I'm often accused of avoiding the real issues, and I fear that every time I don't write a post about a real issue (a crime I commit for a major portion of the sixteen hours a day that I don't write posts) I am probably guilty has charged.

And here it is Sunday morning. And the talk shows are trying to distract me from the real issues by talking about events that took place when I was a teenager.

But much as I'd like to talk about Watergate (and Nixon's overwhelmingly shortsighted coverup of John Dean's sex scandal), to do so would be an ongoing violation of the Rule Against Avoiding Real Issues.

If I wrote another post wallowing in Watergate, I'd be avoiding the real issue which is emblazoned across the front page of today's Philadelphia Inquirer -- a story about killer bog turtles:

If anybody is afraid this nippy morning in early May, it is Caesar Gorski, a developer watching from the wetland's edge and praying that Teti won't find what she's hunting for: a killer bog turtle.

Killer of construction projects, that is. Just four inches long, the "boggie" is one of North America's tiniest turtles. But with the muscle of the federal Endangered Species Act under its shell, it stops bulldozers. If it rears its bitty orange-spotted head here, the turtle will sink Gorski's plan for a $20 million office park and render part of his 30-acre tract unbuildable.

To developers, the boggie may be a baneful little beast. But for Teti and an elite band of turtle stalkers, it is a cash cow - worth $10,000 to $75,000 out of a builder's pocket for each site searched, whether a tortoise is found or not.

Since 1997, when the bog turtle ascended to the federal list of threatened species and its protection was mandated, a cottage industry has emerged for herpetologists willing to get muddy and bloody for the title, and the paycheck, of a "certified bog turtle surveyor."

Here's a picture of one of the little $1000.00 "boggies":

The above picture is credited to Certified Bog Turtle Surveyor Andrea Teti, who's possessed of virtual life-and-death power to stop development if she's able to find a bog turtle which might find it's way into the bulldozer's path:

Now, on her third search of the six-acre wetland that stretches along the perimeter, Teti does a quick slog-through in hopes of spotting a boggie basking in the skunk cabbage. Seeing none in about half an hour, she shifts to intense search mode, stooping low to probe the mud with her hands.

"You have to learn the nuance of wetlands," she says - the turtles' tunnels, their almost imperceptibly matted trails.

For the size of this job, she has six assistants, including college students and retirees from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Most are wearing hip-waders. At 5-foot-3, Teti sinks in up to her thighs, one of which soon is bloodied by a thorn.

The search will last five hours, and be repeated twice in the following two weeks. As chaotic as it looks, she says, the process is "90 percent foolproof."

After two hours, Gorski nervously posts himself in the swamp grass. He tells Teti he has read that anti-sprawlers plant turtles to stop projects.

"There are crazy environmental activists out there. That's not us," she replies, and presses on.

She stops not for lunch or a bathroom break but to take photos of a wood turtle sunning itself in a thicket of multiflora roses.

Gorski moves in for a peek. But his wonderment turns to panic when a shout of "Turtle!" rings out from the marsh.

It turns out to be a common box turtle. By 3 p.m., Teti has found two of those, but no boggies.

(And (around 10:43 a.m.) I just heard Ben Bradlee twice identify John Dean as Deep Throat, saying that the information provided by Dean was never wrong. He's an old man, probably misspoke, and I'll bet the flub will never appear on the transcript.)

But back to the real issue facing us today. Clearly huge development projects can be stopped stopped dead in their tracks if one of these bog turtles is discovered. It's also clear that if the Knoxville Zoo can breed over a hundred of them, others could too.

I'm wondering.... Just wondering. Is the goal really one of saving the bog turtle? I'm all for that, and I'd even be willing to help. Seriously, as a former amateur herpetologist I'd be willing to fund a breeding project, and I'd be willing to apply for a breeder's license and do it all properly.

Except I don't think the goal is saving the bog turtle. If it were saved through a properly run breeding program, why, then it wouldn't be called the "killer bog turtle" anymore.

Isn't it more likely that the lowly bog turtle is being used as an environmentalists' weapon? As things stand, it's unquestionably one of the most potent weapons in the arsenal against development. And if bog turtle populations became stable thanks to breeding programs, the turtle would cease to be the killer of development it now is. So outside of an occasional zoo naive enough to think it's helping the environmentalists' cause, I don't expect much effort to save it.

That's why I'd rather wallow in trivial non-issues.

UPDATE (1:24 p.m.): The CBS "Face the Nation" transcript is here and it confirms what I thought I heard:

.... I think that proves that Bob Woodward was a reporter before he even knew it himself. I mean, it was his instincts to develop friendships and contacts with people, and he was very good at that. I would like to quibble with John Dean's thing. John has identified a whole lot of people in his career as Deep Throat, and the idea that when he says that Deep Throat was wrong many times, I don't believe that, and I certainly don't believe that he was wrong in any significant case. Any information that we got from Dean turned out to be right, period. (Emphasis supplied.)

Imagine. The great Ben Bradlee finally agrees with something I suspected for years.

MORE: I did not mean to imply that I am the only person to speculate about John Dean as part of the Deep Throat composite. Here's former GOP Chairman Ody Fish, in March:

OCONOMOWOC - A former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party said he believes John Dean is "Deep Throat," an anonymous newspaper source made famous during Watergate.

Ody Fish of Pewaukee, who spent nearly 15 years as a member of the Republican National Committee, said he believes Dean was the one who passed along information to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

"Deep Throat brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon," Fish said. "Woodward said he wouldn’t tell who it was until after Deep Throat died. Dean is still alive."

Dean was White House counsel to Nixon from July 1970 to April 1973. He became deeply involved in the Watergate coverup and was referred to as "master manipulator of the coverup" by the FBI. He would go on to become the star witness of the Watergate prosecution.

Dean was sentenced to four years in prison for his role in Watergate but served less than four months after cooperating with authorities.

In the summer of 1974, Fish was joined by then-Mich. Gov. Bill Milliken and then-Rep. John Rhodes, R-Ariz., to meet with Nixon and tell him his support was dwindling.