Steer clear of the red streets

I saw a friend last weekend who works for a major educational company in D.C. Luckily for her, the company is in Dupont Circle, in one of the safest (not to mention priciest) neighborhoods of the nation's capital.

This summer, her company held a conference for regional managers in Baltimore, and put up employees at an Inner Harbor hotel. When my friend checked in, the conference planners were nice enough to give her a map of Baltimore -- with "dangerous" streets outlined in red.

According to her, she was left to navigate a few short city blocks near the harbor to avoid the carjackers, rapists and murderers surely lying in wait beyond the invisible borders.

Great impression the city is leaving on professionals and tourists, eh?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

The pet care industry's impact on corporate bottom lines

...you may not have thought there was one. I certainly didn't.

That is, until I read this article about FETCH! Pet Care, a franchise that promises to resolve employee absenteeism and inefficiences by dog-walking and pet-sitting.. as part of your company's employee benefits package.

Having not lived under a rock for the last ten years, I'm aware that many professionals hire dog walkers and the like to care for their cuddly companions while they work an extra hour or two to pay for them.

The twist here is that FETCH! aims for employers to front the cost as a perk for employees. According to FETCH!, its clients include Fox/Newscorp, PeopleSoft and Pixar.

Someone has to be biting, because Entrepreneur.com reports that FETCH! has 80 franchises as of this year. There are even FETCH! franchises in Bethesda and Silver Spring.

As employers, would you provide (and subsidize) this service for your workers?

As pet owners, would you sign up if your company offered it?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

Jonathan Lee Riches and the Brady bunch

Jonathan Lee Riches, the prisoner plaintiff who filed law suits this summer against sports celebrities including Michael Vick and Barry Bonds, has a new fish to fry — and this time he’s doing it in Maryland.

In a suit filed Wednesday in federal court in Greenbelt, Riches asked for a temporary restraining order against one “John L. Brady” as well as a 1963 Supreme Court opinion featuring an erstwhile death-row inmate by that same moniker, better known as *Brady v. Maryland.*

Yes, you read that right. He’s seeking a TRO against a Supreme Court decision. One of the most famous Supreme Court opinions, too: the one that requires prosecutors to tell the defendant about any evidence they have that would help his case. Fittingly, Riches accuses *Brady* (the opinion) of withholding evidence that would clear him of a crime.

He also accuses Brady (the person) of withholding medication from him, which caused him to rob a pharmacy. And here’s where it gets juicy.

Riches claims that Brady "is related to Cleveland Brown Quarterback Brady Quinn, who has my brain in a football, tossing my brain tissue during football games because I sued LeBron James in court. This is a Cleveland connection. Salt ‘n Peppa.”

Riches also says the defendants took his “Nobel peace prize on writing law suits,” that the Watergate burglars broke into his cell with a crow bar, and that he is the father of Angelina Jolie’s five children. You have to read the rest to see why he sued Terri Schiavo and Florida State Football Coach Bobby Bowden.

So here’s my question: is the South Carolina inmate really crazy (in the suit he says “I spin like a Disney cup”) or is this all an ongoing joke he likes to play on the federal courts? And if it is a joke, does that make Riches a comic genius? Or do you just feel sorry for the federal clerks that have to deal with this guy’s shenanigans?

-LIZ FARMER, Legal Affairs Writer

"I'm more enlightened!" "No, I am!"

Moco Exec Ike Leggett tells WMAL-AM radio that the reason Moco has embraced illegal immigrants (rather than withholding public services) is because of "enlightened leadership."

You can imagine that leaders in Prince William County, Va. — where legislators are "cracking down" on illegals — don't agree.

Red Maryland blog points to new laws in Arizona that discourage companies from hiring illegal immigrants; reports indicate many illegals have left the area for greener pastures.

Who's the winner here?

-JACKIE SAUTER, Multimedia Editor

New York Times upsets Bill Struever

Bill Struever was a little riled up Thursday morning as he addressed folks who were about to take the Baltimore Development Corp.’s 2007 Baltimore City Real Estate Tour.

What had the founder of Struever Bros. Eccles and Rouse upset was a New York Times story that appeared Thursday that suggested – OK it said – that Baltimore’s revival was being slowed by the “turmoil in the national economy.”

Actually, to me, the story didn’t put Baltimore in that bad a light. And it certainly laid the fault on the national economy – not on anything that was or wasn’t done locally. But I’m not a developer with tens of millions of dollars on the line.

Anyway, at the beginning of a 10-minute welcome at the impressive Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park, Struever – dressed much more casually (jeans and a plaid button-down shirt) than any of the other 200 or so attendees -- said he wasn’t happy.

“If you give me that reporter and let me drive him around town for two hours, I’ll straighten him out,” Struever said.

He mentioned the article twice more in the welcome.

Did you see the article? Was the reporter correct about Baltimore? Do you think Struever had reason to be upset?

-ED WALDMAN, Managing Editor, Business

The church doesn’t want my lemon squares.

It’s October, and sure as the leaves are falling, the festivals are popping up all over north Baltimore County: Church festivals, community fairs, even a bull roast to benefit a scholarship fund in memory of two local kids who were killed in Iraq.

But my lemon squares will be stuck at home, the victim of a Baltimore County ordinance banning bake sales unless the goods are cooked in a county-certified kitchen under the watchful eye of a county-certified cook-watcher.

No cert, no bake sale. Now, I’m a lawyer, and I’ve got no inherent problem with government regulation. Every time I walk out my door and see green fields instead of a gas station, I bless Baltimore County for having the strictest zoning regs going.

But the bake sale thing makes me sad.

Is there no way around this?

Could we have eating clubs, like cigar clubs, where people pay to get into a room where baked goods are sold?

Or judging booths, where you pay your buck to sample, er, vote on various cookies or pies?

Or will the whole bake-sale thing have to go underground, with bake-easies in church cellars, and desperate choirboys knocking on a heavy wooden door that opens not with a key but with a code word: “Coconut Cream.”

Actually, if Prohibition is any indication, that’s probably where the real money would be made.

Remember: when brownies are outlawed, only outlaws will have brownies.

-BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor, Law

The end of the world?

For three days in a row now, The Wall Street Journal has run page one stories knocking the props out from under a different pillar of what has passed for Universal Truth in our times.

Today, it was “Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade" (at right).

Wednesday it was “Wal-Mart Era Wanes Amid Big Shifts in Retail: Rivals Find Strategies To Defeat Low Prices; World Has Changed.”

Tuesday it was “GOP Is Losing Grip on Core Business Vote: Deficit Hawks Defect as Social Issues Prevail; ‘The Party Left Me.’”

What could possibly be next? Is this the end of the world as we have known it?

Here’s your chance to help join in. Write a headline for the next big change you think is going to happen or you would like to see happen. You write it, we’ll post it.

-TOM LINTHICUM, Executive Editor

Image above courtesy of the Newseum.

Amateurs, pros share the green

Yesterday was the day for the amateurs to play like the pros. Well, to be a bit more accurate: it was the day for the amateurs to play with the pros.

The pro-am for the Constellation Energy Seniors Players Championship was held Wednesday at Baltimore Country Club’s Five Farms course in Timonium. As well as they played, there was no mistaking the amateurs with the pros they were sharing the course with.

In all fairness, the pros probably couldn’t manage annuity funds for a multi-national bank, but today was about 9-irons, not dividends. As expected, the pros drove the ball 300-yards down the heart of the fairway while the tax attorney shanked his drive into the bushes at 17.

Oh well, it’s not about the competition, it’s about the purity of the game. Right?

Try telling that to the hospital administrator who hit it into the sand trap on 18. "You gotta be kidding me," he said, slamming his club into the turf, to another player in his foursome.

"That’s the best shot you hit all day," his partner replied.

They stopped talking as the pro lined up his three-foot birdie putt.

The Players Championship tees off for real today.

—LOUIS LLOVIO, Business Writer

Gotta spend money to make it?

As the governor tours the state bemoaning a looming budget crisis, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development took a field trip to New York Tuesday.

The purpose of the trip was to sell Maryland as a place to do business. The tab for this jaunt to the Big Apple: $11,000.

The old adage is that you have to spend money to make money, but is spending $11,000 to wine and dine Big Apple bigwigs worth it when schools are getting funding cuts? Or should we look at it as an investment that will bring business to the state and grow our coffers with corporate taxes?

Can you do both? How do you balance the two?

Let us know what you think…

—LOUIS LLOVIO, Business Writer

Overheard in the court

At the Court of Appeals yesterday, while I was waiting for arguments in the Baby case to start, I sat and listened to the arguments in another case, Attorney Grievance Commission v. Ralph Edward Hall Jr.

Hall, who is married, apparently slept with a client. He was also carrying on an affair with another woman.

This case produced all manner of interesting discussions, including a lively debate about whether having consensual sex with your client is worse than spanking your client and your secretary. (The spanking referred to a 1993 attorney grievance case where the spanker was suspended indefinitely but not disbarred.)

But the jaw-dropping, did-he-just-say-that moment came during a discussion of how Hall lied to both of his mistresses about the existence of the other and about the state of his relationship with his wife.

Judge Dale Cathell interrupted the commission’s lawyer, highlighting the tendency of people in adulterous affairs to lie:

“I know a little bit about — not necessarily about adultery — I know a little bit about men...”

Judge Glenn Harrell, who had been leaning back in his chair, immediately jerked upright at the word "adultery." Judge Irma Raker broke into shocked-looking laughter. Judge Lynne Battaglia leaned way forward in her chair to stare at Cathell. Chief Judge Robert Bell put his hand over his face and warned Cathell, “careful, careful, careful.”

Cathell continued: ..."I don't know much about women. I always thought, in a situation such as this, everybody presumed a lot of lying was going on."

Check it out for yourself here, 25 minutes and 38 seconds into the arguments.

-CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Note: After a phone call from Judge Cathell's office, we listened to the webcast several times again and revised this post to reflect the Judge's remarks more precisely and in fuller context.