As of this writing, there isn't that much being said on my favorite blogs about former FBI #2 Mark Felt's revelation that he not only had the perfect name for an FBI man, but was also Deep Throat.

Over the next few days, there will be some nostalgic rehashings of the Deep Throat legend. A few of our nation's professional buzz-kills will dig up whatever Mr. Felt has done wrong as a fed. But mostly, there will be this strange sense of feeling let-down.

After all, the Deep Throat we all loved, Hal Holbroke's Deep Throat, is a mythic figure, a shadow in the back of a parking garage, the modern-day Delphi for the journalism major.

Mark Felt, on the other hand, is an old man living in Santa Barbara. Nice enough, sure, but not someone who tickles resceptors in Jung's collective unconcious. Mark Felt is not the omniscient voice in the darkness we all know as Deep Throat, and in defiance of reality, we are never going to fully accept him as Deep Throat. There will almost be a bit of anger simmering in the back, in the places we don't talk about at parties, that really almost hates this Mark Felt for daring to take away our mythic, heroic Deep Throat and put some pathetic mortal in his place.

His family hints that he wants to make some money and pay off his granddaughter's college loans. I hope he does.

"In this time of unprecedented dangers, we need you to take on two difficult missions at once," [Bush] told the officers. "We need you to defeat the terrorists who want to destroy what we stand for and how we live. And at the same time, we need you to transform our military for the 21st century, so we can deter and defeat the new adversaries who may threaten our people in the decades ahead."

An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

The parents' Wiccan beliefs came to Bradford's attention in a confidential report prepared by the Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which provides recommendations to the court on child custody and visitation rights. Jones' son attends a local Catholic school.

"There is a discrepancy between Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones' lifestyle and the belief system adhered to by the parochial school. . . . Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon (the boy) as he ages," the bureau said in its report.

But Jones, 37, Indianapolis, disputes the bureau's findings, saying he attended Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis as a non-Christian.

Jones has brought the case before the Indiana Court of Appeals, with help from the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. They filed their request for the appeals court to strike the one-paragraph clause in January.

"This was done without either of us requesting it and at the judge's whim," said Jones.

Republicans threatened to immediately invoke what some have called the nuclear option - doing away with the filibuster against judicial candidates - if Democrats tried to block any nominee except in the most extreme cases.

"This is merely a truce; it's not a treaty yet," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee.

• John McCain and his band of merry men deny Frist the votes he needs. Frist is humiliated and probably loses his job. Tom Minnery, Focus on Family's VP of public policy, who recently accused McCain of being "squirrelly," accuses him of being something worse.
• Frist gets the votes he needs, and Roy Cohn becomes Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Frist gets the GOP nomination for President in 2008—and loses. Phyllis Schlafly is stunned that so many Americans are upset that a dead McCarthyite homosexual is Chief Justice. Simply stunned.

In a sign of the complications Dr. Frist faces in trying to balance running the Senate as he prepares to run for president in 2008, two conservative Republican senators who are also talking about running immediately attacked the agreement. Dr. Frist, of Tennessee, had promised conservatives that he could pass the measure to prohibit Democrats from using filibusters to stop votes on judicial nominations.

At the same time, Mr. McCain's role in brokering the compromise may have severely ruptured his already strained relations with the party's conservative bloc, a group that is critical to winning the presidential nomination, conservatives and some of Mr. McCain's supporters said.

I, J'myle Koretz, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that--

--I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

--I am not participating in any strike against the Government of the United States or any agency thereof, and I will not so participate while and employee of the Government of the United States or any agency thereof.

--I have not, nor has anyone acting in my behalf, given, tranferred, promised or paid any consideration for or in expectation or hope of recieveing assistance in securing this appointment.

The negotiators largely credited Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and said they recieved signifigant support from veteran senators John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). ... Other signers were Democrats Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Ken Salazar (Colo.), and Daniel Inouye (Hawaii), and Republicans Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Lincoln Chaffee (R.I.).

Depending on how conservative groups digest the news over the next few days, one of the biggest losers in the deal could be Frist, who is weighing a presidential run in 2008. He has always insisted on up-or-down votes on judicial nominees. Amassing the support needed to win the vote on the nuclear option was considered a major test of his leadership skills and his adeptness at promoting social conservative causes.

Dr. Frist and his allies potrayed the agreement as a positive step but noted that it still did not fully meet their requirement that all judicial nominees ultimately recieve up-or-down votes. "This agreement falls short of that principle," the majority leader said.

One of my Republican friends recently told me flat out that Condi Rice would never be nominated because the GOP has too many racist elements in the party. I'm not to sure, especially when you consider just how much Condi would do to neautralize Hillary and bring moderates into the party. I don't believe there are enough racists left in the GOP, even among local primary voters, to sink their most electable candidate.

Some Republicans don't want to risk it. USNews reports that Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is being floated as a candidate for the office of His Royal Superflousness.

The hot 2008 GOP presidential ticket links either Virginia Sen. George Allen or Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour with ... Blackwell.

USNews quotes a Republican strategist as saying running a Black conservative man for vice president is a "dream ticket." Especially since both the presidential hopefuls he's linked to are southerners--they may want a Southern Gentleman to reassure their party's more reactionary elements.

Just as long as Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee doesn't run. So far, Huckabee has done two things that have been noticed outside Little Rock. First, he promised to stay married to his wife. Second, he wrote a diet book. It's called Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork (When There's a Perfectly Good Shovel in the Shed) and I would hate to see a diet book become my generation's Profiles in Courage.

“The moment draws closer when all 100 United States senators must decide a basic question of principle, whether to restore the precedent of an up or down vote...or to enshrine a new tyranny of the minority into the Senate rules,” said Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

Nothing makes a hospital stay more interesting that passing a kidney stone when you are in for something else.

I think the heat is affecting my brain. Last year, I went to Durham, North Carolina, for a day in the height of summer. I spent most of that day feverish and semi-lucid on a ratty couch in a coffee shop with broken air conditioning. By the time the temperature was tolerable again, everything had closed down for the night, and there was nothing to do but watch an underage male prostitute wander up and down the street, waiting to be picked up.

Aside from that, Durham was fine.

I say that the heat is getting to me because yesterday, when my bus pulled up to a stop, and the ‘Bus Stop’ sign was just outside the window, I felt some separation anxiety. The sign and I were so close we'd be less than a step away in normal life, a tem which here means “when I'm not riding the bus.” But because of the god-forsaken window, I could never lean against the bus stop sign; I couldn't even lean in close and read when the next bus was due to arrive. I hated the window.

Later I remembered that windows open.

It's not just the heat. I've been stuck on center for the better part of a week. Which is worse on this center than it was in Charleston, because here when you get off-center, you're in Washington, D.C., our age's Imperial City, where the hedonism of Imperial Rome meets the indoor plumbing of Imperial London.

At the other center, when you went off hill, you were in Charleston, West Virginia, which is the other place they manufactured that stuff that spilled in Bophal.

Watching an episode of Law & Order so old, Jerry Orbach is not yet a detective, and Paul McCrane is still playing a one-scene street tough, not dreaming of the E.R. in his future.

Man, I wish the D.A. would warn him to stay away from helicopters right about now.

Heh. That was a meta-joke.

Well, I thought it was funny.

It's too damn hot out.

Carons mediocre band, Letters on Mountains, opened the evening with Im Not Down, a rambling pseudo-ballad that was reminiscent of the worst of Ani DiFranco.

Compare and Contrast: Why Farid Ghadry Is Not the Ahmad Chalabi of Syria

Though not reflexively opposed to minimum wage laws, I tend to think that raising the minimum wage too sharply is likely to result in the exclusion of large numbers of people from formal labor markets. And in the shadow economy, poor people become more vulnerable to the depredations of employers far more unscrupulous than Wal-Mart...

Because some employees are too expensive to employ at higher wages--language barriers, a lack of schooling, disciplinary problems, and absenteeism are among the many factors that separate recent immigrants, those who grew up in severe poverty, and those who've been institutionalized from everyone else--they are more likely to be completely excluded, i.e., to join the ranks of the non-employed or under-employed, than they are to benefit from a steep statutory increase in the minimum wage. When you consider the very rigid labor markets found in Western Europe, where vast numbers of increasingly disaffected young people find themselves left behind without the social protections that come with holding a legal job, you can see the downside risks.

“If I were to walk down the street and say ‘Barry Goldwater,’ at least three fourths of the people I stop would say, ‘Who's he?’”

—Sen. John McCain

When I worked for the Kerry campaign in West Virginia, people would express their disagreement with my political views by shouting “babykiller” out their car window and speeding off. In D.C., people politely inform me that they're “on the other side of the aisle,” then engage me in a stimulating discussion of the political strengths and weaknesses of Hillary Clinton, recall with remorse the unfortunate history of Jews in Spain, recommend obscure Ukranian authors, and tell stories of a sibling's rise in the ranks of the RNC—in order to inspire me to do the same in my own party.

People from West Virginia, for the most part, think people from Washington, D.C. are rude and intolerant.

While driving through El Paso recently, I heard a caller to a talk-radio program laughingly suggest that we should embed Army recruiters within the frontline ranks of the Border Patrol so that they could sign up illegal immigrants and thus eliminate the Army's current recruiting deficits. I laughed, as did the host of the show, and said to my wife, “Hey, thats not a bad idea.”

Dug up from the archives: A post I wrote way back on, ah, March 3rd. Ah, the good old days. I remember them well.

Why did the Republicans start winning? Because the leadership of the party finally started reigning in the wingnuts that had a disproportionate amount of influence. Essentially the Christian Coalition was told that while their views would be respected as much as possible they were not going to set the agenda. Partial birth abortion, an issue which resonates with the electorate would be pushedbut youll never see Bush, or any other senior Republican, publicly speak about overturning Roe v. Wade.

The religious right was basically told that truth of the situation was that they had no viable option but to play along. Any other action would see what they were fighting for further eroded.

Meanwhile a small, vocal segment of the Democratic Party has begun to have a disproportionate amount of influence. One of the reason that Kerry seemed to waffle was the fear of offending the DU and dKos crowd. In the end Kerry had to say that while the reasons to go to war were bad were stuck with it. We need to defend America and this is how the Democratic Party would do it. Too little, too late. Many Americans didnt feel that Kerry was really serious about it. They may not have fully been behind Bushs vision, but they felt that he was serious. Pandering to the DUers and the dKossacks, to the Dean crowd, made Kerry look indecisive and not serious. Christmas in Cambodia, The Magic Hat and the Swifties all played a big rollbut arguments as equally damning, Bushs ill-spent youth and young adulthood, rolled off his back. Because all that happened long ago in a different world that didnt have crazed Jihadis flying planes into buildings. Bush was serious.

I have always considered Hillary Clinton a formidable politician, but I haven't really feared a Hillary presidency because I haven't thought she was electable. I'm not quite as sure anymore.

Hillary is polarizing, but that's hardly a disqualifying attribute. So are her husband and President Bush, both of whom were elected twice. Indeed, in today's partisan climate, almost any strong leader of either party will ultimately be deemed polarizing.

An escalating battle between front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Cinton and 2004 nominee Sen. John Kerry. [US News] learns that Kerry is not just testing the waters: He's running. “His family wants him to run again,” says one pal.

Friends of Hillary, meanwhile, are touting her front-runner status and joining in the chorus of Democrats who think Kerry should crawl under a rock and go away.

During a visit to the Sudanese capital last month, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick stunned the world by refusing to repeat Colin Powell's forthright declaration that the killing in Darfur amounted to genocide. And, last week, as first reported by The American Prospect, the White House sent a letter to Congress instructing appropriators to strike the bipartisan Darfur Accountability Act from the $82 billion supplemental bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. The Act, which easily passed the Senate, tightens sanctions on Bashir, authorizes $90 million to aid African Union peacekeepers and humanitarian assistance efforts, imposes a no-fly zone over the ravaged region, and seeks to make the genocide priority number-one in U.S.-Sudanese relations. It's unconscionable that President Bush can entertain the overtures of the Sudanese genocidaires. Yet he shows every sign of buying the argument made by Bashir adviser Gutbi Al Mahdi, who told the Times, "There can be a strong [intelligence] partnership, but there is some hesitation because the diplomatic relationship remains poor." Well, yes—and it ought to stay that way so long as the dying continues in Darfur.

An unexpected retreat in the United States' demand for imports trimmed the trade deficit in March to a six-month low, the government reported today, creating a far brighter picture of the economy than previous data suggested.

Protesters have occupied the office of the University [of Hawaii]'s interim President David McClain and delivered new demands on Monday, asking him to take immediate action that would stall or stop...plans for a proposed Navy research center on campus.

Citing Native Hawaiian concerns, protesters say the proposed University Affiliated Research Center, which would be the Navy's fifth on a U.S. college campus and the first in 58 years, would further militarize a state that is home to several military bases, including the Navy's Pearl Harbor and headquarters for the U.S. military's Pacific Command.

WASHINGTON, May 2 - The Supreme Court agreed today to consider a case involving national defense, concepts of patriotism and free speech and, not incidentally, billions of dollars in federal money.

The justices announced that they would review a lower-court ruling, in favor of 25 law schools, that universities may bar military recruiters from their campuses without risking the loss of federal aid. Arguments will be heard in the justices' next term, which begins in October.

God also gave us a spirit not of weakness, but of power, love and self control. Timidity is a tool of Satan, which he uses well. Timidity coupled with indifference or tolerance by Christians has caused our nation to slide further and further away from God and all the biblical principles our forefathers founded this nation upon.

—Lebanon, Tenn. Mayor Don Fox