Problem solved

Facing a severe funding shortfall, Hidden Villa is hosting a community meeting Jan. 13 to discuss how to accomplish its goal of creating a $10 million endowment. The Town Crier favors leasing some space to Bullis Charter School as a start. I have another idea.

Marijuana article indefensibly racist

That's what the headline on Audra Baker's letter in this week's Town Crier should have read. "Lacking key fact" is way too forgiving a way to describe blaming Mexicans for marijuana gardens. To put it in context, imagine if Eliza Ridgeway had instead blamed some unsolved crime on black people or Jews without any evidence or, for that matter, relevance.

Two people ought to be censured for this by their employers: Sergeant Ed Wise of the sheriff's department, who made the claim, and Ridgeway, who gave it a veneer of legitimacy by lazily parroting it in print.

It was the Mexicans

The Town Crier's coverage of last week's drug bust at Hidden Villa blames "Mexican nationals." Writer Eliza Ridgeway attributes this claim, for which she admits having no evidence, to sheriff's Sergeant Ed Wise. You may recognize this mechanism for saying inappropriate things from Pope Benedict, Glenn Beck and my youngest brother, who, when he was little, excused his use of swear words to my mother by saying, 'I'm just quoting someone.' He would then get what she called a 'potsch.'

Best bonfire ever

Wow.

State and local law enforcement officers raided a massive illegal marijuana garden estimated at 32,000 plants -- worth $128 million -- in a remote area of the Hidden Villa land Thursday, according to Santa Clara County Sgt. Ed Wise.

Besides being kind of incredible, this is actually kind of scary, considering the deadly shootout that took place two years ago under similar circumstances near Los Gatos. One loyal reader, who also came up with the title for this post when he imagined police burning the plants to destroy them, immediately zeroed in on the fact that the $4,000-per-plant estimate may be a little high. "Maybe a weed tree is worth that much," he said.

This story raises a whole lot of questions. Who was responsible for this? How did they get in there unnoticed? Does anybody really believe that the financially struggling hippies at Hidden Villa were unaware this was going on? Will this finally get people to consider decriminalization?

The one I'm most excited about, however, is whether the Town Crier will write an editorial trumpeting this as an important victory in the war on drugs, or opt not to cover it at all because it is not the kind of good news that readers expect.