May 31, 2005 [LINK]
In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, W. Mark Felt, a former FBI official who is now 91, claimed that he was "Deep Throat," the anonymous tipster who helped Woodward and Bernstein unravel the mysterious Watergate scandal. The iconic beat reporters have long pledged to keep their source's identity secret until he dies, but he apparently wanted to make the revelation on his own terms. "The Washington Post had no immediate comment." See Washington Post. I wonder what Linda Lovelace has to say?
Theme for the day: "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." For the past three years, French President François Mitterrand has systematically cultivated anti-American sentiment as a tool to maintain political support, so it should come as no surprise that the weapon turned into a generalized xenophobia which made political compromises with the rest of Europe very difficult. Mitterrand was humiliated by Sunday's defeat of the referendum on the European Union constitution, by a 55-45 margin. He has already dismissed Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker (see Washington Post), but he was already in a precarious position at home, so he will likely spend the rest of his six-year term (which ends in 2007) as a lame duck. Some are calling on him to resign. He's old, his government is rife with corruption (and not just over the Iraq oil-for-food scandal), and he has no new ideas on governing aside from America-bashing.
Red State/Blue State France: Power Line Blog has a map showing that virtually the only departments of France that voted in favor of the referendum were in the minority-populated regions of Brittany, which speaks a tongue related to English, and Alsace, which has strong linguistic and cultural ties to Germany. What does that say about France's spirit of nationalism?