"And Ed Norris, the former Baltimore police commissioner who was convicted of using thousands of dollars from an obscure department account to finance extramarital affairs, meals and shopping trips, has his own radio show now and gets to use the airwaves each day to tell people what a [expletive] sham the case against him was."

Apparently Ed Norris didn't like this statement from my Thursday column and said so on his radio show Thursday. (By the way, thanks to the hundreds of readers who wrote here this week to say nice things about that column.) The former Commish apparently told his WHFS-FM listeners -- I say "apparently" because I didn't hear it myself -- that what I'd written was wrong. A handful of loyal Norris listeners reported this to me by e-mail, and a couple used the opportunity for an attack of their own:

"Typical journalist," one of them wrote. "Why don't you try getting your facts straight - I know you leftists like to play loose and fast with the truth, but c'mon... If you decide to check the facts, you might just find that Mr. Norris was convicted only of mortgage fraud - for essentially showing a $9000 loan form his father as a gift.  A far sight from what you claim.  By the way - he paid back all the monies in question. Don't call me a shill for Norris either.  Just make an attempt to find the truth once in awhile."

Certainly sounds like a shill to me, and an uninformed one.

For the record, here are some excerpts from the The Sun story of March 9, 2004:

Norris, 43, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to conspiring to misuse money from a supplemental city police fund and lying on tax returns. The former city police commissioner and Maryland state police superintendent is now a convicted felon. The federal charges against Norris grew from an off-the-books police expense account, which court records show Norris used to pay for extramarital encounters with several women and to satisfy an apparent taste for the good life.

Norris stood stiffly throughout the half-hour court hearing, his hands folded in front of him, and said little beyond answering questions from U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett about whether he understood the charges against him, his possible punishment and the implications of his felony conviction.

   "Did you in fact commit the offenses as summarized by the government?" Bennett asked Norris at one point.
   "As summarized," Norris replied.
   Asked by Bennett what his plea was to the conspiracy charge and to the tax violation, Norris answered twice in a low voice, "Guilty."

Last I checked, when a defendant enters a guilty plea, and the judge accepts the plea, the defendant is therefore convicted of the crime. He becomes a convicted felon.

I like Norris' radio show -- and these days, I actually have a chance to listen more -- but he should really bag the whining about how the feds  [expletive] him.