Blackest in a couple of years.  My mid-life crisis must be hitting and my bio-rhythms must be down, all three of them. Thank goodness for Ezra, who seems most enthusiastic when Ken's gone and I have less than nothing to say.  I always enjoy Ezra's posts.

But one of the functions of a decent blogger is to link to other bloggers when he has nothing to say.  On that note, do not anger Mark Bennett!

I survived all you can eat seats at the ballpark. I definitely got my moneys worth, but I also didn't leave feeling like I was going to die (of course, that may say more about me than it does any sense of moderation..)

The seats (the only upper deck seats not tarped off by the almost minor league at this point A's) were nice enough, and it was a gorgeous day for baseball. The usher told us to sit where ever we wanted, so we grabbed great seats behind home plate.

There was one concession stand that featured 7 items, all of which were free: hotlinks, hotdogs, nachos, popcorn, peanuts, sodas and ice cream. There was also beer, but mercifully for all of us, it was not free. The hot links were quite good, but the regular hot dogs didn't look great. The nachos were gross (although, some people like the fake cheese, I guess..) The popcorn was surprisingly good and you can't really mess up an ice cream sandwich, can you?

So, the final tally was a minor sunburn, 2 hot links, 4 sodas, 1 bag of popcorn and 3 ice cream sandwiches. It was fun, and if a real team had been playing, it would have been even better. Oh, and if that guy behind me hadn't screamed everytime the opposing pitcher threw a pitch. Did he think he was going to throw off the batter?

I was walking in Alameda on Sunday, and saw this sign on a house for sale. Heh, equating the crazy real estate market out here with the almost as crazy dating market. I kind of wanted to give the house a hug.

I'm taking a brief moment of peace while the girls nap. We're at a camp in Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz mountains for my church's all-family camp. It's great — the kids have the run of the place and it's safe for them. We've got a great speaker who is doing a series on Matthew, and we've got the afternoon free. Decompressing from a very busy month.

There are a few attorneys out there who actually deserve the monicker, "First Amendment Lawyer".  Their dean is undoubtedly Floyd Abrams, who shreds an execrable opinion piece from the New York Times on the upcoming Supreme Court case on whether the makers of the film Hillary: The Movie should be hamstrung by campaign finance laws.  Writers at the New York Times, who also have corporate backing, are free to influence elections and broadcast their opinions as loudly as anyone in the world.  They just don't see why you should enjoy that freedom as well.

Of course there are more traditional limits to the First Amendment, and one of them is that serious communication of threats is illegal.  Memo to Jeffrey Weaver, who is accused of threatening to kill the family of the BART officer who shot Oscar Grant on New Years:  The internet is a poor medium for satire, irony, and other communications that aren't meant to be taken seriously.  If you really meant your threats as hyperbole or some other protected form of speech, it was probably a bad idea to conclude your post with, "THIS ISN'T A THREAT IT'S A F**KING PROMISE."

Something tells me that talk radio host Hal Turner is going to run up against the same limits that Jeffrey Weaver faced.  After announcing that federal judges Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner and William Bauer should be killed, and that "their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions," Turner posted a map of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals building, with the bomb barricades diagrammed, on his website.  That little added touch may seal the deal for Turner.  We'll be watching the case as it develops.

Des Moines Iowa is scrambling to find a new advertiser for it municipal bus system.  It seems an ad reading, "Don't believe in God? You are not alone," is unacceptable in the Hartford of the West, though churches have and will continue to advertise on city buses.  According to the bus system's development officer, "We've had churches advertise but it's been for their church and not a belief."

Riiiiight.

The Iowa Civil Liberties Union is taking an intense interest in the case.  I suspect God is secure enough in Himself that He will decline to intervene should litigation arise.

Saturday, I will be attending an Oakland A's game. Now, the A's are terrible, play in the hated AL, have a rotten stadium and use the DH. So, why would I go? Well, I just have to try out some very special seats…

I don't see this going well at all. Check back Sunday or Monday for the full report.

Being overweight isn't just a health problem.  It's a moral failing.

• Seriously. The fitness of Dr. Regina Benjamin, the Obama administration's nominee for Surgeon General, has been called into question.  Not just her fitness for office.  But her fitness in general. Or rather, because Dr. Benjamin, a 53 year old African American lady who probably works 20 hour days, isn't physically fit, the argument goes that she's not fit to serve in high office.  Because the Surgeon General's job isn't to advance sound medical policy.  It's to be a role model.
• As penance for her sins, Dr. Benjamin could seek to intervene in the "public interest" lawsuit recently filed against Denny's, accused of killing its customers with salt.
• Meanwhile, David Frum, formerly famous as the man who brought us the Axis of Evil, now wants to bring us the Axis of Obesity. Starting with anti-fast food zoning laws as restrictive as those applied to strip clubs and gun stores, and moving on to a tax on corn syrup.
• Speaking of fatass political pundits, as part of a comprehensive health care package Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic wants to "empower" Medicare and Medicaid to change the "obesogenic environment."  For the good of poor people, of course.   That Ambinder verses his proposals in even denser polysyllabic prose than usual indicates to me that what he really means is: fat tax and reduced insurance coverage.  But if Ambinder used those terms, poor people might understand what he meant.

This may become a continuing series.  Media demonization of the overweight and government / public-interest intrusion into people's eating habits are heavy topics, to be chewed over at length.

We just spent almost eight years in which in which Republicans or their like implied that their political foes were in sympathy with terrorists.  Why are Democrats now so eager to do the same?

[Indiana Congressman Baron Hill] has been speaking to hospital groups, local chambers of commerce and civic clubs and appeared Tuesday before the Rotary Club of Indianapolis. He said he plans to hold small town halls that he can control, though his office still was working out details.

“I don't mind people disagreeing with you, but just to blow up a meeting is an act of political terrorism,” he said in an interview.

Democrats like Hill, considered a moderate, and Karen Bass, considered not a moderate, plan to continue the pattern, of which their party once complained, in which anyone who disagrees with their policies is to be called a terrorist.

Politicians like Hill and Bass are evidently unused to dealing with raucous protest from people paying to watch their performances.  Stand-up comedians, who go through similar ordeals, refer to loud-mouthed dunces in their audiences as hecklers. Good comedians, and for that matter good politicians, view such people as an opportunity for humor, to win over the audience.

In 2002 and even 2003, I could laugh at a stand-up comedian referring to a heckler as a "terrorist," to make a larger point.  I could laugh at a politician doing the same, though he probably wouldn't get the joke.  But the humor is played out, the joke is old, and it has been for years.  If calling angry constituents terrorists is the best our politicians can do, what America needs most isn't health care reform.

It's more comedians in Congress, and a big wooden hook to drag the Baron Hills off the stage.

Via Radley Balko.

"But when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question."

– Yale Univiersity Press Director John Donatich, explaining his decision to allow Brandeis University Professor Jytte Klausen to publish a book on the infamous Danish "Muhammad" cartoons, but only on condition that Professor Klausen agree to remove the cartoons themselves from the work.

As Popehat's resident cartoonist Derrick is firewalled from the site, it falls to me to draw up my own Muhammad cartoon:

Ezra previously mentioned his justifiable disappointment that President Obama is indulging freely in signing statements, a practice he condemned (correctly, I think) in President Bush. Politician says one thing and does another: film at 11.

Now, courtesy of Jim Harper at Cato@Liberty, I see this excellent suggestion: why doesn't the Obama Administration make each signing statement easily available to the public on whitehouse.gov? There's even a perfect page for it. Right now, if you want to see all of the signing statements this President has appended despite his campaign rhetoric, you need to research it yourself, or rely upon bloggers to compile them for you.

If President Obama's signing statements are defensible — if they are somehow distinguishable from the Bush statements he condemned, if they are not an unconscionable assertion of the Imperial Presidency or a defiance of the oath faithfully to execute the law, and if they are genuine and proper meditations on the significance of the law — why not trumpet them like any press release?

A very enjoyable little physics puzzle flash-game. Level 31 is a killer — I had to cheat.

Utterly slammed here at work with a last-minute appeal (that is to say, an appeal that was dumped upon me at the last minute) and lots of minor stuff to do before I leave on vacation. Talk amongst yourselves. Subjects:

1. I knew that the Kennedy family had lobotomized a daughter. Prior to TJIC's post, I did not realize what a vile and indefensible assault upon a human spirit it was. That made my skin crawl. It puts me in mind of P.J. O'Rourke's line "Two of the Kennedys have been shot, but not, as one might hope, after due process of law."

2. If you aren't in the mood to hate Kennedys, then consider 20 reasons to hate the Fox Network. Though realistically what I really hate is the bad taste that drives market forces, I suppose.

3. If you use your Twitter account to direct tweets at a celebrity, will you get a response? If you are as twisted as the Bloggess, you will. @khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnn!

4. The "edit the movie trailer to convey a different theme" concept reaches its peak with Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Once of the frustrations of being libertarian-minded is that people are so inconsistent about notions of freedom. Almost everyone is in favor of personal liberty and autonomy and limited government interference in our lives in the abstract. But when you get to the specific, people can rationalize all sorts of hideous state intrusion into our lives, so long as it matches their cultural predilections. And I'm not just talking about liberals railing about the war on drugs but welcoming nanny-state regulation, or conservatives railing about regulation while welcoming PATRIOT ACT nonsense.

Example of the day — 50% of Americans surveyed think that women should be legally required to take their husband's last name when they get married. That's some scary escape-from-freedom shit there. I have no problem with 70% thinking that women ought to take their husband's name. They're nosy assholes, but that's their right. But the fact that 50% of Americans think that their government ought to regulate family nomenclature makes me shake my head and wonder just how self-evident it is that we are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Via.

David Mamet to write and direct film about Anne Frank.

Ken is a fortyish professional on the west coast.  Almost every day Ken reads something in the newspaper, or on the web, then pulls up the dashboard of his group weblog and writes about it.

Meanwhile, in the San Francisco bay area, Ezra, who works at a non-profit agency, has experiences with people in his life.  Invariably, Ezra writes a blogpost on a weblog he shares with other authors, to discuss his experiences.

And on the east coast, Patrick, a lawyer, copes with the demands of a law practice.  He remembers when things were less hectic, complaining that he had more free time before he joined the legion of Americans who now compulsively write about things and ideas at a group weblog.

These individuals are part of a national trend in which Americans of all ages, classes, races, and genders participate in the modern phenomenon that is the group weblog…

Sound contrived?  Well it is.  If one takes a sample of people who are strongly connected in some fashion, or have a deep interest in some activity, and excludes all others, their anecdotes can be spun as any sort of trend or a new problem society must face.  The story writes itself.

Of course if I do it, it's dishonest wanking.  But when the New York Times does it, it's quality journalism.