Here at Popehat we talk a lot about how the government — through design or through bureaucratic inertia — sticks its nose into your business. It's easy to forget that the government can be even more of a bizarre, ineffectual nuisance when you work for it.

Case in point: the City of Bozeman, Montana. Say you want a job with Bozeman. You'd expect to fill out an application. You'd expect to disclose your education, and almost certainly your criminal history.

But would you expect being required to disclose every internet forum and social networking site you use and every web site you comment upon?

The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person's "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records."

"Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.," the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.

Yes. In other words, Bozeman wants you not only to list every web site on which you have a username, but wants you to turn over your password. Presumably Bozeman does not plan to get into the sock-puppet business, so I can only assume that they want to have an easy way to search for every comment you have ever made under your various usernames.

Bozeman officials think this requirement is narrowly drawn. Said City Attorney Greg Sullivan:

We're not putting out this broad brush stroke of trying to find out all kinds of information about the person that we're not able to use or shouldn't use in the hiring process.

Well, actually, Greg, you are. You're demanding a broad swath of information that is completely unrelated to the applicants' qualifications, and that demands disclosure of speech activity that the state cannot use to deny employment. A state "cannot condition public employment on a basis that infringes the employee’s constitutionally protected interest in freedom of expression.” Connick v. Myers, 461 U. S. 138, 142 (1983). Evaluation of retaliation against public employee speech involves a balancing test taking into a account (1) whether the employee was speaking as a citizen on a matter of public interest [as opposed to speaking as a government representative], and (2) whether the government had an adequate justification for treating the employee differently based on the speech. Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563 (1968). Bozeman might be able to fire — or refuse to hire — employees for some internet conduct that could serve to disrupt city business, but cannot justify demanding not just identification of, but control over all forums on which an employee comments, whatever the content. Moreover, the City has no possible, let alone adequate, justification for limiting what employees say under anonymous usernames like WootILoveMontana on YouTube. This leaves aside the entire privacy analysis, which is another problem.

How could Bozeman get away with such a ludicrous and patently illegal policy? The same way the government always gets away with sticking its nose in people's business: cowardice and indifference.

No one has ever removed his or her name from consideration for a job due to the request, Sullivan added.

The government will always get away with bad behavior if nobody stands up.

Pity People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.  Ever since President Obama swatted a fly during an interview on Tuesday, people have been joking that PETA would condemn the President. It must have been hard, knowing that if they did follow through on their principles, the laughter would only increase, and PETA's already sterling reputation as a gang of nitwits would be further cemented.

Actually, it wasn't hard at all.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said they wished Obama had served a better example.

“We support compassion for the even the smallest animals," says Bruce Friedrich, VP for Policy at PETA. “We support giving insects the benefit of the doubt."

Friedrich says PETA supports "brushing flies away rather than killing them" and was disappointed that the President had gone ahead and squashed the pesky fly.

This afternoon PETA sent a Katcha Bug, a device which traps bugs and allows their safe release back into nature to the White House.

Board members at PETA plan to issue a statement later today condemning foreign aid to African nations which seek to eradicate malarial mosquitoes, and to attack efforts by the Centers for Disease Control to develop a vaccine for the H1N1 Swine Flu virus.

Unlike my friend Ken, I do not descend to cheap mockery of low-hanging fruit.  So I will not point out that the Republican Party has allowed this:

to lay claim as its standardbearer.

That said, the video, which depicts Rush Limbaugh guest-hosting "The Pat Sajak Show" before Limbaugh became nationally famous, really makes me wish I had some … well, I've seen Infra-Man multiple times, and this is almost as funny and strange as the funniest, strangest movie ever made.

Like many truly strange things, this becomes stranger the longer one observes it.  Your patience in watching through the slow build-up will, I promise, be rewarded.

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who is married, admits to an affair with a staffer who was married to one of his aides.

So you've got betrayal (of wife), betrayal (of the man who worked for you), bad-judgment-fraternization (top man in office boinking a staffer).

Then, as dramatic convention increasingly requires, you've got the banal hypocrisy:

When Bill Clinton's adultery came to public light, Ensign not only voted to remove the president from office, but insisted the president should resign as a result of the personal scandal. When former Sen. Larry Craig was caught up in a sex scandal, Ensign not only called for Craig's ouster, but led the charge against him.

Ensign has also been a fierce opponent of marriage equality, and supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In 2004, the Nevada Republican lectured his colleagues, "Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation."

And did I mention that Ensign is a longtime member of the Promise Keepers, a conservative evangelical group that promotes strong families and marriages?

I'm not thrilled about stuff like this continuing to tank the Republican brand, because the Democrats are so very bad in so many exciting different ways. However, I do appreciate that Sen. Ensign (not in a red shirt, regrettably), Sen. "Huggies" Vitter, and Rep. Craig are bringing closer the day when Republicans cannot bloviate about matters of sexual propriety without everyone snickering and idly speculating about whether the pockets of their impeccable blue suits are stuffed with smuggled Thai anal beads made out of the polished bone of dead hookers.

Popehat readers near the ocean: could you kindly check whether the tide is red?

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has signed a bill that takes some baby steps towards reigning in the moronic trend of zero-tolerance policies in public schools, under which if little Billy brings a spork from home, he may find himself proned out on the wet playground pavement by Resource Officer Muscly McOverreact. Overlawyered has a good archive of zero-tolerance idiocy.

I must admit that I was not expecting that from a Florida politician.

The bill is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction:

It is the intent of the Legislature to promote a safe and supportive learning environment in schools, to protect students and staff from conduct that poses a serious threat to school safety, and to encourage schools to use alternatives to expulsion or referral to law enforcement agencies by addressing disruptive behavior through restitution, civil citation, teen court, neighborhood restorative justice, or similar programs. The Legislature finds that zero-tolerance policies are not intended to be rigorously applied to petty acts of misconduct and misdemeanors, including, but not limited to, minor fights or disturbances. The Legislature finds that zero-tolerance policies must apply equally to all students regardless of their economic status, race, or disability.

I'd love to see more Legislatures recognize that not all behavior on at school should be treated the same. That — and, God willing, a less hysterical attitude towards drugs — might might result in fewer thirteen-year-old girls being strip-searched by predatory school administrators looking for Ibuprofin.

If you do, they might have to search you.

Members of the public are being stopped and searched under controversial anti-terror laws to racially balance the overall official figures, the Government's watchdog over the issue said today.

Lord Carlile of Berriew, QC, also said people are being stopped by police when there is not the slightest possibility of the individual being a terrorist.

He warned of the “poor and unnecessary” use of special powers which give police the ability to stop anyone in a designated area without them having “reasonable suspicion”.

Here we have the ultimate fusion of postmodern racial sensitivity with premodern police thuggery.  Section 44 of the British Terror Act of 2000 authorizes the police, in designated areas of concern, to stop anyone at any time, and search him, with no requirement of probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or even a hunch, based on the fact the suspect was wearing say, a shamrock t-shirt, or carrying a box-cutter and a Koran.

That's appalling enough.

But according to the official charged with monitoring police as they use this invasive power, the cops know they'll be charged with racism if they abuse it only against people who are stereotyped as likely terrorists.  To prevent that, they're going out of their way to bother everyone, from grandmothers to Australian tourists carrying cameras.  Then at least, no one can accuse them of being unfair.

Here's a thought:

"I cannot see a justification for the whole of the Greater London area being covered permanently. The intention of the section was not to place London under permanent special search powers."

None of the many thousands of searches had ever led to a conviction for a terrorist offence, he said.

If, in the nine years this law has been on the books, it has never succeeded in its avowed purpose of catching a terrorist, why not repeal it?  Why not require the police to articulate some justifiable suspicion before they can stop and search anyone, as they must in the rest of England and in every other liberal democracy?

But that can't happen, because it might prevent them from balancing search quotas to prove that the British police aren't prejudiced.

Via Coyote Blog, I see that Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has issued an entertaining list of abysmal, corrupt, wasteful stimulus projects that the government will be paying for with your tax dollars. For instance:

Optima Lake is in line to receive $1.15 million in federal stimulus money to construct a new guardrail for a lake that does not exist.

The guardrail is needed for “public safety,” says the Army Corps of Engineers, but there is not much of the public around to protect. Because the lake has never filled with water it is all but useless to potential visitors.

Coburn has built a reputation for fighting pork, and memorably tangled with Ted Stevens in 2005, leading to Stevens furiously threatening to resign if his pet projects were killed. He's also fought for more a more transparent budget process so that pork — and earmarks — are easier to detect.

I like all this. I like identifying wasteful government spending and exposing those who seek it to ridicule and political consequences.

But can someone explain to me why, in modern America, if I want someone to fight for fiscal responsibility, someone willing to scrap with corrupt parasites like Ted Stevens, I've got to take it bundled with a passel of nutjob-level social conservatism, with freakish paranoia about lesbians invading Oklahoma and driving schoolgirls from bathrooms, and freaking out about showing Schindler's List on television, and praising Cuba's approach to AIDS?

Why the hell don't I have more decent options to get my fiscal conservatism on its own, without the social authoritarian baggage?

It's nice to have a hobby, I guess.

But some people have something that goes beyond a hobby. Batman, for instance. Running around Gotham at night putting the hurt on bad guys isn't really a hobby. It's a dysfunction. Even in the campy TV series, before all the dark Frank Miller stuff.

So it is for some of the fans of our old pal Ron Paul.

When the blog Wonkette — which is to poseur beret-wearing belabored ironic detachment what Glenn Gould is to the piano — made a rude stray comment about Ron Paul, it prompted a world-weary call to arms from a fan at the Daily Paul encouraging Paulites to retaliate against Wonkette. The Paulites have since sent the exceptional post down the memory hole, and as far as I can tell did so before Google could cache it (and before I thought to take a screenshot), but the deathless opening line remains in Wonkette's quote:

As someone who can’t help but google news search Ron Paul everyday for almost two years, I keep running into the same foul mouthed liberals slandering the Good Doctor under the guise of Satire.

As they say, that's some weapons-grade crazy there, my friends. There's a guy who is going to get raptured up by the celestial blimp when Ron sounds the trump and call.

Fascinating.

Youtube user "Hultonclint," whoever he is, has set up a Youtube channel recording himself singing the 400 or more classic sea chanteys from the book by Stan Hugill, one of the last masters of the art.  So far he's up to 163.  In Hultonclint's words:

A quasi-systematic project of recording examples of the sea chanteys (shanties) in Stan Hugill's book of the same title. The text compendium contains "over 400 shanties," and Hugill was one of the last living chanteymen aboard sailing vessels, who was largely responosible for keeping alive the know-how of chantey-singing after the days off sail had ended.

While not a trained or classically talented singer, his work is enthusiastic, and fun.  He has a friendly booming voice.  Only a few chanteys in, I feel like hoisting the black flag, or if your interests run to more peaceful pursuits, loving a few maidens of Spain.

Via Walter Olson through Twitter.

We've written numerous times about Canada's censorious speech laws. We've lauded Ezra Levant, a man with whom some of us agree on almost nothing but whose tenacious defense of his own right to free speech we admire.  We've beaten that horse.

And we're going to beat it again.

Had I been charged with hate speech 10 years ago, I could not have fought back as effectively. If all this had happened in 1996 instead of 2006, few would have known anything about my battle. YouTube, which brought my story alive for 600,000 people by the time the traffic died down, debuted only in 2005. Before that, there was no universally surfed repository of current event–themed videos, and bloggers were much less prevalent. And without the credit card donations made possible by PayPal (which was started in 2000), it’s unlikely that I could have raised the money to cover my legal expenses.

In short, the Internet saved me. In that sense, my story isn’t just about free speech. It’s also about the way new technology has leveled the playing field between big government and private citizens.

Levant faced a lifetime ban on certain forms of speech, for publishing cartoons.  This is a sample of Levant's self-defense before a bewildered government drone, who expected to be the one conducting the hearing and asking the questions.  Thanks to Youtube, Google, and blogs, probably a million people have seen it.

Of course it's true that in 1996 the idea of charging a news magazine publisher with "hate speech" for publishing cartoons, even in a nation like Canada which lacks vigorous speech protection, would have been considered ridiculous.  Legal theory moves on.

But not as fast as technology.  The theocratic government of Iran suffered protests in 1999 that were as vigorous as those going on today.  The rest of the world paid little attention, not because it didn't care, but because it didn't know.  The basiji and the mullahs made sure of that.

We in America take our liberties, and our internet, for granted.  I recently read of a French court decision that declared internet access, at least in a liberal technological society like France, a human right.  At the time I laughed, and filed it away as something not worthy of blogging.  Stupid Frogs.

I'm not so sure now.  Maybe the French got it right.

Question: If one is lost in the snow-covered wilderness that is the Canadian Rocky Mountains, is it better to have:

A. A small organization of local volunteers willing to conduct dangerous search and rescue operations?

B. No search and rescue at all?

I'd be willing to bet that each and every person who has ever been saved by the Golden and District Search and Rescue Society would choose A.

However Gilles Blackburn of Quebec, who got lost by going off trail at a ski resort last February, and whom the Society was unable to locate, evidently believes that since the Society was unable to rescue him, it shouldn't be able to rescue anyone else either.

Quebec skier Gilles Blackburn filed two lawsuits last month claiming negligence and seeking damages from Golden and District Search and Rescue, RCMP, and the owners of Kicking Horse Resort after he and his wife became lost in the backcountry when they were skiing out of bounds, and she died.

Blackburn says the groups failed to heed his SOS messages.

Marie-Josee Fortin died of chronic hypothermia two days before a passing helicopter saved her husband.

The Golden District Search and Rescue Society appears to be an ad hoc, unpaid organization, like a volunteer fire department in a rural area.  It operates by means of raffles and fundraisers.  GSAR evidently does have insurance, but it's shut down for the time being.  According to Canadian media, many similar organizations in rural or even arctic Canada are considering shutting down in response to the suit, because they can't afford insurance.

Search and Rescue volunteers ready to quit over lawsuits.

Lawsuit concerns halt East Kootenay rescue teams.

BC search-and-rescue volunteers consider quitting after lost skier files suit.

Of course, not a drop of virtual ink is spilled in any of these stories concerning the inherent riskiness of skiing in a place so remote that it might as well be the wilds of Daghestan.  Among those risks are broken limbs, being eaten by bears, and yes, getting lost because you wandered off the trail into an almost polar wilderness.

In the United States (with a few noteworthy exceptions), the law shields "Good Samaritans" from liability for negligently rendered, but well-meant aid to those in jeopardy.  After all, if we impose tort liability on the guy who tries to remove someone from a burning car, or renders CPR to a heart attack victim, because he didn't perform as well as an EMT or cardiologist, only the bravest and most charitable will attempt to rescue anyone.  In fact, generally the law does not impose any duty at all to rescue someone, such as Gilles Blackburn, who is imperiled by his own risky or foolish behavior.  You could walk past Gilles Blackburn, trapped in a burning car because he crashed it after suffering a heart attack at the North Pole, and no court in the country would punish you.

But of course you'd stop, because you're a moral being.  You couldn't live with yourself if you didn't.

An all-volunteer search society in the hinterlands of British Columbia is just that: a society of Good Samaritans.  Hopefully Mr. Blackburn's loss, tragic as it was, won't lead directly to other lives being lost as a result of his foolish and misguided lawsuit.

One of the inevitable traits of human society is that bad people are going to do bad things. Whether or not you can come to grips with this — whether your response to bad people doing bad things is proportional and reasoned, or hysterical and innumerate — tends to determine your approach to the relationship between government and individuals. If the inevitability of bad people doing bad things tends to freak you out and make you want to OMG DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW, then you're probably going to supporting increasing government control of individual behavior. If bad people doing bad things makes you ask questions like "are individuals better at protecting themselves from this? Could government conceivably prevent it without side effects that are worse? Is it practical or possible to prevent this rather than punishing it?", then you are more likely to be a fan of limited government.

Bonnie Erbe, an opinion writer for U.S. News and World Report and cbsnews.com and a PBS host, is clearly not a fan of limited government. Bonnie Erbe wants to "round up promoters of hate." She wants to do it for YOU.

Continue Reading »

It's time for the Road to Popehat, the feature where we check out what search engine queries have brought huddled masses yearning for snark to these shores, and then send donations to Tom Tancredo in hopes he'll enact strict blog immigration policies. Some recent searches bringing you here:

picture of criminal leaving convenient [sic] store: See, we don't have any requirements about command of the English language here.

Would someone please defend sherri goforth? Oh, won't SOMEONE think of the imprudent dipshits?

fuck england Yes, we welcome refugees from anywhere.

how to make a dog an emotional support animal Look, a dog is going to be wildly happy to see you every time you come back into the room, day after day, for the rest of your life, and is going to treat every can of store-brand dog food you give him like the BEST THING EVAR, and is going to wag when you pet him no matter what kind of person you are. If that isn't already supportive enough, then it's just possible that you are too goddamn needy.

gay marriage = ridiculous costumes That's actually one of the better arguments I've heard.

is there a color in space Come for the snark, stay for the Lovecraft references.

legal to carry a claw hammer in texas? This reminds me of that Far Side "nature's warning signs" cartoon.

what the fuck is husbandry Hey, Larcenia Bullard learned to use Google!

I've reviewed Cracked's article 10 Things That Will Not End Well, and I want to try at least three of them. My main concern is that the bear from #9 has already taken the course from #1.

His passion and excitability.  I turned away in loathing when Sullivan, long after even the most partisan hacks had given up on the execrable "Trig Palin is a changeling" legend, continued to promote that conspiracy theory.  I laugh at people who say "Andrew Sullivan is my favorite conservative blogger," because Sullivan, befitting his passion and excitability, abandoned conservatism entirely when George W. Bush cynically endorsed an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting same sex marriage in 2003.  (Sullivan was right and Bush was wrong.)

But for a leftist, which is what Sullivan is now, his stance on individual freedom remains excellent, and that's nowhere better reflected than in his coverage of the (hopefully) emerging revolution in Iran.  For the past 4 days, Sullivan's site has been the best source for the sort of news that isn't covered by mainstream press, individual twitter messages and underground video of protests and massacres.  And if his passion infects his blogging (Sullivan really believes that a second revolution may be at hand), well, it wouldn't be Andrew Sullivan without the passion.

Sullivan's major league blog doesn't need an endorsement from a AA (I flatter myself we're not single A) blog like Popehat, but I urge you to read it anyway.