Ahem. Where was I?

Oh yes. The mailbag.

I received two identical emails from this gentleman inside a week:

Dear popehat.com,

I hope this message finds you well. My name is Austin Staubus and I am with Lanista Concepts, a premium boutique ad-agency located in Dallas, TX. I recently discovered your website and wanted to inquire about potential advertising opportunities.

Lanista Concepts specializes in increasing ad revenue through both manual and programmatic efforts and offers the most competitive and complete monetization solution on the market. As such, we are confident we can outperform your existing solution.

Further, we specialize in certain verticals and feel this could become a mutually beneficial partnership. If you would, please put me in touch with the person or department that deals with your business development so we can discuss further.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Austin Staubus
Lanista Concepts Ad Agency
[address and phone number ommitted]

Today I responded:

Dear Mr. Staubus,

Thank you for your inquiry. I am happy to hear from a reputable agency, particularly a premium boutique.

We at Popehat are definitely interested in increasing our revenue, owing to certain recent expenses that prudence and confidentiality agreements prevent me from explaining in detail. To date our ad revenue has been disappointing. Perhaps that's because we've been focusing on manual methodologies of paradigm interstice optimization. It never even occurred to us to take a programmatic approach to monetization! That's why you're the professional and we aren't.

Though I am eager to hear more, I am concerned at your reference to "certain verticals." Which verticals are these? If our website has a horizontally-focused design, will they still work? Or does verticals refer to things that are very tall?

Also, I assume that we would have some ability to veto certain types of advertising on our own site. We are all men of the world here, Mr. Staubus, and not prudes. But there are some things that our good consciences will not permit to be advertised on our web site. We would have to have a careful conversation about certain juvenequinallian issues.

Very truly yours,

Ken
www.popehat.com

Austin was cautious, but optimistic, in response:

Hey Ken,

Thank you for your quick response. That was, hands down, the best first response I've ever received. Your website analytics look great, and we feel confident we can increase your revenue. Your reputation for quality content online is nothing short of impressive.

Here are a few facts about Lanista Concepts and how we differentiate ourselves.

A. We're a 100% fill remnant solution.
B. We focus on specific verticals.
C. Every website we work with receives a custom set up to ensure optimization (we're not a "plug and play" solution).
D. We put your inventory in front to approximately 3,000 buyers.

E. We provide seven-day-a-week ad and technical assistance.

All of the ads we run are brand-safe. You won't experience and pop-ups, pop-unders, or ads that would be intrusive. In fact, we have the ability to filter the units so our publishers don't receive ads that are contrary, or questionable, to the aim of their site.

Further, I apologize if my mention of certain verticals was unclear. By verticals, I simply mean the type of website. Our main verticals are politics and news. You would not need to change the design of your site. In fact, the layout looks great.

Finally, Lanista Concepts works with a limited number of sites. We only work with publishers we know, for a fact, we can help. We feel confident Pope Hat is one of those websites. Please let us know we can earn your business.

Sincerely,

Austin Staubus

Bored now.

Austin:

Thanks for your response! We at Pope Hat are heartened. We didn't know it was possible for someone to focus on our specific verticals. We assumed our specific verticals would go neglected. Especially Clark's.

But I have more questions.

1. You say you have the ability to filter units. Is your filter pony-compliant? Can you assure no pony content? I need assurance with Level 4 safety here. I can't and won't have it, Austin, for a pony ad to slip through and have you telling me you thought it was a stunted donkey or something.

2. What kind of methodology do you use to match appropriate ads to content? For instance, say you wanted to match ads to our series mocking spammers who send us solicitations for guest posts, even though we have been ridiculing that for years (see, for instance, http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/30/wont-anybody-think-of-the-children-and-the-ponies-and-the-ponies-attacking-the-children/) — what would you match to that? What about our series naming and shaming web advertising spammers (like so: http://www.popehat.com/2012/10/24/ponies-have-entered-the-popehat-ponies-have-entered-the-popehat/) — what would you match to that? Would you use heuristic algorithms? Are they vertically programmatic?

Very truly yours,

Ken

Maybe you think I'm being mean to Austin, by naming him here.

I'm not. Austin, and his company, need to learn an important lesson: spamming has consequences. It should.

Spamming lets companies send vast numbers of emails cheaply and hope for a few hits. Collectively it inflicts costs — strain on the infrastructure of the internet, wasted time, spam filter expenses, annoyance. That cost isn't paid by the spammers. It's paid by you, and by me.

Spammers need an incentive not to spam. This is one such incentive. Ladies and gentlemen of the marketing profession, when you spam blogs, now and then you're going to find someone like me who is going to name, shame, and ridicule you. You deserve it. You deserve it because, like a telemarketer, you're willing to annoy thousands for a handful of bites. You especially deserve it when you offer me the disrespect of a lie — when you say "Your reputation for quality content online is nothing short of impressive," as if you had any clue who we are, other than a blog email address you've gotten off of some auto-generated list.

I hope this embarrasses you, Austin Staubus of Lanista Concepts Ad Agency. The way you elect to do business makes the world a measurably worse and more irritating place.

Edited to add:

And, as a palate cleanser, one who didn't write back:

Hi,

I'm looking for a site to do a guest post on and found yours to be a fit. I have several articles on personal injury, DUI, criminal cases (and anything about law) that you might want to have on your site. I understand that you want nothing but the best pieces there so I made sure my articles are all fresh, informative, and original (absolutely free from plagiarism) . The article will have at least 300 words and will contain two links back to the site I'm developing. The piece is free!!

If you're interested, please let me know.

All the best,
Rommel

Rommel:

You magnificent bastard, I read your guest post!

But I have concerns. 300 words? That's like half of one of my mid-paragraph parenthetical comments. Also, I appreciate that you have posts on personal injury, DUI, and criminal cases. But we have very specialized interests. So I ask you: would it be possible to get a guest post on, instead of driving under the influence, riding under the influence? Preferably the post would be about riding ponies under the influence — of drugs or alcohol, not of the ponies (Of COURSE you're under the influence of the pony when you are riding it. How could you not be? They know all. They see all. We imagine we have free will, we imagine we choose our own path, but we are fools — we merely do their bidding [Their dark, pony bidding]) — but in a pinch it could be about adult horses, I suppose. Or camels. Or dromedaries. (Dromedari?)

I look forward to hearing more.

Cheers,

Ken
www.popehat.com

Here's NBC News on the first openly incarcerated-related muppet:

Alex is blue-haired and green-nosed and he wears a hoodie – you might think he’s just another carefree inhabitant of Sesame Street. But there’s sorrow in Alex’s voice when he talks about his father.

“I just miss him so much,” he tells a friend. “I usually don’t want people to know about my Dad.”

My wistful muse is piqued. Everybody sing!

DEA
Takin' your Dad away
On his way to a detention suite.

We can tell you how to get,
How to get to Sentencing Street.

Come and play.
Everything's A-OK.
Social workers here
Make sure you eat.

We can tell you when you'll get
When you'll get to Sentencing Street.

It's a penal playground ride
Once the guidelines are applied
To criminal people like–
(What's probation like?)
To people your Dad is like!
Just be dutiful….

DEA
Takin' your Mom away
On her way to a detention suite.

We can tell you how to get,
How to get to Sentencing Street.
How to get to Sentencing Street.
How to get to…

Cue MPAA PG-13 Rating Screen. Cue Dreamworks logo, in association with Disney.

Close up of Matt Damon from behind and over right shoulder, clad in black leather jacket, wearing VR glasses, typing furiously at a keyboard before a monitor displaying mulitcolored images of geometric figures.

Announcer: "Meet Case. He's a hacker."

Tracking shot to close-up of Damon, on a night-time Tokyo street corner, the sky lit by images of Anime figures and [K-Pop singer the studio's parent company needs to promote at time of release], handing a compact disc to a Gunjin [see source novelization], and receiving a credit chip in return.

Cut to medium shot of Emily Blount, wearing Versace leather, Prada shoes, and mirrored sunglasses, performing a disarming martial arts move on [affordable character actor resembling Ray Liotta, or Liotta if negotiable].

Announcer: "Meet Molly. She's a career girl, hiding a secret behind those mirrored sunglasses."

Cut to close-up of Blount, emerging from shower, strategic mist around her body, raising her hands in a motion resembling prayer. Blount's lacquered fingernails morph from red to liquid silver [instruct FX library to lease T-1000 FX from Cameron], revealing them to be knives.

Cut to distance telephoto shot of Will Smith walking forward, clad in hair extension dreadlocks, a ripped sweater revealing Smith's abs, jeans, and motorcycle boots. Smith holds a sawed-off shotgun in each hand, elbows turned upwards. Greenscreen behind Smith shows [Gothic Spaceship Interior #9], with a neon sign behind Smith, flashing the word "ZION".

Announcer: "And Malcolm, her best friend."

Musical Cue: [Standard THWOP-THWOP noise #7]. Fade to black.

Interior shot of 1957 Cadillac El Dorado on night-lit LA freeway, Smith driving, Blount, in passenger seat, extended from window firing AK-47 at unseen object behind, Damon in rear compartment, wearing VR goggles, typing furiously at laptop.

Announcer: "They're about to commit the greatest theft of all time."

Cut to medium shot of a bar, with two patrons and a robot bartender. First patron is John Malkovich, clad in [Corrupt Businessman Heavy Three Piece Suit #6]. Second is [Generic German heavy actor resembling Rutger Hauer, or Hauer if affordable].

Malkovich, in German accent: "I want them in the games, until they die playing!"

Hauer: "Ja!"

Announcer: "If they don't get killed first."

Cut to medium-close [Gothic Spaceship interior #12], Damon, not wearing VR goggles, speaking to Smith.

Damon: "Still, she's got spirit. You think, a razorgirl and guy like me?"

Smith: "Don't worry, be happy mon."

Cut to [Alpine Lake Hotel Vista # 2], semi-close shot, Damon and Blount seated close at [Intimate Dinner Table #5], [prop steak #4] before Damon, [prop salad #2] before Blount.

Damon: "I love you, Molly."

Blount: "We've got business, Case."

Close-up, same set: Damon and Blount embrace, and kiss across the table.

Cut to shot of [Starfighter #4], pursued by [Starcruiser #3], panning to [Midtechlevel Space Station #11], draw back wide to Greenscreen starfield.

Announcer: "This Holiday Season, Steven Spielberg presents NEUROMANCER, in theaters across the Matrix!"

Fade to black.

This year we combined the bioethics and economics final exams, and simplified it to one question. This will be a test of your mathematical skills, your reading comprehension, and your ethical intuitions. It's a bit of a trick question, so please read carefully.

First, read the following two quotes.

http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause – it is seen. The others unfold in succession – they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference – the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal,

…

The advantages which officials advocate are those which are seen. This blinds all eyes.

…

I must beg you, gentlemen, to pay some little regard to arithmetic, at least

and

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/sarah-murnaghan-lung-transplant-ruling-kathleen-sebelius-92299.html

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan to be moved to the adult lung transplant list, giving her a better chance of receiving a potentially life-saving transplant.

Now, the question:

There are 500 people who need lungs and 20 lung donors. What is the name of the person who was to have received this pair of lungs but who will now die?

http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/

Has entertainment value.

"Perhaps I should not say 'terrorists' so rashly. But you can see how tempting it is."

All the Popehat authors are deeply busy with life right now and there's not much blogging, but I'm sure that I don't speak only for myself when I say "Edward Snowden, F____ yeah!"

My Dear Wormwood,

Your suggestion that I "sign up" for something called "Twitter" is noted, and rejected. I gather from your rapturous description of the thing that "tweeting" is one of the ephemera through which the humans chatter with one another using their internet. Having been promoted from the front lines to a policy-making position some centuries ago, I no longer have interest in corresponding with the vermin through physical means. On the occasions when I do desire the society of humans there is no shortage of them here in Hell, where one can communicate with them in terms rather more frank than is possible on Earth.

In your enthusiasm for the nuts and bolts of the humans' technology, you seem to miss the opportunities it offers.  For example, you boast that your patient, in discussing the most recent controversy occupying the humans' fleeting attention, rebuked another of the beasts in terms profane and sacrilegious, as though this was some great sin. While it is always pleasing to Our Father Below when the man utters a sacrilege, we long ago degraded their speech, particularly in America, to a level barely more articulate than the hoots and grunts of the apes from which they claim to descend.

The great sin, which your patient failed as thoroughly as you to appreciate, was that he entered the discussion in the first place. Think of it, Wormwood, at the moment your patient "clicked the upvote button" in the expectation that his demand would grant the girl a long life, he arrogated to himself that power which belongs solely to the Enemy. In his pride, the fool presumes that he is as qualified to decide the best use of the lung as a transplant surgeon, when in fact he has no medical training and his sense of ethics is limited to parroting platitudes he was taught by older parrots in his half-forgotten school days.

This misplaced pride is particularly common among the American humans. Make no mistake: The idea on which their republic was founded, that all men are born equal in the Enemy's sight, is a noxious and pestilential notion which, if the humans properly understood and followed it, would be the ruin of many of our plans. We want every man to think of himself as better or worse than his brother. If a man thinks himself his brother's superior (whether he actually is or not is of little concern to us), we can foster the pleasing sins of pride, wrath, tyranny, and at the best of times the mass murders and genocides which brought so many to Our Father's House in the last century. If he knows himself to be his brother's inferior, we may reap a crop of envy, resentment, false humility, deceit, despair, and suicide.

But as to equality, under the guidance of the Low Command we have largely nullified the meaning of the word, as the Enemy understands it. Rather than the (self-evident) truth that before the Enemy all men are fallen, and so low in His sight as to deserve none of the gifts He has given them through grace alone, in modern parlance equality is understood to mean that each man is actually the equal of his fellow. Thus the fool thinks it virtuous to blather in the company of the wise man, and the ignorant feel it an injustice when rebuked by their betters for empty-headed prattle. This trend has only accelerated since humans created the internet.

And so we come to the events of yesterday, when a herd of cattle, your patient among them, lowed so loudly at being shown a picture of a young girl denied an organ transplant that it now appears the girl will receive the cast-off lung, whether or not she was of suitable age to receive the organ, and in disregard of longstanding rules on which others of the vermin based their expectations. You can be sure that not a one of the brutes considered that in "giving" life to the object of his fancy, he was just as surely taking it from another. In the Roman colosseum, the plebs knew full well that their roars condemned Christians to death. In the modern arena, the plebs dupe themselves that their roaring is righteous.

Thanks to seeds planted long ago by the Lowerarchy, we can expect more such harvests in the future. As the number of the humans increases, their competition for finite resources will grow keener. We have taught mankind to believe that such resources should be allocated arbitrarily, to she who is most popular or to he who cries most loudly of his need, rather than according to rules, laws, or anything approaching such rationality as their little minds can muster. The so-called leaders of their societies, whom we have well in hand, will be only too happy to appease the mob.

Finally, I concur with your facile observation that it benefits our cause for the girl get her lung (the death of a child, while pleasing to the senses, does us no good since we probably cannot get her soul), but the disposition of a piece of dead tissue is of no importance in the long run. What matters is we are fast approaching the day when, by showing the humans a picture of a wounded puppy or a homeless kitten, we can provoke in them such squalls of outrage that they will abandon their laws, their morals, and their reason.

Your affectionate uncle,

Screwtape

There's an old joke about prog rock: "it's the only musical genre where 23:17 could be either the time signature or the track length".

Anyway, I'm a fan of prog rock. A big fan.

In other news, I'm also white, middle aged, male, and have a bigger waist line than I should. All of which should have been pretty well predicted by your priors before beginning this paragraph.

What's not utterly predicted by my demographics is that I'm also a fan of rap and of mashups. So, yes, I'm all over
Girl Talk (Go download the free "All Day" right now, if you haven't already).

So, anyway, when I stumbled into a rap / prog mashup this morning I just had to listen to it a dozen times.

Now it's your turn.

It begins:

'Political action involves mental vulgarity," wrote Michael Oakeshott in 1939, "not merely because it entails the concurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the false simplification of human life implied in even the best of its purposes." Economist Arnold Kling says something similar in "The Three Languages of Politics."

Mr. Kling's three "languages" are ways of talking about politics and government, and they align roughly with the progressive, conservative and libertarian viewpoints. Progressives, Mr. Kling thinks, typically express opinions using an "oppressed-oppressor axis": societal problems are envisioned mainly as forms of oppression of the weak by the strong. Conservatives favor a "civilization-barbarism axis" and worry about how to defend traditional values and institutions. Libertarians use a "freedom-coercion axis" in which the threat is governmental encroachment on individual choice.

One reason American political culture has become polarized and uncivil, Mr. Kling believes, is that each side puts its contentions almost exclusively in terms of its favored language, and fails to see that contrary opinions are manifestations of a different language rather than evidence of stupidity or duplicity.

Read the rest of the review at the WSJ.

One can buy the e-book at Amazon for $1.99. I just did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test

The Ideological Turing Test is a concept invented by American economist Bryan Caplan to test whether a political or ideological partisan correctly understands the arguments of his or her intellectual adversaries: the partisan is invited to answer questions or write an essay posing as his opposite number. If neutral judges cannot tell the difference between the partisan's answers and the answers of the opposite number, the candidate is judged to correctly understand the opposing side. The ideological Turing test is so named because of its similarity with the Turing test, a test whereby a machine is required to fool a neutral judge into thinking that it is human.

The idea was first mooted by Caplan in 2011 in response to Paul Krugman's claim that, in the context of US politics, liberals understand conservatives (and libertarians) better than conservatives (and libertarians) understand liberals. Borrowing the idea of the Turing test used to judge whether machines can pass themselves off as human, Caplan suggested the ideological Turing test as a way to impartially test Krugman's claim: whichever side understands the other better would perform better on an ideological Turing test. He also offered to take the test himself and offered to bet that libertarians could more easily pass themselves off as liberal than liberals could pass themselves off as libertarian.

Caplan's post was praised by Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy blog.

The Ideological Turing test is important because it lets us disambiguate two different cases:

1) my opponent does not agree with position X because he is too stupid / ignorant / confused to understand position X

2) my opponent does not agree with position X because he has considered it and found it wanting.

Today we've secretly replaced your regular Clark with Folger's Clark; let's see if you notice the difference.

Please ask me anything about politics, religion, culture, economics, the family, gay marriage, the Obama scandals, immigration, the Republican party, libertarians, etc. I will answer it as a mainstream liberal US Democrat. Then you may judge how well I do.

All of Popehat's Prenda coverage is collected here.

There have been many small-to-medium developments in the Prenda Law saga. I'm preparing for trial, so I won't be covering them any time soon. But I will leave you with one: a consequence for a Prenda Law lawyer in the Ninth Circuit.

You may recall that Prenda figure Paul Hansmeier has dabbled in representing people objecting to proposed class action settlements. Apparently Mr. Hansmeier was seeking admission to the bar of the Ninth Circuit in order to represent an objector on the Groupon class action. The Ninth Circuit, having seen Judge Wright's order, is less than welcoming in an order by an appellate commissioner:

On April 5, 2013, attorney Paul R. Hansmeier entered his notice of appearance as counsel of record for Objector-Appellant Padraigin Browne. At that time, Hansmeier’s application for admission to the bar of the Ninth Circuit was pending.

On May 15, 2013, the court ordered that Hansmeier’s application for admission be held in abeyance pending the outcome of his referral to the Minnesota State Bar and the Central District of California Standing Committee on Discipline in Ingenuity 13 LLC v. Doe, No. 2:12-cv-8333-ODW(JCx) (C.D. Cal. May 6, 2013) (Order Imposing Sanctions). See In re Hansmeier, No. 13-80114.

Because Hansmeier’s application for admission to the court’s bar cannot be approved at this time, he cannot represent parties in this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 46(a); 9th Cir. R. 46-1.2. Accordingly, within 14 days after the filing of this order, Hansmeier shall withdraw from this case. Hansmeier’s notice of withdrawal shall contain proof that he has informed Browne that Hansmeier cannot represent him in this court and that Browne may obtain new counsel or represent himself. Hansmeier’s notice of withdrawal shall also contain contact information for Browne unless a notice of substitution of counsel has been filed by the time Hansmeier files his notice of withdrawal.

Failure timely to comply with this order may result in sanctions.

In other words: no, Paul, you can't have admission to the Ninth Circuit until this is cleared up, and we won't let you represent a client before us in the interim.

Actions have consequences.

(Thanks to a tipster for word of this order)

An update about the True Authorship of the Pirate Resignation Letter– now with 100% more Angus scrotum:

Back in April, in the comment thread of a post about our recondite plans for global dominion, a Popehat visitor using the nick "Will Nobilis" seemed to claim authorship of the well-known Pirate Resignation Letter. In one comment, Will Nobilis wrote,

"…a random web search led me to find out Ken and Patrick (and someone named Mike) wrote about my pirate resignation letter…."

This claim surprised me, so I poked around for other posts by Will Nobilis, and, behold!, appended to Ken's variant of "The Nymph's Reply" there was the following humblebrag from 2011:

"I am glad to see it has made it to a site I frequently enjoy reading and I hope it brought you as much amusement as it did for me to write it and send it to my bosses back then."

In Will's claim I detected a whiff of Alvarez. So I asked him to clarify. I haven't bothered to grep the logs for a visit from him to that page since then, but we haven't noticed his nick or IP since. Whatevs….

This little episode is what prompted my recent post on The Origin of the Pirate Resignation Letter. A few years ago, by the usual means, I had traced the PRL back as far as the early aughties–specifically, to the third of May 18082001–and had come up with a tentative attribution: "As far as I've been able to tell through clever googling in my favorite search engine, the renowned and much beloved Pirate Resignation Letter was written by Chris Castle…." This Castle chap had posted in a forum, now defunct, under the nick "The Bartender" and had stated that

"In the interest of disclosure I should note …[that t]he entirety of the letter was not drafted by solely myself[.] I prefer to think of myself as the 'Producer' of the document".

As if summoned by low-tier conjuration, a Popehat commenter named "The Bartender" bearing email and IP affinity to Castle turned up to comment on the thread (without disclaiming credit): "Thank you for finding this!…" In neither case did the drinkslinger cited a source.

Anyhow, I don't mean to get exercised, but the pilates thickens: there's new evidence that may set the record straight. For comes now a future reader of Popehat, the humble, scoundrel-hatin' Rob G——-, who intimates that all the preceding claimants, real or imagined, are right bastards, and who adduces credible evidence to support his own authorship. He confirms that he was not posting as "Will Nobilis" and that he ain't "The Bartender". By email, RG explains:

A friend of mine sent me a link to a recent post you guys made about the supposed "original" author of the pirate resignation letter.  (To wit: http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/24/origin-of-the-pirate-resignation-letter/)  She suggested I send you a note and square the issue – because I indeed wrote the pirate resignation letter in the winter of 2000.

I've been gratified for over a decade that it's been re-posted and reused more than a few times, but I don't believe I've ever before seen someone attempt to claim authorship, until now.  As such, I direct your attention to the following link on the Internet Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010408002129/http://www.i-resign.com/uk/letters/ViewLetter.asp?ResignationID=91

As a bit of background, I was a miserable IT guy at Merrill Lynch back in the 1990's, and during the waning moments of my career I took to writing resignation letters as a bit of a hobby.  Two of the ones I wrote I later forwarded on to i-resign.com, and the pirate letter was the one I actually did use as my resignation letter from Merrill in December of 2000.  The "Chris" mentioned in the letter was my boss at the time, a guy named Chris O——-, and the word "porcine" was actually "bovine" in the original letter.  (When you work for a company with a large, scrotum-displaying bull as its logo, it's obvious to see the reasons for my use of the term.)  The eventual recipient of my actual resignation letter was a gentleman named John F——-, who had, at time of receipt, long been convinced of my eccentric incompatibility with Merrill.

Someone sent me a link years ago to a reply I suppose you guys did – it was droll and appreciated.  I don't really want any notoriety or "credit," but I wanted to set the record straight – I don't like liars.

Best,

Rob G——-

Various journalists are claiming they have seen a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack.

This led to the most darling legal threat ever from a lawyer named Dennis Morris — who has represented Ford for some time — to Gawker:

Update: We've received an email from Dennis Morris, a gentleman with a hotmail.com email address purporting to be Ford's attorney. Here is the message. We haven't corrected its formatting.

Greetings;I am a lawyer,and have been contacted by Mayor Ford's office in reference to your indicating you will post a photo of Mayor Ford smoking crack cocaine. Mayor Ford denies such took place,and if such posting occurs,it is false and defamatory,and you will be held legally accountable.In reference to the photo,you wish to publish, Mayor Ford has his photo taken daily,sometimes with others.

If the person you mention is now deceased,it is sad,regardless of his alleged background.

Please govern yourself accordingly.

Dennis Morris.

This is delightful, like that video of the kitten freaking out when it sees a lizard.

First, nobody ever governed themselves accordingly based on a threat from a hotmail account. Second, are you using some sort of comma-based operating system? Third, what the fuck are you talking about?

This sets a high bar.

I'm in trial preparation mode, so this will be brief.

A publisher in India called OMICS Publishing Group has threatened to sue a blogger named Jeffrey Beal, who runs a blog called Scholarly Open Access. Beal critiques open-access publishing venues, and and ran a post asserting that OMICS engages in spamming and bait-and-switch. OMICS' threat would be mundane, except that its lawyer, Ashok Ram Kumar of the Indian firm IP Markets, has chosen to be so very ridiculous. He's threatening to sue for $1 billion, and to seek criminal penalties in India.

In India, Section 66A of the Information Technology Act makes it illegal to use a computer to publish "any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character" or to publish false information. The punishment can be as much as three years in prison.

Lawyer, please.

Mr. Beal has little to fear from civil or criminal proceedings in India unless he wants to travel there.

First, if OMICS gets a civil judgment against him from India, they won't be able to enforce it here. The SPEECH Act prohibits any federal or state court in the United States from recognizing or enforcing a foreign judgment for defamation unless (1) the judgment creditor can prove that the foreign court offers equivalent protections for free speech as the defendant would have enjoyed in United States courts under the First Amendment, or (2) the judgment creditor can prove he or she would have prevailed even under the stricter standards in the United States.

Second, if OMICS seeks criminal charges against Mr. Beall in India, they won't be able to extradite him there. Like most extradition treaties, the treaty between the United States and India requires dual criminality — that is, that the offense is a crime in both countries. Hurting fee-fees isn't a crime in the United States. Moreover, under these circumstances, the chance that the U.S. Departments of State or Justice would cooperate with extradition requests is effectively zero.

So. OMICS can sue in the United States. If they do so, they'll have to satisfy their burden under U.S. law — for instance, by showing that Mr. Beall made provably false statements of fact. Attorney Kumar's bluster does not encourage confidence that they will be able to do so:

The rambling, six-page letter argues that Mr. Beall's blog is "ridiculous, baseless, impertinent," and "smacks of literal unprofessionalism and arrogance." The letter also accuses Mr. Beall of racial discrimination and attempting to "strangle the culture of open access publications."

"All the allegation that you have mentioned in your blog are nothing more than fantastic figment of your imagination by you and the purpose of writing this blog seems to be a deliberate attempt to defame our client," the letter reads. "Our client perceive the blog as mindless rattle of a incoherent person and please be assured that our client has taken a very serious note of the language, tone, and tenure adopted by you as well as the criminal acts of putting the same on the Internet."

Let us know how that works out for you, Mr. Kumar. Remember: you can't say "all the publishing credibility of COMIC SANS" without OMICS.

Remember Joseph Rakofsky? He's the brand-new lawyer who thought it was prudent and appropriate to attempt, as his first trial, the defense of a man accused of murder. Havoc ensued. A federal judge granted Rakofsky's request to withdraw, which coincided with the defendant's request for a new lawyer, and granted a mistrial. In doing so the judge said that in the alternative he would have granted a new trial based on Rakofsky's incompetence:

I must say that even when I acquired [sic -- probably "inquired of"] Mr. Deaner [the defendant], I — as to whether or not, when the Court found out through opening, at least near end of the opening statement, which went on at some length for over an hour, that Mr. Rakofsky had never tried a case before. And, quite frankly, it was evident, in portions of the trial that I saw, that Mr. Rakofsky — put it this way: I was astonished that someone would purport to represent someone in a felony murder case who had never tried a case before and that local counsel, Mr. Grigsby, was complicit in this.

It appeared to the Court that there were theories out there defense theories out there, but the inability to execute those theories. It was apparent to Court that there was a — not a good grasp of legal principles and legal procedure of what was admissible and what was not admissible that inured, I think, to t detriment of Mr. Deaner. And had there been — If there had been a conviction in this case, based on what I had seen so far, I would have granted a motion for a new trial under 23.110.

So I am going to grant Mr. Deaner's request for new counsel. I believe both – it is a choice that he has knowingly and intelligently made and he understood that it's a waiver of his rights. Alternatively, I would find that they are based on my observation of the conduct of the trial manifest necessity. I believe that the performance was below what any reasonable perrson could expect in a murder trial.

And later in that hearing . . .

And I think that the – As I said, it became readily apparent that the performance was not up to par under any reasonable standard of competence under the Sixth Amendment.

This was widely reported, resulting in Rakofsky suing a ridiculous array of news outlets and lawbloggers, and stubbornly pursuing those claims in what became known as "Rakofsky versus the Internet."

Last week he lost — a judge granted motions to dismiss his case. That represented two major victories last week for Marc Randazza, who not only represented many lawbloggers in Rakofsky's case, but also crushed infamous copyright troll Righthaven on appeal. This will not make him any easier to live with.

Rakofsky's lead argument was that he was defamed because his detractors reported that a judge had declared a mistrial based on his incompetence, when in fact the judge had declared a mistrial based on the defendant's request and had only said that in the alternative he would have granted a mistrial based on Rakofsky's incompetence. The correct rejection of this argument is a good example of the substantial truth doctrine, also known as the "gist" or "sting of it" doctrine — the rule that says that a statement isn't defamatory if the main insulting thrust of it is true. So, if you accuse me of molesting squirrels in a public park, and I sue you for defamation on the grounds that my companion was a chipmunk and I was in the storm drain adjacent to the park, my defamation suit against you should not survive. (Unless, I suppose, we live in a community where squirrels are held in high esteem but chipmunks are generally despised.) Here, it was patently ridiculous for Rakofksy to maintain that the "mistrial resulting from incompetence" story was meaningfully misleading or false. The trial judge was brutally frank in his evaluation of Rakofsky's ability, and trial judges don't just go around letting defendants change lawyers mid-trial for no reason.

There are a few lessons to learn from this regrettable affair.

1. Our legal system is so broken that it can take years to resolve even the most patently vexatious, harassing, and incompetently prosecuted lawsuits like this one.

2. Rakofsky doubled down. Had he slunk away after his grave error in judgment, giving thanks that his rashness did not lead to someone being convicted, he might have learned the trade, become a competent lawyer, and overcome a brief flurry of bad publicity. Instead, he chose to file a vexatious lawsuit. Now he belongs to the ages. He will never, in the half a century he has left to him, live this down.

3. Yielding to censorious thuggery like Rakofsky's is harmful to your reputation. Cowardly and unprincipled University of St. Thomas School of Law, I'm looking at you. You yielded to a frivolous suit and taught your students and alumni a terrible lesson about being a lawyer and a citizen. You encouraged vexatious and speech-chilling litigation. Let your cringing suckitude be proclaimed throughout the land.

4. Judge Wright's photon torpedo salvo notwithstanding, most judges are reluctant to award sanctions even against conduct that richly deserves it. Here the judge declined to award sanctions against Rakofksy. I'm inclined to agree with Scott that Rakofsky's youth, inexperience, and nationwide humiliation probably stayed the judge's sanctioning hand.

5. If you want the law to be an instrument of self-actualization, start a blog. Law practice — the profession of providing services to clients who need you — is not your personal voyage of self-discovery and empowerment. If you practice as a lawyer, you owe it to your clients only to do the things you are competent to do. Embarking on the defense of a man accused of murder as your first trial is a moral and ethical outrage. Regrettably, the profession is barraged with eager voices telling us that attracting clients with puffery and keywords and Twitter accounts is the way to build a practice. Nobody's reminding us that you have an obligation to know what you're doing before you accept the client. Somebody should.