A lot of you have probably already read the, ahem, somewhat lengthy Bruce Smith profile we published last week, so you’ll be forgiven if you have Smith fatigue.

But I spent seven hours interviewing him one day a couple of months ago and called him for follow-ups numerous times. We couldn’t get all the interesting stuff into one story — not one anyone would read to its conclusion anyway.

So here are just a few of the outtakes:

- On his 280-pound weight loss after stomach-belting surgery and the fact its cured his sleep apnea: “I’m kind of like a reformed alcoholic about it. I like to talk about it.” “Now I get by with the same five or six hours of sleep, and I feel fine.”

- On the myriad duties of being a political activist and publisher: “People know me mostly from my writing, but it’s not 20 percent of what I do.”

- On being a publisher: “I think of myself as a journalist.”

- On why the Yakima Valley Business Times doesn’t run a Web site: “I can’t make any money with a Web site.”

- On having outspoken political opinions: “I’m not a day-to-day journalist. I don’t write much news. So I don’t have any problem with that.”

- On the open-meetings e-mail controversy: “In hindsight, looking back, we didn’t handle it right.”

- On the council members who, like him, wanted to change Yakima's budget process so the council has more control of it: “I said, ‘I don’t understand you people. Good politics is the ability to count. One, two, three, four. Make it happen.’”

- On why they planned a strategy to introduce the change: “They didn’t have the group skills or whatever it took to move them forward. (City Manager Dick) Zais was blocking it. (Finance Director) Rita (Debord) was blocking it. (Former Councilman Neil) McClure was blocking it.”

- On the fallout from that controversy: “So now people I help politically are like, ‘Geez, maybe now we’ve got to keep a low profile.’ … Now suddenly it’s a bad thing to be involved in the community.”

- On his level of influence: “There’s 20 people in the community as involved as I am. There’s probably 100 people in the community as involved as I am.”

  “I’ve worked with a lot of elected people. I’ve helped a lot of people get elected.”

- On being critical of local government: “I’m the furthest thing from the good old boy club you’ll ever get.”

- On a chance hot tub meeting with former Secretary of State Al Haig and Smith’s correct guess that Mark Felt was Watergate’s Deep Throat: “Haig confirmed it in a wink-and-a-smile way. Our meeting was accidental. I was at the Resort at Coeur d’Alene for a long weekend vacation and he was there speaking at a conference. I’m an early riser so I went down to the indoor pool, hot tub area, swam a few laps and settle in the hot tub with this guy. Turns out it was Haig.”

- Pat Muir