The Flash had to scrub in the shower after reading last Sunday's column by Arizona Republic editorial windsock Paul Schatt.
It wasn't enough for Schatt to parrot the doomed and primal yearnings of Arizona's crispiest Phil Gramm crackers--Governor J. Fife Symington III and U.S. Senator John McCain. Schatt had to slay the language in the process.
What you see below is not the formula for Prozac. It's The Flash's attempt to diagram a Schatt sentence, which somehow became lodged in the aforementioned column:
Then, in a race shunned by candidates and voters alike, because Pat Buchanan gets five more delegates than he does, nationally his campaign is reported to be on life support.
Supreme Sport
The Fifester owes a lot of lawyers a lot of money, butthat's something a nice appointment to the state Supreme Court might fix.
The Flash is on pins and needles, waiting to see whether the gov can resist another juicy judicial conflict of interest. You'll recall that he caused an uproar in Cochise County last fall when he named Ramon Alvarez--father of former Symington aide de campout Annette Alvarez--to the Superior Court bench.
Now comes an opening on the Supreme Court bench. The Commission on Appellate Court Appointments has whittled a long list of applicants to six and will further narrow the field before giving its recommendation to Symington. The Flash's odds-on favorite: Gary L. Stuart, who's had some exceedingly high-placed clients, including Symington.
Stuart, a partner at the Phoenix law firm Jennings Strouss and Salmon, represented Symington after the governor was named in a $210 million civil lawsuit filed by the Resolution Trust Corporation. Stuart and Symington's Washington, D.C., barrister, John Dowd, did a bang-up job. A $12.1 million settlement was reached in 1994 with--what else is new?--the Fifester having to pay nothing and admit to no wrongdoing.
Oh, and did we mention? Jennings Strouss is a creditor in Symington's bankruptcy!
The Fifester's original bankruptcy petition names the firm and Stuart as creditors. A subsequent court filing puts the debt to Jennings Strouss at $90,000.
Stuart teamed up with Dowd in 1994 to represent another political luminary, Cindy Hensley McCain--wife ofthe Snowy-Haired Senator, daughter of beer magnate Jim Hensley--after she was busted for stealing prescription painkillers from her own charity, the American Voluntary Medical Team.
Expect the also-rans for a seat on the big bench to be Charles E. Jones (also of Jennings Strouss), Frank T. Galati, Ruth V. McGregor, Philip E. Toci and Sheldon H. Weisberg.
