Crittenden's souvenirs. The Herald's gung-ho embedded reporter, Jules Crittenden, has not only been cleared in the matter of those souvenirs he grabbed in Iraq, but the US Customs Service has actually returned most of them to him.

At least that's what this account in today's Herald says.

Here's an April 25 Globe story by Geoff Edgers and Mark Jurkowitz on the initial inquiry. And here is a commentary by the Poynter Institute's Bob Steele that was posted to Poynter.org on April 23.

Crittenden shouldn't have done it; Steele went so far as to call what Crittenden and other reporters did an example of "terrible ethical judgment." Plenty of other reporters came back empty-handed.

But apparently Crittenden has been proved right about this: it wasn't a criminal matter.