Former Detroit City Attorney Kathleen Leavey, who resigned under fire after referring to a city court covering a majority black district as a "Ghetto Court," is suing for racial discrimination.

Although Leavey, who is white, does not claim that many of her best friends are black, she does believe her comment was, of course, taken out of context and misunderstood by touchy black people.  Black people who would never have been demoted or pressured for saying the same thing.

"In making the remark, Leavey meant that the 36th District Court was regarded in the community as providing very poor and inefficient service because, in fact, it provides very poor and inefficient service," Leavey alleged in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit. "Leavey's comment had nothing to do with race."

In filing her suit, Leavey joins a long list of white people outraged by the double standard at play in America, where Chris Rock can crack jokes about the difference between "ni***rs" and "black people," while a white person saying the same thing faces ostracism and shame.  Why, no one complains when black people repeat Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck if…" routine.

"There's not many things worse than being called a racist, particularly in print and broadcast media," [Leavey's attorney James] Fett said. "This has been devastating to Kathleen."

Indeed, and sadly "stupid" is not one of those things that are worse than being called racist.  Giving Leavey the benefit of every doubt, that's the worst one can say of her.   In a country with a history like America's, where real, living black people remember being denied the right to vote, and being forced to live in actual ghettos by law in the south, or by redlining and de facto discrimination in northern cities including Detroit, it is profoundly and colossally stupid for a politically appointed city attorney to describe courts in majority-black districts as "Ghetto Courts."

No one has a civil right to be an idiot.

Kids Prefer Cheese is one of the more consistently amusing blogs on the web, exploring humor at the intersection between political science and economics.  Yes, there is such a thing.  And they've posed an interesting question:

People, can this be real?? Zach Wamp?? Thaddeus McCotter??? Roscoe Bartlett?? Is this the US Congress or the Dukes of Hazard??

How is it that people with names like Zach Wamp rise so effortlessly to the United States House of Representatives?  It would seem that a child born with the name "Barney Frank" or "Hank Johnson" has equal odds of ending his career in Congress, or at the Fillin' Station.

Without mousing over, which of these quotes comes from a real football conference commissioner, and which from the Onion?

Sample #1:

He understands that much of the country has been raised on the expanded postseasons of the NBA and baseball, but that college football remains unique.

"To be honest with you, I never ever want to be able to hope they would see a December or January football madness," Delany said. "To do to college football what we've done to college basketball, that's too big a price for me to pay — a series of months and months of meaningless games."

Sample #2:

"Imagine if we'd let this happen—if we had let, say, Boise State play for the championship after all the filthy happiness and cheering they inspired," a vomit-drenched, glassy-eyed Scott said from his hospital bed. "College football as we know it barely survived them upsetting Oklahoma. If we had let teams compete in a—a—a playoff, as they call it, the resulting combination of joy and true competition would have gone against everything the BCS stands for."

You can tell, of course, but the juxtaposition in time was striking.  Note that the satirical article appeared before the genuine article.

The tiny country of Moldova was once the Romanian province of Bessarabia.  Though predominantly Romanian in population, Bessarabia was forcibly amputated from Romania by Stalin in 1945, ostensibly as punishment for siding with Germany, but really because it had Europe's largest oilfields.  After undergoing the horrors of communism, including mass executions, deportations, and imprisonment of anyone deemed unreliable, Moldova remained a part of the Soviet Union until the dissolution of that tyranny, but has stayed under Russia's thumb since.  While today even Russia isn't ruled by a communist party (Putin's Unity Party could be better described as Peronist), Moldova remains the sole European state ruled by communists.

Which is just the way Putin and Medvedev like it.  Despite past obvious vote-rigging, on Sunday the Communist Party of Moldova "won" parliamentary elections with just over 50% of the vote.  The opposition claims the vote was rigged again.  And young Moldovans aren't happy.

The tiny republic of Moldova erupted in violence today as anti-communist demonstrators stormed the parliament in protest at what they said were rigged elections.

Angry crowds smashed windows and threw furniture and computers from the building after overwhelming riot police in the capital Chisinau. Up to 20,000 people were said to be on the streets, many chanting "Freedom, freedom" and "Down with the communists".

At least 30 protesters and police were reported hurt in clashes. Police fired tear gas and water cannon to try to regain control as the demonstrators, many of them students, lit fires and attacked a nearby presidential administration building.

20,000 people organizing in such a short time is quite a feat.  Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, claims it's a pre-orchestrated plot by the European Union, which must be news to actual Europeans, whose governments can't agree on a uniform tariff for cheese.

In fact, the outside agitating forces are American in origin, though they're international now.  You probably know them.  They're your friends Facebook and Twitter.

If you asked me about the prospects of a Twitter-driven revolution in a low-tech country like Moldova a week ago, my answer would probably be a qualified "no". Today, however, I am no longer as certain. If you bothered  to check the most popular discussions on Twitter in the last 48 hours, you may have stumbled upon a weird threat of posts marked with a tag "#pman" (it's currently listed in Twitter's "Trending Topics" along with "Apple Store", Eminem, and Easter).

No, "pman" is not short for "pacman"; it stands for "Piata Marii Adunari Nationale", which is Romanian name for the biggest square in Chisinau, Moldova's capital.

Which is precisely where the crowds are.  Though it's around midnight in Chisinau, in the five minutes it's taken me to write this post there have been 72 new twitters/tweets with the hash-tag #pman.  Most are in Romanian, but a growing number are appearing in English, as the world takes notice.

I'm about to add one myself.  Too often, Americans think of the internet as a way to chat or to shop.  Those are wonderful things, but the internet also provides a communication tool that can change the world.

Which is why the World so desperately wants to control it.

What would lead BYU's student paper, the Daily Universe, to recall and destroy its entire 18,000-copy daily run? Well, for instance, this:

In referring to activities at the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last weekend, the caption read in part, “Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostates and other general authorities raise their hands in a sustaining vote. . . .”

Whoops.

I've been lax in not writing about Steve Beirfeldt, the staffer for Ron Paul's Campaign for America who recorded his run-in with suspicious TSA cops at St. Louis airport. Radley Balko and Scott Greenfield, among many others, already commented on TSA's interrogation of Beirfelt, in which the TSA displayed deep suspicion of his possession of around four grand in cash and characteristic outrage that he would stand on his rights and demand that they clarify their basis for detaining him and whether he was required to answer their questions.

Now the TSA has issues a statement in response to the story; both Radley and Scott have commentary worth reading on it. The pertinent part of the statement, after the jump:

Continue Reading »

I did that in 1993, thank you very much, especially to the friends who've suggested that I should.  Instead this year I believe I'll just watch the game on tv with Mrs. Me and the dogs.

Still…

One of my employees was just in a fender-bender. A lady in the next lane was not paying attention to what she was doing and veered into the back panel of his car. No injuries, minor damage.

The lady had (or at least claimed to have) no license, no registration, and no insurance.

When the cops showed up, they said there was nothing they could do about that, and that they wouldn't even take a report, because the DMV wouldn't suspend her license or registration if she didn't have license and registration.

So the woman drove away.

Huh?

How do my clients wind up with all of those driving-without-a-license or driving-without-insurance priors, if the cops aren't citing people for this?

I suspect the cops were late for lunch.

Cynthia Moreno hated the Central California town of Coalinga. She didn't hate it because it sounds rather like a sex act illegal in Arkansas. She hated it because she grew up there and found it stultifying and banal. So what did she do? Well, this is the new century. And Moreno — though a student at UC Berkeley — is a young person. So naturally she wrote a rant about Coalinga — creatively entitled "An Ode to Coalinga" — on her MySpace page, which apparently containing unflattering references to the fair city and its inhabitants.

There was a time when such a rant would have been issued verbally to teen friends, or written badly on ripped-out lined notebook paper. By necessity it would have had a limited audience. But as I mentioned, this is the new century. So Cynthia Moreno's Ode was accessible to anyone who read her MySpace page. One such person told another such person, and so on, and before you knew it, one Roger Campbell, the principal of Coalinga High School, had sent it to a friend who arranged for it to be printed on the editorial page of the Coalinga Record, which despite how it sounds is a newspaper and not a reference to a prior conviction. By then Moreno had taken down the Ode from her MySpace page, but it was too late — the Ode was published and attributed to her. Some of the inhabitants of Coalinga took offense and subjected Moreno's family to abuse and even death threats, forcing them to flee the city.

So what happened next? Oh, you know what happened next. Even if this is the new century, this is still America. The Moreno family sued the paper, the school district, and the principal, claiming (among other things) invasion of privacy.

But here's the thing — something posted on a publicly accessible page on the internet is, by definition, no longer private. You might feel that it's private, but your subjective feelings are irrelevant and, frankly, full of shit. As the Court of Appeal said in affirming the dismissal of Moreno's privacy cause of action,

Here, Cynthia publicized her opinions about Coalinga by posting the Ode on myspace.com, a hugely popular internet site. Cynthia's affirmative act made her article available to any person with a computer and thus opened it to the public eye. Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material.

Exactly. The fact that the Moreno family was threatened is unacceptable, and any person caught threatening them should be prosecuted. But ultimately what happened to the Moreno family is no different than if Cynthia Moreno was mouthing off about Coalinga to a crowd downtown and someone wrote a story about it. Words have social consequences. Generally, those consequences have their root in other people's freedom of expression. If you don't want your opinion about something to be widely known and to reflect upon you, then don't shout it in the public square — or don't post it on an unprotected page on the internet, which is the functional equivalent. You may get lucky, and nobody may hear you. The square — both the physical one, and the digital one — is crowded and noisy, after all. But if someone does take notice, blame yourself, not them.

Edit: By the way, I should point out that in the unpublished portion of the Court's opinion, it reversed and remanded the case for Moreno's cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress, finding that the trial court should not have dismissed it. Looking into that angle now.

Further edit: No joy finding the unpublished opinion so far. Still looking.

Final edit: Eugene Volokh found the unpublished portion of the opinion, and has thoughts on why it is bad law.

The scene: a park, where I am watching Evan (now 8 ) play his first T-ball game of the season (one home run, two doubles, seven outs as first baseman) while Abby (now 5) and Elaina (now 2) play in the grass next to a wash.

Then suddenly:

ELAINA: FUCKS!

ME: . . .

ELAINA: FUCKS FUCKS!

ME: I beg your pardon.

ELAINA: FUCKS!

ME: Surely this is your mother's influence.

ABBY: She means ducks. We see ducks.

ME: Really?

ELAINA: DUCKS!

So we go see the ducks. The ducks, I note, quickly waddle away in the trickle of water across the wash when the girls approach the fence.

ME: (suspiciously) Were you being nice to the ducks?

ABBY: (indignant) Yes!

ELAINA: Yes!

ME: Really? You were being nice?

ABBY: Yes! We threw sticks at them!

There are many reasons to be appalled, horrified, and saddened at the terrible spree killing at the Birmingham, New York immigration services clinic today.

But conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel (rhymes with "pustule") knows exactly what the real tragedy is:

Many of the people there weren't screaming or pleading for mercy in REAL AMERICAN, but were talking in SOME FOREIGN LANGUAGE.

But it looks like most of those who were at the American Civic Association at the time of the rampage didn't speak English. And yet, most were there to take the citizenship test.

That's not all. Every DAY people who are murdered or raped or assaulted in this country turn out to be foreigners who don't belong here and can't even talk English. Everyone cries for them. But who cries for people like Debbie, who are traumatized by the knowledge that they shouldn't have been here to be killed or raped or assaulted in the first place? Where's your compassion then, huh?

Hat tip to Sadly, No.

In the latest setback for my hope that the mainstream media will treat international adoption as something other than a freakshow or a punchline, Madonna's effort to adopt another child from Malawi has been rejected on the grounds that she was apparently unwilling to fulfill Malawi's residency requirement.

"The decision came down to residency requirement and the fact that the judge believes she was being well taken care of in the orphanage," said Zione Ntaba, a spokeswoman for the Malawi Justice Department.

"For the Malawians, the fact that the child is at an orphanage, is being taken care of and is going through the school education system, that does qualify as the best interests of a child," Ntaba added.

Predictably, this is generating two species of asshattery. Species one: the sentiment that all international adoption is the product of the accessory-seeking whims of flighty rich white people. Species two: the sentiment that this is a terrible decision, because of course the child would have a "better life" with Madonna.

Certainly the child would have a more materially fortunate life with the Material Girl. (OK, sorry.) But the question of whether that life would be "better" in other ways lies at the heart of the dilemma of international adoption. Without diving headlong into the question today, I submit this: the child's life would not be "better" in a way that justifies exempting an aging pop star from Malawi's residency requirements or otherwise ignoring Malawi's sovereign right to oversee the adoption and welfare of its children.

Paula at Heart, Mind, and Seoul — an adult adoptee and adoptive parent whose writings on international adoption issues should not be missed if you are interested in the topic — has a good take on this, in which she decries the "how can you enforce residency rules when this is best for the child" sentiments and reasonably questioning why Madonna can't just hang out in Malawi long enough to satisfy the residency requirement if she is committed to this child. Getting a child — whether through labor or adoption — is not calculated to be convenient or easy, so why should we expect that it will be? As I've argued before, adoption ought not be all about the parent.

My commute into the City used to be a bit of a slog. I mean, I did casual carpool in the morning, but I was still taking a bus, and it took about an hour. In the last few years, there has been a growth in bike to transit. For instance, all buses in Oakland and San Francisco now have bike racks. Most convenient for me, my local BART station (our regional train, which can get me from Alameda to San Francisco in about 15-20 minutes) now has valet bike parking. I simply leave my bike in the rack in the room, take a number and log my bike in. It's kept safe and sound in a secure & monitored room until I come back to pick it up in the evening. It's the best, and it's free. Heck, I could even ask them to do bike repairs while they have my bike. I love it, and it means that I can continue to ride daily even though I work in the City now.

Frank Miller's Peanuts, or Schulz City.  I did laugh out loud.

Via Billy Ockham.

Remember Ward Churchill, the Colorado University professor who claimed (when stung by one of the most righteous internet smackdowns to date) that when he called 9/11 victims "Little Eichmanns," his remarks were "taken out of context"?  Churchill was fired.  Churchill sued the University.  Now the jury has spoken.  Their verdict?  "We hate you all."

Do we need a new word for fascism? It's a perfectly good word to describe a form of state economic control, but its Nazi variant makes use of the word provocative.  I'd suggest  "phalangism," but no one would know what it means. Perhaps "corporatism," but that's already taken.

The blogger known as Charon QC is a British barrister who works in London's banking district.  Not the sort to hang out with anarchists who call the counterman at Spar a "fascist" because he won't give them a discount on lager.  But he's appalled by what he saw at the G20 summit protests, and produced some rather remarkable citizen Twitter journalism on it.  I'll give you the blog version.