Best Friends

We like Lori Parrish. We really do. She's a Southern lady with an attitude almost as big as her hair, and we respect her for that. Sure, we've slammed her a couple of times, but we're paid to do that. It's nothing personal. Because we like her. We really do. Of course we might have raised her ire a bit last August when we exposed the fact that she charged a whopping $13,000 in cell phone bills to her campaign -- in which she ran virtually unopposed. But now at least we know who was on the other end of those phone calls: good old lobbyists. They are, after all, her best friends, according to statements she made in an April 2 article written by that cute and rascally Sun-Sentinelcolumnist, Buddy Nevins. In the story Parrish called attempts to regulate lobbyists and limit their power a "bunch of B.S." To clarify her point, she gave a classic quote about the relationship between politicians and influence peddlers: "All of us play golf, play cards, go to the movies, are attendants in [lobbyists'] weddings, or a variety of other things," Parrish said. "Some of us even married a lobbyist or two along the way. To me, [curbing lobbying] is simply unnecessary." Now, don't that just wrap a soft blanket around your little heart and make it coo? Who knew that government here in Broward was such a love-in?