Ricin Tainted Letter Sent to Senator and Possibly the President

An anonymous reader writes "A letter addressed to Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) was tested and found to contain ricin, a highly toxic, inexpensive, and easily produced substance derived from castor beans. The letter was intercepted at the U.S. Capitol's off-site mail facility and nobody has been injured. The letter was postmarked Memphis, Tennessee, but listed no return address. Sen. Claire McCaskill told reporters that a suspect has been identified." And, this morning, a letter addressed to the President was discovered containing a suspicious substance. Update: 04/17 16:25 GMT by U L : And the substance is ricin. Apparently, air filters at another facility have also tested positive for ricin.

Comments

Pres letter does have Ricin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Source.

Re:Pres letter does have Ricin.

[rwa2]

"Oh Pollux" - says some Brit constellation.

Profile of attacker already available..

[nweaver]

Its someone stupid enough to think a Senator opens his own mail. (Shamelessly stolen from Twitter)

There is only one option.

[ScentCone]

Obviously we must ban all Assault Beans. Even though castor beans aren't even really legumes at all. All that matters is that word "bean" is used, which qualifies them as Assault Beans.

Just because the Lima Bean ban back in the 1990's didn't reduce the number of assault bean attacks doesn't mean that a properly configured law - which we'll have to pass in order to find out what's really in it, of course - won't save "at least one life."

Next, we'll have to focus on deaths related to soccer and other Assault Sports. I'm looking at you, Kayaking.

Re:There is only one option.

[bigstrat2003]

That... is really not true. A pretty decent chunk of business matters get handled via snail mail (not all or even most by any means, but enough to make it non-negligible). And also, people do still send personal mail (letters and such), as not everyone has internet nor wants to. Call them foolish if you want, but they are still using the service for non-spam reasons.

Re:Wow ...

[cffrost]

I imagine he gets these every single day. It goes with the job.

Oh, wait, we have to take advantage of the bombings! We're still at war with Eastasia, remember!

This whole every-aspect-of-our-lives-must-be-in-the-context-of-1984 conspiracy stuff has really gotten out of hand ...

Has it? I think the actual government-using-1984-as-an-instruction-manual stuff has gotten far more out of hand than your particular gripe.

Re:Here we go again

[ScentCone]

If we could create legislation that could keep unstable people from bombs, we would. Since we can with guns, we will.

Really? The owner of the guns in the CT killings would have passed any of the newly proposed background checks. She owned the guns legally. They were stolen from her by someone not allowed to have the, who killed her before moving on to kill other people and himself. Which restraint on the 2nd being tossed around would have prevented that crazy guy from being crazy? Please be specific. Thanks.

Re:So?

[sycodon]

Have you noticed that whenever something bad happens in America, to normal people, the next day or the same day, a letter with a "suspicious substance" is sent to a politician in D.C.?

They must have a special unit called "All About Us" that just sends these out as needed.

Re:Here we go again

[thomasw_lrd]

I'm truly curious what background check will keep someone from stealing another person's legally obtained weapon?

Are you suggesting that if you have a family member with issues (I wanted to type "crazy", but that's derogatory IMO) then you shouldn't be able to pass a background check? Where does this kind of logic end and what personal liberties are you willing to forgo to allow a database of this size to happen?