How utterly convenient.  :-/

A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick (Md.) Memorial Hospital. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.

OK, maybe I'm just a paranoid mofo whose judgement is clouded my my intense disgust, fear, and loathing of these fascistic bastards. Just the same, I'd greatly appreciate any of our resident legal beagals weighing-in with their astute analysis of what this EO portends. At the very least, I'm quite struck by the apparent bitchslap to the CIA.

<i>The order has been under revision for more than a year, an attempt to update a nearly 30-year-old presidential order to reflect organizational changes made in the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It was carried on in secret in the midst of pitched national debate about the appropriate balance between civil liberties and security, spurred by the president's warrantless wiretapping program.

The briefing charts assert that the new order maintains or improves civil liberties protections for Americans.

Interest in the rewrite inside the 16 agencies has been high because it establishes what agencies' powers and limitations will be.

The order, which has not yet been publicly released, is expected to cut into one of the CIA's traditional roles. The CIA has for 50 years set the policy and largely called the shots on relationships between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts. According to the briefing charts, the national intelligence director will now set the rules for engaging with foreign intelligence and security services. The CIA will now just "coordinate implementation," according to the briefing charts.</i>

<b>Senator Obama, you're invited</b>

Sen. John McCain came up with a terrific idea Monday when he was handed an invitation to meet with our editorial board as part of our endorsement process.

"Why don't you invite Senator (Barack) Obama to join me?" McCain suggested.

McCain noted that he has been frustrated in his attempts to have "just the two of us stand there and answer questions" in a town-hall format.

"Unfortunately, he (Obama) has refused to do so," McCain told our colleagues Debra J. Saunders and Carla Marinucci at the start of an interview at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel.

Senator Obama: Consider this an official invitation for a debate with McCain before The Chronicle's editorial board.

The format would be straightforward and substantive, modeled after the five debates we hosted (and streamed live on the Web) with statewide candidates in 2006. The candidates would have sufficient time to answer questions. If they tried to duck a question, we would follow up. Voters would have a chance to see video of the editorial board meeting in its entirety.

Senator McCain gets extra points for proposing a unglossed, unscripted, groundbreaking version of the presidential debate in the bluest of states and at a newspaper that last endorsed a Republican for president in 1992.

What do you say, Senator Obama?