Yesterday I put up a poll to see what folks thought would be the outcome of the Times Square bomber case. While about 40 folks said my posting was stupid, 459 people voted.
Given events, I think the outcome was interesting. Only 24 people (I can't do math, so I don't know the percentage, but it's low) said that this fellow was an American sympathetic to al Qaeda. On the other hand, more than half -- 288 -- said that the would-be bomber was a militia or tea partier guy.
Now, Faisal Shahzad should be presumed innocent by all of us. However, the probability that this had nothing to do with any conservative movement is now extremely low.
That leads me to one thing I should say: I argued my belief that this would be an anti-government type. I was wrong.
Given the criticism, I felt like my posting was wrong to do. But now I'm glad I did it, because we have some information that gives us -- particularly me -- something to think about. . It is interesting to see how many of us -- me included -- went the direction we did in our predictions. And I don't know what that says, but perhaps it does mean we are classifying tea partiers too strongly. Perhaps not. But I think it's an interesting thing.