Possibly when he or she lives for more than a year in a half-million dollar home while paying next to nothing.

In “Rescue is quirk of timing” in Wednesday’s edition of The (Baltimore) Sun, the lead anecdote is Veronica Peterson, a 45-year-old single mother of three who says she can’t keep up with the mortgage payments on a $545,000 house in Columbia. She says she expects an eviction notice any day. The story presents her as a victim of the foreclosure crisis.

However, that’s apparently not the full story. I’ll let the City Paper explain:

…in the comments section below the article, hundreds of readers pointed out what the Sun’s reporters and editors could not, apparently: that Peterson had no business in that house, and that she’s lived there for more than a year rent- and mortgage-free. “Where do you think we can get in on this deal?” one commenter, calling himself Henry Bowman, asked another.

The City Paper goes on to dissect the loan numbers:

The online court and land records show that Peterson closed on the house on Nov. 3, 2006, with two loans from Washington Mutual. The main mortgage, for $436,000, had a starting interest rate of 8.5 percent, adjusting in December of this year to the London Interbank Offered Rate plus 4.99 percent. The second loan, often called a “piggyback,” totaled $109,000 with an interest rate of 11.5 percent, according to The Sun.

Those two payments together would have totaled $3,386.17 per month. That’s before property taxes, upkeep, utilities, etc. Peterson would have to earn at least $50,000 per year just to make her house payments.

But it appears that Peterson made few–if any–payments. The foreclosure was filed July 31, 2007. The balance on the main note then was $435,735.86, plus unpaid interest accrued from Jan. 1, 2007, plus $1,005.72 in late charges. This suggests that Peterson made, at most, one payment on her house: the December, 2006 payment. Given the grace periods typical in home-mortgage business, it is at least as likely that her first payment was not due until January 2007, which would mean she has made zero payments.

Had she made all of her payments, Peterson would have spent about $64,335 so far. Had she rented a similar place, she would have been charged around $2,500 per month–a total of $47,500–since January 2007. Instead, she apparently paid nothing.

Not much of a “victim,” I’d say. I’m also shocked that someone would take out a mortgage for the full price of a home. Am I missing the down payment in this transaction?

JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist

The New York Times has a story today about what Obama was like during his time teaching at the University of Chicago Law School. On the one hand, he was apparently an engaging professor, if a touch overly pleased with himself:

As his reputation for frank, exciting discussion spread, enrollment in his classes swelled. Most scores on his teaching evaluations were positive to superlative. Some students started referring to themselves as his groupies. (Mr. Obama, in turn, could play the star. In what even some fans saw as self-absorption, Mr. Obama’s hypothetical cases occasionally featured himself. “Take Barack Obama, there’s a good-looking guy,” he would introduce a twisty legal case.)

On the other hand, he sometimes got so wrapped up in the intellectual arguments surrounding an issue that he didn’t do anything about it:

While students appreciated Mr. Obama’s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand. When two fellow faculty members asked him to support a controversial antigang measure, allowing the Chicago police to disperse and eventually arrest loiterers who had no clear reason to gather, Mr. Obama discussed the issue with unusual thoughtfulness, they say, but gave little sign of who should prevail — the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the measure, or the community groups that supported it out of concern about crime.

What, if anything, do you think this all says about what kind of president Obama would be? A broader question: do academic types make good political leaders? Are there similarities between the skill set required to be a law professor and the one needed to be president? Or are we talking about two very different personality types here?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

In my story yesterday about a legal battle between a defense contracting firm and its former employee, I mentioned that the judge “appeared annoyed” by the sparring in the second day of cross-motions for preliminary injunctions.

That wasn’t very specific, and there are those who’ve moved for a more definite statement (or, since this is federal court, should I say a bill of particulars?). Anyway, here were some of the clues:

Shortly into plaintiff Dennis Glynn’s testimony, opposing counsel began objecting to the questions Glynn’s own lawyer was asking him. The questions improperly called for the witness to speculate or to draw legal conclusions, according to the Winston & Strawn lawyers representing Impact Science & Technology.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz overruled the first couple objections without incident but eventually could not contain his disapproval, calling the tactics of the W&S attorneys “absolutely outrageous.”

Motz said the frequency of objections during an earlier deposition was an “absolute disgrace” that reflected badly on the international firm — and set a bad example for the firm’s younger lawyers.

Later, in response to a further objection about hearsay, Motz included Glynn’s attorneys from The Employment Law Group in D.C. in his criticism.

Between the first day of the preliminary injunction hearing two weeks ago and Monday, Motz said, he had dealt with other pairs of opposing legal teams — and the difference between them and the lawyers in this case was like “night and day.”

“Unfortunately, I’m in the dead of night,” Motz said.

BRENDAN KEARNEY, Legal Affairs Writer

I never played Scrabulous, the Scrabble imitator W₄I₁L₁D₂L₁Y₄ popular on Facebook. Personally, I don’t like playing regular Scrabble because I view it as a no-win situation as someone who makes a living with words: if I lose, I’m a dope; if I win, I’m supposed to.

Still, I read with interest the decision by the Scrabulous creators to remove their game from Facebook after Scrabble-maker Hasbro filed a lawsuit against the online application developed by two brothers from India in 2005. Many of my friends played Scrabulous, among a reported 500,000 users daily, so I’m sure they were upset. Members of a Facebook group, “Save Scrabulous,” were posting last night and into this morning, annoyed at Hasbro for ending Scrabulous and replacing it with their own, inferior version.

“To say that I was disappointed is an understatement,” one wrote. “Will we ever get closure? Are thousands upon thousands of us doomed to live the rest of our profiled lives with our unfinished games in internet limbo?”

But another user pointed out Scrabulous was a blatant Scrabble knock-off and was surprised it took Hasbro this long to file a cease-and-desist order.

I guess the moral of the story is Scrabulous was quixotry. You can’t score a triple-word score circumventing copyright infringement laws.

D₂A₁N₁N₁Y₄ J₈A₁C₃O₁B₃S₁, Legal Affairs Writer, with an assist from Pholph’s Scrabble Score Generator.