ICYMI: White powdery substance sent to Rep. West’s office last week

This story is about a week old, but I’m posting about it anyway because I suspect many people didn’t hear about this because it didn’t get much, if any, significant national media attention:

A letter containing white powder and a threat was opened at U.S. Rep. Allen West’s campaign office here on Friday afternoon, prompting a HazMat response and an FBI investigation, officials said.

City firefighters tested the powder and determined it wasn’t anthrax or any other dangerous biological substance, said Frank Correggio, Boca Raton Fire-Rescue spokesman. It wasn’t clear Friday what the powder was .

Firefighters were called to the office, near the 2000 block of North Federal Highway, at about 1:45 p.m. Friday, Correggio said. FBI agents arrived about an hour later.

According to a statement from West’s office, the envelope was picked up from a Deerfield Beach post office box and opened in Boca Raton by a campaign worker, the only person in the office.

The envelope was stuffed with white powder and a letter with “derogatory statements” toward West. It also “mentioned the word anthrax,” the statement said.

West’s campaign office called police in Boca Raton and the U.S. Capitol. His offices in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale were told to take precautions when handling mail Friday, the statement said.

“I am deeply disturbed at this incident which threatened a member of our campaign staff,” West said in the statement. “I thoroughly condemn this act which does nothing but evidence the sick and deranged nature of the perpetrator.”

As you can imagine, this news got a good amount of coverage in the Boca area, and the AP even reported on it, but you didn’t get the wall to wall, 24-7 saturation of national news coverage from the major nets like you would have had this been a Democrat Congressman/woman who received a threatening note with a suspicious substance contained inside the envelope in the post-Gabrielle Giffords shooting era. You’d think that such egregious New Tone violations would merit more than just your garden variety run of the mill national MSM reporting, but then again, as we’ve learned all too often before, the speculated political affiliation of the perp and the political affiliation of the victim have to be “a certain way” before it grabs and holds national headlines for more than just a few seconds. It’s sad, but this is the reality we live in.

Glad Rep. West and his staff are ok.