Wanted: Federal Goodfellas

Well, it seems the Bush administration got conned (again) back in 2007. Per the NY Times, a California man claimed to have invented software that would uncover terrorist threats and even catch Bin Laden. Turns out it was all a crock. D'oh! It'd be funny if we (the taxpayers) hadn't paid the programmer $20 million for his services. The scam artist, Dennis Montgomery, got caught trying to pass almost $2 million in bad checks in Las Vegas casinos. As Tom Ricks put it, "the casinos, they don't like that sort of thing." Naturally, no one knows how Team Bush got bushwhacked or why it took so long to figure it out. Ricks suggests that next time, we might be better off using casino "wise guy" tactics to protect ourselves. A clip from the movie Casino [Robert DeNiro voice-over]: "In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I'm watching the casino manager. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all." Works for me.