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DEEP THROAT SLEUTHING CONTINUES

The 30th anniversary of the Watergate scandal has spawned a flurry of discussion of who the secret White House source to Washington Post reporter Robert Woodward is. In honor of the anniversary, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, John Dean, promised to name his latest guess at Deep Throat in an e-book being offered for sale via salon.com.

According to SFGate.com, Dean said last week he had seven former Nixon White House employees on his short list, none of them were familiar names to most Americans, but all denied being Deep Throat, and one top pick warned he would sue for defamation, putting the publication in limbo.

However, Dean's e-book does appear on salon.com and he told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post that he believed Deep Throat might subconsciously welcome being named.

Last week, an investigative reporting class at the University of Illinois revealed the result of a three-year investigation into who Deep Throat is. Heading the list was Patrick Buchanan, who was a speechwriter and later a special assistant to Nixon before he ran for president three times. Also on the list are: David Gergen, speechwriter and spokesman for Ronald Reagan, who also served in Bill Clinton's White House; Jonathan Rose, attorney for White House relations with regulatory agencies; Raymond Price, head speechwriter; Stephen Bull, a special administrative assistant to Nixon; Fred Fielding, top assistant to Dean, and Gerald L. Warren, deputy press secretary under Nixon.

Kurtz writes that Dean now says he believes the Deep Throat may be Buchanan, Price, Bull or Ron Ziegler, who was press secretary.

Dean, who in the past suggested others were Deep Throat, told Kurtz it would be unfair to finger one of his four current suspects because he's still "parsing the clues," but he plans to continue the detective work because "I know more than I've written."

-- Do you want to know who Deep Throat is?

-- Does John Dean have any credibility?

FAMILIES STRUGGLE TO MAKE ENDS MEET

In Sullivan County, Ind., population 21,751, men's incomes dropped 11 percent in the 1990s, according to the 2000 census, The New York Times reports. Jobs that paid about $50,000 a year with companies that strip-mined coal all but disappeared, and by the end of the decade the median men's income in the county had fallen to $30,207.

As men's wages have declined, more women have taken jobs to make ends meet. Fifty-four percent of adult women now have full-time jobs, up from 46 percent 10 years ago. Their earnings rose correspondingly in the decade, by nearly 16 percent, to $20,790, though that still left them making far less than men, according to The Times.

The figures are similar around the country: Men's median earnings nationwide fell over the last decade by $889, or 2 percent, to an inflation-adjusted $37,057. At the same time, women's earnings rose by 7 percent, to $27,194.

Sullivan County Circuit Court Judge P.J. Pierson says rising rates of juvenile delinquency and drug abuse are the result of people working more and spending less time with their children.

-- Is a one-income household able to get by, or is that now impossible?