Isikoff has a new brief piece out on Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert "Gold Bars" Luskin.

Actually, for what it's worth, GB sounds like he'd be sort of a fun person to hang out with. But don't tell anyone I said that.

As we were first to report back in July (at least in the context of the Rove case) Luskin, a Democrat, got in trouble with the Feds back in 1997. He took up the appeal of a precious metals dealer who'd been convicted of laundering tens of millions of dollars of drug money. The DOJ got a bit miffed when they discovered that Luskin was taking payment in gold bars.

Luskin tells Isikoff he did nothing wrong but now concedes "I was completely obtuse about the optics of the situation."

Perhaps we need to rename him Robert "Gift for Understatement" Luskin.