Bank robbery miscellany

In the days before Christmas, we noticed from sitemeter that we were getting a bunch of hits simply by virtue of having been around to blog about the Belfast bank robbery in what was expected to be a quiet holiday period. The story is now splashed all over the papers with the declaration of the Northern Ireland police that the IRA was involved -- despite the lack of any arrests. We refer you to Slugger O'Toole for a vast range of relevant links and make a few minor observations here.

First, we noted the gloating of the Sunday Independent on their apparent scoop that the Irish Times killed a column of Kevin Myers written a few days after the robbery in which he declared the IRA's culpability. Unlike Mark Steyn, whose only outlet for spiked columns is his website, Myers was able to publish essentially the same column in the Sunday Telegraph.

Second, we wonder if some of the media reports have been coyly hinting at police suspicions about one of the hostages taken during the raid. It's all being said in a carefully libel-proof way, but the frequent references to where the younger of the two hostages lived, his support for Glasgow Celtic, where he liked to drink etc. Perhaps this is one link that the police have already established but can't say so publicly.