Lenarte Artesanato

Who says those Brits don’t know their NFL?

The Giants’ 13-10 win in London on Sunday dropped Miami’s record to 0-8, causing Tom Lutz of the London Guardian to note: “Some Dolphins fans have complained that they’ve been deprived of a home game, but judging by their team’s inept performance, the NFL has done them a favor.” Denver Omelet Dept.

Among the top 10 Colorado Rockies excuses for losing the World Series, courtesy of CBS’s David Letterman:

• “Manager distracted by Joe Torre walking around with his résumé .

• “O.J. stole the equipment!

• “Turns out our ‘flaxseed oil’ really was flaxseed oil.”

Hippo wars

FoxSports.com’s report that a hippopotamus seeking refuge from the Southern California wildfires wound up in the swimming pool of Chargers special-teams coach Steve Crosby is being met with some skepticism.

USAToday.com reports that the nearby San Diego Wild Animal Park has no hippos, that hippos or pygmy hippos are all accounted for at the San Diego Zoo and Fund for Animals Wildlife Center, and that the county veterinarian’s office reported no incidents of a hippo intervention.

And after watching Sunday’s Dolphins-Giants game from London, we can vouch that Tony Siragusa wasn’t the pool perp, either.

Cheek, please

The coach of a teenage-girls soccer team in Windsor, Calif., allegedly lowered his pants after a contentious game Saturday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and gave the opposing sideline a two-run salute.

And for those of you who believe in such karma, yes, there was a full moon that night.

Lost in the shuffle

News: Rams guard Richie Incognito might miss the rest of the season with a kneecap injury.

Comment: Could there possibly be a more obscure NFL player than an offensive lineman on a winless team named Incognito?

Talking the talk

• Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle, on the Lakers’ soap opera starring Kobe Bryant: “Bryant has become L.A.’s version of Barry Bonds ‘07 - a beloved, sore-kneed and controversial superstar/media magnet whose main job is to dazzle the fans so they don’t notice how bad the team is.”

• Marc Tandan of the Virginian-Pilot, after NFL commissioner Roger Goodell cleared suspended receiver Chris Henry to resume practicing with the Bengals: “Cincinnati can’t wait to get him back in a nonpolice lineup.”

• Bill Lankhof of the Toronto Sun, on how sports and politics mix: “About as well as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”

• Shannon Sharpe of Sirius NFL Radio, on all the hype for Sunday’s matchup between the 8-0 Patriots and the 7-0 Colts: “If this was cartoons, this is Godzilla vs. Megalon.”

CSI: Fenway

Boston police arrested 37 overzealous fans in the wee hours Monday morning after the Red Sox captured their second World Series in four years.

Asked to explain their clients’ nutty behavior, defense lawyers shrugged and said it was just many being Manny.

Dwight Perry: 206-464-8250 or dperry@seattletimes.com

Seattle

A King County District Court judge set a Dec. 10 trial date for Seattle City Councilmember Richard McIver, who is facing a domestic-violence charge for allegedly assaulting his wife in their South Seattle home Oct. 10.

The trial for McIver, who pleaded not guilty to an allegation that he grabbed his wife by the throat during an argument, will likely last three days, prosecutors said. District Court Judge Linda Thompson on Tuesday denied a request for a change of judge submitted by McIver’s attorney, Todd Maybrown. Maybrown declined to comment on his reason for seeking the change.

A pretrial hearing for McIver is scheduled for Nov. 27, at which time attorneys will discuss whether certain information and witness statements should be admissible.

The judge is also expected to hear arguments about what investigative information should be released to the media by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Maybrown said some of the witness statements should not be released because they could be inflammatory and could affect McIver’s right to a fair trial.

Seattle

Firefighter hurt in blaze at temple

A Seattle firefighter was injured while responding to an early-morning fire Tuesday at a Buddhist temple in Southeast Seattle.

The firefighter suffered an ankle injury and was taken to Harborview Medical Center, said Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick.

No one else was hurt in the fire that broke out shortly before 4 a.m. at the temple, in the 6900 block of 42nd Avenue South.

Seattle

Recommendation on school delayed

A 13-member task force charged with helping decide the future of John Marshall Alternative School’s students decided to do more research before making its recommendation to Seattle Public Schools Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorno.

It was scheduled to give its recommendation Tuesday.

Even when the task force does make a decision, a district spokesman said the district doesn’t intend to release it to the public.

John Marshall, which enrolls fewer than 100 students this year, is scheduled to close next fall. Santorno appointed the task force in August to help decide what to do with the school’s five programs.

The school principal was removed in August after a national consultant said the school was chaotic and unsafe.

District spokesman David Tucker said the district is hesitant to release the task-force recommendation before district officials have made a final determination about the school’s programs.

Tacoma

2 military men died in car crash

Police say two young military men died in a car crash after a chase or street race in Tacoma.

Speed appears to be a factor in the crash, Officer Mark Fulghum said.

According to a police report, the two were in a car that was either racing with or chasing another car early Sunday morning. The other driver told investigators the car followed him through an east side intersection, then went out of control and slammed into a tree.

The other driver stopped and tried to help, but the passenger died and the driver died shortly afterward at a hospital.

Edmonds

Wounded suspect armed with 4 guns

Police say a man wounded by an officer Thursday in Edmonds had four guns and wore a bulletproof vest.

Court documents say the man carried two guns when he was arrested, threw another one to the ground and had a fourth gun in his car. And it appeared a bullet had bounced off his bulletproof vest.

The officer confronted the man in a motel parking lot because he appeared suspicious. They exchanged shots before the 44-year-old man was wounded in the arm and arrested.

He’s jailed in Everett for investigation of assault.

Seattle Times staff and news services

Snohomish County will kick off a new initiative in coming weeks to protect the region’s farmland from increasing urban pressures.

The Agricultural Sustainability Project, headed by the county’s 11-member agricultural-advisory board, will create a long-term vision for increasing the acreage of land now being farmed in Snohomish County as well as find new ways to promote the county’s agricultural economy.

Among the components are a comprehensive inventory of existing or potential farmlands outside current use; an analysis of ways to remove red tape for farmers looking to increase usable acreage; recommendations on preserving farmland; and new ideas for building agricultural businesses in Snohomish County.

The initiative will rely on a mix of project leaders that will include farmers, local and state agriculture agencies, farm and environmental advocates and other residents interested in farming.

To start, the county will host a series of community meetings in which the public will be asked to create priorities and a long-term vision for county agriculture. From there, the county will begin to find ways to implement those plans.

That could include new policies for farming at a local government level, better promotion of Snohomish County’s agricultural products and increased lobbying of state and federal lawmakers for support of the county’s farming industry.

At present, there are about 1,600 farms in Snohomish County, of which more than 70 percent are either family or individually owned. Total acreage farmed is beginning to increase, after years of decline, say county officials. Part of that is because of increased corn prices for ethanol production and feed.

The entire agriculture industry is worth about $127 million to Snohomish County’s economy, local studies show.

“Farms are the backbone of Snohomish County,” said County Executive Aaron Reardon during Tuesday’s project announcement. “To make an agriculture plan sustainable and functional, we need continued input from farmers.”

Reardon said increased farming will eventually help the county retain local food production and, because of increased interest in biofuels, could reduce the reliance on foreign sources for energy.

Christopher Schwarzen: 425-745-7813 or cschwarzen@seattletimes.com

The Mountain Loop Highway reopened Friday. Can you spell r-o-a-d t-r-i-p?

Part of the highway, north of Barlow Pass toward Darrington, had been closed since flooding in 2003 washed chunks of it into the Sauk River. Did I say highway?

Fifteen or so miles of the Mountain Loop north of Barlow Pass are unpaved. In places, it’s more a one-lane dirt track, with some wider spots for vehicles to pass. And it wouldn’t surprise me if this is where all of the potholes in the state are born.

But if you can lift your eyes from the road for a moment, what you see is spectacular:

The Sauk, a federally protected Wild and Scenic River, rushing over boulders. New snow on jagged, mile-high peaks on both sides of the road. Trees dripping moss everywhere. Creeks cascading down to the river. Stands of evergreens so dense it seems dark as you walk among them, even on a day as clear and crisp as Friday was.

It’s nature at its best. Nature as art. And no cell service.

To me, the Mountain Loop is a three-part experience:

1) Granite Falls east to Barlow Pass. Here’s where you find most of the trailheads, campgrounds and folks heading into the hills for the day or weekend. Barlow Pass is also where you start the trail to the site of Monte Cristo, the county’s legendary gold- and silver-mining town.

2) The unpaved highway north of Barlow Pass. This is for folks who want to get away, even from the other folks getting away. One of my new favorite parts is where some repairs were made - there’s a steep rock face on one side of the freshly graveled road, the Sauk on the other, and just you in between - no shoulders, no guardrails. In many places, you can pull off the road and just sit on a rock on the edge of the Sauk and enjoy the solitude.

3) The paved portion heading to Darrington. Ah, pavement. The ride becomes smooth again and you can glance away from the road more often to check out the sights. Except you quickly realize you’ve left most of the good stuff behind and start to wonder whether you should turn around and go back. But Darrington has espresso stands, so you push on.

If you want to drive the Mountain Loop before spring, go now. Barlow Pass is only 2,361 feet high, but because the highway is in the mountains, it usually closes for the winter when the first heavy snow hits in November.

Scott Barry: 425-745-7816 or sbarry@seattletimes.com

Whatever the coming winter may hold in store, the winemakers I’ve spoken to are quite pleased with the vintage just in.

A quick bloom during intense early June heat set the crop and encouraged even ripening. Later, heat spikes shrank the grapes and reduced the tonnage but concentrated flavors and accelerated the onset of harvest. The fall rains, which have caused problems in Oregon and parts of California, did little harm here, as the grapes were safely fermenting at most wineries by mid-October. Meanwhile, new releases from the 2005 vintage are proving that Washington’s spectacular numbers growth is being closely matched by a rise in quality across the board. So many good wines are hitting retail shelves just ahead of the holidays that I can only offer highlights here as I don’t have the space to focus on each winery’s entire lineup, though many deserve it.

Here is a mixed case of outstanding new releases. They may be purchased from specialty retailers or (in most instances) ordered directly from the wineries themselves.

Arbor Crest

www.arborcrest.com

2004 Columbia Valley Syrah; $20: Washington is becoming known as the place for syrah but few in the $20 range are this good. The key to success is the fruit, sourced from the Stillwater Creek and Sundance vineyards. Let this wine breathe for a while and note the complex aromas of cured meat and smoke wafting over berry and currant fruit. This lovely and graceful wine will reward your time and attention; I found it took a full day for it to reach its flavor peak.

Des Voigne Cellars

www.desvoignecellars.com

2005 “Montreux” Syrah; $27: This small Woodinville winery makes a big statement with its colorful labels, featuring beautiful poster-art graphics of famous jazz musicians. The star of the new lineup is this Montreux Syrah, a raw blast of wild berries, spicy cranberry and rhubarb. The chorus is tart and peppery, smoky and herbal, and it keeps on rocking through a wild and unrestrained finish.

Furion Cellars

www.furioncellars.com

2005 “Wicces Basium” Red Wine; $25: This new producer has made a perfect wine for Halloween (Wicces Basium, says the winery, may be loosely translated as “witches’ kiss”). In any language it’s a supple Rhone blend of 60 percent syrah, 25 percent grenache and 15 percent mourvèdre. The fruit flavors are beautifully integrated, and the finished wine is just 13.4 percent alcohol, which keeps it racy rather than sappy.

Gorman

www.gormanwinery.com

“Big Sissy” Conner Lee Vineyard Chardonnay; $35: Chris Gorman first made his mark as a red-wine specialist, but this luscious chardonnay, his first, shows him to be equally adept with white wines. A wild yeast fermentation in 100 percent new French oak really piles on the rich butterscotch flavors of toast, nutmeg and caramel. Happily there is plenty of thick, powerful fruit to match.

J. Bookwalter

www.bookwalterwines.com

2005 Columbia Valley Merlot; $38: The 2005 continues along the established path of Bookwalter’s recent red-wine releases: big, no holds barred, rich and jammy. The alcohol, at 14.8 percent, is not shy, and can be tasted in the finish. But the brambly fruit is ripe and nicely woven together, coated with appealing barrel flavors of coffee and chocolate.

L’Ecole No 41

www.lecole.com

2006 Columbia Valley Semillon; $16: L’Ecole “owns” semillon in Washington, and it is hard to think of any winery in the country that does a better job with the grape. The fact that consumers do not seem to have jumped on the semillon bandwagon does not deter L’Ecole’s Marty Clubb - he offers four different bottlings and sells out of them all. Put your preconceptions aside and try this delicious, rich and succulent wine with its deft flavors of nettle, lime, melon and vanilla custard.

Mark Ryan

www.markryanwinery.com

2006 Conner Lee Vineyard Viognier; $28: Rarely have I had a better viognier from America. This is a riot of citrus and stone fruits, lightly peppery in the mouth but also creamy and textural. It’s generous, subtle and refreshing - not tiring - and designed to accompany a wide variety of sauces, cheeses, pasta and poultry.

McCrea Cellars

www.mccreacellars.com

2006 Ciel du Cheval Vineyard Roussanne; $25: Roussanne, one of the six white grapes of the Rhone, is not often presented as a pure varietal, but Doug McCrea does a great job with this new release from Red Mountain’s Ciel du Cheval vineyard. Creamy and refreshing, it’s got plenty of texture and wet stone flavors to liven up the finish. This is a good option for chardonnay lovers who yearn for something new and different.

O• S

www.owensullivan.com

2005 Champoux Vineyard Cabernet Franc; $30: O• S generally produces one of the best cab francs in Washington, and this is no exception. The aromas are lifted and intense, even a bit high-toned, but the wine is packed with juicy red-fruit flavors and barrel notes of coffee and tobacco.

Seia Wine Cellars

www.seiawines.com

2005 Clifton Hill Vineyard Syrah; $30: Clifton Hill is one of the Milbrandt vineyards located in the Wahluke Slope AVA, and Seia is one of several small wineries making excellent syrah from this fruit. Ripe, concentrated flavors of plum and berry are accented with a streak of citrus, then finished with a hint of mint.

Sineann

www.sineann.com

2006 Old Vine Zinfandel; $36: This is made from century-old vines at the Pines vineyard, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River gorge. Sineann’s Peter Rosback consistently makes the finest zinfandel in the Northwest from these grapes. Released at less than a year old, this wine shows bright primary flavors of ripe raspberries, with plenty of tart acid behind 15.6 percent alcohol. Though it’s a bigger style, it is reminiscent of the lovely Nalle zins from Dry Creek Valley - succulent and bursting with berries.

Vin du Lac

www.vindulac.com

2006 “LEHM” Estate Dry Riesling; $20: The Lake Chelan region is just now reaching an age where some of the estate vineyards are settling in and beginning to show what this exciting new appellation-in-waiting is capable of. Vin du Lac’s ‘LEHM’ bottling is finely detailed with citrus rind, stone, light herb and yeast; the wine is nicely meshed and the flavors refined. Though almost completely dry, it is not lacking in substance, length or flavor.

Paul Gregutt is the author of “Washington Wines and Wineries The Essential Guide.” His column appears weekly in the Wine section. He can be reached by e-mail at wine@seattletimes.com.

Wood-products producer Pope & Talbot filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada, citing record low demand for lumber and the appreciation of the Canadian dollar.

The 150-year-old Portland company filed for protection from creditors for U.S. and Canadian subsidiaries under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act of Canada.

The cost of servicing debt and slowing demand for sawdust were cited as reasons its principal operating subsidiary, based in Canada, sought bankruptcy.

“Pope & Talbot is taking all available steps to allow its business to continue operating as a going concern,” Chief Executive Harold Stanton said in a statement.

The company, with about 2,500 employees, said most of its operating assets are in British Columbia. It also has mills in Oregon and South Dakota.

Weyerhaeuser

$100 comments send stock higher

Weyerhaeuser stock rose the most in more than five years after the lumber maker’s second-largest shareholder told Barron’s the shares may reach $100 if the company becomes a real-estate investment trust and sells assets.

Weyerhaeuser rose $5.51, or 8.1 percent, to $73.85 Monday. The gain was the biggest since July 29, 2002. The shares have risen 16 percent in the past year.

“With different engines under the hood, there’s a huge amount of value there,” Michael Embler, chief investment officer of Franklin Mutual Advisers, said in the Oct. 29 issue of Barron’s.

Embler’s firm holds 17 million shares and is encouraging Weyerhaeuser to restructure into a real-estate trust, or REIT, Barron’s reported.

Jones Soda

Regional SEC ends stock probe

Jones Soda on Monday said the San Francisco regional office of the Securities and Exchange Commission terminated an informal investigation into stock trades made by company executives and board members.

The SEC office does not plan to seek enforcement action, according to a letter the soda maker said it received Thursday.

Jones Soda has been hit by several shareholder lawsuits claiming executives and board members pushed up the share price, then sold stock before poor first- and second-quarter earnings reports caused the price to plunge.

The company has denied the claims.

Shares of the quirky soda maker sank 43 cents, or 4.3 percent, to close at $9.54 Monday.

Inrix

Startup raises $15M for expansion

Inrix, the Kirkland startup that tracks and predicts traffic patterns, announced a $15 million funding round Monday that will help it expand internationally.

The company’s existing investors - August Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Venrock - participated in the round, which brings the total invested over three rounds to $31.1 million since it was founded in 2004. The company is building on technology from Microsoft Research.

Inrix, which counts more than 40 customers for its location-based service, said it did not need to raise capital, having booked its first month of positive cash flow in September.

It decided to take the additional money to “accelerate several investments and further expand our product offerings to firmly cement Inrix’s leadership position in the market,” said President and CEO Bryan Mistele.

Microsoft

Thai firm acquired; focus on health care

Microsoft added another piece to its health-care business Monday with the acquisition of Global Care Solutions, a Thai maker of software for managing hospital systems.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, who is leading Microsoft’s efforts in new fields, including health care, was in Thailand for the announcement.

Global Care Solutions (GCS) makes a suite of software for managing billing, patient records and many other hospital functions. Microsoft intends to integrate it with software from Azyxxi, another recent acquisition, that collects and displays a wide variety of patient data, including routine clinical information, X-rays and other imaging scans.

The GCS software, in use in seven hospitals, will be sold globally by Microsoft.

MediQuest Therapeutics

Patent obtained for skin lightening

Bothell-based MediQuest Therapeutics said Monday that it has obtained a European patent for a technology that can be used to lighten skin.

The technology inhibits the production of melanin and could be used to treat age spots and other skin ailments, the company said in a statement.

MediQuest, a pharmaceutical startup, specializes in topical treatments.

Verizon

Telecom’s earnings drop 34 percent

Verizon on Monday reported third-quarter earnings fell by a third from a year ago due to tax charges.

Verizon earned $1.27 billion, or 44 cents per share, in the July-September period, down 34 percent from $1.92 billion, or 66 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts expected 62 cents a share.

Revenue came to $23.8 billion in the latest quarter, up 5.8 percent from a year ago.

Verizon shares rose 39 cents to close at $45.99 in Monday trading.

Compiled from Seattle Times staff, Bloomberg News, Reuters and The Associated Press

TACOMA - Tacoma police are trying to shut down a bar where three people were wounded last week in a gang-related shooting.

Police are asking for an emergency suspension of the business and liquor licenses for McCabe’s American Music Cafe.

In the past year there have been 178 calls to McCabe’s for crimes that include fights, rapes and robberies.

Assistant Chief Bob Sheehan told the Liquor Control Board that with the recent shootings the situation at McCabe’s has reached a critical stage.

In a statement last week the manager of McCabe’s said it takes safety seriously but it could not have prevented the shooting.

Buoyed by a $3.5 million federal grant, the Port of Kingston is expected to submit a plan to Gov. Christine Gregoire this week to begin passenger-ferry service between Kingston and downtown Seattle.

A private company, Aqua Express, offered passenger-ferry service from Kingston, in Kitsap County, to downtown Seattle until October 2005, when low ridership and high fuel costs prompted it to abandon the route. It still holds the state permit on the route, but other companies can apply for it.

The Port of Kingston has not said what it plans to do, but Kingston has long been considered a valuable route for foot ferries, and commuters who used to ride Aqua Express have formed a nonprofit, Kingston Express, to encourage passenger-ferry service between Kingston and Seattle.

The group envisions a small ferry that would begin with 80 passengers, growing by one passenger a week, up to 500 passengers.

John Blackman, one of the partners of Aqua Express, said he didn’t know the Port was preparing a business plan to send to the governor, but he said his company is prepared to bid on the service.

“We are interested in working with them to restart business,” Blackman said. “We’re certainly set to compete to do the route.”

Winning the federal grant was a coup for the Port of Kingston. Port director Mike Bookey called it a “longshot,” when it submitted its application last summer. “A lot of people are competing for it, and some better politically connected than Kingston,” he said at the time. “But if you don’t try, you don’t have a chance.”

Under terms of the federal grant, the money can be used for the purchase of a ferry or for dock construction, but not for operations.

Kitsap Transit also has been pushing to finance passenger ferries, but voters twice have turned down ballot measures to raise taxes to operate foot ferries.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com

WASHINGTON - The first big scandal confronting Rudy Giuliani in his presidential quest has nothing to do with his personal life, his gov-erning style in New York City, or his associations with people such as Bernie Kerik, his police commissioner now under criminal investigation.

No, it has to do with Rudy’s heresy as a Yankees fan: In hot pursuit of votes in next January’s New Hampshire primary, Giuliani declared that, because of his preference for the American League, he was rooting for the Red Sox in the World Series. No doubt he will now claim credit for their sweep against the Colorado Rockies, which we giddy Sox fans will deny him.

When Rudy came out for Boston, you’d have thought he had announced that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be his running mate. The New York tabloids greeted the news with something less than tranquility.

“Traitor,” shouted the New York Daily News. “Red Coat,” opined the New York Post.

National Public Radio’s normally serene Scott Simon felt Giuliani’s move crossed all bounds of decency. “Now I don’t feel I have the right or sense to judge another man or woman’s religious faith, sexual orientation or family relations,” Simon said. “But I’m sorry: Yankee fans don’t root for the Red Sox. It’s like Sylvester rooting for Tweety Pie. It would be like Napoleon shaking hands with the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo and saying, you won, we lost, my bad. Now, we root for you. Tally ho.”

And members of Giuliani’s target audience - New Hampshire fans of the Red Sox - were not persuaded. “True Red Sox fans (and we know many, of course) don’t want Rudy Giuliani or any Yankee fan rooting for the Red Sox,” wrote John DiStaso, senior political reporter for the Manchester Union Leader, as loyal a conservative paper as you’ll find. “Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.”

On top of all this, Rudy seems to have flip-flopped. Last July, The Providence Journal asked Giuliani what he’d do if the devil made pulling for the Red Sox a condition for his election as president. “Probably that’s a deal I could not make,” he said. Then.

Of course, it is ungracious for a lifelong Red Sox loyalist to taunt Giuliani like this so soon after a triumph proving that if the last century belonged to his guys, this one belongs to us. But Red Sox fans are supposed to jeer followers of George Steinbrenner’s evil empire - a phrase invented by the perceptive Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox president and CEO who happens to be a Hillary Clinton campaign contributor.

But there’s another point: Many non-sports people think team loyalties are irrational, trivial and a waste of time. Loyalty itself is an uneasy virtue for my fellow liberals who rightly prize equal justice without favoritism and view tribalism (that’s what sports loyalties are) with disdain.

In fact, loyalty is a greatly underrated virtue. That’s why I honestly respected Giuliani’s stubborn and unwavering faithfulness to his New York Yankees, and appreciated the generous words he spoke upon Joe Torre’s departure earlier this month as the Yankees’ manager.

George P. Fletcher, a Columbia University law professor, wrote a brilliant book called “Loyalty” in 1993 and once argued in a radio interview that loyalty “creates a certain stability in personal relationships, and I think that it creates, in the people who are loyal, a sense of integrity and continuity.” Or, as he put it in the book, “In the way we draw the lines of our loyalties, we define ourselves as persons.”

“People bring their histories to their loyalties,” Fletcher argues, “which implies that the reasons for attachment to a friend, family or country” - I’d add sports team - “invariably transcend the particular characteristics of the object of loyalty.” No kidding. I was a Red Sox fan in the days of Frank Malzone, Chuck Schilling and Bill Monbouquette when often the Washington Senators were the only team between us and the cellar. I loved those guys.

My Red Sox loyalty is, in part, to family (my dad raised me a Red Sox fan) and to place (my native New England) and is thus very much about Fletcher’s sense of “integrity and continuity.”

Yes, yes, this is way too grand. But please remember that I’m trying to persuade those people who see us sports loyalists as dangerous idiots. Mostly, I’ll just be irrationally happy for the next several months. And Rudy, please go back to despising the Red Sox, as you’re supposed to. In sports, an honest hatred is always better than a convenient dalliance.

E.J. Dionne’s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is postchat@aol.com

WASHINGTON - The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, three senior law-enforcement officials say.

The immunity deal has delayed a criminal inquiry into the Sept. 16 killings and could undermine any effort to prosecute security contractors for their role in the incident that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law-enforcement official familiar with the investigation.

It’s not clear why investigators would make such a move, or who authorized doing so.

State Department officials declined to confirm or deny that immunity had been granted. One official - who refused to be quoted by name - said: “If, in fact, such a decision was made, it was done without any input or authorization from any senior State Department official in Washington.”

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd and FBI spokesman Rich Kolko also declined to comment.

FBI agents in Baghdad have been trying to collect evidence in the Sept. 16 embassy convoy shooting without using statements from Blackwater employees who were given immunity.

The senior law-enforcement officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved in the incident - both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above - were given the legal protection as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department.

Government officials who spoke to The New York Times - also on condition of anonymity - said the investigators offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the newspaper reported on its Web site. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, those officials added.

Iraq is demanding the right to launch its own prosecution of the Blackwater bodyguards.

The company has said its convoy was under attack before it opened fire in west Baghdad’s Nisoor Square, killing 17 Iraqis. A follow-up investigation by the Iraqi government, however, concluded that Blackwater’s men were unprovoked. No witnesses have been found to contradict that finding.

An initial incident report by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in Iraq, also indicated “no enemy activity” was involved. The report says Blackwater guards were traveling against the flow of traffic through a traffic circle when they “engaged five civilian vehicles with small-arms fire” at a distance of 50 meters.

The FBI took over the case early this month, officials said, after prosecutors in the Justice Department’s criminal division realized they could not bring charges against Blackwater guards based on their statements to the Diplomatic Security investigators.

Officials said the Blackwater bodyguards spoke only after receiving so-called “Garrity” protections, requiring that their statements only be used internally - and not for criminal prosecutions.

Garrity protections generally are given to police or other public law-enforcement officers, and were extended to the Blackwater guards because they were working on behalf of the U.S. government, one official said. Experts said it’s rare for them to be given to all or even most witnesses.

“You have to be careful,” said Michael Horowitz, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and senior Justice Department official. “You have to understand early on who your serious subjects are in the investigation, and avoid giving these people the protections.”

The FBI has re-interviewed some of the Blackwater employees, and one official said Monday that at least several of them have declined to answer questions, citing their constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination. Any new incriminating statements that the guards give to the FBI could be used to bring criminal charges.

If prosecutors do bring charges, they will have to prove that any evidence they include was uncovered without using the guards’ statements to State Department investigators. They “have to show we got the information independently,” one official said.

Bureau of Diplomatic Security chief Richard Griffin last week announced his resignation, effective Thursday. Senior State Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said his departure was directly related to his oversight of Blackwater contractors.

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered a series of measures to boost government oversight of the private guards who protect American diplomats in Iraq. They include increased monitoring and explicit rules on when and how they can use deadly force.

Blackwater’s contract with the State Department expires in May and there are questions whether it will remain as the primary contractor for diplomatic bodyguards. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his Cabinet is drafting legislation that would force the State Department to replace Blackwater with another security company.

Congress also is expected to investigate the shootings, but a House watchdog committee said it has so far held off, based on a Justice Department request that lawmakers wait until the FBI concludes its inquiry.

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this story.