Wherein Publius returns to Delaware's blogosphere.

I never thought I'd return to publishing a blog. After all, what is the blogosphere (a term I hate) other than a bunch of people grumbling about how irritated they are at this or that? But it's been a while since Delatacit.com left, and I'm tired of dealing with allegedly Ph.D.-bearing concert sound engineers who use commas whimsically and have difficulty stringing more than three words together.

So, here I am.

Highlights from around Delaware today:

- The Eagles are getting their asses kicked. UPDATE: Ouch. McNabb is out for the season with a bum knee, and the Birds lost 31-13.

- The News-Journal has a fascinating retrospective on one of Delaware's two Crimes Of The Century, viz. the Peterson/Grossberg murder case. According to the Delaware Chief Medical Examiner, the Peterson/Grossberg child could have been a beautiful boy, with the slight problem that it's dead.

You can also thrill to the wonders of Amy Grossberg's pre-sentencing letter to then-President Judge Ridgely, the original police report by the cop who found the murdered/stillborn fetus, and the warrant supporting Amy Grossberg's arrest warrant.

While the stillborn/murdered child lies in an all-but-unmarked grave in a Jersey cemetery (see the News-Journal's photo, above), Amy Grossberg is running her own business now: Just Because Invitations, a greetings-card concern in North Jersey. One of her products is a card for a "mommy to be. . .", inside of which the somewhat ominous phrase appears: "and baby will make three."

Irony.

I remember the heady days of this prosecution quite well. The New Castle County Courthouse turned into a media shark-tank, with vulture-like reporter types poised to spring on anyone remotely connected with the case. After all, it had irresistible media appeal: two Rich White Kids from the north Jersey suburbs in a fuckload of trouble for killing a baby/disposing of a stillborn fetus.

The fact is, however, that almost no one involved in the case behaved very well: defendants, cops, prosecutors, and media. Of course, the whole case started because two kids couldn't figure out what to do with a live/stillborn baby. But then we had what Lemony Snicket would call a "series of unfortunate events" in quick succession:

1. Then-Attorney General Jane Brady decided to go on national television (Geraldo Rivera Live, of all shows) and ruminate over how the death penalty just might apply to the case, resulting in...

2. Brian Peterson decided he wasn't going to turn himself in to the Delaware authorities as he had planned, whereupon...

3. The FBI issued a national fugitive arrest warrant for Peterson, whereupon he retained the always-interesting Joe Hurley, who...

4. Arranged for Peterson to turn himself in to the FBI at the Boggs U.S. Courthouse in downtown Wilmington, but...

5. Instead of arranging to park in the courthouse's sally port and bring him in through the back way, Hurley had his client park in a garage two blocks away and paraded him up King Street to the courthouse in the midst of a media maelstrom (not to mention amid the usual curses such as "baby killer", etc.), and...

6. President Judge Ridgely establishes a gag order on the case, whereupon...

7. Amy Grossberg went on 20/20 with America's confession queen, Baba Wawa (er, I meant Barbara Walters) to spill her guts, thereby violating the gag order and...

8. Grossberg's New York City lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, was kicked off the case.

Ugh.

- The News-Journal's StoryChat on the Peterson/Grossberg story devolves into another poorly-spelled mudfest, with TyZilla accusing me of being drunk and others ruminating that Peterson/Grossberg pled to Manslaughter down from Murder One not because the state's case was weak and they outlawyered the Attorney General's Office...but because Favors & Bribes must have been paid. Egads.

- Delaware Watch's Dana Garrett asks why Delawareans should have to rely on the Attorney General to pursue double-dipping politicians. They shouldn't, of course, but that's what Rep. Nancy Wagner's attorney John Brady suggested to the Superior Court in an attempt to dismiss a pro se lawsuit filed by one Robert Reeder which, apparently, seeks to have Wagner disgorge monies he alleges she received from her employer, the Capital School District, for legislative duties. Nice try, dude, but double-dipping by Delaware state legislators is nothing new. More on this later.