Worst advice of the season: A lawyer for Christopher A. Moran of Houlton, whom police describe as a convicted child molester, advises his client that it would be all right for him to be a mall Santa Claus, even though Mr. Moran’s probation conditions bar him from having contact with children under age 15. Just who did the lawyer think would be sitting in Santa’s lap, elves?

Another lawyer who apparently lingered too long at the egg nog bowl hangs his shingle over in Vermont, where a woman recently was arrested for shoplifting $101.49 worth of stocking stuffers, $1.49 more than is needed for a felony charge. Unfair, her attorney says: If she’d paid for the goodies, she would have used her store courtesy card and received a 10-percent discount, enough to discount the offense down to a misdemeanor. The judge didn’t buy it and Santa got to cross two stops off his itinerary.

Gov. Angus King signs a deal with the feds to avoid listing Maine salmon as an endangered species, and activists of all stripes along the political spectrum speak against it. Is it the fish that smells or is that the odor of an election year in the air?

Patrick Carkin of Richmond has been on a crusade recently, visiting assorted high schools to hand out free copies of the book “Bastard Out of Carolina” in protest of the Mount Abram school board’s guidelines on how Dorothy Allison’s celebrated tale of incest and rural squalor can be used in the classroom. Carkin admits he hasn’t read the entire novel, only the most controversial parts. Let’s hope he highlighted all the naughty bits so students don’t have to waste their time and energy on all the unnecessary filler, like plot and character development.

Early this year, when the National Pork Producers Council sued the Maine Lobster Promotion Council for infringing upon its “white meat” slogan, lobster’s executive director, Susan Barber, took thermonuclear umbrage at the attempts certain elements of the media made to inject levity into this very extremely monumentally serious situation. Now that the case has been dismissed, with lobster prevailing, Barber’s turned into a regular Henny Youngman. “We’re happy as pigs in mud,” she yukked. “(They) couldn’t hog the term `white meat.’ ” If laughter is indeed the best medicine, a favorable out-of-court settlement must be the spoonful of Thermidor that helps it go down.