This week’s column: I sing the praises of Kevin Calabro.

Another post by me–some silliness with top-10 lists and local political figures.

Huan Hsu used to write for the Weekly but moved to China to work for an Uncle’s business and work on a book. He wrote this entertaining piece on his adolescent struggles with Asian stereotypes and the success of Michael Chang.

My friend Bucky sent me this Washington Post op-ed a couple weeks ago. While one can cherry-pick events to show the similarities between eras, and while the author doesn’t provide much evidence to back his contention that the 1970s federal government was actually more inefficient than previous ones, rather than just perceived as such, he does lay out an uncanny array of ties between 1978 and 2008. It’s an entertaining read.

My friend/former co-worker and employer Doug Hiatt got a much-deserved write-up in the Seattle Times. Philip Dawdy’s longer (and highly entertaining) piece on Hiatt from a couple years ago can be found here.

John McCain may have gotten a little confused about the chronology of the surge and the Anbar Awakening, but CBS bailed him out. In covering the story, the NY Times turns to the ever-reliable war cheerleader Michael O’Hanlon for commentary. (A few questions: If Surge Cola were still around today, what would the surge do to its sales? It would have to help, right? Would they still call it the surge? Would people take the surge less seriously because it was seemingly named after a soft drink? Would Coca-Cola sue?)

Seth Kolloen put together a very funny graphic about former Mariners GM Bill Bavasi.

Hit the books, junior!

The chickens are finally coming home to roost for Rafaello Follieri, former boyfriend of Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway and alleged defrauder of big-time investors. Follieri used his family’s Vatican connections to persuade capital firms to bankroll a scheme whereby he would buy up Church properties in the States and redevelop them for socially responsible purposes. It seems, however, that he was simply pocketing the cash and using it to fund an extravagant playboy lifestyle.

All in all, not a bad short-term scheme, and Follieri managed to drag it out for two years. It likely reminds fans of French literature of a famous forebear: Andre Gide’s The Vatican Cellars. In that novel (whose plot is partly borrowed from an actual 1892 scam), the scheming Protos poses as a priest to persuade credulous Catholics that the Freemasons and a cabal of mutinous Cardinals have imprisoned the Pope in the Vatican cellars, replacing him with an impostor. Under the utmost secrecy, he collects donations for a holy SWAT Team to free the Pontiff. Donors are warned not to mention a word of the situation to anyone, lest the plans be blown or the faith of the masses shaken.

Might Follieri have been wiser to have used such a scheme? Unlike real estate transactions, top-secret kidnappings and rescue efforts are entirely off the books. And impostor accusations are hard to disprove: we all know that Saddam Hussein had look-alikes. Perhaps Mr. Follieri now wishes he’d read his French classics. It looks like he’ll have plenty of time to catch up.

House Bill 2712, the anti-gang legislation I wrote about here, passed the Senate on Friday, minus two key provisions. Gone are the controversial civil injunctions, which could have enabled city attorneys or prosecutors to prohibit gang members from associating with one another, even for lawful purposes. The injunctions were removed by Senator Margarita Prentice, who explained that she feared they would be used in a racially discriminatory manner.

More notably, the Ways and Means Committee removed the social “intervention” programs that were touted as essential by all of the bill’s supporters. A spokesperson for the Senate Democratic Caucus explained that the Ways and Means Committee didn’t want future legislatures to be bound by the $10 million earmark. This excuse seems strange insofar as, by the time the bill got to the Ways and Means Committee, the original earmark for intervention programs had been softened to an advisory statement (from “the sum of $10 million is appropriated” (pdf) to “it is the consensus that…should be appropriated” (pdf)), while real earmarks for the law enforcement end of the bill remained. The Committee managed to remove the dollar-specifics for law enforcement, but chucked the social programs baby with its earmark bathwater.

The bill now goes back to the House for concurrence and then on to the Governor for a signature.

I had my first hard news story published in the Weekly. It’s on the debate over House Bill 2712, a piece of proposed anti-gang legislation that has parties who are typically allies pitted against each other. Check it out.