Minnesota Lawyer Blog

OK, OK, not really, but we had to give you at least one April Fool's Day headline on the Minnesota Lawyer blog. Ventura, of course, is not now, nor has he ever been, a lawyer, but he used to quip that he had "never lost a case." (Apparently a reference to the fact that he had gone to court representing himself once and "won." I have no idea whether his "record" remains intact.)

Ventura is a wrestler, turned actor (is there really a difference?), turned Minnesota's governor (again, is there really a difference?) and, most recently, I guess you'd have to call him an author. His latest book -- "Don't start the Revolution without Me!" -- was, appropriately enough, released today, on April Fool's Day.

Here is an excerpt from the books description on Amazon.com --"Ventura pulls no punches in discussing our corrupt two-party system, the disastrous war in Iraq, and what he suspects really happened on September 11. ... He reveals the illegal role of the CIA in states like Minnesota."

I have not yet read this scholarly tome, and surely do not intend to. I tend to shy away from books with exclamation points in the title. In fact, I haven't read any of Ventura's stuff since I leafed through "Do I Stand Alone? Going to the Mat against Political Pawns and Media Jackals." I didn't think that diatribe was very good at all, but I'm a media jackal, so you can take that with a grain of salt if you like. I note with some satisfaction Amazon is currently advertising the book with a "new or used" price starting at $ .01. Another book, "The Wit and Wisdom of Jesse 'the Body...the Mind' Ventura" is listed as starting at $ .90, which I think is 45x too much to pay for Ventura's two cents worth. But then again, it's probably a popup book, so maybe your kids will enjoy it.

I almost hate to say it, but from the legal community's perspective, Ventura was not a bad governor at all. He was good with court funding and made excellent, nonpartisan judicial picks. Much of the credit for the judicial appointments has to go to the efforts of the Commission on Judicial Selection and its then chair, Minneapolis attorney George Soule, but Ventura had the good sense to listen to their advice. As a result, Ventura's lasting legacy on the bench is one of the best of any Minnesota governor. That doesn't mean I'd want Ventura in the U.S. Senate though, something he coyly hints that he would at least consider ("Never say never.") It might make C-SPAN more interesting, but so would releasing a bag full of rabid squirrels with sparklers on their tails into the Senate chamber during a debate.