Singers and Garage Freaks

let's get it out of the way - Taylor Hicks will be named the next American Idol. He was great.

Ironic that the day I cover Watergate and W. mark Felt, I get a phone call from the press regarding some of the issues I blabbed about last time. Just when to blow the whistle? When is the fight the family's, and when should dirty laundry be aired? I wasn't feeling the slightest Hal Holbrookesque, though I know my friend Steve would just want to call me the nickname. On a sidenote, teach THAT to a bunch of seventeen year olds without feeling like it's hotter than hell in your classroom.
I wanted so much tonight to be off the record and yet i wanted to air my conscience. The circle of people involved is small and my town is small enough that what was said by people to the press could create a blowback from the higher ups that will make what has already happened look like the warm-up act. I'm nervous and yet, I know that even the little I said was said with best faith and in proper means.

Things have been quiet as the Senate names as the new CIA chief the man who coordinated the NSA phone tapping and wiretapping schemes. Our president, as seen in this week's Newsweek, more than admitted that some of his family's domestic employees were illegal aliens and Alberto Gonzales has suddenly suffered amnesia about the history of his own family's immigration history. What we have here isn't a bunch of impeachable baffoons (see other blogs on this issue) but men with pasts that are more checkered that the pearly-white straw-men caricatures they wish us to believe. Is Bush a bad guy? No; I'd be curious to know just how many people knowingly and unknowingly have worked side by side with myself who are undocumented. however, what kills me is the point of view of this entire debate: punish those wanting to take advantage of this nation as a source of opportunity and ignore those who take advantage of the situation and hire these people yet wish to get off scott-free in this equation. Clamp down on the employee yet allow the employer shirk responsibility? Why don't we just fine the employees at Phillip Morris for being the ones who made and sold the cigarettes without paying attention to the name on the building they work in. Figures.

Who is the right candidate for the governorship of this great state? Are we as Californians willing to pay more for everything we want? To come...