Republican of the week

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer met other Plains states governors this week over the severe drought in the Missouri River watershed. There they tried to deal with the fact that the "Master Manual" of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which runs the dams on the river and has the right to control water flow, has hard-and-fast rules about what can be done in drought situations. Gov. Schweitzer delivered this admirable blatt:

"We know there's a master manual, and some highfaluting folks worked on this for a dozen years, and now it's all cast in concrete," Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer told the group, "but when folks don't have water to drink in big cities it becomes a big problem, not a little problem like it is when its 10,000 people on an Indian reservation in North or South Dakota."

Yeah -- stupid Indians! Why do they need water anyway? Aren't they supposed to just eat dirt?