Evening thread: Cops continue to hunt Tsarnaev; Update: Seven IEDs recovered; Update: FBI interviewed older brother two years ago about possible "extremist ties"; Update: Tsarnaev went to ... campus party on Wednesday night? Update: Cops take Tsarnaev alive

The last thread’s getting unwieldy so here’s one more to take us through the rest of the day. And we begin with breaking news:

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I assumed the grainy surveillance photo that’s been circulating since this morning came from a 7-11 camera, but evidently not. It must have come from the ATM that the Tsarnaevs used after they carjacked someone and used his debit card to withdraw $800. I still don’t understand why they didn’t have cash socked away in advance for their getaway, but there you go.

Another little factoid circulating right now:

Increasingly I’m thinking Tsarnaev must have found a shed or an open basement window somewhere in Watertown and killed himself earlier this morning. If that’s true, it might take awhile to find him. How long is the city going to stay locked down out of fear of one man whom thousands of cops are looking for?

Update: Via Ace, this Judicial Watch piece needs confirming but if it checks out then Jay Carney’s going to have a long day on Monday.

Update: Some good news: Despite rumors to the contrary earlier, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is the lone suspect remaining.

Update: Sure looks like the Tsarnaev boys had bigger plans:

Here’s what life looks like in Watertown today.

Update: Per the Daily Mail, turns out Tamerlan Tsarnaev left a widow and a three-year-old daughter in Rhode Island.

Someone on Twitter offers another theory about Dzhokhar: Maybe he was wounded last night in the shootout with cops and has since bled to death wherever he’s hiding. I saw one estimate that more than 200 shots were fired.

Update: A tidbit from the Daily Mail piece that I overlooked, in case you think there’s any doubt that they’re guilty:

Alvi Tsarnaev told The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News that his nephew phoned him Thursday night for the first time in about two years.

The call came at 7 p.m., just a couple of hours before Tamerlan was shot dead.

“He said, ‘I love you and forgive me,’ ” said Alvi Tsarnaev, who lives in Montgomery Village, Md.

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Update: Man, this is some family.

Update: A little more evidence as to who the mastermind was:

“I used to warn Dzhokhar that Tamaralan was up to no good,” Zaur Tsarnaev, who identified himself as a 26-year-old cousin, said in a phone interview on Friday from Mkhachkala, in the Russian republic of Dagestan. “[Tamaralan] was always getting into trouble. He was never happy, never cheering, never smiling. He used to strike his girlfriend. He hurt her a few times. He was not a nice man. I don’t like to speak about him. He caused problems for my family.”

Zaur Tsarnaev said he most recently expressed his concerns about Tamarlan — the alleged bomber pictured in a dark hat in FBI videos released Thursday — to Dzhokhar when Dzhokar visited last summer. He added that Dzhokhar went to mosque sometimes but he was “never an extremist.”

Update: Here’s what’s coming next week, along with the debate over the Judicial Watch piece linked above. Odds of Tsarnaev being taken alive at this point, though, are slim.

If you think there’s zero chance of Obama taking Graham’s advice, Glenn Greenwald’s reminding people on Twitter that Eric Holder proposed something like this after the failed car-bombing of Times Square in 2010.

Update: Random thought: What’s the “blowback” theory of the Tsarnaevs’ bombings?

Update: Their hopes for a tea-party terrorist thwarted once again, liberals are burning up Twitter right now in rage over Graham’s tweets — even though, per Greenwald, he’s right in line with Holder. Jennifer Rubin called him this afternoon and got this elaboration:

I spoke with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) by phone just a few minutes ago. He said of the Boston bombers: “They were radicalized somewhere, somehow.” Regardless of whether they are international or “homegrown,” he said, “This is Exhibit A of why the homeland is the battlefield.” Recalling Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster, Graham noted that he took to the Senate floor specifically to object to Rand’s notion that “America is not the battlefield.” Graham said to me, “It’s a battlefield because the terrorists think it is.” Referring to Boston, he observed, “Here is what we’re up against,” and added, “It sure would be nice to have a drone up there [to track the suspect.]” He also slammed the president’s policy of “leading from behind and criminalizing war.”

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When Graham says the homeland is the battlefield, he means it. This is a guy, remember, who once said of Terry Jones’s Koran-burning, “Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” And then, when he was criticized for that, kinda sorta backed off by saying, “I wish we could hold people accountable for their actions, but under free speech, you can’t.”

Update: A possible clue to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s radicalization via Fox News:

Professor Brian Glyn Williams, who teaches the only course in the U.S. on the Chechen wars, said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev emailed him in the spring of 2011, asking questions on Chechen history for a research project he was doing at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School.

Williams said that based on conversations with a friend who taught Tsarnaev — and who recommended he reach out to Williams — he learned that Tsarnaev was “studying his past.”

“He was sort of in the process of vicariously rediscovering his Chechen origins,” the professor told FoxNews.com.

Williams said that after the student contacted him, he emailed back a syllabus. He said he didn’t even remember the interaction until he talked to a friend.

Update: Uh oh.

Update: The cops are holding a 6 p.m. briefing right now and … nope, they can’t find him, despite a massive manhunt. They’re going to provide extra patrols to Watertown for two or three days on the assumption that he’s there somewhere and will have to surface soon. Just as I’m writing this, though, Deval Patrick is saying that the request that people stay home has been lifted. Boston’s back in business.

Update: Gabe Malor notes on Twitter that the Judicial Watch piece about Tamelan Tsarnaev’s 2009 domestic-violence arrest doesn’t specifically say that Tsarnaev was convicted. JW’s trying to nail that down. You can be deported for an arrest if you’re a visa holder but, per Gabe, they need to convict you in order to deport you if you’re a permanet resident, as Tsarnaev reportedly was.

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Update: As noted in the last thread, last night Tsarnaev somehow survived a car crash, a shootout with huge numbers of police, another car crash — and still somehow managed to get away on foot, with thousands of police unable to find him after looking all day today. Unbelievable.

Update: An update on the FBI’s run-in with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011:

Presumably the foreign country is Russia. Why were they interested in Tsarnaev? Did they give the FBI info about him?

Update: We know from the last thread that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was on campus at UMass-Dartmouth on Wednesday. We didn’t know this:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had passed an apparently normal day at the school Wednesday, according to a UMass official, working out at the gym, then sleeping in his single-unit room at the Pine Dale Hall dorm that night, while law enforcement officials were frantically scanning photos and video trying to identify him and his brother.

School officials know he was there Wednesday because of card swipes, but it was not clear if he had been there earlier. He was described as good, typical student who played intramural soccer.

A student, who didn’t want to be identified, said she saw Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at a party Wednesday night that was attended by some of his friends with whom he played intramural soccer.

“He was just relaxed,” she said.

He knew by that point that the feds had surveillance images. News was already leaking that morning that they were focused on a white male in a black jacket, gray hoodie, and white cap. What on earth was he thinking hanging around campus?

Update: At just before 7 p.m. ET, a CNN reporter in Watertown reports that she’s heard shots fired.

Update: Sounds like endgame is near:

Is this it?

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Update: Not much longer:

That’s terrible news in one sense: It means the body in the boat isn’t his.

Update: Fox 25 in Boston says the suspect is “down.” Alive or dead, no idea.

Update: Apparently police are sending in a robot for fear that Tsarnaev is wired and ready to blow. Shep Smith is reporting now that apparently the key tip came from a woman in Watertown whose boat and boathouse were searched earlier today by cops. When she looked out the window later, though, she saw the boathouse door open and what looked like blood on the boat. The theory is that Tsarnaev ducked into one of the two possibly to change clothes.

Update: Pete Williams, who’s been the most accurate of the TV news reporters throughout the week, says there’s a “body” in the boat. Maybe it’s Tsarnaev after all and not one of his victims. The cops probably can see him in the boat overhead but can’t be sure that he’s dead or just wounded and ready to explode until they send the robot in.

Update: My, oh my:

Update: He might have been moving, but he’s not now:

Update: Per Ed, Fox’s affiliate in Boston is reporting that the man in the boat is “refusing” to come out.

Update: A Fox affiliate reporter on the scene says he’s heard no less than eight explosions. Word on Twitter is that those are flashbangs being tossed in to scare him out of the boat.

Update: Cross your fingers: Pete Williams reports the police are moving in.

Update: At 8:13, Pete Williams reports that there’s a fire in the boat. A few minutes later, a local NBC reporter says a police helicopter shined a light briefly on the boat and it looks like Tsarnaev’s “covered in blood.”

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Update: According to Michael Isikoff, they’re now trying to talk him out:

Update: Holy cow. Is there … a cell here?

ABC says they’re “college-aged.”

Update: At 8:42, NBC is reporting that the cops have got him — and he’s alive. I see people on Twitter cheering that, since it means we’ll be able to get intel from him and eventually execute him anyway. Don’t be so sure. Ben Smith tweeted an hour or so ago a friendly reminder that Lee Boyd Malvo, the second man in the D.C. sniper murders, got life in prison. And since Tsarnaev’s a U.S. citizen, if he lawyers up and refuses to talk, there’s little the feds can do to make him.

Update: The likeliest legal outcome here, it seems to me, is the feds offer him life in prison if he gives them useful intelligence (especially vis-a-vis those other three people arrested) or death if he doesn’t. Either way, that’s a mixed bag. Intel would be great, but then we’re paying for decades and decades of prison for this degenerate. And if he gives us nothing and is sentenced to lethal injection, that’s a long, expensive process too. With little to show for it counterterror-wise.

Update: That didn’t take long:

https://twitter.com/adamsavader/status/325411741200703489

You have to do this if you want his statements to cops admissible in federal court, regardless of whether Lindsey Graham or Eric Holder wishes otherwise. I don’t think it’s a big deal, actually: They’re going to pressure him to talk regardless by threatening him with death if he doesn’t. Miranda won’t weigh as heavily in his mind as that, especially since this cretin craves his own life enough not to have offed himself today.

As I told Ace on Twitter, I look forward to auditing Tsarnaev’s class at Columbia 25 years from now.

Update: At least he looks pretty messed up. That’s something.

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Update: Looks like Obama and Holder are going to test the courts a bit:

Update: A little something to make you feel good after a long day. Tsarnaev’s reportedly in serious condition.

Update (Ed): Looks like the reports of further arrests were more like a case of protective custody:

For now, then, Dzhokhar is taking the fall all by his little lonesome.  Maybe he’ll be singing sooner rather than later on his big brother’s buddies, if Tamerlan had any to sing about.

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