Miami Spice

A thousand kudos to TPM for bringing me up to date on Efraim E. Diveroli (link; cf. link), the 22-year-old Miami merchant of death, by comparison to whom a Carl Hiaasen novel is about as much fun as the back of a Dade County bus transfer. Where else will I find, for example, an arms dealer named Bar Kochba Botach (link)—and if you were in the business of purveying weapons and ammo, wouldn’t want your customers to be, like satisfied with your goods & services? I see from Efraim’s MySpace page that he is in my “extended network”—which I cannot possibly fathom, because he has only one MySpace “friend”, and to the best of my knowledge, so do I (and it ain’t the same one). I do see that Efraim is looking for

a woman that will stand by her man because she knows he would do the same for her no matter the circumstance.

…and I can only hope he found one in time for the arraignment.

Oh, and a word about John L. Withers, II, the US Ambassador to Albania, whose copybook seems to have been blotted in the whole affair. I see by the Embassy web page that the Ambassador is a career appointee, and a second-generation civil servant. Which leads to two thoughts;

• I assume guys like this know what is permissible (=what they can get away with?) in a job like this?

• But I would assume that guys like this are also supposed to be good at covering their tracks?