The NYTimes got around to

looking at the Annie Jacobsen story today (FYI, here at the Dallas Morning

News, we published an edited version of the original on our op-ed page this

morning). Michelle Malkin links to it, and publishes a fascinating letter to

the Times cc’d to her by its

author. The letter, from a

former PBS producer active in the world music scene, finds the Feds’ story

that the 14 Syrians were musicians to be rather improbable. I’m still

waiting for somebody, somewhere, to find the casino where the Feds say these

guys played a gig. Michelle’s reader says that when musicians from foreign

countries (e.g., Cuba) get hassled in any way coming into the US, the

activist community complains about it. We’ve heard nothing like that about

these detained Syrians. For that matter, he says he knows a lot about Arab

musical groups, and he can’t think of who these guys might have been.