An attempted coup d’etat by Richard Nixon, stopped by two intrepid young reporters from The Washington Post and their dashing and heroic editor.

The 1976 movie, “All the President’s Men,” retold the story with Robert Redford as Bob Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Jason Robards in his Oscar-winning role as Ben Bradlee. What did Bradlee really think of Watergate?

In a taped interview in 1990, revealed now in “Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee,” Bradlee himself dynamites the myth:

“Watergate … (has) achieved a place in history … that it really doesn’t deserve. … The crime itself was really not a great deal. Had it not been for the Nixon resignation, it really would have been a blip in history.”

“The Iran-Contra hearing was a much more significant violation of the democratic ethic than anything in Watergate,” said Bradlee.

Yet when the Iran-Contra scandal hit the Reagan White House, Bradlee chortled, “We haven’t had this much fun since Watergate.”

All fun and games at the Post. Yet with Nixon’s fall came the fall of South Vietnam, thousands executed, hundreds of thousands of boat people struggling in the South China Sea and a holocaust in Cambodia.

Still, what is most arresting about “Yours in Truth” is the panic that gripped Bob Woodward when Jeff Himmelman, the author and a protege of Woodward, revealed to him the contents of the Bradlee tapes.

Speaking of “All the President’s Men,” Bradlee had said, “I have a little problem with Deep Throat,” Woodward’s famous source, played in the movie by Hal Holbrooke, later revealed to be Mark Felt of the FBI.

Bradlee was deeply skeptical of the Woodward-Felt signals code and all those secret meetings. He told interviewer Barbara Feinman:

“Did that potted palm thing ever happen? … And meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage. Fifty meetings in the garage … there’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.”

Bradlee spoke about that fear gnawing at him: “I just find the flower in the window difficult to believe and the garage scenes. …

“If they could prove that Deep Throat never existed … that would be a devastating blow to Woodward and to the Post. … It would be devastating, devastating.”

When Himmelman showed him the transcript, Woodward “was visibly shaken” and repeated Bradlee’s line — “there’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight” — 15 times in 20 minutes.

Woodward tried to get Bradlee to retract. He told Himmelman not to include the statements in his book. He pleaded. He threatened. He failed.

That Woodward became so alarmed and agitated that Bradlee’s bullhockey detector had gone off over the dramatized version of “All the President’s Men” suggests a fear in more than just one soul here.

A second revelation of Himmelman’s is more startling.

During Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein sought to breach the secrecy of the grand jury. The Post lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, had to go to see Judge John Sirica to prevent their being charged with jury tampering.

No breach had occurred, we were assured.

We were deceived.

According to Himmelman, not only did Bernstein try to breach the grand jury, he succeeded. One juror, a woman identified as “Z,” had collaborated. Notes of Bernstein’s interviews with Z were found in Bradlee’s files.

Writes Himmelman: “Carl and Bob, with Ben’s explicit permission, lured a grand juror over the line of illegality …”

This means that either Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee lied to Williams about breaching the grand jury, or the legendary lawyer lied to Sirica, or Sirica was told the truth but let it go, as all were engaged in the same noble cause — bringing down Nixon.

Who was that grand juror? Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee know, but none is talking and no one is asking. The cover-up continues.

Had one of Nixon’s men, with his approval, breached the secrecy of the Watergate grand jury, and lied abut it, that aide would have gone to prison and that would have been an article of impeachment.

Conduct that sent Nixon men to the penitentiary got the Post’s men a stern admonition. Welcome to Washington, circa 1972.

With the 40th anniversary of the break-in coming up this June, Himmelman’s book, well-written and revelatory of the temper of that time, will receive a wider reading.

As will Max Holland’s “Leak: Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat,” out this spring and the definitive book on why J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy betrayed his bureau and sought to destroy the honorable man who ran it, L. Patrick Gray.

With Bernstein’s primary source spilling grand jury secrets, and Mark Felt leaking details of the FBI investigation to Woodward, both of the primary sources on which the Washington Post’s Pulitzer depended were engaged in criminal misconduct.

At Kay Graham’s Post, the end justified the means.

Redford is now backing a new documentary, “All the President’s Men Revisited.” The Sundance Kid has his work cut out for him.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

But U.S. voters have a fundamentally different view. Sixty-one percent believe that cutting government spending is what those ailing European economies need. Just 20 percent agree with the political leaders.

Not surprisingly, American voters think that the same prescription is needed closer to home. Most believe cuts in government spending help the economy and an increase in government spending will hurt.

The entire debate is clouded by a refusal of political leaders to talk honestly about spending. The air is filled with talk of brutal spending cuts in financially troubled Europe, but Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center, a pro-free market U.S. think tank, has shown that to be a lie. The growth of spending may have slowed, but there have been no significant cuts in spending in France, England, Italy or Spain. There have been cuts in Greece primarily because nobody will loan the government money. But even that troubled country is spending more than it did just a few years ago.

In the United States, government spending has increased every single year since 1954. But in my book “The People’s Money,” I show that voters are quite willing to make the changes needed to reverse that trend, balance the budget and eliminate the federal debt. The only thing standing in the way is a political class committed to pursuing its own agenda rather than listening to voters.

That brings us back to the word “austerity.” It sounds ominous when political leaders talk of nations on an austerity budget.

But it’s important to recognize that there is a difference between a nation and its government. Every dollar that is spent by the government is a dollar that can’t be spent by individuals, businesses or charitable organizations. So those who want to eliminate austerity for governments are really saying they want to impose austerity on the private sector.

Many political leaders around the globe believe that higher taxes are needed to keep the government spending machine going. That’s a direct way of imposing austerity on the private sector. Others think that governments should simply increase already large deficits. That’s a way to impose austerity on future generations. It’s also one reason that just 16 percent believe today’s children will be better off than their parents.

Ultimately, in the United States, government spending will come down because voters have made it clear that’s what they want. Politicians will bemoan the austerity budgets, but most voters will see them in a different light.

Two out of three Americans believe decisions made by business leaders will do more to create jobs than decisions made by those in government. Cutting government spending is seen by voters as a way to free more resources for the private sector. In other words, austerity for the government leads to prosperity for the nation.

To find out more about Scott Rasmussen, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

The immediate and obvious mulligan is a new national election. The teed-off Greek electorate teed up on May 6, but fractious voters produced a scattershot result. No single party achieved a parliamentary majority.

The leaders of Greece’s three largest political parties subsequently failed to form a coalition government.

Their disagreements are fundamental. During the coalition discussions, the Syriza Party (Coalition of the Radical Left/Unitary Social Movement) announced it would not participate in any government that imposed austerity. Austerity is shorthand for economic reform, budget cuts and debt reduction, the policy regimen the eurozone’s productive economies (led by Germany) and international lenders require in exchange for further loan guarantees and economic assistance.

Syriza’s no-austerity leaders, however, argue that Germany and France will balk when they actually face a eurozone breakup. The Syriza-istas argue the election of French Socialist President Francois Hollande demonstrates a “shift to the left” in France that they contend (or pray) will weaken German demands for Greek debt reduction. While on the campaign trail, Hollande claimed he did not favor austerity measures, or at least he didn’t favor harsh austerity measures.

Syriza’s no-austerity pitch appeals to the Greek electorate’s understandable anger at economic decline and frustration with complex reform measures. However, it also plays to and sadly encourages a far less justifiable sense of national resentment and victimization. No one likes to be told they must work hard, cut spending and do without. No-austerity politicians play to this human preference. Ultimately, Syriza counts on Santa Claus. Gifts will come down the chimney. Someone else, from the North Pole (or Northern Europe), will pay the bills.

In contrast, the New Democracy Party (center-right) and PASOK (Greek socialist party) think the Germans mean what they say about no more loans unless Greece lives within its means. The Germans demand honest money. New Democracy and PASOK are committed to keeping Greece in the eurozone. Greece, they argue, gains political clout and economic stability from being in the European Union and the eurozone. Remaining in the eurozone requires fiscal restraint and budget reform, which means accepting austerity.

Some PASOK supporters, however, condemn austerity. Conservative factions who see austerity as an affront to Greek nationalism have quit New Democracy.

Syriza’s leaders see these fissures and wager that angry, resentful Greeks will reward them with a working majority in a new election. Another round of parliamentary elections will occur June 17. The electoral mulligan is a done deal.

The second mulligan, The Big Greek Mulligan, is another matter entirely. What Greece really wants is a complete eurozone do-over — a restart, from scratch, with all debts forgiven. Syriza-ista fantasists may actually believe this dream mulligan is possible. New Democracy and PASOK political realists know it won’t happen but miracles — miracles do happen, don’t they? Don’t they!?!

Miracle enthusiasts will have to answer this question: Where is scratch? When the eurozone officially formed in 2001, Greece claimed it had a gross domestic product deficit of 1.5 percent. According to former Greek budget minister Peter Doukas (BBC News, Feb. 2, 2012) the correct figure was 8.3 percent of GDP. From euro-scratch the Greek government lied — told a Big Lie and told it often — about its deficits. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty (the treaty that created the EU) stipulated that member budget deficits must be 3 percent of GDP or less. Greece signed the treaty and claimed it met the 3 percent commitment. Today, skeptics doubt that claim.

A 1992 mulligan? Why, that might suggest the entire European Union project is a suspect venture.

To find out more about Austin Bay, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

A story over the weekend put the number of “seniors” who use Facebook at no more than a third. I cannot say what the reporter meant by “seniors.” My uninformed guess would be that he meant people who remember the Kennedy assassination. This takes care, I think I can safely say, of the great majority of folk who might expect to communicate with me by means of Zuckerberg’s miracle.

Think of it: I don’t have to check my Facebook page to receive news and “updates” from those likeliest to want to share with me. Not that I ever did check my page back when I think I had one.

A favorite student, from the days I was holding forth as a media expert at a leading Texas university, was kind enough to undertake setting up a page for me. I think she must have done so, woman of spotless integrity that she is. But I couldn’t prove it. I have rudely, I am afraid, neglected to check and see how I appear online. Partly, I imagine, out of terror for not resembling the happy souls said to live on Facebook, bronzed and yucking it up around the swimming pool and who knows what else?

I have nothing against Zuckerberg or for that matter, any other billionaire who takes a good idea and runs with it. Power and fourth homes to all of ‘em. At the same time, we “seniors,” with an ever-diminishing amount of time to spend on earth, need no more distractions. To tell the truth, we need fewer. What we need, instead of news of a high school classmate’s vacation, is leisure to spin a 33-1/3 phonograph record: “Toscanini Plays Wagner,” or something of equal merit. The desire to peer deeply and curiously at plastic screens large and small declines sharply, I can tell the younger generation with awful veracity, at the appearance of the first truly white hair.

The fascination of the younger generation with electronic playthings is to be expected. Everything new fascinates for a while — so with Twitter and the Internet and Facebook. The problem is the time these wonderful innovations command. They want you. They want you this instant!

Not all of us wish to be wanted in this abrasive fashion. There’s a lot, one learns eventually, to being left alone rather than buying into what Zuckerberg describes as “a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.”

There is undoubted value in openness and connection — if these commodities are not pushed too far. Pushed too far, they — I had started to say, “irritate.” I think what I actually wanted to say was “bore.” To know everything is to know too much. To know it, after the fashion of Facebook — right now, this second! — is to feel the words forming in the brain and the throat: Who cares?

In life we need to choose carefully the things we care about: spouse, children, church, bridge partners, bowling league, judges and congressmen — the “little platoons” to which we belong, as Edmund Burke so wonderfully put it.

Try caring about everything. It can’t be done. We get “cared out” sooner than we get carried out. Or maybe the latter is in part a consequence of the former.

I leave Facebook to those who care with enormous intensity concerning … whatever. My sole admonition, all I ask in return, is when you do find out, kindly neglect to tell me.

William Murchison, author and commentator, writes from Dallas. To find out more about William Murchison, and to see features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Booker, a Barack Obama surrogate, later tried to walk back his comments. He posted a video in which he explained that he was expressing his frustration with negative campaigning when he spoke out, effectively undermining the president’s re-election narrative. (Booker also referred to the biggest non-story in politics last week, about a political consultant who recommended that a super PAC use Wright in an anti-Obama ad. That ad didn’t get made.)

But there is no walking back from Booker’s disapproval of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Mitt Romney founded. Last week, Team Obama released an ad that told the story of a Kansas steel mill that Bain bought in 1993 and that went bankrupt in 2001. In the ad, laid-off steelworkers had some choice words for Romney. Like “vampire” and “job destroyer.”

The problem with such ads, Booker said Sunday, is that “we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America.” Pension funds, unions and others invest in companies like Bain Capital. Bain’s record has been to grow businesses. To Booker, Bain Capital has been good for America. To Obamaland, Bain Capital has been bad for America.

As a mayor, Booker said, he, too, has had to lay off workers “because it’s the only way” his “government would survive.” He added, “Call me a job cutter if you want.”

I should note that PolitiFact rated as “mostly true” this statement from the Obama campaign: “After purchasing the company, Mitt Romney and his partners loaded it with debt, closed the Kansas City plant and walked away with a healthy profit, leaving hundreds of employees out of work with their pensions in jeopardy.” Missing from the story: the fact that Romney wasn’t in charge anymore and that in 2001, the steel industry was in a world of hurt — with low steel prices and high production costs — which drove a lot of mills out of business.

I would add that the steelworkers in the political ad were talking about the heyday of the steel industry, which occurred long before Bain stepped in to rescue an ailing mill.

Monday, a reporter asked Obama about Booker’s remarks and the role of private equity. The president explained that the goal of private investment is to “maximize profits,” whereas a president’s job is to make sure that everyone has “a fair shot” and that everyone pays his or her “fair share” of taxes.

That’s the problem with Obama; he thinks he’s the fairness czar. He didn’t say that a president is supposed to create an environment that nurtures business success. He said a president is supposed to make sure that nobody walks away with too much.

When you’re president, Obama said, “your job is to think about those workers who get laid off and how are we paying for their retraining.” Obama’s war is a war on private money. He thinks his job is to create job training programs, not create an environment that creates real jobs.

Email Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Question: Which Catholic public official in America

There are all sorts of ways the Church is forced to respond to Sebelius’s actions, from her own bishop dealing with her personally to the USCCB and Catholic institutions dealing with her and Obama’s unprecedented assault on Catholics’ freedom of conscience. But one way that no Catholic or Catholic institution should respond would be by honoring Sebelius with a platform at a commencement ceremony—a giant no-no explicitly forbidden by John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Yeah, but, gee, come on, no institution would do that!

Well, amazingly, one such Catholic institution, Georgetown University, has done just that. Yes, that’s right. Georgetown invited Sebelius to give a commencement address. It’s true, it really is. You can’t make this up.

Georgetown’s action is stunning, a flagrant, arrogant in-your-face gesture to the Catholic Church.

For a slightly different take on this, consider my perspective as a professor. I teach political science and government at an undergraduate institution. I have superb students who constantly consider Georgetown for graduate school. Do I continue to recommend they consider Georgetown?

Beyond Kathleen Sebelius, another Georgetown incident sticks with me:

It occurred in April 2005. It was related to me by a former student attending grad school at Georgetown. It was shortly after the death of John Paul II. My student was among other students awaiting the announcement of the new pope. When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stepped out, my student—thrilled to see Ratzinger as the new pope—was suddenly horrified at the litany of obscenities and insults shouted by his fellow Georgetown students. “Fascist!” one student yelled at the new pope, adding another choice “f” word to his insult. “Nazi!” screeched another.

My student, a former Baptist considering converting to the Catholic Church, halted the conversion process right there. If this was Catholicism, he wanted none of it.

And, indeed, maybe that’s the crux of the issue at Georgetown. Is this Catholicism?

For Catholic Exchange dot com and Ave Maria Radio, I’m Paul Kengor.

Our friendship and collaboration began in the early 1990s, when Herb Schlossberg, the evangelical author, buttonholed me at a Washington reception and expressed concern about the ongoing fracture between Catholics and evangelical Protestants, two communities that Herb thought should be working together to shore up America’s public culture. I mentioned Herb’s concern to Richard John Neuhaus; Neuhaus called Colson; and within a matter of months “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” was born.

What began as co-belligerency in the American culture-war soon evolved in ways none of us had anticipated. Led by Neuhaus and Colson, and prodded by such towering intellects as Avery Dulles, S.J., and J. I. Packer, “ECT,” as we called it, developed into what was arguably the most important theological encounter ever between evangelical Protestant and Catholics. Issues that we had once imagined completely off-the-table—Mary; the communion of saints; justification—were not only broached but examined, pondered and prayed over. And the result was not only a deepening of fellowship but a refinement of thought. That a leading evangelical theologian should today be working on a book on Mary-for-evangelicals says something about the miles traveled, and the centuries of misunderstanding bridged, in those conversations.

ECT returned to the culture-wars in 2010, this time in defense of religious freedom. And just before Chuck Colson died, the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty commended and cited the ECT statement, “In Defense of Religious Freedom,” that Chuck had helped push to completion.

Life with Chuck Colson also involved adventures. My favorite took place in Rome, about 10 years ago. At a conference held in the old Synod Hall of the Apostolic Palace I ran into Colson, who asked if I might do him a favor. Obviously, I replied. Well, Chuck said, he had met John Paul II on several occasions, but his wife, Patty, a Catholic, had never met the pope and would be ecstatic if that could be arranged. Nothing easier, I said—at which point Chuck asked if he could bring along another Major Evangelical Figure (as I shall discretely style him) and his wife. No problem, said I.

So Patty Colson, Chuck, Major Evangelical Figure, and Mrs. Major Evangelical Figure met John Paul II, and Chuck called me the night of the general audience to express his thanks. I then asked if he thought a picture of the encounter in the English edition of L’Osservatore Romano would serve our common ecumenical purposes. Chuck, initially enthusiastic, then got cautious: “Wait; I’d better check with (Major Evangelical Figure).” The next day I got another phone call from Chuck: “Don’t do anything. The pope was sitting when he received us, and (Major Evangelical Figure’s) picture was taken when he was down on one knee in front of the pope. He’s afraid his fundraising will collapse if that picture gets out!” I laughed, assured him that I would abandon any idea of having the photo run in the Vatican newspaper—and reflected on the still-supple political instincts of a man who found his true vocation only after being driven out of politics.

Chuck knew the threat Major Evangelical Figure feared: at the beginning of our common work, Colson’s leadership in ECT cost Prison Fellowship, the marvelous ministry he founded, millions of dollars in lost donations. Chuck took the hit and soldiered on because he believed that the truth of Christ would prevail, eventually, over hardened hearts. It was a conviction he came to him from hard personal experience. And it made him one of the great Christian witnesses of our time.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. 

“Shape up while you walk,” one ad proclaimed. And: “Get in Shape Without Setting Foot in a Gym.” Kim Kardashian endorsed the rocker-bottom sneaks. She said they worked so well she got rid of her personal trainer. The FTC found Skechers’ weight-loss and tone-up claims to be overhyped.

Overhyped? It’s a good thing Washington politicians never overpromise; otherwise, one might think the FTC should go after politicians who mislead voters before it targets private-sector employers that overhype their products.

In the rush for headlines, politicians know no shame. Attorneys general from more than 40 states got in the act. California Attorney General Kamala Harris put out a press release to toot her role in the settlement. “Consumers shouldn’t be duped into paying more for products with false promises of weight loss and other benefits,” quoth Harris. “The FTC’s message for Skechers and other national advertisers is to shape up your substantiation or tone down your claims,” the FTC’s David Vladeck said in a statement.

You can sleep soundly tonight, America. In the land of the press release, there is no such thing as an insignificant problem.

Confession time: I bought a pair of Skechers. (I bought the shoes because a similar brand helped my husband alleviate knee problems.) I didn’t expect to lose weight. I certainly didn’t expect to look like Kim Kardashian. I also did not expect to moon-dance as deftly as Mr. Quiggly, the French bulldog who replaced Kardashian as Skechers’ shill.

“It’s one thing if you sell someone a washing machine and it breaks,” Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson observed, or if a product promises a medical advancement that it cannot deliver. But the Skechers ads, to Olson, are like beer ads that show “pretty women swimming around the beer drinker, which seldom happens in real life.”

FTC attorney Larissa Bungo disagrees. She explained, “We’re dealing with a national advertiser that made explicit performance claims,” which it couldn’t back up. The FTC made much of the fact that endorser Steven Gautreau, a chiropractor, is married to a Skechers marketing executive.

I could see the FTC engaging in a legal settlement to stop Skechers from false advertising — if that happened. A disclaimer at the end of the FTC’s statement notes that the settlement does not constitute an admission of guilt on Skechers’ part.

But I do not see it as prudent use of government funds and resources to set up a bureaucracy that gives money to consumers to compensate them for not getting a benefit that no reasonable consumer would expect.

And it’s not as if consumers can’t return sneakers.

“The government is looking for easy targets,” Cato’s Olson opined, “which is not the same as being the worst players in the marketplace. If you have a successful product, in some ways you can be an easier target.”

In a statement released Wednesday, Skechers chief financial officer David Weinberg denied the allegations of “unfounded claims” but did say the “exorbitant cost and endless distraction” of multiple class action suits presented an “unreasonable burden” on the company, regardless of outcome.

That’s why the government always wins. It’s like paying protection money. In the end, it’s easier to pay up and move on.

Email Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Handcuffed, taken in and interrogated, Zimmerman told police Trayvon had been acting suspiciously that dark and rainy night, that he had followed Trayvon, been knocked down and battered on the ground, and, fearing for his life, pulled a concealed handgun and shot him.

Sanford police and prosecutors concluded that Zimmerman acted in self-defense and had not committed a provable felony. They let him go.

A racial firestorm followed. “Blacks are under attack,” railed Jesse Jackson. “Killing us is big business.” Arriving in Sanford, the reverend dialed it up. Trayvon was “shot down in cold blood by a vigilante … murdered and martyred.”

Rep. Maxine Waters’ charge of “hate crime” was echoed by radio talker Joe Madison. Rep. Hank Johnson said Trayvon had been “executed.” The Grio compared his killing to the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955.

The New Black Panther Party put Zimmerman’s face on a “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster, called for 5,000 black men to run him down and said Trayvon had been “murdered in cold blood.”

Spike Lee twittered Zimmerman’s home address.

Zimmerman and his family have been in hiding for months in fear for their lives after the death threats.

President Obama expressed his empathy with the parents.

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. And I think (the parents) are right to expect that all of us as Americans are gonna take this with the seriousness it deserves and that we’re going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

Obama said not a word to cool the lynch-mob atmosphere created by some of his major allies in a nation where he is the chief law enforcement officer. And so the campaign to convict Zimmerman of racist murder in the public mind, before he ever got to trial, proceeded on.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky called Trayvon’s killing a “modern-day lynching.” CNN claimed to have picked up the phrase “(bleeping) coons” on the tape of Zimmerman’s call to police, but had to retract when an enhanced version of the tape revealed no such slur.

Three times NBC used a version of Zimmerman’s call to the police edited to make it appear he racially profiled Trayvon.

The actual version:

Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

Dispatcher: “OK, and this guy, is he white, black or Hispanic?”

Zimmerman: “He looks black.”

The transcript was spliced to have Zimmerman say: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

CNN media critic Howard Kurtz called it “blatant distortion.”

Caught and called out, three NBC employees were cashiered.

With this wind at her back, Florida State Attorney Angela Corey charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder. Translation: Zimmerman murdered Trayvon in a “depraved” state of mind.

If convicted, he could get life.

Last week came a more ominous report. Federal investigators are looking into hate crime charges that could bring the death penalty. The feds would have to prove Zimmerman stalked and murdered Trayvon because he was black.

Yet, last week also, evidence from the investigation spilled out into the national media and seemed to contradict and swamp the prosecution’s case.

A medical report the day after the shooting revealed that Zimmerman had suffered a broken nose, two black eyes and lacerations on the back of his head. Photographs from the night of the shooting confirmed it.

A police report that same night said Zimmerman’s sweatshirt had “grass stains and was wet on the back,” consistent with his being flat on his back.

The lead investigator on the scene, Officer Christopher Serino, wrote that Zimmerman could be heard “yelling for help as he was being battered by Trayvon Martin.” One witness said he heard 14 separate cries for help. Trayvon’s father initially told police the cries were not those of his son, then recanted.

One responder at the scene said he saw wounds on the knuckles of one of Trayvon’s hands, suggesting he had connected with a punch. The coroner found both the knuckle wounds and traces of the drug found in marijuana in Trayvon’s blood and urine.

Trayvon’s hoodie had powder stains indicating he was shot in the chest from 1 to 18 inches away, consistent again with what Zimmerman said.

Another eyewitness said the guy in the hoodie was on top beating the guy on the bottom “MMA style” — mixed martial arts style.

With this evidence, how can a jury convict Zimmerman of murder?

Yet the public mind has been so poisoned that an acquittal of George Zimmerman could ignite a reaction similar to that, 20 years ago, when the Simi Valley jury acquitted the LAPD cops in the Rodney King beating case.

Should that happen, those who fanned the flames, and those who did nothing to douse them, should themselves go on trial in the public arena.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

In essence, Boehner is pushing a Republican policy to wrap up a debt-limitation bill and extend the Bush tax cuts in one fell swoop before the election — and before all the last-minute, crisis-oriented political machinations that would come in a lame-duck Congress, threatening another credit downgrade and leading to a business-hiring freeze and plunging stock market, all of which happened last year.

Tax-cut certainty is so vital right now because the anemic economic recovery may be moving toward deflation. That’s the message of a gold price that has collapsed by near 20 percent, falling from around $1,900 an ounce to the mid-$1,500s. With a risk-averse economy at home, and with the Greek and European financial crises abroad, the demand for dollars seems to exceed the dollar supply printed by the Fed. This could be solved by more quantitative easing. But a better approach for a system already oversupplied with unused liquidity would be the extension of tax-rate growth incentives, not more monetary pump-priming.

The uncertainty over the Bush tax cuts already has caused a number of business leaders to threaten a hiring freeze and a dampening of investment until they can figure out the after-tax cost of capital and rate of return on investment. Hiring has slowed noticeably in recent months. And a number of Wall Street economists are marking down the anemic recovery even more, suggesting that the 3 percent growth at the end of last year, which faltered to 2 percent growth in the first quarter, could be even less in the period ahead.

A bunch of CEOs have even formed their own march on Washington. Eighteen of them just wrote to Treasury man Timothy Geithner, begging him to oppose tax-rate hikes on dividends (from 15 to 45 percent) and capital gains (from 15 to near 30 percent, taking the “Buffet Rule” into account). “Equity capital is the life blood of investment and job creation for U.S. companies,” they wrote. And they argued that the administration’s tax-hike plans would do great harm to American competitiveness and capital formation.

According to accounting firm Ernst & Young, the top U.S. integrated tax rate on corporate profits and dividends is on course to hit 68.6 percent, significantly higher than all other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, as well as Brazil, Russia, India and China. Capital gains would rise to 56.7 percent.

And Boehner knows this. So he’s begun a valiant fight to get supply-side tax reform at the top of the congressional agenda well before the election. Similarly, House budget chair Paul Ryan is suggesting at least a six-month extension of the Bush tax cuts, so as not to disrupt business. (By the way, the Ryan tax-and-spending-reform budget got 41 votes in the Senate, while Obama’s budget got none.)

In a recent interview, former top Obama economic advisor Larry Summers told me the U.S. recovery is going “ahead of schedule.” Really? But former Obama economist Austan Goolsbee gives a more realistic assessment by referring to a subpar 2 percent forecast that is way too slow to spark faster job creation.

Bizarrely, some 25 million people have vanished from the labor force — from unemployment, underemployment or simply dropping out all together. And half of U.S. households are now on some form of federal-transfer-payment assistance. So as we pay so many people not to work, we’re sapping the vitality of the economy.

Mitt Romney recently gave a fine speech blasting Obama’s profligate spend-and-borrow policies. He described “a prairie fire of debt sweeping across Iowa and the nation,” and he tied our newfound debt to the “tepid recovery.”

But lower spending alone, while important, is not going to solve the economic-growth problem. Yes, moving spending to 20 percent of gross domestic product from 24 percent will free up private resources. But lower tax-rate incentives on the extra dollar earned and invested is a more powerful economic-growth tool. Romney should push his 20 percent tax-rate-reduction plan. That would add liquidity to fight deflation and would provide new economic-growth incentives.

As for John Boehner’s goal of an early extension of the Bush tax cuts, it’s going to be an uphill climb. Democrats want to raise taxes, not cut them. But at least the GOP will have a coherent growth-and-jobs message. They can tell the public how important it is to avoid falling off the massive tax cliff that looms ahead. Deflationary fears can ease. And they can make it plain to voters that the GOP has a growth message in these perilous economic times, while the Obama Democrats do not.

To find out more about Lawrence Kudlow and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.