Bishop's husband James Anderson is talking to anyone who can get him on the phone. He told ABC's Boston affiliate that he loves his wife and that he doesn't know why she did what she did. He told the Associated Press that he and Bishop went to a shooting range a few weeks ago but they didn't own a gun. He told The Chronicle of Higher Education (who have been all over over the story, today publishing an interview with the heroic biochemistry professor who locked Bishop out of the room before she could kill the rest of the assembled faculty) that Bishop called him from jail to ask of the kids had done their homework. He told ABC that his wife was "loved and respected by everyone," though that doesn't quite seem true: most interviews with colleagues and former coworkers of Bishop present the picture of a "socially awkward" "oddball."

And her neighbors hated her. She was one of those women who constantly calls the cops on kids for biking around the neighborhood and making noise. She videotaped neighborhood kids while they annoyed her with their afternoon scootering. Her own children weren't allowed to play with neighborhood kids. And, most evilly, she made the ice cream truck stop going through their neighborhood.

Bishop and her husband reportedly met in a Dungeons and Dragons club when they were at Northeastern (Anderson even answered a question about this, to The Boston Herald).

The New York Post adds a little chilling color to her presumed motive. Bishop apparently went nuts and opened fire because she'd been denied tenure (her husband said she got a mean email about it, too—if anyone finds the ticket stub in Bishop's possession, A Serious Man could become the 21st century's murder-inspiring Catcher in the Rye), and the Post reports that she was obsessed with the story of an academic researcher who lost his funding. The source, once again, is her husband:

She feared she'd end up like Douglas Prasher, a brilliant molecular chemist who had to abandon his research in 1994 when his funding dried up.

His colleagues went on to the win the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008 based on his research. Prasher currently drives the courtesy van for a Huntsville Toyota dealership.

(We await the Politico exclusive on the literally tens of dollars a day that these van-driving pinhead liberal academics rake in.)

As you have probably gathered, Amy Bishop's husband will talk to anyone about literally anything. You should give him a call! Ask about the ice cream thing!

[Pic: AP]

Military paper Stars and Stripes is finally delivering copies to the troops stationed in Haiti. If Haitians can use these papers to construct some sort of crude blanket, they will be the most useful print newspapers on the face of the earth.


Further word on last week's abrupt firing of Roger Hodge as Harper's Magazine editor: Everybody's a little scared of publisher Rick MacArthur, who fired Hodge and now seems to be the grand and only god of Harper's, and accordingly it seems that the majority of the staff is leaking snippy little things to the media (hello!), so today's NYT follow-up story is rife with backhanded insinuations that MacArthur is kind of unstable, as well as dumb. To both sides in this mildly alarming interoffice feud: We're here to listen.

Our reading of this incredibly long piece on the case of a J-school professor's disputed tenure hearings is that it's a case of the age-old question in academia: Which is more important, being a good teacher or not being an asshole in the teacher's lounge? The answer, of course, is it's more important to have the undergrads think you're "Cute."


Today's notable NYT op-ed contributor: Howell Raines, making his first(?) appearance as a writer for the paper since the whole unpleasant "You're fired as the top editor of the NYT, Howell" business. His piece is about the Greensboro sit-ins, which makes it hard to criticize. Can Andy Rosenthal still be trusted?