TIME FOR LIMBAUGH, COULTER TO BE MODEL CITIZENS

I feel bad for the Palm Beach County State Attorney's
Office.

The way things are going, it might make good sense to create a
prosecutorial unit called the Right-Wing Pundit Office of Aggravated
Mopery.

Things used to be simpler before national scolds like Ann Coulter and
Rush Limbaugh moved here and began exhibiting their boundless hubris
and flexible personal virtues in our midst.

It's so much easier for prosecutors to deal with the real business of
the day: street crime committed by people with dead-end lives, little
education and rotten futures.

That's the bread-and-butter of state court o not highfalutin Palm
Beach gasbags with self-administered personal exemptions to the law.

I'm sure Barry Krischer and his staff of prosecutors would be thrilled
if Coulter and Limbaugh would either just sell their homes or try
being the model citizens they pretend to be.

For Coulter, that would mean using her actual address on her voter's
registration. For Limbaugh, it means an end to being so creative with
his meds.

Monday, two months after Limbaugh accepted a probation offer to settle
a doctor-shopping case involving his addiction to prescription pain
pills, he was detained at Palm Beach International Airport for having
29 Viagra pills prescribed to his doctor.

I guess Limbaugh doesn't only have a bad back.

This is what happens to a guy who spends 14 solid years obsessing
about Hillary Clinton.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office turned the matter over to
prosecutors. Maybe there's a plausible explanation.

So far, Limbaugh is playing it for laughs.

"I'm trying to figure out how Bob Dole's luggage got on my airplane,"
he said, then launched into his second one-liner: "I told the doctor,
I was worried about the next election." This, you can be sure, is only
his opening gambit. If Krischer's office pursues the case, you can bet
that Limbaugh will dust off his recently retired witch-hunt defense.
It's all so tedious.

Coulter, who came to Limbaugh's defense in his previous prescription
caper, wrote a piece last December called "Why Can't I Get Arrested?"
"What's a girl to do to become a 'person of interest' around here?"
Coulter wrote. "Mr. Krischer, where do I go to get rid of my
reputation?" Two months later, she voted in the wrong Palm Beach
precinct - using the address of her Realtor, rather than disclosing
where she really lives on the island.

Voting in the wrong precinct and having somebody else's prescription
are, technically speaking, criminal acts.

But going after Limbaugh and Coulter is such a chore, such a thankless
task of trying to get people who ought to know better simply to behave
like grown-ups and take responsibility for their actions.

Instead, Coulter has hired former federal prosecutor Marcos Jimenez, a
lawyer from the Miami firm that helped George W. Bush in the 2000
Presidential Recount, to clean up her voting irregularity; and
Limbaugh has gone back to veteran criminal defense attorney Roy Black,
to mop up his prescription troubles.

I know it's not easy being Coulter or Limbaugh. Painting people such
as combat veteran John Murtha and 9/11 widows as traitors is tough
work.

But it would be awfully adult of Coulter and Limbaugh to exhibit a
little more compassion to the local prosecutor's office. Just a little
personal responsibility is all it would take. Is that too much to ask?