Tilting at windmills: carrot addiction; the price of pro-bono; downward devolution; all in the family; new-class nuptials.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Defending tobacco; ACLU bills Citadel $6.15 million; government nepotism; wedding announcements; plus other items - Column

Of all the tobacco industry's attempts to defend itself, my favorite was supplied by Andrew Schindler, president of R.J. Reynolds, who told a plaintiff's lawyer that he didn't believe that tobacco was any more addictive than coffee or carrots.

"Carrot addiction?" asked the lawyer.

"Yes," replied Schindler. "There was British research on carrots"

Equally incredible, for me at least, was this recent headline in The New York Times. "GOP Panel Sees No Major Flaw in Fund-Raising Rules." In other words, they're outraged by what Bill Clinton and Al Gore have done in their campaign, but want to remain free to behave similarly.

I have more evidence for our campaign to get lawyers out of the practice of law, leaving behind the small minority that are both decent and dedicated to justice. It comes from an article by John Greenya in The Washington Lawyer, which is the official publication of the District of Columbia Bar and therefore cannot be accused, as some would say I can, of prejudice against practitioners. Of the local lawyers who left their firms to go into health care, teaching, computer software, and even songwriting, Greenya wrote: "All report solid satisfaction with their career move. In fact, with one slight exception, none of them has serious misgivings about leaving the practice of law, or plans to return."

Continuing in the realm of the unbelievable, Vanessa Williams of The Washington Post reports: "If he were the least bit certain that Republican leaders of Congress had launched last week's raid on home rule in an effort to rout him from office, Mayor Marion Barry says he would step aside" If you believe that one, I've got a lovely bridge to sell you.

One reason I try to persuade lawyers to leave the law is to save their souls. Another is to save the rest of us from the harm they do as lawyers. Consider what the lawyers have been up to in the District of Columbia, where the number of auto accident-related lawsuits has risen 137 percent since 1985. During the same period, the number of auto accidents fell by 22 percent.

My wife often asks me how I can say I'm against violence and still be a pro football fan. Sometimes I have to admit she has a point. An example occurred here a few weeks ago when Michael Westbrook of the Redskins assaulted his teammate Stephen Davis during a practice session, striking him several times while Davis was down.

The incident, by the way, was taped by a television crew for a local station that doesn't carry pro football games. Interestingly, it was not taped by crews of the stations that do telecast the pros. George Michael, a sports reporter for one of those stations, explained that he had gotten access to the Redskins' practices by promising "we wouldn't use anything that would embarrass them."

Sports journalists, it appears, are just another species of the celebrity journalists who, as Joshua Wolf Shenk pointed out in these pages last year, too often purchase access with the promise, most often quietly implied instead of baldly explicit as it was here, of treatment that will not be too tough.

According to The Washington Post's Judith Havemann, the devolution of authority over welfare, which a year ago went from the federal to the state level, is now proceeding further down the political ladder as states hand off responsibilities to counties and other local jurisdictions. One problem with this is the same as with the public schools: The greatest need is concentrated in the poorest counties and localities, which often have the most inadequate resources. Another problem is that local welfare offices are often not very good. The New York City child welfare agency, even after a supposedly radical overhaul and reduction of caseload, was still found in a recent study to have closed one in every four cases where children were still at risk of abuse. In one in seven cases, welfare investigators actually interviewed children in the presence of their alleged abusers, according to Rachel L. Swarns of The New York Times.

And if you have doubts about the federal civil service, don't assume local merit systems are better. Linda Blackford of the Charleston (W. Va.) Gazette looked at the county school system and found that merit principles are circumvented by administrators who decide who will get a job before it is advertised and then tailor the...