MiamiHerald.com: Glenn Garvin

Obama reneges on secrecy pledge

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:02 EDT

There were no cameras around to record whether President Obama was winking when, on his first full day in office, he signed an executive order and two presidential memorandums declaring that “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”

After 10-year ride, R.I.P. ‘CSI: Miami’

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:05 EDT

If this were an episode of CSI : Miami, David Caruso would look grimly into the camera. “The only thing dead around here,” he’d say, pausing a beat to whip off his omnipresent sunglasses, “is my show!” Then the TV screen would fade to black with the news that CSI: Miami has been canceled after 10 seasons.

Death of a tyrant

Mon, 07 May 2012 18:17 EDT

When the Marxist Sandinista party he had helped found was driven from power in Nicaragua, it understandably took Tomas Borge some time to adjust to the new realities. Accustomed to local journalists gravely listening to his addlebrained theories on economics as if their lives and liberty depended on it — which, of course they literally did — he was quite unprepared when a reporter broke in with a rascally question during a radio interview.

When R2D2 and C3P0 go to war

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:52 EDT

As a little kid I worried a lot, about everything from marauding robot armies laying waste to Americans with death rays (which I saw in a terrifying old sci-fi movie called Target Earth) to the prospect of starving hordes of old people ravaging the countryside after Social Security broke down (which I heard in an even more terrifying Barry Goldwater campaign speech). My father’s inevitable response to my regular heebie-jeebie attacks was, “Don’t worry, it’ll never happen.”

Today Show’s ‘dirty editing’ of 911 call in Trayvon Martin case

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:10 EDT

When The Washington Post discovered reporter Janet Cooke had made up a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict, it printed a 14,000-word investigation of what happened by its ombudsman. “She was a one-in-a-million liar,” admitted Post executive editor Ben Bradlee.

Don’t rush to judgment in Trayvon Martin killing

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:11 EDT

I’ve read tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of words on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the South Florida teenager whose shooting death last month at the hands of a neighborhood watch volunteer has become a national symbol of continuing American racism. But in all those words, there are three that haven’t come up that seem worth remembering to me: Duke lacrosse team.

Local sports franchises take the prize

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:12 EDT

It’s looking like a great season for the Miami Marlins. The first game hasn’t even played, but already they’ve won an important and hotly contested championship, wresting the title of Most Swinishly Arrogant Sports Franchise in South Florida away from the Miami Heat.