Law enforcement authorities yesterday released details of the death of 51-year-old Bill Sparkman, a Census worker whose decomposed body was found almost two weeks ago hanging from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest. As of this morning, there is still no reliable news as to the nature or circumstances of his death. Specifically, authorities are non-committal whether his death had anything to do with his Census job:

The 51-year-old Sparkman was found this month hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery with the word “fed” scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.
[...]
FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is assisting state police and declined to discuss any details of the crime scene. Agents are trying to determine if foul play was involved and whether it had anything to do with Sparkman’s job as Census worker, Beyer said. Attacking a federal worker during or because of his federal job is a federal crime.

Lucindia Scurry-Johnson, assistant director of the Census Bureau’s southern office in Charlotte, N.C., said law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is “an apparent homicide” but nothing else.

Census employees were told Sparkman’s truck was found nearby, and a computer he was using for work was inside, she said.
[...]
“I have my own ideas, but I can’t say them out loud. Not at this point,” (Sparkman’s mother, Henrie Sparkman of Inverness, Fla.,) said. “Right now, what I’m doing, I’m just waiting on the FBI to come to some conclusion.”

You might have expected responsible self-respecting news outlets and commentators to not start saying their own ideas out loud at this stage either. That, for example, was the approach of The Huffington Post, which posted a just-the-facts story yesterday.

What was really disappointing was to see Salon’s War Room rush in with what at this stage is totally unfounded speculation:

It’s possible the story isn’t true . The report appears to cite a single, unidentified “law enforcement official,” and those kinds of stories are often wrong in some way; the source might not be the primary investigator on the case and could, for example, be passing on an erroneous rumor about the word on Sparkman’s chest.

But if it is true, it’s a scary thought for all the workers who are going out in the field in order to conduct the 2010 Census. There are always people who have some sort of paranoia about the federal government and the census, but things might be worse this time around. There’s been a lot of talk on the right about the connection (always very tenuous, and now severed) between the census and ACORN, a group that’s been conservatives’ favorite bogeyman of late. And Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has been spreading her own fears about the census, at one point even suggesting a link between the census and Japanese internment during World War II — a frightening parallel for modern conspiracy theorists who fear that the government is setting up similar camps for them now.

Is it that hard to recognize that if you find yourself going “It’s possible the story isn’t true, but if it is true…”, you’ve crossed a line? And surely no one can convince themselves that saying “It’s possible the story isn’t true” lets you off the hook?

(Isn’t this the kind of thing that liberal bloggers consistently jump on right-wing bloggers for? Is it too much to say that an apology is in order?)