The AP his finally gotten around to reporting on Annie Jacobsen and Flight 327. The story's only been out there for, what, three weeks? But now it's been mainstreamed. Before, Mrs. Jacobsen, the folks who read National Review Online, and the mostly red-pink part of the blogosphere had even heard of her or her story. Now, you can count on people of all political persuasions cocking their heads and saying, "yeah, wasn't she the alarmist on that flight with Wayne Newton."

As a side note, articles on Mr. Mehana & his traveling whack-a-mole band (just when one sits down, two pop up) now routinely and without quotes refer to him as the "Syrian Wayne Newton." I can't find any reference to him as that, prior to Mr. Taylor's NRO article. Three weeks is now the Half Life of Irony.

Once the story made the New York Times as the subject of derision, and the Times turned it from a lesson in national security intto one of cultural paranoia, the wire service probably figured it had to write something. But as noted here before, Mr. Taylor did all the actual legwork in findout who these guys were. The Times couldn't be bothered to credit him, while happily stealing his line about Wayne Newton. Now the wire service just follows suit.