HIS WATCH COSTS MORE THAN MY CAR, THAT'S WHAT HIS NAME IS

Mugger, aka Russ Smith, the free-paper despot of the New York Press and bon-vivant gourmand blowhard, makes this observation and gets in one more completely irrelevant dig against the Clinton administration on the way:

One of the difficulties we face is that both the media and government are in over their heads on the anthrax/smallpox question. It’s akin to Bill Clinton’s Justice Dept. persecution of Microsoft in the late 90s, when the government pretended to understand an industry it knew nothing about and, employing the politics of class warfare, demonized Bill Gates, an extraordinary entrepreneur. As a result of that prosecution, the current recession began.

Agreed -- they're all in it over their heads. Wiser pundits than I have observed that Tommy Thompson -- hired to help sell Bush's domestic health care agenda -- has already made so many absurd and uncomforting public utterances that he should be promoted to Ambassador to Sri Lanka immediately. But --

What was that about Clinton's overreaching Justice Department bringing down the economy of the entire nation? Oh. I see. If only Microsoft had been allowed to break the law with impunity -- then all those money-losing companies, built on wing-and-a-prayer business models, like contentville.com, egghead.com, eyada.com, kozmo.com, pets.com, thestandard.com, suck.com, webvan.com, theglobe.com, balducci.com, fandom.com, urbanfetch.com, etoys.com, govworks.com, planetrx.com, furniture.com, angryman.com -- and maybe even Midway Air -- would have achieved profitability and their employees would be thinking about how to spend their fat Christmas bonuses right about now. Damn that Janet Reno!!!