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Dan La Batard had the audacity yesterday to infer in his Miami Herald column that erstwhile Heat coach Pat Riley dumps his team when it's losing and jumps back on when its rising (and Shaq is back on the court). Here's a taste:

"Anybody else with less aura and less credibility and less jewelry would be getting savaged for how selfish and convenient his timing has appeared lately in deciding when to coach and not coach the champion Miami Heat.

Riley doesn't coach when the team is in last place or laboring or even bored. But Riley returns triumphantly whenever Shaquille O'Neal does. Riley suspends James Posey and Antoine Walker for fatness, then leaves poor Ron Rothstein to take the beatings without them. Shaq and Dwayne Wade are healthy? Suddenly, so is Riley."

Those who trudge through the local sports pages on a regular basis might have been invigorated by the column -- tough, unflinching analysis of Pat Riley's worm-like maneuvers has been hard to come by. But Greg Cote, Le Batard's colleague at the Herald, wouldn't stand for such insolence. In his blog, Cote stood up for Riley's honor:

"... I'm not real sure that anyone is suspicious other than, apparently, Le Batard. Dan sees a nefarious, plotting, devious Pat Riley timing his return to the Heat to coincide with Shaq's good health and the team's rising fortunes ... cynicism based solely on scattershot suspicion is some of why a pretty sizable gulf exists between media and fans."

You know what gives that gulf even more girth? Sychophantic sports writers who give "legendary" coaches (as Cote put it) like Riley license to do backstabbing, cowardly things without repercussion. Cote also ate up the infamous dumping of Stan Van Gundy ("I'd rather spend time with my kids this winter than win a championship with Shaq and Wade") like a kid with cotton candy at a carnival stand. It's one thing to be a gutless wonder, but it's another altogether to criticize a fellow writer for failing to be one too.

(Oh, and Cote, there's another sports writer who shares a bit of Le Batard's wacko ideas about Riley. Read Ethan Skolnick's well-reasoned column this morning in the Sun-Sentinel).

After the Jump: Violent Con Man Proves Life Begins At 80

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Mad Dog Merkel

The Sun-Sentinel is such a trembling leaf of a newspaper it's surprising it hasn't floated to the ground and started to decompose. Once again, it sided with keeping its readers in the dark over reporting the details of a news story.

This time it happened in a story out of Wellington about a high school wrestler who so enraged about a rumor being spread about his girlfriend that he banged down a classmate's door at 11:30 p.m. Saturday night because of it. The father of the classmate shot the six-foot, 215-pound wrestler inside the house.

The wrestler, now recovering from a gunshot wound to his chest in the hospital, is being charged with burglary and criminal mischief. The father who shot him, Ricardo Collier III, isn't being charged for the shooting.

Great story. The Palm Beach Post included a photo with Kelly Wolfe's article of the student charged in the crime, Daniel Scott Merkel, which it apparently got from its TV partner, News 12. Merkel is a big

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Gotta check out this story in the Palm Beach Post by Stephanie Slater and Dianna Smith about a deadly war going on between two Haitian gangs. It all stems, apparently, from a small-time music label called Top 6 Records. The B-Town Boys, one of the groups involved in Top 6, are breaking out -- and they're going out with a lot of gunfire. The Post reports that there have been two dozen recent shootings, with three dead gang members and a slain landscaper who was unlucky enough to have been caught in the fire.

-- Interesting story from Marc Caputo and Beth Reinhard on a political attack on Democratic governor hopeful Jim Davis concerning Freddie Lee and Wilbert Pitts -- two wrongfully convicted black men who were rescued from Death Row by the late, legendary Miami Herald journo Gene Miller some 30 years ago. In 1990, Davis voted against compensating the two men financially for being wronged by the state. The issue is raised by U.S. Sugar -- the hench-company for Davis's opponent, Rod Smith. Yes, Big Sugar, always the champion of the oppressed and falsely accused, is standing up for the little guys again, God love 'em. It's just more Rove-ian politics from Smith and his supporters. But the bad news for Davis is that it might be effective. Let's face it, the vote doesn't reflect well upon him and it could sway a few ever-important black votes in what is looking to be a tight primary.

-- Not that such trifles matter -- especially since votes don't count in Florida anyway. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration (hey, what else are blogs for?), but Herald reporter Ashley Fantz does show us that the early voting has started out with a screw-up. How reassuring.

-- Just got off Barry Epstein's 10 a.m. radio show on AM-1470 and we talked about Big Sugar's impact on the Democratic primary. Epstein, a long-time political consultant, says he thinks it's going to back-fire on Smith. As for Smith's attack on Davis's recent attendance record in Congress, Epstein gave the Davis campaign a free line:

"I had to come back to Florida to save the state from you and Big Sugar."

-- Ralph De La Cruz impressed the hell out of me this weekend. Check out this courageous little column.

-- The story by Thomas R. Collins and Tony Doris on West Palm Commissioner Jim Exline's conflict of interest shows that Palm Beach Post is still, pound-for-pound, the best watchdog of local politicians among the Big Three newspapers in South Florida.

-- But the newspaper still falls victim to its stupid side. The Post tries desperately to have cultural relevance, which isn't a bad goal at all. The problem is that it usually comes off as either trying too to hard or just plain stupid. An example came on Saturday when the Post had this front-page tease to the Accent section:

"Kate Hudson's Breakup ... Why Does America Care?"

That really is news, though, since everybody thought it didn't.

-- Y0u'll find no bigger fan of Wanda Demarzo than the Pulp, but the Miami Herald story about false confessions was off the mark. To illustrate how confessors like John Mark Karr (why do I always want to write Mark David Karr -- oh, right) sometimes lie, a faulty comparison was made to Jerry Frank Townsend. To wit:

Twenty-seven years ago, Jerry Frank Townsend toured northwest Fort Lauderdale with a convoy of detectives and recounted grisly details of a series of rapes and murders only the killer could know.

That September night in 1979, Townsend confessed to strangling 19-year-old Terry Cummings with a piece of wire.

He confessed to killing 23-year-old Ernestine German with a knife.

And he confessed to raping Sonja Marion, 13, in the ballfield at Dillard High School and then smashing her skull with a concrete block.

In all, Townsend confessed to at least six murders in South Florida -- and others across the country.

The only problem: Townsend made it all up.

It makes Townsend, who has an IQ of 58, sound like a fabulist. He wasn't. In truth, the poor guy was cajoled by a notoriously corrupt Broward Sheriff's Office homicide division. He was fed the lies and spit them back up under extreme pressure. Keith King is also brought up in the story. King, a young and troubled black teen who was living in a youth home at the time, was another fellow who was ensnared by the BSO goon squad to confess to a murder (of BSO deputy Patrick Behan, no less) he didn't commit.

These guys were the victims of hell-bound bastards with badges. They couldn't be farther away from Karr, who, if he is lying about JonBenet, truly is a fabulist, a man who wanted to exchange the crushing hell of a life he'd built for himself for instant celebrity in a jail cell.

-- The Sun-Sentinel's Linda Kleindienst tells us how Lori Parrish skated on campaign violation allegations. The issue: Water Taxi owner Bob Bekoff -- who relied on Parrish's votes when she was a county commissioner -- put up Parrish election ads on his boats. Bekoff got slapped on the hand with a $1,500 fine and Parrish walked. Why? Because she claimed that she didn't know the signs were on the boats until the complaint was filed. The Florida Election Commission lawyers -- who apparently have brain matter in their heads -- believed Parrish bore responsibility for the violation. A judge and the appointed commissioners -- who don't -- voted to drop the charges.

To think that Parrish didn't know that Bekoff was helping her is asinine on its face. But it's even more ludicrous when you know -- as the elections commission knew -- that New Times had exposed the violation long before the complaint was handed to Parrish. I don't know Lori real well, but I do know this: She's well aware of New Times and she reads everything that's written about her.

This is a ridiculous ruling that will only embolden sleazy politicians. So unlike Florida ...

"John Doe" Leader Smith

It may have taken the recent spate of senseless killings to awaken the ancient art of deadline murder reporting in South Florida. The Miami Herald's David Ovalle, Nicholas Spangler and Evan S. Benn give a veritable tutorial on the craft in this morning's newspaper.

They tell us of the shooting death of 24-year-old Kenneth "Covie" Smith, the nephew of notorious former "John Doe" gang leader Corey Smith. As usual, the power of the piece lies in its detail. These guys tracked down the sources and got them to talk -- which is what crime writing is all about. And it led to passages like this one:

Covie Smith's girlfriend said she was on the phone with him when he was shot Monday night.

''He was telling me to bring him down his food,'' said Lacquette Monique Wiggins, adding she is three weeks pregnant with Smith's baby. 'Next thing you know, he got quiet. I heard somebody yelling, 'Call the police! Call the police!' ''

As Wiggins shouted into the receiver, someone picked up Smith's phone and said, ''I got bad news for you: He is dead,'' Wiggins remembered.

Great stuff, redolent of Edna herself, but unfortunately the composition of the article didn't live up to the stellar reporting. That passage should, by all rights, have been the lede of the story (as Ms. Buchanan would have done). Instead we got this as the first sentence:

"The nephew of an infamous Liberty City gang leader was fatally shot Monday night while he stood on a corner in the Liberty Square public housing community, according to Miami homicide investigators."

It's not so much the straight lede that's bad, though it was a boneheaded decision. What's unforgivable is the unnecessary attribution. These reporters were at the scene and they spoke with relatives of the dead man. The idiotic "according to" just clunks it up. And this line, in the middle of the story, really got my goat: "Police asked witnesses to anonymously call Crime Stoppers, 305-471-8477."

Throwing a plug and a phone number into a story has all the grace and art of a Hezbollah rocket strike. Put it at the end of the story in italics if you must, but never, ever put phone numbers in the middle of compelling copy. It's the editor's fault. For God's sake, get out of the way with your journalistic conventions and imagined responsibility and let a damned story tell itself.

-- Also in the Herald, John Dorschner tells us of how Shaq is doing his part to make China the most dominant country in the world. The big guy signed a shoe deal with a Chinese company called Li-Ning. The most interesting part of the article is that the company first signed Shaq's good buddy Damon Jones to get into the giant's good graces. Yeah, those red bastards are cunning.

-- Rochelle E.B. Gilken tells us about Fred Van Dusen, who trained police in Iraq for 13 months. It's a story that not only delves into the way the war zone follows people long after they've left it, but also gives some insight into the challenges in training police. For one, the recruits are operating on Iraqi time:

"They start at 8; nothing gets going until 10," Van Dusen told Gilken. "They go to lunch at noon and don't come back until 1:30. At 3:30, they would just leave. They went home. Take three generations of 'Do this or I'll kill you' and all of a sudden they have all this freedom. No one's telling them what to do, and they don't know what to do. That was my job: to try to keep people in order."

-- In a lackluster Sun-Sentinel, Jon Burstein's article on the acquittal of Pompano Beach "adult game room" maven Gale Fontaine stood out. This was yet another Michael Satz disaster -- a case that the State Attorney's Office never should have brought to court. Let's see, Broward County is rife with con artists and thieves, some of whom haven't been elected to political office yet, and Satz is muscling a mom-and-pop softie gambling outfit that caters to retirees? Seriously, he's got a half-dozen open corruption investigations that he's been sitting on for years (literally) and Satz and his prosecutors find the time to act as the personal investigation wing of the established gambling industry. It's unbelievably repugnant -- and classic Satz.

-- The Miami Herald's Web team pulled off another gem this morning. Headline:
"Early morning driving is difficult because of traffic woes - 7/18/2006 08:27 AM EDT"

Read this thing. Is the Herald serious about posting traffic reports in the morning at 8:30 a.m., when most people are already on the road, experiencing those woes firsthand? I'm sure the morning radio people -- who can actually do drivers some good -- are quaking in their boots.

-- It's true, Casmo (not Cosmo, as the Herald initially reported) Hill was killed by friendly fire during a robbery attempt in Broadview Park. But the Herald just can't his name straight. In the middle of what is a very strong and interesting story by Wanda DeMarzo and Darran Simon, the Herald reverts to the misspelling of his name. ''If I knew, believe me, Cosmo would be alive today and Troy wouldn't be where he is,'' Baker said Monday. ''Cosmo is like a son to me. I lost two sons.''

You'd think she'd get the first name of her "son" right. That's one of those errors that, as a reporter, crawls into your skin. All reporters have them on occasion, those mistakes that are fairly insignificant in the scope of things, but never should happen and sully otherwise solid reports. And in this case, the blame should fall squarely on the Herald's formidable copy editing desk, especially after the newspaper learned that they had gotten the name wrong in the first place.

-- Apparently the News-Press, my ol' journalistic alma mater, didn't get the memo about "Regina Milbourne" aka the "Miami Psychic." They printed the lies on Sunday as if they were set in stone in the book of truth. Research, friends, research.

-- Fred Grimm enters the Muslim store owners fray and I think he lays an egg this time out. It's an arm-chair column based on little to no reporting. Get out in the community, Fred, check out the prices in the stores, talk to the people. It is of course true that waging broad attacks on a people that rely on a few anecdotes is wrong, but there's real resentment here. This is no place for high-on-the-mountain columnizing, but for shoe-leather reporting. People want to know what it's like to live from paycheck-to-paycheck and rely on these little overpriced stores for sustenance. They want to know if the stores do indeed exploit the people and give little back to the community or if it's a myth borne of irrational fear and distrust of another religion. One thing that is clear: Nobody needs a lecture from a well-paid suburban-living Publix-shopping white fellow who has no idea of the reality on the ground.

Miami Herald crime writer Wanda DeMarzo tells us today about a "stunning" plea deal: The State Attorney's Office is dropping charges against Deputy Chris Thieman in the crime-reporting scandal in exchange for Thieman's testimony against higher-ups. Yeah, I suppose it's stunning. It also proves -- again -- that Michael Satz is completely incompetent. And it looks like more craven political maneuvering. Look, Satz has been on this case for years. He chose to go after the low-level deputies and scapegoat them. That's the way Satz always operates -- exploit the weak while kow-towing to the powerful. And now, with the feds breathing down his neck and after the first deputy his office tried was acquitted, Satz has suddenly found Jesus. Bullshit. The case is mangled beyond recognition, nobody is going to get convicted (at least on the state level), Broward County has once again proven to be a joke, and all the thank-you notes should be directed to the state attorney.

-- The Palm Beach Post's Mark Schwed tells a helluva good brain-bending lost-at-sea tale. George W. Bush even plays an unwitting role. Here's the guts of the story about the disappearance of Jim Trindade:

Trindade

He was last seen on the afternoon of Thursday, Jan. 12, leading a caravan of three boats from Spanish Cay in the Bahamas, where his family and dozens of friends had gathered for the holidays. Trindade was skippering a new 38-foot Donzi with three powerful outboard engines bought by his friend Roger Gamblin after it was used in the upcoming movie Miami Vice. Trailing Trindade were Gamblin's son, Chris, 24, in a 35-foot Donzi, and Chris' friend, Brian Pratts, 23, in a 22-foot Angler. Roger Gamblin was still at Spanish Cay with about eight others.

About 50 miles from home, at 2:19 p.m., Pratts' boat experienced mechanical trouble. He couldn't reach Gamblin on the radio, but he did hail Trindade.

"I'll slow down," the 54-year-old Trindade told Pratt. "I'll idle along and wait for you."

Trindade's boat was out of sight, thought to be 5 miles ahead of the other two boaters.

Twenty-nine minutes after Pratts' radio contact with Trindade, the radio crackled again: "U.S. Coast Guard. U.S. Coast Guard." Pratts and Gamblin say it was Jimmy's voice.

Later, other boaters taking part in a regatta reported hearing a man radio: "Mayday. Mayday. Mayday" — the international distress signal.

Pratts and Gamblin alerted the Coast Guard that their friend was missing, and it immediately launched a massive search involving a jet, helicopters and boats. West Palm Beach police scoured the coastline from Lantana to Palm Beach Yacht Club. Roger Gamblin hired two private planes to join the search, but they couldn't take off for hours because President Bush was visiting West Palm Beach that day, and all flights were grounded until Air Force One left the area.

Finally, at 1:09 a.m. — almost 11 hours after Trindade's radio call to Pratts — a Coast Guard HU-25 Falcon jet spotted the Donzi, two of three engines idling, boat spinning in a circle, no one on board. It was about 38 miles off the St. Lucie County coast.

There are many theories.

Was he ejected after hitting a floating log or a turtle while running his boat at 50 mph? Did he have a heart attack? Did drug-runners or pirates commandeer his vessel? Or did he carry out an elaborate ruse to run away from what everyone else believes was a beautiful life?

For more on the mystery, click here.

-- Speaking of the Palm Beach Post, I neglected for a long while to mention that Kevin D. Thompson is back after his domestic violence arrest. The lesson: Post reporters are allowed to rough up their estranged wives but if they try to buy crack cocaine, they're through. Not that I think Thompson should have been fired, at least not for the arrest. He should be fired for ending a blog post about Ted Koppel's fucking hair with a "Check ya later!"

-- More Post stuff: Antigone Barton has an hilarious story about a simple love story between a Boca Raton police officer and her taser gun. When Sgt. Shannon Wendlick isn't leading the department in tasering suspects, she's zapping her fellow officers.

And, finally, Washington correspondent Larry Lipman informs us in an enterprising report that Katherine Harris is lying -- or, um, has been mistaken -- about her record on Capitol Hill in her run for U.S. Senate. Whoda thunk? She's been saying she supported legislation called the American Dream Downpayment Act that has helped 4.5 million people buy homes. Turns out the actual figure is, oh, 4.487 million people fewer than, or 13,000. Yeah. Oops.

In the latest twist from the Larry Deetjen Racist Airport Blowup saga, an unexpected object was found while city employees cleaned out the suspended city manager's office: A Confederate flag.

The flag was found rolled up on a shelf in his office. Whatever the reason for it, I think it's a safe bet that the find isn't going to help his argument that he's a man of all the people, regardless of race, color, or creed.

"I guess he was a closet racist, or not quite, since it was found on his shelf," quipped one city insider and Deetjen critic. "But that's not far from his closet."

More About O'Neal
The Miami Herald followed the Pulp post (and cited it) about O'Neal Dozier this morning. Darran Simon wrote about the "Jeb Bush ally's" incredible anti-Islamic remarks on the Steve Kane show yesterday morning. Then Simon -- who got help from fellow reporters Marc Caputo, Lesley Clark, and Ashley Wilson -- dug pretty deep into the issue.

Quoted Dozier this way: ''I don't look for everyone to believe what I believe, because everyone is not as astute about religion as I am. That's my life.''

Substitute "astute" for "ignorant" and you got something there. And I think it's funny that the guvna is finally "distancing" himself from the rev, since Dozier has been verbally bashing gays for years (he once told me they make God want to vomit -- that's O'Neal for you, he seems to believe his little mind, and gastric system, are replicas direct from the creator). I think a lot of this has to do with competition. Dozier and some of the other Christian ministers simply don't want the competition from Imams and such. They want the youth to themselves. Some of the greatest African-American activists I have ever known have been Muslims.

Strong story, but I just wish they'd have mentioned the thing about Muslims wanting to cut off all our heads. When I asked Dozier on the radio show if he knew of any heads being cut off by Muslims in Pompano Beach, he replied, memorably, "I'm not going to take that chance."

Weekend Reading
Some interesting stories I've neglected to tell you about, in case you missed them:

-- Kevin Deutsch's follow-up story about a 20-year-old woman who confessed to being an accomplice to the murder of a cab driver. And you thought all those "stripper with a heart of gold" stories were crap. (Okay, maybe they are. The woman, Ashley Samone Ramirez, was scared shitless of her boyfriend, the triggerman, who had a bad habit of pointing guns at her head and dragging her around by her hair).

-- Ana Ribeiro's original story and folo on the "Bodies" museum exhibit were great. This is truly weird and twisted shit: Unclaimed Chinese corpses, some of them with bullet holes in their skulls, manipulated into poses and paraded around America.

-- The Sentinel's John Holland tells us about the City of Hollywood's abhorrent practice of stealing cars from people. God, I hate that.

-- Joe Kollin gives us a helpful tip when y0u go to court: Don't show the judge your ass.

-- Brett Sokol does the Miami Vice thing -- with help from Edna and Carl -- in the latest edition of Ocean Drive.

-- I think this article by the Herald's Nicole White is crap, but it's still interesting.

-- This sory in the Palm Beach Post by Rochelle E.B. Gilken takes you to a place nobody ever wanted to go. If this SOB ever goes free again, there's something wrong with the system.

-- This little piece about a teen who died in a one-car crash in Fort Pierce by Allyson Bird in the Palm Beach Post took me back. Same thing almost happened to me. At about 17, I lost control of an old Volvo on a country road and was sliding at about 45 miles an hour at a tree. I swear I watched myself looking at that tree coming at me, expecting to die when my it struck my head. I hit the brake as hard as I could and turned the wheel with everything I had. The wheels caught the edge of the road and the car flung into a furious 180 before coming to a sudden stop. And I was sitting there still and silent as can be, facing the wrong way on the road, barely believing that I was still alive. RIP Wayne Lincoln Jr.

In the Miami Herald, Darran Simon had a wonderful story about a Sunrise cop who gave a Christian conservative group a good ol' fashioned hassle. The Florida Family Policy Council, led by the vile James Dobson, claims Sgt. Stephen Allen harassed them during a drive for signatures to support a gay marriage ban. Sarge told them that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and that their drive was a waste of time. Another gem from Allen: "The Bible said you need to obey your governing authority. I am your governing authority and you need to obey me."

Then he removed the group's petitions and even had the gall to mock them by giving Det. Michael Allard a peck on the cheek (photo above). Okay, probably shouldn't have done it, but damn, it's refreshing to see police, for once, abuse their authority on the side of the oppressed. An ACLU official told Simon, ''If the police officer feels so strongly, then I think they need to take off their uniform, leave and join a peaceful, counterdemonstration.''

Boulis Killers

In the Sun-Sentinel, Jon Burstein and Sean Gardiner had a big fat scoop this morning. They report that Adam Kidan, the former partner of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff in SunCruz Casinos, claimed to know who killed Greek tycoon Gus Boulis in 2001. Kidan told a lead detective and state prosecutor that it was John Gurino, a Gambino crime family associate who himself was killed in a dispute over a deli two years later.

Two things:

1. When is the state going to charge Adam Kidan? I know Michael Satz doesn't like to charge folks with crimes who have made it to a certain social strata, but this is ridiculous. Again: Kidan's involvement is the only way this case makes any sense. Otherwise, they are going to have to argue that Moscatiello had Boulis killed as a favor for Kidan. Insane. When a mobster kills somebody for a businessman, that mobster gets paid -- and they've already tracked suspicious payments Moscatiello received from Kidan. What is Satz and lead prosecutor Brian Cavanagh afraid of?

Bogenschutz

2. Does David Bogenschutz have a clone? He's everywhere. He defended Gurino's killer, Ralph Liotta, who was sentenced to 15 years (Liotta, who claimed Gurino was about to kill him, probably shouldn't have done any time -- he did society a favor and it really was probably self-defense). Now he's defending Anthony Moscatiello, who is accused of masterminding the Boulis murder. So Boges defended Gurino's killer and is now defending Gurino's old Mafia buddy. That's pretty twisted. But hey, if you can defend Broward Sheriff Ken Jenne during this federal investigation thing, I guess you can do anything.

Speaking of Bogenschutz -- no correction in the Sun-Sentinel today for their Jenne-tax fraud story. Keep an eye out.

Some quick (and not so quick) takes on the morning papers:

Wanda DeMarzo tells us of the outrageous ruling by Circuit Judge Michael Gates in the trial of former BSO deputy Christian Zapata, the first public hearing of the crime stats scandal. Gates -- remember that name -- ruled that Sheriff Ken Jenne didn't have to testify after a BSO attorney wrote in a "protective order" that Jenne didn't know anything and would only be embarrassed. That's right, if you're sheriff you're basically above the law. DeMarzo also tells us that Gates had previously ruled that Zapata couldn't argue that he was following orders -- basically his entire defense. Unbelievable. Congratulations to Gates, though, for making himself Broward County's No. 1 douche bag.

Bush Desecrates Flag

But who are we to question authority? Just ask the Sun-Sentinel's resident flag nazi, Ann Carter. She writes in a column on the editorial page today that she noticed a tattered flag in the post-Hurricane Wilma debris. "I was stunned, not wanting to believe that someone who had cared enough to show love of country by flying the flag would shove a wornout banner, still attached to a short plastic pole, into the trash." Gee, Ann, maybe they were too busy with other things after the hurricane -- like trying to find food, gas, and water and fix the leaks in their roof -- to have a proper flag funeral. Few of us can be as heroic as Carter, who routinely puts her life at stake to protect the sanctity of the flag. How? She picks them up after they fall in traffic. "I've picked up maybe a dozen flags this way, risking my life most of the time. I think the flag is worth it." What an eagle eye this woman has for flags in distress. And finally she reminds us that there is only one good way to dispose of a flag: Burning. So, kids, listen to Ann Carter and go out and burn those flags! Seriously, you have to read this column. It's absolutely fanatical.

The Palm Beach Post's sagely scribe Frank Cerabino nails the Jeb Bush/NFL commissioner thing to a tee in his blog. Great stuff.

From the Palm Beach Post, some young men in Deerfield Beach have apparently done the unthinkable: Beating ducklings to death. I don't really have anything to say about that, but I had to mention it.

And lastly the Miami Herald's Jennifer Lebovich gives us a brief story about the Deerfield Beach teenager who vandalized a Jewish book store (as the commentator mentions, more thorough versions come Sofia Santana in the Post and, I've since noticed, Chrystian Tejedor in the Sentinel). The kid wrote: "Bun The Jews." This could either mean that the young bigot is such an idiot that he managed to misspell "burn," or that he has a novel new approach to anti-semitism that perhaps also involves mustard, ketchup, pickles, onions, and sesame seeds. Connor Thomas Ranieri was charged with, among other things, "criminal mischief evidencing prejudice." Put him away for vandalizing a business, but that last part touches my First Amendment button. Either way, Connor Thomas has earned himself a spot on that list, right under Gates.

While Miami Herald Editor Tom Fiedler has been relentlessly preaching the wonders of newspapers' convergence onto radio, TV, and, most importantly, the Internet, the Palm Beach Post got the attention this week. Editor & Publisher's Steve Outing wrote about the Post's web-feedin', bloggin', multi-taskin' reporters in his recent column. He singled out columnists Frank Cerabino and Leslie "Yummy" Streeter, assistant business editor Greg Stepanich, and deputy photo editor John Lipinot as folks who make the old-school reporter seem "lazy." But he gave the most attention to cops reporter Rochelle E.B. Gilken, whose Pulpish writings have been featured on this here site on a few occasions. She's a reporter, Internet feeder, blogger, and football fantasy columnist all in one. "I think that Gilken is the archtypical example of the modern newspaper reporter," Outing writes. "While not every reporter today is as busy as her, nor has as many cross-media responsibilities yet, the newspaper reporting profession is clearly headed in her direction."

No doubt Gilken is smokin' -- and I know first-hand how this convergence thing can up your workload. And anybody who doesn't live in a dirt hut knows this Internet thing holds the fundamental future of American journalism. But calling the reporters of, say, the 70's and 80's lazy by comparison is off-base. There have always been lazy newspaper people, but reporters have been notorious for working ridiculous hours since the days of Citizen Kane and The Front Page. My father was a reporter and he worked so much I wasn't sure what he looked like until he showed up at my high school graduation. The obsessive workaholic journalist is a damn cliche -- and "multi-tasking" didn't have anything to do with creating it. Only in the past they were digging up information instead of feeding the web.

Something's got to give. There is no doubt the print version of newspapers is going to be slightly diminished as we go more and more Internet happy. Investigative and in-depth journalism will undoubtedly suffer some setbacks as well (and there's not much room for loss in that department). Anybody who tells you otherwise is blowing smoke up a place where the sun doesn't shine. It's a precarious balancing act -- and the future of journalism depends on how well the transition is made.

That's why great leadership (whatever the hell that might be) is needed at newspapers now more than ever.

I don't know what's in the water (or the estrogen) around here, but in South Florida right now a handful of journalistas are lighting up the newspapers in the crime-writing department. From the Herald you have this generation's grande dame of the genre, Wanda DeMarzo. She's relentless, has the best sources in the business, and often goes in unpredictable directions. Like this week, when she wrote the creepy and offbeat story about a blood-drenched house in West Park.

Also at the Herald, you never know when Jennifer Lebovich, Stephanie Chen, or Elaine de Valle is going to hit you with a mean little crime ditty. All of them show that drive -- which I think exists in only about 15 percent of the people in the news business -- to not just get the story but the story's jugular. It may come only in a telling quote or seemingly random detail, but you often get that jolt of recognition when you read them. Suddenly the newspaper seems REAL for at least a fleeting moment.

And the greatest new development in South Florida crime writing would be the emergence of Stephanie Slater and Rochelle E.B. Gilken at the Palm Beach Post. Look, I don't need to throw a lot of words at you about them. Just read this morning's harrowing house fire story by Gilken. She killed it, as usual. And Behind The Yellow Tape, which is a tag-team effort by Gilken and Slater, has become my favorite daily newspaper blog.

Again, any praise I can give would seem meaningless next to the most recent post by Slater, a jailhouse interview with one of the accused killers of Curious George co-writer Alan Shalleck. She introduces us to evil. His name is Rex Ditto and he has an IQ somewhere south of George Bush's approval rating. It was done exclusively for the blog and includes one of the ten most eerie mug shots I've ever seen (it's Ditto's co-defendant, Vincent Puglisi, and ain't it weirdly similar to that pulp cover above?).

It's enough to make Edna proud.

Don't Criticize It
Other than Gilken's scorcher, nothing much caught my eye in the dailies today, but I was struck by a quote in the aforementioned Chen's story on a father named Miguel Duque who was busted for having 183 pot plants in his home.

''They were quiet neighbors, a happy family,'' said Lemoine, 48, shaking his head. ''I come home for break and find a plantation of marijuana. Unbelievable.''

That's right, Miguel was a VERY happy family man. But why jail him for that and deprive a three-year-old girl her father? Sure it was an excessive amount of pot. I suppose he was trying to make a go at self-employment, also known as the American Dream. It's a damn plant people and it's not even close to being as damaging to the planet or to people as oil or half the pharmaceuticals on the market. Plus, it's made milions of taxpaying responsible adults happy for a very long time. What's this I hear about America being a free country? Legalize it.

And free El Duque!

So you've probably seen the tempest in a teapot with Tom Fiedler. If not, read the comments in the post below. I'm going to do a little bit more reporting on this, but until then, let's move on to ...

The DBR Beating a Subpoena
Broward Circuit Judge Marc Gold proved himself a man of wisdom by quashing (don't you love that word?) a subpoena on Daily Business Review reporter Julie Kay. Kay calls it a "victory for the First Amendment" in the story -- and she's right. If prosecutors start pulling reporters into court for every little thing, we're in big trouble. I, for one, hope Gold has started a trend, since Michael Satz's office has also hit me with a subpoena to testify in the Mafia case involving reputed Bonanno capo Gerard Chilli. It has to do with this story. I don't know nothing.

Quash away, please.

In Other News ...

The Palm Beach Post's Jose Lambiet tells of the robbery of David Copperfield outside Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. And for some reason I bet he really was pretty cool when the gun was pointed at his face. I want to know two things: how to do that pocket trick and how many cops got involved in trying to catch the robbers. Because I'm thinking if that were you or me, nobody would have been "nabbed" ten minutes later.

Also in the Post, Larry Kellerproves that it really isn't easy to be a pimp, even if you're dealing with relatively high-class call girls in Boca Raton. Keller writes of David Bachmann's "bad customer list" for the prostitution ring he was running. He had chokers, knife-wielders, and, tell us it ain't so, midgets. And Keller teases us with the fact that one repeat customer was a "South Florida sports broadcaster." I'm torn on whether it was the right call to withhold the broadcaster's name. On the one hand, I think the whole business should be decriminalized. But the guy (assuming it's a guy) may have broken the law and everyone who reads that will want to know who it is. Does that make it news?

The blending of shoe marketing and sports reporting was on display Sunday. Dominating the front page of both the Sun-Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post were feature stories about the same thing: The Heat's Dwyane Wade's penchant for falling down on the court. It might seem like a weird coincidence -- how could two reporters, in his case the Post's Hal Habib and the Sentinel's Ira Winderman, get the same idea at the same time on such an obscure topic?

Well, neither Habib nor Winderman got the idea. It came from Converse shoes. Last year Converse ran a commercial featuring Wade's falls on the court and, with the playoffs coming, they are running the ads again, beginning with yesterday's nationally televised game against the Bulls. And Wade, his family members (his sister and father), Pat Riley, and the rest of the Heat are more than happy to the press about it now. So Habib and Winderman, taking the path most traveled, wind up with the same story on the same day, right down to the same "fall guy" headlines. Questionable journalism, but hey, it's the shoes, man, it's the shoes.

In other news of news, Fred Grimm proposes a proposal for Sheriff Ken Jenne that I can get behind. Get out of dodge, Kenny boy. Hell, I think the taxpayers will even charter a helicopter for you to climb into after you resign.

Underwood

The Boy Next Door
Back in my cops reporter days, I was constantly amazed at the things people would give me. I wound up with the datebook of a guy who shot himself during a game of Russian Roulette. A photo album of a guy who hanged himself on a neighbor's fence. All manner of strange tchotchkes from murders and other crimes that helped make interesting stories. So when I heard the guy in Oklahoma who killed a 10-year-old neighbor girl and planned to eat her had a blog, I had to check it out.

And the blog, titled "Strange Things Are Afoot At the Circle K," is amazingly still up and running. What is remarkable about what you find there -- and there are four years of posts -- is that this guy seems a lot like your typical Joe Nobody. A dark Joe Nobody, yes, but no worse than your typical Goth geek. Not that he was Goth -- in his everyday life he was tortuously normal. Kevin Underwood is a bored, depressed 26-year-old guy out in the middle of nowhere (Purcell, OK) with above-average intelligence and a dead-end life. I'm not going to get too far into it here, but he's got serious problems with the ladies (as in they won't have anything to do with him), he's all conflicted in regards to morals (for instance, he seems to be simpatico with the devil but is repulsed by the immoral premise of the movie Wedding Crashers), he hates living in the boonies where you have to drive to Texas to get decent porn or a tattoo, he also hates George W. Bush and is fairly politically astute, and he's scraping by at dead-end jobs at a fast food restaurant and grocery store.

Underwood obviously left out his darkest fantasies and plans on the blog, he's incredibly honest about the shitty nature of his life. Sometimes painfully -- and sometimes literally. I leave you with a passage about a day at work at Carl's Jr., the fast food restaurant where he made $6.15 an hour:

"Last night at work sucked. I had to clean the bathrooms, which is nothing new, but when I went to clean them, the men's room was completely and totally disgusting. This is also nothing new, but it was even worse than usual. Men's rooms are the nastiest, filthiest places on the planet. Usually when I go in there I have to clean snot off the wall from where people have picked their nose and wiped it on the wall while they're on the toilet. And there's often crap smeared on things, and I mean actual crap.

Last night it was even worse. The toilet had been filled with toilet paper, to the point that all the water had been sucked up and the paper had formed a big coagulated lump that filled most of the toilet. And then, since the toilet was stopped up, someone had taken a crap in the urinal, or something. It was just a piece of some crap, not an entire turd, I don't know if someone had just put it in there, or if they'd taken a crap in the urinal and got most of it to flush, or what. I don't want to know what some people do in our bathroom. Also, someone's kid had thrown up in the floor. I say it was a kid or a baby, because it was just a tiny pile, and judging from the looks of it, and the smell of the entire bathroom, it was a pile of fresh Froot Loops or Trix cereal.

I'm glad I don't have to clean the bathrooms for almost another week."

This is at least a touch of Travis Bickle in the boonies, people. Underwood was also a bit of obsessed by the numbers his blog (which is named for a line from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure) were getting -- basically a dozen visits a day or so. He's got to be thrilled today: His hit counter has shot up to 86,000 and counting. It's the most popular blog in America.

Boca Crime Scene/Sun-Sentinel Photo

While reporting on the killing of a married couple at a Boca Raton clothing store, Sentinel reporter Leon Fooksman contacted family members in Alabama.

For crime reporters, contacting people after they've heard devastating news about their loved ones is business as usual. But what happened to Fooksman yesterday was far from routine. While reporting on the deaths of James and Sandra Mayer, both 62, he got their daughter-in-law Brandy Meyer on the phone from Alabama. The problem: Brandy had no idea what was going on. Police had not yet notified the family of the deaths.

What does Fooksman do in that situation? Does he tell her of the deaths? Does he politely excuse himself and hang up the phone?

"I just told the family what I knew which was that police were at the couple's store all day and that police didn't provide the media with much information," Fooksman explained in an e-mail. "I asked the family in Alabama if they knew anything. They didn't."

Now you can only imagine how troubling that first phone call must have been for the Mayer family. "Frantic" and "terrifying" are two words that comes to mind. And I've been told that Boca police are angry as hell that Fooksman beat them to the punch.

Fooksman wound up including a quote from Brandy Mayer in his story today.

"Before I hung up with them, I ask them about the couple and what they were like," Fooksman wrote the Pulp. "The information was consistent with what the couple's customers in Boca Raton and friends in West Boynton were saying. So I went with it. When I called the family in Alabama back shortly after the cops notified them, they no longer wanted to talk."

There are two schools of thought here:

1. Fooksman was out of line. When the police refused to release the names of the victims because they hadn't yet notified next-of-kin, he should have waited until police gave the go-ahead before he contacted relatives.

2. Fooksman proved only that he's a good reporter and this one is the fault of police. In a high-profile crime, it's the police department's job to notify kin as soon as possible. And it doesn't help that P.D.'s are notorious for stringing along reporters by claiming that they haven't notified kin even when they have.

Where do you stand?