Three Cheers for Mark Felt

By now, everyone has heard about the revelation that former FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt was the informant for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their investigation of the Watergate break-in, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The debate has begun on whether he was a hero or a snake.

Interestingly (and not at all surprisingly), the people who are most convinced he was a snake are folks like G. Gordon Liddy, Charles Colson, and Pat Buchanan. Interestingly, Liddy and Colson actually went to jail for their role in the Watergate scandal, so it's no wonder that they're upset. And Pat Buchanan was a Nixon staffer himself, so it's hardly surprising that he's upset.

My view? Give the man a medal. Not only will this reward someone who did the right thing in revealing government at its worst, but it might even convince some of those folks who are stuck in the government now to do the same. And never has the governmente been more in need of whistleblowers.

With the media being owned by huge corporate interests, we aren't hearing about the scandals that the Bush Administration are perpetuating. And for anyone who thinks I'm a conspiracy theorist, I would CERTAINLY call the entire Iraq War a scandal. Lying to the world to get our troops into a war against a nation that did nothing to us? One of the greatest scandals. Then look at the amount of money that goes into the coffers of the Bush Campaign and where it came from, and notice the sorts of anti-environmental and anti-freedom laws that our Theocrat-in-chief is pushing. It doesn't take Fox Mulder to see these issues.

Today, potential whistleblowers are kept in fear of losing their jobs and blacklisted. We need to reward people who try to keep order and honesty in our government. And since the media won't report on it, we need whistleblowers to stand up and tell us what's going on inside the oil-slicked curtain of the Bush Administration.

So three cheers for Mark Felt. And to all those employees who are too frightened by the threat of big government's claw, stand up and get noticed publicly. You'll do us all a great service.