Nothing Shakin' on Shakedown Street?

By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t Perspective
Tuesday 01 November 2005

Don't tell me this town ain't got no heart. You just gotta poke around.

-- The Grateful Dead

Confession time: I missed the whole Libby-indictment thing almost completely. I wasn't writing a book or researching a story, nor was I interviewing people in the know about this or that. Nope. I was in Vegas, splitting my time between a poker table in Mandalay Bay and the Vegoose Music Festival out on the edge of the desert. The trip had been planned months before, and I spent all those days leading up to last Friday hoping Fitz would drop the hammer so I could bug out in good conscience.

Didn't happen. I was on the plane Thursday night, shaking my head at the timing. You just had to wait until the last day, didn't you? Well, it wasn't a total loss. I spent a couple dozen hours out there under the mountains listening to bands like Moe, Phil Lesh & Friends, the North Mississippi All-Stars, Umphrey's McGee (the set of the weekend, by the way), and managed in between to take down a few fat pots off the felt when I was back on the strip.

It was a good weekend, all told, but I just absolutely missed the whole Fitzgerald train. Yes, I caught the press conference on Friday. After that, however, I was in the ozone, away from televisions and computers and newspapers. I got back home on Monday night, and have spent every waking minute since playing catch-up.

Here's what I have so far.

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