A lot to talk about, as usual, when we skip a week. Just about everyone already has checked in, but I can’t resist a few comments about Deep Throat. Although everyone in Washington, whether in the press or in politics, says they knew it all along, I wouldn’t have remembered who Mark Felt was until he decided to admit he was the guy who pointed Woodward and Bernstein in the direction of a crooked President. This isn’t a real news story; that was finished 30 years ago, but it’s one of those things that hold onto the imagination over the years like, "What happened to Amelia Earhart or Jimmy Hoffa?"

Most of us probably wished that Deep Throat was a person of principles who somehow had managed to work his way to a high place in government, but the more likely possibility turned out to be true; he was just a political animal who had a score to settle with Nixon and knew where the bodies were buried. Mark Felt was a career cop who was blindly loyal to J. Edgar Hoover. Like Hoover, he didn’t regard the FBI as a law enforcement agency, nor did he think the FBI was above the law. He thought the FBI WAS the law. He didn’t condemn the Nixon crowd for playing dirty. Mark Felt, himself, later was convicted of similar crimes directed at anti-war protesters in the ‘70s. He probably thought Nixon’s only transgression was keeping the job in-house instead of leaving it to the FBI.

The most fun was watching Dub and Rummy respond to the story. Both were careful not to say that what he did was right, but both had to suck up what they really wanted to say–that they’d like to see his head on a stick. Law enforcement people have been more candid. They are unanimous in the conviction that it’s better to cover for a crooked President than to rat on him.

So where’s another guy like Mark Felt when we need him again? I don’t think anything like Watergate could happen now. For one thing, crooked politicians–forgive the redundancy–learned a lot from Watergate. Today’s dirty tricks come in two categories; either they’re played right out in the open as though everything is okay, or they’re hidden behind layers of deniability never imagined by the Nixon crowd. For another, the exercise of a free press has been suppressed by repeated imprisonment of journalists who choose to protect their sources. The mainstream can’t risk it, and the alternative journalists have been thoroughly marginalized in the eyes and ears of most voters. Corporate journalism won’t tell you anything that doesn’t sell the product, and most folks just don’t believe it unless it has a sponsor. If the Watergate story were happening today, most folks would be asking, "So what?"

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I guess that leads to the Downing Street Memo, a story which illustrates both the inadequacy of the U.S. corporate media and the willingness of the mainstream voters to accept dishonest behavior as normal behavior when it involves political power. The content of The Memo was widely known in Europe a long time ago, but it was discussed on the floor of the US Senate before it got any serious attention in the mainstream US media. Now it’s becoming widely known that the Bush crowd and the Blair crowd were planning to sell the world on an occupation of Iraq before 9-11 and before anyone cooked up that phony story about big time weapons in Iraq. Thirty years ago, that would have been enough to put Bush and Blair both on their butts, but too few people even care anymore. Everyone knew, instinctively, that the slogan "weapons of mass destruction" was just a fairy tale. Having it confirmed by the evidence doesn’t change anything. Bush lied and he got caught, but that’s exactly what most folks, including his supporters, expect him to do.

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We now know that the US paid a bounty for many of the prisoners it holds at Guantanamo and in the Middle East. The Associated Press recently reported that some Pakistani warlords were rounding up any Afghanis they could find and selling them to the US as Taliban and al Queda warriors. The State Department denies it. Then Amnesty International denounces the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo, and everyone in the Bush administration dismisses the report as absurd political quackery. Let’s not forget that the same people sold the invasion of Iraq, in part, by citing Amnesty International reports about Saddam Hussein’s cruel record of human rights abuses. If you can’t love your enemy, at least you can emulate him.

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By now you’ve heard that the US Supreme Court says the feds can come after you for marijuana even if the state where you live says you’re legal. I haven’t read it, but it appears that the decision was based on the reasoning that your stash represents interstate commerce because, even if its just your personal medicine, you might cause it to be transported from one state to another. This is the court to which Dub wants to appoint even more conservative judges. Based on that reasoning, everything growing in your yard is interstate commerce and subject to federal regulation. Look for that same reasoning to be applied when the pharmaceutical companies make their big move on all the herbal products they desperately want to control and suppress. Grow some echinacea; go to jail.

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Here’s another story for those who still doubt that the Christian right is taking over the government. The current governor of Texas, Rick Perry, sat down at a private, evangelical Christian school in Ft. Worth to sign an anti-abortion, anti gay rights bill. Perry’s campaign for governor included a promise to celebrate with his Christian friends when the opportunity came to sign this bill.

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And one brief local item. You’ve probably been watching the progress of construction on the Jimboys Taco stand in the Glenbrook basin. Apparently Gary Lyon, owner of the local Taco Bell, has been watching it too. He’s asked the city of Grass Valley to let him tear down his garden variety replica of the Alamo and replace it with one that’s bigger and better. That ought to keep his customers loyal despite the new competition. Let the taco wars begin.