A number of weeks back I was flying into Vegas, and as we were nearly on the ground I looked out my airplane window and noticed an unusual sight, even for Vegas: the top floor of the Monte Carlo was on fire and there were flames jumping off the top of the hotel. And then, suddenly, the pilot aborted the landing and we were back up in the air. No explanation given.

That's the way authorities now seem to want to handle the Ricin find: they want us up in the air without explanations.

That's fair enough, but if they're going to handle things that way then why reassure us that there's no link to terrorism? Every statement from authorities as of yesterday emphasized that: no reason to suspect terrorism.

Or is it that what they're really saying is that there's no reason to suspect "foreign" terrorism? And since they allegedly know so little, why urge even that conclusion?

Associated Press reports that:

As police tried to piece together how a rare, deadly poison ended up in a motel for transients, the 57-year-old man who could hold the key lay unconscious in a hospital.

Adding to the mystery, police said firearms and an "anarchist type textbook" were found in the same room where the ricin was discovered two days later.

I'm not much of a criminologist, and less of a conspiracy theorist, but when one finds a bunch of Ricin in a transient hotel and along with it they find an "anarchist type textbook," perhaps eliminating terrorism, domestic or foreign, from the list of what's conceivable might be a tad premature.

And if authorities, who according to their own admission don't really know much, then why eliminate the possibility that a man with Ricin and a chemical weapons cookbook might just want to do some harm?