Boy it's slow out there, huh?

I was going to point out that anybody with a law license is now apparently under consideration to be the next United States Senator, but I see my friends over at Riptide beat me to it.

So let's talk Glenn Garvin.

It's certainly a legitimate political and rhetorical tool to point out when the other side is being hypocritical.

But how far does the observation get you?

It happens so often and with such stunning frequency that -- standing alone -- a charge of hypocrisy in politics is like getting excited over spotting an iguana in your South Florida neighborhood. It just doesn't resonate that much anymore.

So in today's column Glenn observes that economic boycotts used to be bad when they were directed to the Dixie Chicks, but now liberals like them when they are directed to Glenn Beck.

I think he has a point, but an infinitesimally small one.

In addition to the legitimacy of economic boycotts as a tool of political expression, isn't there also a component of whether or not -- in a particular case -- the economic boycott is appropriate?

To equate the Dixie Chicks, who criticized the President once while on foreign soil (a bugaboo that Glenn Greenwald has recently been discussing at length), with the repeated stream of corrosive crazy talk from Beck, is a bit unfair.

Doesn't it matter at all what you are boycotting?

Glenn also conflates corporate punishment with economic boycotts. Bill Maher wasn't fired because he was the subject of a popular protest movement - his bosses fired him because he made comments deemed too controversial. Entirely different thing.

That said, Glenn does devote his entire column to making an exceedingly minor rhetorical point, and I actually agree with him.

So I'm sure back when the Dixie Chicks were being vilified the way Garvin's buddy Beck is today, Glenn was writing similar columns condemning the outrage and pointing out the hypocrisy just like he's doing today, right?

Umm, the Herald must not have archived that column.

But look at this -- Garvin did accuse the Chicks of "embracing their First Amendment martydom"!

See how hypocrisy works, Glenn?

Our friend Glenn continues to pretend he's a lawyer, except now he's a top-notch US Attorney taking pot shots at the prosecutorial record of Patrick Fitzgerald, one of the more celebrated US attorneys in the country.

There's so much straw men hackery to unpack in Glenn's op-ed that it could take literally days and valuable billable hours, but let's just examine the main claim -- that Peter Lance wrote a good book that exposes Patrick Fitzgerald as a bumbling, inept and dishonest AUSA.

In other words, Glenn wrote a press release!

Glenn even kindly timed it so his column would coincidentally run the same day (today) that Lance holds a big press conference in DC to drum up publicity for his book.

Nice work Glenn!

From what I can tell, Glenn basically cribbed his op-ed almost entirely from Peter Lance's own voluminous press releases, available at his website. (The oddball stuff about the Plame prosecution is of course Glenn's own straw-man invention).

If you actually read the letters from Fitzgerald (which are extremely well-written and highly persuasive), Fitzgerald makes a compelling case that Lance made or makes a number of dubious and/or possibly defamatory claims.

I'm sure due solely to word constraints, Glenn fails to mention that some of Lance's key claims were debunked in a recent book by former AUSA and NRO legal contributor Andy McCarthy, who appeared on The O'Reilly Factor to denounce the book as follows:

"This (book) is scurrilously presented. Everything he says we were hiding about Ali Mohamed was presented in open court. It is represented in the book in a widely disingenuous way, relying on convicted terrorists and convicted murderers as sources."

Glenn also fails to mention that the book was first published under the now defunct "Regan Books" imprint, in a lame effort to make the book seem more respectable.

Regan Books, you may recall, published important literary works such as "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It," as well as highly regarded tomes by Janice Dickinson, Jenna Jameson, Jose Conseco, and of course Sean Hannity.

Didn't one of those win the Booker Prize?

Glenn also neglects to inform his readers that National Geographic apparently dissociated themselves from Lance due to his insistence on making claims that could not be "independently confirmed."

You can see see other thoughtful, detailed criticism of the book not anywhere in Glenn's column, but instead here, here and here.

Sorry folks I got caught up writing an 11th Circuit response brief, and missed all the fun yesterday.

As I was working on the brief, I was reminded again of V.S. Naipaul's advice for young writers:

"I didn't know how you seduced a woman, how you excited her and thought of her pleasure. I hadn't got that from my upbringing. There was no one telling me about it or talking about it. I realised all this later, much later....A young taxi driver was driving me back from the [railway] station one day. He said his father had told him 'Always please the woman first.' A marvellous thing to tell the son, don't you think? I wish someone had told me that. But we grew up with this furtive incestuous idea."

Oops! Wrong passage.

I meant this:

1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.

2. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.

3. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words.

4. Never use words whose meaning you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work.

5. The beginner should avoid using adjectives, except those of colour, size and number. Use as few adverbs as possible.

6. Avoid the abstract. Always go for the concrete.

7. Every day, for six months at least, practice writing in this way. Small words; short, clear, concrete sentences. It may be awkward, but it’s training you in the use of language. It may even be getting rid of the bad language habits you picked up at the university. You may go beyond these rules after you have thoroughly understood and mastered them.

Wow, imagine if we all wrote briefs like this (and judges wrote opinions that way!).

But Naipaul's comments about his relations with women merely highlight the obvious -- we are all the sum of our experiences. If Naipaul had not grown up as an Indian immigrant in colonial Trinidad, would he have produced the great post-colonial works that emerged from that background?

Same, sorry to say, with Glenn Garvin -- he is a product of having watched too many Simpsons episodes, and always rooting for Montgomery Burns.

Personally I'm sick to death of the confirmation process already, but here is the offending quote from Judge Sotomayor that Garvin is all lathered up about:

''Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum,'' Sotomayor says, ``our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.''

She should be asked about this, obviously.

But anyone who went to UM Law School (founded on "legal realism" principles) or who practices in the 3d DCA know that judges decide things based on a variety of factors, including the law, precedent, and sometimes what they had for breakfast.

In Judge Sotomayor's case, we have a few decades of opinions to digest, which Scotusblog has been kind enough to summarize (Glenn, you might want to cite to at least one opinion from her long judicial career that supports this "racial essentialism" charge).

Read the Pappas opinion and dissent (summarized here with links by Greenwald) before you throw around this kind of "identity politics" charge.

Although her comments about her ethnicity and background are clearly fair game and deserve some inquiry, you also have to examine in her case several decades of judging before simply pronouncing her biased and racist.

Unless you're the TV writer for the Herald, of course.

Didn't this week start with the weather all dark and rainy? Why does Friday feel like Monday?

But that's ok, it's always windsurfing weather somewhere -- you just have to find it like. say, in China.

But I hope you stay dry and do something productive and fun this weekend.

Did you see Jeremy Alters just won a billion dollar verdict.....against the Cuban government. Could you imagine if at the end of the hearing Judge Adrien denied it or granted a JNOV?

It's nice to win, Jeremy, but it's no fun when the other side won't put up a fight!

Me, I plan the usual diversions. First and foremost is to pump those endorphins, then I plan to learn more about something called a "Marinelli bend," study how certain people hold their glasses, and of course I will probably wind up in Davie gazing at a Lover's Moon.

Actually, I do plan to sit still long enough to watch the new Churchill war movie on HBO, Into The Storm. What can I say, Churchill war porn always does it for me, folks.

Hey look -- none other than our very own Glenn Garvin makes the front page of HuffPost! Trust me, Glenn, more exposure for you is probably not a good thing.

And finally, I urge you to wrap your hands around something delicious this weekend -- I always do!

Have a nice one, folks.

Oy.

I'd like to write about exciting South Florida civil legal news, such as the fact that Lew Freeman is investigating lap dancing receipts.

But I see Glenn Garvin has graced us with another column, filled with high-larious insights never before seen on the intertubes. These include:

1. Joe Biden makes gaffes!

(Never heard that one.)

2. It is "dishearteningly true" that Obama is really smart.

Wait, did I just write that? Is Garvin actually "disheartened" that the President of the United States is so smart?

Oh, I see. He's upset because everyone else Obama hired is really, really dumb. Because that's what smart people do!

Like Rosa Brooks, the new undersecretary of defense. According to Garvin, Brooks thinks that Al Qaeda are little more than "an obscure group of extremist thugs."

Garvin pulled this, not surprisingly, from a Washington Times editorial, which badly misstated Brooks' views:

In an April 24 editorial titled, "A disaster for Defense," The Washington Times distorted a quote from Rosa Brooks, an incoming Defense Department official, as evidence that Brooks has "hard-left, rabidly ideological positions on defense matters." The Times claimed Brooks "has called al Qaeda 'little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs.' " In fact, Brooks used that phrase in a July 20, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed to refer to the view of Al Qaeda in 2001 held by "most experts." She further wrote that the group was "well financed and intermittently lethal" in 2001 and that, since then, it has become a "vast global threat."

Garvin also thinks Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is really dumb because she said ''crossing the border [without a visa] is not a crime per se.''

Glenn stole this one whole cloth from Michelle Malkin, but what Napolitano actually said was this:

What we have to do is target the real evil-doers in this business, the employers who consistently hire illegal labor, the human traffickers who are exploiting human misery.

And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil. But anyway, going after those as well.

She didn't say "crossing the border illegally." Approximately 45 percent of illegal immigrants are visa overstays, which is largely treated as a civil matter. These are people who in fact crossed the border -- with a visa -- "legally."

And Michelle, I mean Glenn, needs to read the rest of the law:

Improper time or place; civil penalties

Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to enter) the United States at a time or place other than as designated by immigration officers shall be subject to a civil penalty of—

See what happens when you add words to quotes!

We lawyers do it all the time, but we're a lot better at it.

Glenn, if you are going to cobble a column together from discredited stories that have been circulating on the tubes forever, at least do Herald readers a favor and acknowledge your (discredited) sources.

Glenn Garvin's column today presents a case study in what is wrong with op-eds in local newspapers.

First, he's picked a topic with no local angle -- the trial of KSM in New York.

Being a national story, this topic has been discussed at length in newspapers and blogs and on TV ever since Attorney General Holder made the announcement two weeks ago.

Indeed, I covered it a week back on November 24.

So, if you are going to approach a topic that is several media-cycles old and which has already been the subject of tremendous debate and analysis by every major national columnist in this country, you need to bring something new to the table.

Needless to say, Garvin fails.

Instead, Garvin offers a deeply flawed and inaccurate understanding of how the criminal justice system works, with absolutely no reference to the successful terrorist prosecutions that have occured in this country, such as John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, Zacarias Moussaoui, Ali al-Marri, Jose Padilla -- all tried under the Bush Administration btw.

Garvin's gloom and doom and fear-based arguments are too silly to get into, and have already been addressed dozens of times by knowledgeable lawyers such as former Bush AGs Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith.

The larger point has to do with the newspaper business. If you are that late to a story, you have to approach it like Time Magazine, The Nation, or National Review -- deliver some analysis, synthesis, commentary that reflects a point of view or which has been lacking in the day-to-day coverage thus far.

Can anyone reading Garvin's column today -- including his editors -- say with a straight face that Garvin has added something (anything?) meaningful to the discussion?

I finally figured it out -- Glenn Garvin is stuck in Season Six of Maude.

The Herald TV columnist-turned-editorialist inhabits a world that is straight out of that groundbreaking 70s sitcom, filled with "wacky" limousine liberals, hippies lurking under every bed, Feminazis and long-haired draft-dodgers who seek to impose their "batty" PC cultural values on the silent majority of decent, hardworking hard-hat Americans.

In Glenn's world, every administrator and "lefty" academic seeks to impose their "1960s political orthodoxies on a younger generation," George W. Bush is just like President Lincoln, fascism is a left-wing rather than right-wing phenomenon, the 70s-era Fairness Doctrine is making a comeback, the peace symbol is really secret code for the Waffen-SS, and John Lennon was a womanizing, abusive druggie.

In other words, he's stuck in Tuckahoe with Maude and Walter Findlay.

In particular episode #126, "The Gay Bar," in which Arthur organizes a local group of neighbors who are opposed to the opening of a gay bar in Tuckahoe. As I recall, Arthur's group pickets the bar with signs that bear the acronym of Arthur's anti-gay group, Fathers Against Gays Society.

That's right -- F.A.G.S. For Tuckahoe.

Listen Glenn, I had as big a crush as you did on the luscious Adrienne Barbeau.

Or was it Mrs. Naugatuck, I can't remember now.

But dude, seriously, you have got to move on.

I lost my breakfast attempting to get through Garvin's column this morning, so I was reluctant to give it another go and actually try to finish the darn thing.

But I waited for my lunch to digest, and gave it another crack.

Here's a checklist of things I learned from Garvin today:

1. Hokey "letter from Obama" premise;

2. Obligatory reference to early 1970s (Nixon at Great Wall);

3. Obligatory joke about ACORN and pimps;

4. Misleading and distorted stats about Obama's record on the economy (for an antidote, please see this WP article which actually looked at the numbers in relation to the "jobs creation summit" Garvin mocks);

5. Misleading and distorted stats about FDR and the New Deal (for an antidote, please see this TPM article which explains how unemployment rates dropped from a high of 25% to 10% before WWII);

6. Obligatory joke about Obama apologizing to everyone (especially the French!);

7. Obligatory Ronald Reagan Was God reference and misleading and distorted stats about unemployment under Reagan (for an antidote, please see this history of unemployment figures under Ronnie);

8. Obligatory Obama/Nobel Prize joke; and

8. Obligatory Biden is a clown joke.

Oh hail, I think I just lost it again.

Ok ok, several of you have asked for my thoughts on this Business Monday look at local law firms and how they are faring during these tough economic times.

Here's what I took away from the story:

1. Emily Blunt is cute as a button and really shines in The Great Buck Howard; and

2. The article doesn't really break any new ground.

Wait a minute -- I take that back.

I also learned:

3. There is or used to be a real legal specialty involving "legal review of car dealer ads" and that Hollywood attorney Fred Hochszstein was apparently its resident guru.

Seriously, I know this is the work of intrepid reporter Julie Kay, but to me it was mostly a recap of stories already reported elsewhere by Julie and reframed for a more general audience.

Julie -- stay away from the Herald! They plainly left all your really juicy stuff on the cutting room floor. Then again, how else to make room for Glenn Garvin's tough, unflinching expose of Bill O?

Here's another reason the otherwise great Julie should stay away from the Herald -- take a look at the comments to Julie's piece. It makes the Herald letters page seem simply erudite and sophisticated by comparison.

How many news cycles can this story dominate?

Scott, this scandal has officially joined the list of Things That I Hate -- in no particular order:

1. Flatbread;
2. The Case That Dare Not Speak Its Name;
3. Any current or former lovers of Drew Barrymore;
4. Metadata;
5. Flavored vodka;
6. Jeremy Piven and/or Brett Ratner;
7. Pesto wraps;
8. Certain Herald TV critics (Glenn was right about V however -- it rocked).

Oh the melodrama:

Rothstein mused that he had three options -- kill himself, live life "on the lam as a fugitive'' or go to prison and risk being killed there because he had made enemies, said the law firm's co-founder, Stuart Rosenfeldt, according to the website. Rosenfeldt talked to Rothstein, urging him to "choose life.''

I bet that's the first time a George Michael T shirt saved a high-powered lawyer from suicide.

Scott seems to possess a perfect storm of characteristics -- talented yet narcissistic, delusions of grandeur, persecution complex, excessive displays of wealth even by South Florida standards, megalomania and a sense that the entire world revolves around him -- in other words, your typical successful South Florida trial lawyer.

Consider the stories coming out -- private elevators, a car fetish, carrying a gun in an ankle holster, blowing $10 million a month.

Indeed, look at the comments section of Bob Norman's "Jewish Avenger" story -- there is definitely something not right about the way Scott engages Norman.

Are there some chemical or other disorders at work here?

Now that he's down, it seems everyone has a negative Rothstein story -- yet some of these folks sat on their feelings or refused to act on them, no?

Roger Stone now says Scott "never added up"; Bill Scherer says "[w]e all wondered where the money came from"; Michael Goldberg says Scott's spending "made no sense." Sunshine Charlie says "I think everybody heard rumors."

My friend Brian Tannebaum wonders how in this recession a firm can go from seven lawyers to seventy and no one questions why or how?

He relates a story of how he drove 40 minutes to meet with Scott for lunch, only to be totally stiffed:

I never met Scott Rothstein. He ducked out a few minutes before our lunch a few years ago. His secretary telling me and his colleague, who set up the lunch: "he went to lunch." There was no further inquiry as we were not entitled to even be standing by his office, an "off-limits" area of the firm. Instead I went to lunch with some other lawyers in the firm who felt they needed to take pity on me for my wasted 40 minute drive, all of them telling me in response to the unprofessional behavior of their king: "I'm not surprised." "That's Scott."

These out-of-control legal types, of which I know many, all have enablers -- those who justify, excuse, or clean up the mess left by the large lives of the bosses they serve, and who not coincidentally benefit from being near to the flame.

Now we know that a seventy lawyer firm, with only two equity partners, really only had one -- as Stuart Rosenfeldt apparently had no signatory authority on certain firm accounts and there is suddenly only $500k left in the firm's operating account.

Judge Streitfeld called Rosenfeldt "clueless" about the firm's finances at a hearing yesterday. Stuart has since invested a large chunk of his own money to keep salaries paid and the firm afloat.

There are lots of victims here, including many many fine lawyers at RRA, but a few of us in the South Florida legal and business communities should probably step up and acknowledge we could have been a bit more proactive on what some apparently suspected all along.

I know they probably don't have many fact-checkers left over there, but still.

I mean, it's one thing when the burning issue is whether it was Danielle Brisebois or Soleil Moon Frye who starred in the revival of Hair that played at the old Konover Hotel back when it was owned by Abe Hirshfeld.

(It was a deliciously grown-up Danielle Brisebois, by the way.)

It's another thing when it's something of actual substance:

And that paled before the tragic memory loss of Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who was so freaked out by the bonuses that he proposed a special tax to take them back, forgetting completely that he was the one who stuck an amendment into the stimulus bill the Senate passed last month that specifically OK'd the AIG bonuses.

Oy.

Now what Glenn wrote is technically true, and yet utterly and completely false:

Dodd was pressured to put that carve-out in at the insistence of Treasury officials (whose opposition meant that Dodd's two choices were the limited compensation restriction favored by Geithner/Summers or no compensation limits at all), and Dodd did so only after arguing in public against it. To blame Dodd for provisions that the White House demanded is dishonest in the extreme....

In other words, it would be like writing "King George granted the colonies their independence" or "Japan sought to negotiate a peace with the Allies during WWII."

Hey -- all technically true, right?

Let's discuss something positive:

Lisa Pisciotta is an associate with Hughes Hubbard & Reed in Miami. An attorney for nine years, her practice concentrates on commercial litigation, products liability and intellectual property.

But on Friday, she had one thing on her mind — the defense of Daniel Gray, who was charged with misdemeanor driving under the influence in Miami-Dade County Court.

“It’s hard to get trial experience when your cases are worth $300 million,” she said Friday referring to the caseload she handles with one of her firm’s partners. “It’s also a side of the law you don’t see.”

Pisciotta is one of 23 attorneys participating in a pilot project spearheaded by the Miami-Dade public defender’s office to bridge an expanding budget gap.

Miami-Dade Public Defender Carlos Martinez already has won a court ruling — which is on appeal — that his attorneys are spread too thin to adequately represent clients charged with third-degree felonies. On Friday he made a public appeal for help from private attorneys who may want a bit of trial experience to consider participating in the project.

Now this is a great idea -- a way to match BigFirm attorneys, many of whom are looking for trial experience or just plain old-fashioned work -- with a desperate need for legal representation here in South Florida.

Good job all around (except you, Garvin).

Hoo boy I feel like a kid who opened up his Hanukkah present two months early and -- instead of some slacks and a nice belt -- found a bottle of Malaccan gin and Bo Derek holding two glasses and wearing nothing but a smile and some windsurfing gear.

Wow that got a little weird, I better start again.

Blogger extraordinaire Random Pixels (who is a pretty darn good photographer too) was at the Gerald Posner book reading the other night and came across a furry, bespectacled curmudgeon wearing what looks like a umpire outfit stolen from a local South American soccer league.

It turned out to be human, and -- to my unceasing delight and amazement -- Glenn Garvin.

You can tell Bill is an excellent photographer because he actually manages to make his subject look sympathetic and personable, which evidently disproves that old adage about polishing very small objects.

Nice work!

Today's Glenn Garvin op-ed epitomizes everything that is wrong with his columns:

1. It is at least three media cycles too late.

2. It is riddled with factual and logical errors; and

3. See first two points above.

As usual, Glenn rises to the defense of the rich white man (hey, I'm ok with that), and writes that Rushbo got a raw deal because other NFL owners -- like JLo and Fergie -- are just as bad or worse:

Among Fergie's more infamous songs recorded with the Black Eyed Peas is one called My Humps, which goes: I'ma get get get get you drunk/Get you love drunk off my hump -- well, you get the drift.

Yep Glenn, Rush and Fergie are pretty much exactly the same thing -- did you used to work in marketing?

Garvin also drops this whopper:

What got Limbaugh in trouble were purportedly racist comments that mostly turned out to be Internet fabrications.

I see -- "internet fabrications," something totally different from "Glenn Garvin fabrications."

It's true there were several statements attributed to Rush that were not properly sourced. Rush himself denies them in a column published by the WSJ four days ago (see Glenn? -- you're late).

I agree with A.L. on the unverified quotes:

Contrary to what the National Review and Rush's knee-jerk defenders claim, these quotes are not all fabricated. Most of them, in fact, are well-documented (his quote about Donovan McNabb, etc.). Several of them, however, are unverifiable. They come from secondary sources (books and magazine articles about Rush) and supposedly date back to very early in Limbaugh's career. It's not as if there are transcripts of everything Rush has said on air since the 70s, so who knows whether they're true.

That's ok, though, because there are dozens of quotes that Rush has not denied that are just as bad:

• "We are being told that we have to hope [Obama] succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles ... because his father was black."
• "I do believe" Obama is an "angry black guy."
• "[I]n Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."
• "Obama's entire economic program is reparations."
• Obama is "more African in his roots than he is American" and is "behaving like an African colonial despot."
• Obama is "Halfrican-American."
• "Obama has disowned his white half ... he's decided he's got to go all in on the black side."
• Sotomayor "a reverse racist" appointed by Obama, "the greatest living example of a reverse racist."
• Obama "wants us to have the same health care and plan that he had in Kenya" and "wants to be the black FDR."
• Latching onto LA Times op-ed, Limbaugh sings "Barack, The Magic Negro."
• "God does not have a birth certificate. Neither does Obama"; Obama "has yet to prove he's a citizen."
• Limbaugh on Gates controversy: "Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman."
• Limbaugh suggests Obama would not have acted on Somali pirates if he'd known they were "actually young, black Muslim teenagers."
• Limbaugh suggests Democrats, media believe "you can't criticize the little black man-child."
• "The government's been taking care of [young blacks] their whole lives."
• "The days of [minorities] not having any power are over, and they are angry."
• "[M]inorities never do anything for which they have to apologize."
• Limbaugh: "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well."
• Limbaugh says "NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips."
• Limbaugh declares basketball "the favorite sport of gangs."
• Limbaugh invented "racial component" to Hackett's decision to withdraw from Ohio primary race.
• Limbaugh on Survivor series: "African-American tribe" worst swimmers, Hispanics "will do things other people won't do."
• Limbaugh suggested Colin Powell only supported Obama because of race.
• Limbaugh: Gates is an "angry racist."
• Limbaugh called illegal immigrants an "invasive species."
• Limbaugh repeatedly calls Native Americans "Injuns."
• Limbaugh says Democrats' interest in Darfur is securing black "voting bloc."
• Limbaugh says that if "feminazis" had remembered to oppose "affirmative action for black guys ... they wouldn't face the situation they face today."

The bottom line here is that free market capitalism -- the treasured, fetishistic object of Rush's wet dreams -- spoke and determined that it probably is better to have JLo or Fergie own a piece of a team than Rush:

From a pop culture marketing and public relations perspective, Limbaugh is positively toxic. Of course, Limbaugh's free to push his AM brand of loathing, and within that world he sells lots of ads. But why on earth would sane businessmen who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a mainstream entertainment franchise want to be associated with Limbaugh's paranoia and divisiveness? Guess what? They don't want anything to do with the guy.

Thanks Glenn -- you just wasted a chunk of my time on a stupid nonissue and forced us all to revisit a story that everyone pretty much moved on from days ago.

On a happier NFL note, my fantasy team crushed -- crushed -- the Well Hung Jury. All hail Aaron Rodgers!!

Before we turn to, you know, legal issues, let's dispense with today's Glenn Garvin.....

Hey now! You know what they say -- a blind pig finds a broken clock twice a day inside an acorn, or something, but Glenn actually is right -- this show is awesome (I watched it this morning on video-on-demand).

But, as usual, Glenn gets the politics of Night of the Living Dead all wrong:

But with racial violence wracking America in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination, a black character decapitating and disemboweling white people by the score -- even white people who were already technically dead -- inevitably assumed epic political proportions.

First off, the context is incomplete -- in addition to riots in the streets and MLK and RFK, you had the Tet offensive and the escalating violence in Vietnam.

Moreover, the black character wasn't just "killing whitey" in Glenn's reductive formulation, he was a bold and courageous leader -- giving orders, saving lives, and taking command -- not something seen in American cinema very often at that time.

Most importantly, Glenn misses the entire point of the ending, filled with grainy black-and-white photo images of Southern, white law-enforcement authorities with guns, laughing and committing cheery violence -- clearly evocative of historic newspaper accounts of white-on-black lynchings, ongoing KKK violence, Medger Evers, church bombings etc.

Speaking of zombies, what sane parent would intentionally submerge their child in a vat filled with Disney total-immersion purchasing opportunities:

“The world does not need another place to sell Disney merchandise — this only works if it’s an experience,” said Jim Fielding, president of Disney Stores Worldwide. The company plans to unveil the new look in May in Southern California, Long Island and Madrid, and is close to signing a lease for that Times Square flagship.

Theaters will allow children to watch film clips of their own selection, participate in karaoke contests or chat live with Disney Channel stars via satellite. Computer chips embedded in packaging will activate hidden features. Walk by a “magic mirror” while holding a Princess tiara, for instance, and Cinderella might appear and say something to you.

It’s your birthday? With the push of a button, eight 13-foot-tall Lucite trees will crackle with video-projected fireworks and sound. There will be a scent component; if a clip from Disney’s coming “A Christmas Carol” is playing in the theater, the whole store might suddenly be made to smell like a Christmas tree.

In other words, another remake of Dawn of the Dead.

Ok, I already reported about a month ago that Pat Riley really doesn't want his depo taken.

Now, in addition to the plaintiff's motion to compel and Pat's motion to quash, Dwyane Wade has also filed a motion for protective order regarding Riley's impending deposition.

In it, Robert Turken of Bilzin argues that deposing Riley would be a "fishing expedition" and that Riley knows nothing about the underlying facts of the alleged antitrust action. He also argues that the plaintiff's effort to depose Riley is for an improper purpose -- to gain leverage in the pending state court action.

Of course, it's possible a depo can be legitimate and permissible under Rule 26, and yet also have a collateral benefit to one of the parties in ancillary litigation.

My advice -- when you're going after someone who looms as large as Pat Riley, it's like taking down a zombie -- your first shot better be the right one.

This one feels like a misfire.

I see that activist Orlando lawyer and Liberty Counsel chairman Mathew D. Staver has an exciting new prayer-in-action program:

Here's How it Works...

Pick one or more of the liberals from the list we have posted online at www.LC.org, or choose your own liberal(s) to adopt. If you are led to choose one or more of the liberals we have selected for consideration, please read their brief biographical statement, including the reasons they stand in need of prayer.

Pray earnestly and intensely for them! Pray that the Lord would move upon them and cause them to be the kind of leaders who will encourage others to lead "a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence." We encourage you to seek the Lord's guidance on how to pray for your liberal(s), always allowing Him to temper your prayer with His love and mercy.

Join Us as We Pray for God's Powerful
Intervention in Many Liberals' Lives

Please pray daily for the liberal(s) of your choice, so each can become a good influence on our Nation's culture. Prayer is powerful! It allows God to change the minds of those for whom we are praying. In fact, we fully expect that many of our adoptees will "graduate" from this prayer program with vivid testimonies of God having changed their lives and worldviews!

Among the usual targets (Olympia Snowe, Michael Bloomberg, Arnold?) there is this prayer for the "Unknown Liberal":

The "Unknown Liberal"

There will likely be additional liberals the Lord may bring to mind who desperately need your prayers. Feel free to select your own unique liberal and adopt them for prayer, perhaps even nominating one or more liberals for listing on our website by emailing us at liberty@LC.org.

Indeed.

Personally I am praying for some of my favorite judges, Glenn Garvin, and George L. Metcalfe, but not necessarily in that order.

Talk about phoning it in, Glenn Garvin's column this morning appears to be recycled solely from parts of his prior columns.

Guess what -- Garvin thinks Hollywood is filled with rich arrogant lefty pot-smokin' atheistic amoralists who believe the rules that "salt of the earth" people must live by don't apply to them.

In other words, Bill Maher.

He's right, of course, but why is this newsworthy?

Because Roman Polanski has some Hollywood defenders. Thus, Polanski is a stand-in for everything Garvin hates, most notably the people he covers as a TV critic (and also Barbra Streisand).

As usual, Garvin misleads his readers.

You'd never know this from Garvin's column, but in addition to Chris Rock there have been vocal condemnation and indeed a backlash of sorts against Polanski from virtually all corners of Hollywood as well as most opinion media.

Indeed, the Herald alone published two very critical pieces by WP's Eugene Robinson, AP writer Jocelyn Novek, and of course Garvin's tardy pile-on. There have been no favorable opinion pieces published about Polanski in the Herald.

Let's see --- Cokie Roberts wants to take Polanski out and have him shot, SNL already made fun of the Whoopie comments Garvin wrote about, and tough-guy Richard Cohen wants to punch Polanski in the mouth.

Even the HuffPost, the standard-bearer for all Garvin despises, has published numerous articles condemning Polanski.

See, Glenn? It's not so simple.

And your tired talking point about Theo van Gogh happens to be wrong too.

Polanski pled guilty to a reduced charge and fled because he feared the judge would impose an excessive sentence. He should return and face the music, without Garvin and others making him a symbol for everything they hated about the 60s.

As Eye on Miami points out, we happen to be fortunate to live between two beautiful but fragile and endangered national parks -- yet this Glenn Garvin rant leads the Herald's coverage of the stunning new documentary series on the national parks system by Ken Burns, which debuted on PBS last night:

But actually it's parks that are unnatural. They're an attempt to impose stasis on nature, to halt its evolutionary change. Conservationist zealots like Burns are the ones who deny a human relationship with nature, because they treat man as the lone creature with no right to modify his environment.

Ok, I see that in Glenn's world, "modify" and "destroy forever" are in fact synonymous.

But wait -- there is seriously no mention in Glenn's column of the Everglades or Biscayne National Park, and the fact we are the only city in the country to border not one but two great national park systems?

Well, there is this:

As for The Story of Florida's State Parks, a three-part companion series produced by WPBT that starts Monday and is full of drippy poetry about God asking trees what time it is, the best that can be said is that it's 10 ½ hours shorter than National Parks.

Florida's beautiful spring systems blah blah blah.

And Black Elk, what a drip -- drop him in Walden Pond by way of Cross Creek, and take John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt for a dip too.

Keep fighting those 60s culture wars, Glenn!

Holy hail, what's this:

Last year Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. won praise for quoting Bob Dylan in an opinion (a dissent, actually, in Spring Communications Co. v. APCC Services.) Not to be outdone, apparently, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. today quoted at length from John Lennon.

It came in Alito's major ruling in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, which redefined monuments placed on public land -- such as a Ten Commandments monument -- as a form of government speech, rather than private speech that can run afoul of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Some briefs had argued that if a memorial was to be regarded as a message conveyed by government, the government ought to be forced to embrace the message through a formal resolution.

In knocking down that argument, Alito, 58, makes the point that public monuments can convey multiple messages, or messages that change over time. The Statue of Liberty, for example, came to New York as a symbol of friendship between France and the United States, Alito said, and only later became viewed as a beacon welcoming immigrants.

Similarly -- and here's where Lennon comes in -- the mosaic in Central Park in New York City that displays the word "Imagine" as part of the memorial to John Lennon conveys several messages. "Some observers may 'imagine' the musical contributions that John Lennon would have made if he had not been killed," Alito said, while others might think of Lennon's song by that name, which imagined "a world without religion, countries, possessions, greed or hunger."

Alito then drops a footnote that offers the full text of Lennon's lyrics to the song "Imagine."

You've got to be kidding me! Can't you leave our treasured heroes alone? It was bad enough when Glenn Garvin suddenly became a book critic too when the Herald allowed him to trash Lennon a few months ago, now we have Justice Alito quoting "Imagine" at length? And Roberts quoting Bobby Dylan?

Please, stick to the musical icons that speak to you and the judges and lawyers you travel with -- you know, like Pat Boone and Celine Dion.

Or maybe that great singer/songwriter, John Ashcroft.

But leave the cool ones to the rest of us.

Hi kids, I hope you have all bought or downloaded Van Morrison's latest -- a remarkable live performance of his first (and perhaps finest) record, Astral Weeks. It's number 4 in music at Amazon and for good reason. Give it a listen.

Okay, we already reported on the Herald's latest idea of a cost-cutting measure -- having its reliably conservative TV critic, Glenn Garvin, write a weekly column on the editorial page. His inaugural column, on the 11th Circuit panel decision on Vamos a Cuba, displayed a stunning ignorance of basic First Amendment law, somewhat surprising given that Glenn ostensibly is a journalist.

His latest column reveals Garvin to be as ignorant of financial matters as he is of the law. Ha ha, Glenn calls the President the "Predator-in-Chief" because he is promoting low-interest loans as a way for the banks to get out of the foreclosure crisis. And according to Glenn they are "adjustable rate," just like the ones offered by the banks that got so many homeowners in trouble:

Through a combination of government subsidies and arm-twisting of banks, the Obama plan will slash interest rates -- in some cases, probably to less than 3 percent -- until a borrower's payments are no more than 31 percent of his gross income . . . for the first five years. Then the interest rate jumps to market levels. A week ago, that was known as an ''exploding adjustable-rate mortgage,'' because so many of the people who took them got financially blown up.

Uh, no they're not. The ones offered by the banks were predatory -- like the credit cards -- because they offered low teaser rates but "balloon," grotesquely above-market rates when the introductory period ended.

But Glenn has never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Oh, and here's an article about (another) cocaine princess and federal court.

You knew I had to link to that one.

Say what you want about the rest of Garvin's silly column today, but at least he ends with something I can agree with:

The unavoidable fact is that there is a rich history of violence on the fringes of both sides of the American political spectrum. The right, as liberals are fond of pointing out, has Timothy McVeigh and James Earl Ray. The left has the Puerto Rican nationalists who opened fire on the floor of Congress, animal-rights nuts and eco-terrorists. If Nancy Pelosi really sees trouble coming, she needs to look in both directions.

To be fair to Garvin, this is a modestly constructive point.

However, the examples Glenn cites for "left-wing" violence all spring from the decades-old Norman Lear dreamworld Garvin clearly still inhabits -- and you know who you were then, girls were girls and men were men, mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again, didn't need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight, gee our old Lasalle ran great, those were the days!"

I mean, if only Meathead, I mean Pelosi, would just let the hard-hats bust the heads of a few long-hairs and Dingbat would stop inviting the Jeffersons over, and her cousin Maude would stop forcing the Tuckahoe Country Club to accept Jews .....

Seriously, the Symbionese Liberation Army? Jim Jones?

What's next, Glenn -- the Baader-Meinhof Gang?

Listen, I know the drugs were copious, the music was great, auteurs made real movies, and TV was much better than it is today, but dude -- come on out of the 70s.

The truth is, Glenn cites to no recent examples of left-wing violence because the right-wing stuff has emerged of late to be something of a real problem.

This from Steve Benen back in June, after the Holocaust Museum shootings:

Two months ago, Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban." A few weeks ago, Scott Roeder, another right-wing extremist, allegedly assassinated Dr. George Tiller in Kansas. A few hours ago, Von Brunn, another right-wing extremist, allegedly opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

There are other recent examples that bear similar characteristics. This story out of Tennessee from last year continues to haunt.

Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children's musical. [...]

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday's mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of "the liberal movement," and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his "hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said. "Liberals in general, as well as gays."

Obviously, we're dealing with sick individuals here. There are key differences between violent right-wing radicals and mainstream Americans who happen to be conservative. Indeed, I'm not suggesting that conservative activists are necessarily dangerous, violent people.

Right, right, and right.

The point is, you'd have to be living in a Don Martin-inspired fantasy world if you are citing the 1954(!) shootings in Congress by Puerto Rican nationalists as somehow relevant to what is happening right here, right now in the fever swamps of the extreme right.

Oh hail Glenn, either stop watching television or return to watching it exclusively -- there's just too much spillover.