Hightower Lowdown

John Poindexter is gone. I hope that they have taken him far, far away to some quiet place where professionals can soothe his rightwing demons . . . and where he can do no more harm. Poindexter is the felon from the Reagan White House who, for some reason, was brought back by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld axis of weirdness. He was given a Pentagon office, staff, lots of money, and-- scariest of all--real power. He was the lunatic behind TIA--the supersnooper “Total Information Awareness” computer program designed to compile detailed dossiers on all of us. More recently, his little shop of horrors produced PAM--the “Policy Analysis Market” that would have created a federal betting parlor on terrorism. Luckily, public outrage has curtailed this guy’s efforts and ultimately forced him to resign. Poindexter is gone, but unfortunately the kookiness runs all the way to the top. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, Bush’s White House and Congress all authorized millions of our tax dollars for his wacked-out schemes--some of which are continuing.