An envelope containing a suspicious white powder showed up in the mailroom at the New York Times last week. We can't tell if she's joking or not -- really, can we ever? -- but Ann Coulter is claiming that she's responsible.

Raw Story ferrets out the news from an item in Women's Wear Daily's Memo Pad blog. Memo Pad's source at the Times said the powder incident makes Coulter's call for the death penalty for Bill Keller just "a little less funny." "I wonder," the source said, "if she considers herself at all responsible when lunatics read her columns and she says that we should be killed."

Memo Pad asked Coulter about the incident. Her response? "So glad to hear that the New York Times got my letter and that your friend at the Times thinks I'm funny. Good luck in journalism and please send me your home address so we can stay in touch, too."

The white powder turned out to be harmless, but perhaps it's time to fight fire with fire anyway. If Coulter thinks that reporters at the Times should be tried for treason -- and she does -- wouldn't it be fair game to say that Coulter herself should be tried for threatening to use WMD or using the U.S. mail to send threatening communications? Those are federal crimes, and it seems to us that Coulter has just admitted committing one.