You’re in trouble. You want a lawyer. And not just any lawyer. You want a scary lawyer. Pick up the phone and call Bertram “Bert” Fields, who is known as “L.A.’s scariest lawyer.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service is weighing a request by a northwestern Indian tribe to hunt gray whales as part of its religious and cultural practices.

The last time the Makah tribe of Neah Bay, Wash., conducted a legal whale hunt was in 1999, and additional hunts have been held up since 2000 by lawsuits from environmental groups and government bureaucracy.

Annette Nazareth, the only Democratic commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission, leaves office today.

She had announced her departure several months ago.

By law, the commission can have only three members of one party. The other Democratic commissioner, Roel Campos, departed in September to head Cooley Godward’s Washington office.

Jerry Springer: The Opera had its New York debut last night, as part of a two-night only stint at Carnegie Hall.

The scaled-down production, billed as a concert, was a test to see if American audiences would embrace the controversial show. Although it had a successful run in London’s West End, when the BBC decided to air a TV version of the musical, Christian groups protested loudly.

In politics, enemies need to be watched. However, it’s friends who can really cause trouble.

Failed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani learned this the hard way. His one-time pal, Bernard Kerik, kept making the wrong kind of headlines, and Giuliani suffered a kind of guilt by association.

Sen. Barack Obama, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, now finds himself in the same boat.

Two California groups, Vote Hope and PowerPac.org, are drawing national attention, and boisterous complaints from opponents, for their support of Barack Obama’s run for the presidency.

Both are operating outside the Obama campaign as 527 organizations, taking advantage of tax-code provisions that exempt them from federal spending limits. And both were founded by Steve Phillips, former president of the San Francisco School Board and son-in-law of billionaire banker Herb Sandler.

Being in the headlines is old news to Tamara Mellon.

She is the co-founder of Jimmy Choo, the high-end shoe label worn by celebrities and fashion-savvy women all over the globe. She’s the ex-wife of Matthew Mellon II, great-great-grandnephew of Andrew William Mellon, of the Mellon banking and oil dynasty. She’s been linked in the tabloids to Kid Rock, Robbie Williams, Pharrell, and Girls Gone Wild founder, Joe Francis. She’s currently dating Christian Slater.

Now, she’s suing her mother.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. may never sleep.

Gates, 57, is a Harvard professor as well as an author and editor of a shelf-load of books. He’s also the host of African American Lives, a PBS series on genealogy that begins its second season next week.

The media company co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt five years ago plans to go public.

Current Media, which operates a TV network and a web site aimed at young audiences, notified the SEC of its intentions today.

Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation, two of the Pentagon’s largest military contractors, announced last week that they are teaming up to develop a new bomber for the Air Force.

The companies are likely to face Northrop Grumman as they compete for the program, which will cost tens of billions of dollars. The fleet of B-2 bombers, the most recent bomber program, cost the Pentagon at least $40 billion.