Drapier: Almost all politicians are two-faced in what we say about the Garda. In public we say they are the finest and fairest group of men and women you could ever hope to meet. In private we regale each other with tales of inefficiency, ineptitude and laziness.
This duplicity is, of course, hypocrisy of the highest order, but it is also little more than role play.
As politicians we are obliged to support an important arm of the State. As private individuals we are as aware as the next man that all is not right with the Garda.
The role play is not without consequences. It means that politicians are very slow to criticise gardaí: we give them carte blanche in whatever they do.
The Minister for Justice has become a spokesman for the Garda; the Department of Justice little more than an offshoot of the Phoenix Park. Nobody guards the guards.
In fact nobody even criticises the Garda, as we saw last week in the wake of Lusk when Bertie warned in typically bolshie fashion against people getting weak-kneed about strong measures.
Equally so the cheap aside from Willie O'Dea when he had a go at Joe Costello for daring to ask why the Garda found it necessary to kill two people when one of them was unarmed and the other didn't use the gun he apparently had.
In light of this dysfunctional institutional relationship it was inevitable that something like Donegal would happen.
What is surprising is not the fact that it happened but the fact that we found out so much about it.
In that it is two of our own who should take a bow.
Jim Higgins and Brendan Howlin persisted with the demand for an inquiry long after the rest of us had forgotten what it was all about.
And, of course, it was Michael McDowell as attorney general who, together with John O'Donoghue, resisted the demands for an inquiry for far too long.
The Garda Síochána is bruised and bloodied this weekend but it is not the only one to bear responsibility for this unholy mess.
Drapier is glad to see that Brian Cowen hasn't lost his sense of style. Drapier had been concerned that all the gin and tonics and broad vowels in Iveagh House had blunted Brian's aptitude for a decent scrap.
Not so, it seems. In the Dáil this week he invited Joan Burton and Dan Boyle to the Dáil equivalent of a punch-up outside the pub.
Joan and Dan were engaged in the usual ribbing of Fianna Fáil about rich friends, tax exiles and all the usual stuff of the left.
Suddenly Brian came over all huffy, and announced that he would sue the redoubtable Joan if only she would repeat her comments without the privilege of the House.
Brian positively bristles in the face of political correctness from any quarter, but his body language when confronted with Joan is a sight to behold.
To be fair to Joan, it is, of course, her job to get under Brian's skin, but she seems to have little appreciation of just how well she does the business.
Brian is like a man possessed as he struggles to prevent his tongue from delivering a nuclear riposte to Joan's persistent and immensely irritating questioning about tax shelters and suchlike.
One of these days he'll lose control, and then there will be craic to be had.
Or maybe he might content himself with punching the guy from Cork with the glasses, metaphorically speaking, of course.
r r r r
The European constitution is dead. Dead, deceased, over, no longer with us.
Not that any of us can say so, least of all Bertie. For a few weeks at least we must all keep up the pretence that something can be salvaged from the wreckage of the non and the nee.
It can't. The breadth of opposition is too great; the nature of the argument too profound.
To be sure the non and the nee were votes against the governments of France and Holland. To be sure it was a calculated kick in the nether regions of the elite by what the French would call l'Europe d'en bas.
But it is more, much more than that. What we saw this week was the belated backlash to Nice, the belated reaction of old Europe to what so many of us obviously see as the threat from the east.
In Nice we voted to bring a final end to communism. We voted to ensure that the Cold War would never be repeated. Most of us never believed that we would be swamped by immigrants, that our very way of life could be put at risk.
Now, suddenly, we're not so sure. We never knew that these guys see our social model as a form of communism, and we certainly didn't realise that they think George Bush is great.
In a very short time the Union has gone from a smallish group of rich countries which were comfortable with each other and shared a general view of the world to a distinctly heterogeneous set of countries, many of whose citizens have never heard of some of the other member states.
The result has been to mobilise an extraordinary diversity of people in the citadels of old Europe against a constitution which has little or nothing to do with the issues which motivate its opponents.
The Union will survive, but the road ahead will not be easy. What we will eventually get will be either a two-speed Europe or a much looser association than we have.
In the meantime we must wait a few more weeks to give the constitution a decent burial.