, beside the cappuccino dispenser at Couch's Marathon, at the Highway 66 exit off the Hal Wilson Parkway. Sam's aunt, Ruby Couch, runs the store, but didn't want her picture taken. Jessica, who gave me directions to the Hoskins Cemetery, told me to stop by Couch's and say hello to Ruby.

Paul Couch owns the Marathon station. His late wife, Maria De La Luce Serrato Couch, known as "Lucy," was Mexican. Mr. Couch met his wife while stationed in El Paso, Texas, with the Army in 1966. They had three children together and he has three grandchildren. Mr. Couch smokes cigars. I've got a slow leak in the left-front tire of the KIA. Mr. Couch filled up the tire for me.

Morgan Bowling is the 20-year-old news director of the Manchester Enterprise. She has lived here all her life, and has four tattoos, including a pistol with the motto "Get Tough Or Die" on her left thigh. Miss Bowling did not show me the tattoo, but only described it. She is a junior at EKU-MRC, and the same age as my oldest daughter. (I am not an award-winning film director beloved in France.)

Four teenage skateboarders on the sidewalk at the Family Dollar shopping center in Manchester. How all-American is that?

Well, I promised Miss Bowling I'd get back to the Enterprise office before they hit deadline. Hit the tip jar now, y'hear?

Who is S.L. Toddard?

He left a snarky comment on my American Spectator story, and merits a response in the Hot Air Green Room:

Mr. Toddard, what you are doing is what psychologists call "projection." Evidence and facts are irrelevant to your own worldview, yet you wish to be considered a rational, well-informed person, so you project onto scapegoated "Right-Wing militants" your own faults and errors. You should seek professional help.
Quite obviously, a man who drives 570 miles to Clay County, Ky., to find out what's actually happening here cares more about the facts than a man who just sits around ranting about "poison flowing from the right wing media sewer." . . .

Read the whole thing.

Question: Who commits crimes?

Answer: Criminals.

That's one thing that occurs to me here in eastern Kentucky, where I've come to report on the investigation into the murder of part-time Census Bureau employee Bill Sparkman.

Consider the elaborately sadistic nature of Sparkman's death -- he was gagged, blindfolded, and bound hand and foot with duct tape, then hanged from a tree limb, so that he died by asphyxiation. Surely the person who committed a crime of such wanton cruelty must have an extensive criminal record.

And that's my chief contribution tonight to the whirlwind of speculation surrounding Sparkman's death. I drove 570 miles Monday, stopping at Fairmont, W.Va., to file a brief update, and then stopping again near Huntington, W.Va., to take a one-hour nap in the car. I didn't come here to speculate, but to report.

It's not a journalist's job to solve crimes. That's what cops are for, and thank God. Whoever killed Sparkman is a very dangerous person, and I don't want them coming after me.

It's very easy for Andrew Sullivan to sit around speculating about "Southern populist terrorism whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts." I'd like to see Sully sit across from Rodney Miller and say that.

Mr. Miller is in charge of advertising sales at the Manchester (Ky.) Enterprise. I took a wrong turn when I got to Manchester, detouring up around the courthouse and sheriff's department before crossing over the bridge to find the Enterprise office.

I'd promised Morgan Bowling, news director of the Enterprise, that I'd make it there before 5 p.m., and it took some genuinely criminal driving to keep that promise. But when I got to the office at 4:55 p.m., they told me Miss Bowling had left just before I got there.

So I spent nearly an hour talking to Mr. Miller, a 56-year-old native of Manchester who was quite helpful in understanding the community, the people and what little can be learned about the Sparkman murder investigation.

After we'd done talking, Mr. Miller introduced me to one of his young advertising reps, who lives in the vicinity of the cemetery where Sparkman's body was found. Would she lead me up there? No way. Uh-uh. Too scary up there.

If you want to speculate about anything, ponder this: Sparkman lived in London, Ky., in neighboring Laurel County, more than 30 miles east of where his body was found, with his truck parked near the end of the the dead-end road leading up to that cemetery.

Did Sparkman arrange a meeting up there with the person who killed him? If so, why? And if not . . .?

Tomorrow -- actually, today, since it's now past midnight and already Tuesday -- I'll have time to clear up some of the specifics about the timeline on this case that aren't yet clear to me. When and where was Sparkman last seen alive? It seems he disappeared a few days before his body was found near sundown, Saturday Sept. 12. My understanding of the coroner's report is that he was killed late Sept. 10 or early Sept. 11.

Given the 30-mile distance between his London home and that cemetery, either Sparkman drove himself there or, perhaps, he was bound and gagged somewhere else, and driven there in his own truck by the person or persons who killed him. And how did that person (or those persons) leave the cemetery? If there were more than one killer, then perhaps one of them drove Sparkman's truck and an accomplce (or accomplices) followed in another vehicle. If there was more than one person involved in Sparkman's murder, then each of the perpetrators has to be worried that his accomplice(s) will rat him out if he gets caught.

So you've got to figure that the investigators are constructing a timeline of their own, trying to narrow down the possibilities. At some point, Sparkman's truck traveled that 30 miles from London to the cemetery, and if they can figure out exactly when that last ride happened . . .

Well, that's a job for the police, not a journalist. Extreme exhaustion takes its toll, and I was just sending e-mails to Wlady, asking him to correct some typos in the American Spectator story I filed at 11:45 p.m. Monday, having gotten three hours' sleep in the past 36 hours. But here are a few typo-free paragraphs:

What is striking to a first-time visitor to this region is the vast distance between the media perception and the reality.
At the London exit off I-75, there is a Starbucks, that ubiquitous symbol of 21st-century American civilization. Drive west for 20 minutes, and the parkway exit at Manchester is surrounded by other all-American enterprises like Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Subway and Wendy's. Teenage boys hang around the shopping center near the Family Dollar store after school, riding their skateboards on the sidewalk.
Yesterday, I ate supper at the Pizza Hut in Manchester, where people were clearly more concerned about the Clay County High School football team -- "Once A Tiger, Always A Tiger," the waitress's T-shirt declared -- than with "anti-government sentiment."
When police finally make an arrest in Sparkman's death, the suspect will be considered innocent until proven guilty. Shouldn't the same be true for the rest of Clay County?

Read the whole thing. I'll be up early Tuesday and back on the job.

Live from Kentucky!

Sorry for the delay with the update, but I got to Manchester, interviewed a few sources to get some background on the Sparkman murder case and had dinner at Pizza Hut.

Yes, they have a Pizza Hut in Manchester, Ky. In case you're one of those people who thought Deliverance was a documentary, I've got news for you: Clay County is not nearly as backwards as the MSM would have you believe, as I told Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack:

"The idea that they're sitting around festering with 'right wing populism' and whatever Andrew Sullivan said was going on here . . . is so far removed from the reality of the place."

Oh, yeah: The hotel in town has an indoor swimming pool.

Well, I've got a midnight deadline for the American Spectator, and then must try to get some sleep, but now that I'm on a Wi-Fi hookup (Sully: "They have Wi-Fi in Kentucky?") you can expect regular updates. And tomorrow, I might even have a little Rule 5 surprise for you.

Sparkman case update: Kentucky-bound

FAIRMONT, W.Va. -- Stopped here and hopped on the computer in a motel lobby, to file a quick report on my progress en route to Clay County, Ky., and give you an update on the latest headlines surrounding the murder of Bill Sparkman.

First, speculation about the motive for the killing of Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census worker, continues. Roger Hedgecock's WorldNetDaily column:

Last week, Sparkman's death became fodder for more attacks on "right-wing violence." Bloggers wanted to "send the body to Glenn Beck," and a Time magazine piece speculated that Sparkman was a victim of the culture of another McCain-voting Southern state
Now it looks more like Sparkman was yet another victim of illegal drug operations on national forest land, and possibly also a victim of our still open border with Mexico.

Mexicans? In Clay County, Kentucky? Is there a "Little Tijuana" neighborhood down in Manchester? I expect to be there before suppertime, so we'll wait and see about that angle. The case is making headlines as far away as Scotland, where Andrew Purcell of the Herald writes:

The death is fuelling speculation he was killed simply because he worked for the federal government – now the target of a wave of hate from extreme right-wingers. . . .
Dave Breyer, of the regional FBI field office in Louisville, sought to play down assumptions a violent dislike of bureaucratic interference could have motivated the killer.
"I think to give this impression he was strung up because he was a federal employee is giving a bad impression to the nation," he said. . . .
Carl Greene, a reporter at [the Corbin, Ky.] Times-Tribune, said it was just as likely Sparkman stumbled upon a drug operation. "The mountain people grow a lot of marijuana," he said. "There are methamphetamine labs there. The place has gotten a reputation. It is an area where the law is sometimes ignored."

Ah, so according to Purcell, the killers are either (a) right-wing extremists or (b) dope gangs. And then there's Dan Riehl's theory, but no need to go into that just now. The main reason I want to see Clay County for myself is summed up by this Associated Press article in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Positive news stories about Clay County don't come often.
When it comes to national news, the rural county about 170 miles southeast of Louisville seems to be a magnet for negative headlines. And to some local residents, the recent discovery of the body of U.S. census worker Bill Sparkman is just the latest blemish. . . .
"It makes us all seem like idiots that do anything they can do to make money," said Freda Collins, 41, of the Burning Springs community near Manchester. "You feel embarrassed for one thing. You get to the point where you don't want to tell anyone where you're from because of the stereotypes. But what can you do?"

Indeed. Well, I'm coming down there to report facts, not stereotypes. Assuming that Clay County is not entirely populated by moonshiners, meth cookers, Mexicans, marijuana growers and militia extremists, I hope to provide a more balanced perspective on this rural community.

Ask yourself this: How many murders happen in Washington, D.C., every year? So how come this one murder -- because it happened in Appalachia -- has generated such lurid speculation?

Hang on, Freda Collins. Just another 390 miles to go today, and I should be there by nightfall. As for the rest of y'all -- hit the tip jar.

I can scavenge pretty well when I have to. They serve a free continental breakfast here at this motel, and everybody evidently assumes I'm a guest, even though I just pulled off the I-79 exit and walked in the door. But professional journalism savvy like that will only get me so far . . . hit the tip jar.

OK, a quick trip to the men's room, refill my coffee and grab another donut from the continental breakfast buffet, and then I'm back on the road.

UPDATE: 9:55 a.m.: Just got off the phone with Trooper First Class Don Trosper of the Kentucky State Police, official spokesman for the investigation. Asked if he had any concern over Internet chatter about the Sparkman case, Trooper Trosper said: "It's just speculation and rumors. . . . We concern ourselves with facts."

'You'd be surprised what some of these morons write on the Internet'

Actually, I'm not surprised at all, but I'm grateful the guy who answered the phone was willing to talk when he got a call from me past 10 p.m. on a Saturday. My brief report for The American Spectator:

"Yes, we are concerned about what people are saying on the blogs," a Kentucky law enforcement official said Saturday night, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The murder of Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Ky., has caused bloggers to engage in widespread speculation about the motive for the killing. Sparkman was employed part-time conducting a Census Bureau survey. . . .
The Kentucky State Police are coordinating the investigation of Sparkman's death. Trooper First Class Don Trosfer, based in the agency's London, Ky., Post 11 is the official spokesman for the investigation, but was unavailable for comment late Saturday.
Another law-enforcement source, not authorized to speak about the case, said state and local officials are working closely with the FBI on the investigation. Internet gossip is a source of concern, he said.
"You'd be surprised what some of these morons write on the Internet . . . that they wouldn't say to somebody's face," the official said in a brief telephone interview. . . .

Read the whole story. Two phone calls and a little research was all it took to get that story. Oh, by the way: Bill Sparkman worked for a decade as a reporter in his native Florida. He deserves some decent journalism, and not baseless rumor-mongering.

UPDATE 1:50 a.m.: Well, folks, it looks like I'm going to be Kentucky-bound to cover this story in person -- another one of those double-dog-dare-ya adventures in shoe-leather reporting.

Thanks to TB in North Carolina, BD in Maryland, AL in Rhode Island, a big thanks to JS in Virginia, and a huge thanks to Nathan in Missouri, the Shoe Leather Reporting Fund quickly collected enough to get me to Kentucky and back.

Additional contributions are welcome, to enable me to extend this trip. Just got off the phone with the lady at the desk of a hotel near I-75, about 20 miles from Manchester, Ky. A single room is about $95 per night, tax included. If you figure 2 packs of smokes/day at $5 each, five cups coffee/day at $2 each, continental breakfast comes with the room, so two meals/day at $5 each -- the basic daily expenses come to $125. Of course, I've got regular bills to pay, but I'll worry about that later.

Just think about Andrew Sullivan sitting there in Pathum, Thailand -- I'm not kidding -- lecturing Michelle Malkin (!) on conservatism:

By the way, there is nothing conservative about Southern populism.

OK, Sully, enjoy your Thai holiday, while I get my 2004 KIA ready for a 500-mile road trip to Clay County, Kentucky (Monday's forecast for Manchester, Ky.: High 70F, low 47F, cloudy, 20% chance of rain) and let me show you how it's done. You just go on back to speculating about Sarah Palin's uterus and leave Kentucky to me.

C'mon, dear brothers, can I get an "amen"?

CORRECTION: I don't think Sully's actually in Thailand. His "View From Your Window" feature seems to be about readers e-mailing him photos of the view from thir windows, rather than his own global photographic travelogue.

My mistake and I'm happy to correct it. Harvard-educated, obstretric-obsessive, AIDS-infected, dope-smoking British immigrants don't have a monopoly on jumping to incorrect conclusions, you know.

BTW, some people have a crazy hunch this Kentucky thing might involve teenagers and the horrorcore rap scene. Maybe they're wrong about that, too . . .