People behave badly. People behave badly while dating, and in reaction to no longer dating. People behave badly on the internet — my God, do people behave badly on the internet. Put them all together, and what do you get? FUN! Unless, of course, you are one of the unfortunate women who received one of the hilarious, jaw-dropping, stupefying Psychotic Letters from Men.
Somewhere there must be a site collecting such communications from women. Until then, this small but savory slice of schitzo will suffice.
In announcing today that Ms. California can keep her title, even though she broke pageant rules and posed for racy photos a while ago, Donald Trump mentioned that he had reviewed the photos and "in some cases the pictures were lovely." Yeah, that's not creepy at all.
By the way, in case you missed it, the wierdest part of this whole story is that the Miss USA pageant paid for her to get breast implants a few weeks before the pageant. Just bizarre.
My basketball team, the Golden State Warriors, announced their General Manager Chris Mullin would not return next season. It was a formality, since Mullin had been marginalized all season. He fell prey to an incredibly lousy owner, a lovable but machiavellian coach and a fan base that are content with mediocrity. Warning, this will be long, about basketball and probably not that interesting to many. I think I am venting more than anything.
I got a chance to see Star Trek this weekend, and really enjoyed it. I went in a little concerned that the film would insert a Mountain Dew commercial into the more stately Space Opera that is Star Trek. Turns out they sort of did, but it worked. Just to warn you, there might be some mild spoilers after the break…
David Brooks, the New York Times' token conservative, has an interesting hypothesis. What the Republican Party needs is to return to the good old days of … 2006. Or perhaps Richard Nixon.
Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order.
By "civic order," Brooks means "more government," albeit with a Republican flair. Not just economic policies similar to those advocated by Democrats, but social policies similar to those the Republicans already endorse, with a healthy dose of hawkish foreign policy thrown in.
It's as though time-traveling Rip Van Brooks woke up after a six year sleep, just after what appeared to be a triumphant conclusion to the Iraq war and the Bush Medicare prescription drug expansion, and began writing columns without missing a beat.
According to time-traveling Brooks, the problem with the Republican Party is its insistence on individual freedom.
Republicans are so much the party of individualism and freedom these days that they are no longer the party of community and order. This puts them out of touch with the young, who are exceptionally community-oriented. It gives them nothing to say to the lower middle class, who fear that capitalism has gone haywire. It gives them little to say to the upper middle class, who are interested in the environment and other common concerns.
WTF?
The problem with Republicans these days is that they are no longer the party of individual freedom, if they ever were. At its ascendance Republican rhetoric, if not policy, promised the little guy that he might be left alone by his government, economically if not socially. At the very least they'd lower his taxes, and get around to lowering government spending once the present crisis (whatever it might be now) was over. If the little man wanted to share a joint with the wife in his own home once in a while, or perhaps make whoopie with someone who, by law, couldn't be the wife, or wondered why we were still in Saudi Arabia ten years after the end of the first Iraq war, well that's why we have Democrats isn't it?
The Republicans who just lost power, on the other hand, spent (sorry, "invested" in "smart government") like drunken sailors and continued to deny the little man his joint or his own definition of the proper way to make whoopie.
They were the Party of Order in spades. If Brooks wants to use cinematic metaphors from John Ford, well, there are other directors who've tapped into the American consciousness:
"Middle class, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join the GOP, and we will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict, and bring Order to America."
I admit I found that appeal pretty cool at the age of 12 (when I got over the shock, I knew immediately that Vader was telling the truth), but when I got my first real paycheck and saw what the government had left me; when I first attended a party of young upper middle class professionals and realized that if we were still kids or black, we might go to jail when the bong came out; when, the first time I testified in court and realized that as an agnostic, I really am uncomfortable swearing on a Bible, it wasn't so appealing.
So don't go telling me bout what movies Americans like to watch Mr. Brooks.
But I could be wrong. According to Brooks, the Republican Party needs to rebrand itself, not just as the party of John Ford, but as the party of Plato, Aristotle, and "the Good Life".
The emphasis on freedom and individual choice may work in the sparsely populated parts of the country. People there naturally want to do whatever they want on their own land. But it doesn’t work in the densely populated parts of the country: the cities and suburbs where Republicans are getting slaughtered. People in these areas understand that their lives are profoundly influenced by other people’s individual choices. People there are used to worrying about the health of the communal order.
Bullshit. Americans have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in the past two elections because one party makes a credible case that it offers freedom in the social arena, while the other, apart from its rhetoric, offers none at all, economic or social. If it's true that the majority of Americans self-identify as libertarians, either socially or economically or on both fronts, the time is ripe for an organized party to offer them that choice.
They haven't had that choice in years, if ever. But Americans have rarely voted for, as I'm sure Brooks in his Greek way fails to recognize, the party of Spartan ephors. They simply choose, with their freedom in mind, between the lesser of two evils.
And the Republican Party, as it's currently constituted and as David Brooks wishes it to remain, is definitely the greater evil.
Sometimes it is hard to be a liberal. Your side claims most of the comedians and the writers, so you figure that you are on the side with the sense of humor. But for the huge blind spot where you are the subject of the joke.
Take, for example, Dijongate. As I write this post, it has 2360 entries. By the time I finally post this, I'm sure there will be many more. Why? Because even the silliest joke has to become evidence that the conservatives are crazy, immediately proving a lot more about the speaker.
It starts with Legal Insurrection noticing that MSNBC edited out the part of Obama's lunchtime burger jaunt where he asked for dijon mustard. He pretends that there is a media conspiracy but the post is little more than a standard "Democrats are sissy-mary elitists with crustless bread and fake concern for the poor" jab. The post, if you have half a brain, is a joke.
The liberals didn't fail to disappoint. For example, Crooks and Liars thinks this is part of a conspiracy to chip away at Obama's dignity and rumproast couldn't believe how many updates the silly mustard post had!
Should I care that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham all picked up on it also? NO! All of them earn their paychecks by inflating petty stuff like this and – I don't think most of my colleagues get this – playing it for laughs.
Note to My Team: We have the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and soon a lot of the Judiciary. Let them make fun of the fucking mustard.
* I should note that while both Instapundit and Hot Air gave the story wider circulation, they both saw it for the gag that it was meant to be.
Lundeby acknowledged that the Patriot Act connection was her interpretation.
"None of the law enforcement officers used that term," she said. "But I knew by their actions that it was the Patriot Act. What else could it be?"
Lundeby also claims that her son has been denied due process. She said Thursday that after two months in lockup he has not yet been charged with a crime.
By Lundeby's own admission, though, Ashton had a hearing the morning after his arrest, before Judge James E. Gates in federal court in Raleigh. Juveniles are not charged but "adjudicated" in the parlance of the legal system.
In addition to her claims that Lundeby is the victim of the PATRIOT Act, rather than juvenile criminal procedure common to all courts, Ms. Lundeby now claims that her son, who allegedly was active on the infamous 4chan Anonymous board (or "/b/" as its also known), was the victim of hackers.
Lundeby, who home schools both of her children, said Ashton did spend a lot of time on the computer, in chat rooms and playing games. In the months before his arrest, he had started to exchange messages with computer users who dared him to make crank phone calls. "But they were to places like Wal-Mart," Lundeby said. "They were harmless."
In February, however, someone asked Ashton to make a bomb threat and he refused, Lundeby said. She thinks someone hacked her son's computer and used his IP address to make the bomb threat, traceable to his computer.
One suspects that if Magistrate Christopher Hadley of the Franklin-Hampshire Massachusetts Juvenile Court could do it all over again, he'd just walk across the street to find another bathroom.
Judge John A. Agostini has ruled that a Boston Globe reporter and lawyers for Juvenile Court Clerk-Magistrate Christopher D. Reavey may not be ordered to appear before a grand jury.
Agostini's rulings, which were issued Thursday, included strong language about the way Elizabeth D. Scheibel's office has handled the affair that has come to be known as "Pottygate."
Since 2008 Elizabeth Scheibel, the District Attorney for Northwest Massachusetts, has been investigating Hadley before a grand jury. Hadley alleges it's because he asked a bailiff to retrieve the key to a locked bathroom from Scheibel's office. Indeed, prior media reports suggest that's the case.
But prosecutors don't like it when their grand jury investigations are compromised, particularly when it's an investigation of something as silly as a missing bathroom key. So Scheibel appears to have subpoenaed Boston Globe reporters who broke the story, as well as Hadley's own lawyers, to testify before her grand jury, about the bathroom incident or (as her office now alleges – though earlier it confirmed that the courthose toilet was the reason for the investigation) "favoritism" on Hadley's part.
Demanding that a suspect's own lawyers testify against him is, um, rather extraordinary. As is attempting to grill news reporters on the bathroom beat.
But those are not the first extraordinary things Scheibel's office has done in this case. She's also served subpoenas on the Judge who oversees the state's trial courts, Robert Mulligan, to see what he knows about this bathroom mess.
According to reports published earlier this year, Scheibel, who usually runs for office unopposed, will face opposition in her next run for reelection. Although "pottygate" is not mentioned as the primary reason for this development (another case that drew some blogospheric notoriety is), Northwest District voters who care about bathroom security will no doubt consider Scheibel's hard work at the next election.
There's comedy, unintentional comedy, high comedy and then there's Shatner. A brief Friday timewaster for you, as William Shatner is filmed watching the Star Trek trailer. His facial expressions and responses are being more closely watched than the Zapruder film, and the level of in depth nerdiness is awesome. So, do you think he liked it?
I am a packrat. I inherited it from my mother. When I was growing up, our house was like a museum of useless stuff. My apartment is full of knick-knacks as well. I've actually gotten better at not getting things unless I need them. But then Burger King has to go & bring back the old classic frosted glass drinking glasses. Sigh. I am powerless against the strong memories those glasses evoke in me.
It seems like in the 70s & 80s, these glasses were the standard drinking ware for me & my friends. I still remember my ET glass that I loved. And, since they were glass it seemed very grown up. Add to that they are retro looking, and Star Trek. Oh, I am in. Now, if only Burger King tasted good. Ah, the sacrifices I make for my dementia.
The North Carolina pattern jury instruction (civil) for "circumstantial evidence" tells us:
There are two types of evidence from which you may find the truth as to the facts of a case — direct and circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence is the testimony of one who asserts actual knowledge of a fact, such as an eyewitness; circumstantial evidence is proof of a chain or group of facts and circumstances pointing to the existence or non-existence of certain facts. The law makes no distinction between the weight to be given to either direct or circumstantial evidence. Nor is a greater degree of certainty required of circumstantial evidence than of direct evidence. The law simply requires the party having the burden of proof on a particular issue to satisfy the jury as to that issue by the greater weight of all the evidence in the case.
In the case of Timothy Helms, a North Carolina prison inmate formerly held at the Alexander Correctional Institute, there is a "chain or group of facts and circumstances" pointing to a scenario in which Helms may have been beaten to within an inch of his life by prison guards and left a quadriplegic.
Yet the government of North Carolina, which is a great fan of circumstantial evidence when it comes to sending people like Timothy Helms to prison in the first place, doesn't seem to recognize the concept where its own employees are concerned.
Let me be blunt: the prevailing stance of Americans towards the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act is one of willful ignorance.
I'm not talking just about the media, which exceeds its customary level of legal illiteracy when writing about the Patriot Act, and as a result indulges in woefully poorly researched flights of scaremongering fancy. Nor do I refer to the professionally ignorant, the pack of blow-dried sociopaths in Congress who passed the thing without reading it or even assuring that their aides had an opportunity to read it. I'm talking about nearly everybody who talks about the damned thing.
Possible case in point: the case of Ashton Lundeby, which as we speak is generating massive internet hand-wringing and arm-waving. As far as I can tell, it's hand-wringing and arm-waving that's not grounded in reality or research.
The city of Moscow has banned a proposed Gay Rights parade, on the spurious ground that such a celebration would "destroy morals" in the capital that was home to such great moral thinkers as Ivan Grozny, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin.
Gay rights activists have staged small unsanctioned parades in Moscow without government approval over the past few years. But they have faced arrests and severe beatings by anti-gay and neo-fascist groups.
"The Moscow government is saying: Moscow has never had gay parades and it never will," said Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's spokesman, Sergei Tsoi. "Not only do they destroy morals within our society, but they consciously provoke disorder which threatens the lives of Muscovites and visitors."
Of course the real reason for the ban is that, from what I can tell via the internet (haven't been there in some time) Russian attitudes toward gay people are about as enlightened as those that prevail in the worst shitkicker bar in Shitkicker, Wyoming. And Russia's catastrophic decline toward zero population, which is a big worry for the government but is not due to a sudden riot of color and home decoration, but vodka, heroin, and immigration by anyone who can get out of the place. Most of that's nothing new, but the option to leave the country for educated Russians, historically speaking, is.
Still, Shitkicker, Wyoming is pretty enlightened by historical Russian standards, when the organizers of a Gay Rights parade would have been torn apart by horses under the tsars, sent to the Gulag by Stalin, or placed in a mental hospital in the enlightened 1970s. So cheer up, Russophobes: while Russia isn't as enlightened as Iowa or Maine, that Russians could even apply to hold a Gay Rights parade, on the same streets where May Day tank parades are held, is evidence of progress. Perhaps in twenty years Russia will join the family of civilized nations, like Iowa.
If there are any Russians left in twenty years.
Via Kip, Esquire, who has a definite "glass half empty" take on the matter.
The scene from The Godfather, in which the weasel who would go on to betray Don Corleone dreams of stealing the wedding purse:
"Madon', if this was somebody else's wedding, sfortunato!"
came to mind when I read of USLaw.com legal blogs, a site whose main purpose seems to be lifting and reprinting, without permission, copyrighted material written by lawyers.
Of course while Gatto was a traitor, he lacked the guts (or perhaps the stupidity) to steal from dangerous people in such a blatant and disrespectful fashion. And so Connie Corleone's wedding purse was safe.
Whoever runs USLaw.com legal blogs, you're a brave man. Te salud!
Earlier this week, in the case Carlsbad Technology, Inc. v. HIF Bio, Inc., (07-1437.pdf) the Supreme Court decided something boring about the right to appeal district court remand orders of state law claims in a removed case where all federal claims had been dismissed and blah blah blah… not the point of this post. (Though, if I may make one point about the case itself, SCOTUS has cut back its workload to roughly 75 cases a year and they wasted one slot to hold "you may file an appeal that you can not possibly win" in this case.)
The point of this post is that Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion and held that the case was clearly covered by the 1976 case Thermtron Products, Inc. v. Hermansdorfer and its progeny. As is typical of Thomas and his precedent-hatin' ways, he included a footnote in which he said "We do not revisit today whether Thermtron was correctly decided. Neither the brief for petitioner nor the brief for respondents explicitly asked the Court to do so here…" Unremarkable so far, until you get to the concurrences.
Scalia is on board with what Thomas implies and is ready to reconsider Thermtron. Breyer is vexed by the inconsistent jurisprudence and wants Congress to wake up and amend the law to bring some order to the statute. And Stevens decides to make fun of Thomas:
If we were writing on a clean slate, I would adhere to the statute’s text. But … stare decisis compels the conclusion that the District Court’s remand order is reviewable notwithstanding §1447(d)’s unambiguous contrary command. The Court’s adherence to precedent in this case represents a welcome departure from its some-times single-minded focus on literal text. Accordingly, I join the Court’s opinion.
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May 12, 2009 
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