This is Banned Books Week, a defiant celebration of reading and of books that various asshats have tried to exclude from public libraries. In celebrating Banned Books Week, it is essential to heed Pogo's warning: we have met the enemy, and he is us. These are not books that some government bureaucrat decided you, or your children, should not read. These are books that your neighbors decided that you, or your children, should not read — at least not in a public library. When such challenges to books have succeeded, it has been because of public indifference; when they have failed, it has been because people have stood up and told Mrs. Grundy to fuck off.

So go read a banned or challenged book, or get your kids to read one.

If this issue concerns you, get involved. Otherwise one day you might take your kids to your local public library and find that the selection has been dictated by the sort of slack-jawed morons who think that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is racist, or who think that 1984 promotes communism.

[Careful celebrants will also examine the supporting materials and note that on some occasions citizens tried to get books removed from libraries, and on other occasions they simply challenged their suitability for particular grade levels. The fact that some of the supporters of Banned Book Week tend to conflate these very different categories is less honest than we might hope.]

Earlier today I discussed the uproar over a poll on Facebook asking "should Obama be killed." Someone reported it to the Secret Service, the poll was pulled (it's not clear to me by whom), and Facebook even disabled the poll application for now. There was much argument, here or elsewhere, about whether the poll was a criminal threat. My position is that it is clearly not, because it does not meet the legal definition of a "true threat" — that is, that is to say:

a statement, written or oral, [made] in a context or under such circumstances wherein a reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted by those to whom the maker communicates the statement as a serious expression of an intention to inflict bodily harm upon or to take the life of the President. [emphasis added]

Here is the poll.

I submit that this cannot reasonably be interpreted as an expression of serious intent to inflict harm on the President. It's presented as a question rather than as a statement of intent. It's presented on Facebook. It's presented by someone with a Borat icon. "If he cuts my health care" suggests satire or political hyperbole. And so on.

Now, Facebook is private, and had every right to delete the poll (if they did) and disable an app that allowed users to make such a poll. That's true whether this is a "true threat" or not.

But here's my question:

Do Facebook, and the Secret Service, and the people who are very upset by this poll, think that some Facebook threats are more true than others?

Continue Reading »

A little update on the parade of repulsive defenses offered in support of Roman Polanski, which I discussed yesterday.

I, for one, am slow to buy into the (typically right-wing) "Hollywood is a moral cesspool, inhabited by morons" meme. I think it's an exaggeration, frequently employed towards ends I do not admire or support.

Hollywood is not making that stance easy for me today.

Behold, a petition in support of Polanski offered by the SACD, the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, the web site of which is currently too slammed to link directly.

Some wisdom from the SACD:

His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.

Well, yes. There are moral dimensions to drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old. But I'm pretty sure the SACD meant that as a sneer.

Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.

By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.

Film festivals are like churches. You should get sanctuary and everything. Because these filmmakers are GREAT MEN. Do you hear me? GREAT MEN.

The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no one can know the effects.

I can only assume that the incoherence of this statement is a result of it being translated from the original by someone as stupid as I am. But their point seems to be that it's unfair to arrest Polanski because he assumed — without any legal basis — that he could not be arrested. Apparently ignorance of the law is not only a defense to charges — it's a defense to being arrested for charges.

Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition.

Liberté, égalité, filmmaker-worship!

This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.

That's the point, you utter imbeciles.

Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians — everyone involved in international filmmaking — want him to know that he has their support and friendship.

A friend is someone who, when you get arrested for raping a thirteen-year-old, has your back.

On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.

If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.

"In perfect French" — meaning, of course, "he respected our notions of cultural superiority." Plus, I love "received French artists and intellectuals." Do you have to register as an intellectual in France? Do you get a card? Has anyone ever met a self-described public intellectual who wasn't an utter douche?

Also, I love "we demand." What are you gonna do — make more subtitled movies?

This comes from the French, and the initial signatories are French. It would be uncouth to hold this against a morally stunted people. They can't help it. It's appalling, though, to see that numerous prominent Hollywood figures signing on.

Seriously, John Landis? Really, Michael Mann? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Jonathan Demme?

The Secret Service tends to investigate people for making comments about presidents even when the comment cannot rationally be described as a true threat. [edit: link corrected.] They look into conditional or hypothetical or fantastical threats, they look into threats by people incarcerated in jails and mental institutions, they look into satire and hyperbole and moronic bluster. As an AUSA, I once worked with a Secret Service agent who had been on that detail. She said that maybe 5% of what they looked into sounded anything like a true threat from the start, and of those 5% of the cases, 75% of the time the person reporting it described it wrong.

So long as the Secret Service does not use methods that violate the Fourth Amendment, I don't have a huge problem with that. Nearly 10% of our presidents have been shot to death (and not, as P.J. O'Rourke would say, after due process of law), and more than another 10% have experienced very close calls. Presidents cause the cauldron of nuttiness to bubble. So it's entirely rational for the Secret Service to look into all sorts of things — including things that are quite possibly hyperbole — to see if there's anything of substance there. Quite often they follow tips that are stupidly or maliciously wrong, and quite often they wind up looking kind of dumb as a result. So long as they are being even-handed (i.e. investigating likely hyperbole from crazy people and general cranks as well as by critics of a particular administration), so long as they confine themselves to actions that do not implicate the Fourth Amendment (like asking questions, asking for consent, and reviewing public records), and so long as they don't use notably coercive tactics, I don't have a problem with it. They're wearing out their shoes on 99% of the cases to make it more likely they will catch — or deter — the 1% that represents a genuine threat.

I do have a problem with other people loudly wetting themselves over things that are not true threats, and using them as a rallying cry for censorship crusades.

Case in point: some asshole used a new Facebook poll application, created by a private party, to make a poll asking if President Obama "should be killed." This was obnoxious and worthy of contempt, but it was not, under Watts, anything resembling a true threat. A blogger freaked, reported it to the Secret Service, the Secret Service talked to Facebook, and Facebook suspended the application, even though the poll itself had already been taken down, "while the inappropriate content could be removed by the developer and until such time as the developer institutes better procedures to monitor their user-generated conten."

Facebook is a private entity, and can delete whatever posts and apps it likes. But the sentiment that expressive internet applications should be shut down if users can post obnoxious or hateful things on them is troublesome. So is the sentiment that the developers and operators of internet applications ought to be responsible for policing how users use them, and be responsible for deleting content that is, by some standard or other, "offensive." Fortunately there are strong legal norms establishing that developers have no obligation to do so. That's why only the most hysterical or ignorant people would be calling the Secret Service demanding that they shut down MySpace or Blogger or WordPress until someone starts policing them for poorly-spelled anti-Obama hateful screeds. But if big-league private companies like Facebook start imposing these as a norm on their private networks — if they start disabling applications that have the capacity to be used for obnoxious expression, and demanding that app developers police content by some standard or other — it can't help but chill and deter app development. That would be unfortunate. It would also be unfortunate if people started using dishonest and hysterical reports to the Secret Service as a weapon to deter and even shut down hyperbole — even hateful hyperbole by assholes.

The blogger that started this — "GottaLaff," at the The Political Carnival — is luxuriating in the reflected glow of petty fame from having reported an asshole on Facebook to the Secret Service. I find the triumphalism in the blog posts and in the comments over getting the application shut down because it didn't magically stop anti-Obama extremist rhetoric to be more than a little odd and disturbing — in some ways, more odd and disturbing than some anonymous and petty asshole starting a troll poll. Take this post, for example:

If we stopped ONE person from inciting hate or violence, then we've done our jobs.

Here's the thing, Buttercup: not all incitement of violence is illegal. Take, for example, incitement that does not present a clear and present danger of imminent lawless action — hyperbole by idiots on the internet, for example. Nor is most incitement of hate illegal. Do you really think it's your "job" to go about "stopping" people from hateful speech, like some sort of self-important internet Batman carrying a belt full of ball-gags?

While we are on the subject of inciting hate and violence, let's take a look at GottaLaff's tone while discussing this story:

Okay, that's it, I've had it.

The hate speech, the threats have gotten completely out of hand. And those who have incited viewers and listeners– and you know who you are Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.– are responsible for a good part of this horrific activity.

No, it is not "grassroots", not even close. It is a sick, terrifying, dangerous movement toward violence and the worst kind of civil unrest.

The same "party leaders" who get their rocks off by pretending to be macho and exerting their windbaggy, wrongheaded power will one day come to realize that killing is real, not just a word on a Facebook poll, and it's already happened (Dr. Tiller, the census "fed"), and it is final. Real and final.

The only things long and hard about these blowhards (no pun) are their mics. You get rid of those, and these chest-thumping cretins are nothing more than overgrown, uncontrollable, whiny, screeching little toddlers trying to clomp around in grown-up shoes, shoes that they'll never be able to fill. They'll never be men. They are wounded, damaged animals.

Yeah, nothing hate-inciting about that. I don't admire or agree with a single person this blogger just condemned. I think that the world would be a more pleasant place if most of them were turned into mulch to fertilize my lawn. But how is that less of an incitement to hate than some anonymous twit's hyperbolic poll? Because it makes dick-size jokes instead of a shock-the-shockable but clearly not true-threat question about killing a politician? Do you think GottaLaff recognizes, or has the capacity to recognize, the irony?

GottaLaff goes on:

Time to tame them. And time to demand that they tame their deranged, diseased herd of blind followers.

Ooookay. Pardon me, I'm just going to move over here and wipe some of the flecks of spittle off of my jacket.

Look, I'm all in favor of "taming" morons on the Right (and the Left). But my chosen whip and chair are fact-checking, criticism, and merciless ridicule. I'm not so much in favor of siccing the Secret Service on them, nor of trying to persuade private entities (like Facebook, for instance) to delete their posts or apps. Response speech is the right remedy. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. GottaLaff's gloating and celebrations are, frankly, creepy — as are the aspirations of all eager censors. Read the posts — read the comments — and decide for yourself. Ask yourself — do you believe, even for a second, that GottaLaff and her faithful commenters would like to stop at getting a "should the President be killed" poll pulled? In answering that question, consider how GottaLaff and her commenters deal with communications from the guy who wrote the poll app — who says he is an Obama voter. Careful with the comments on that last link, please — abjectly stupid might be catching.

Edited to add: I used twitter to notify GottaLaff of this post, so she could respond if she saw fit. Her response, on twitter: "Hey guys! A troll! I'm the topic." The twitter was posted at a speech that suggests that GottaLaff is either an extraordinarily fast reader, or didn't actually read the post. Note that GottaLaff identifies the two most important things about the post to her: "OOOO IT'S ALL ABOUT ME" and "disagrees with me, therefore a troll." QED with regard to this post.

Second edit: GottaLaff is offended. There's an almost touching level of naivete and self-congratulation in her posts about her interactions with the Secret Service. The Secret Service said to her — basically — "hey, thanks." They blew some nice nice at her for reporting some guy on the internet for making a "should the President be killed" post. GottaLaff is spinning this as the Secret Service being EXTREMELY grateful, like she's going to have her picture up at the local field office next week and the SSA is going to send her an FTD "special friend" bouquet. Here's the thing: that's what the Secret Service says to you. They don't say "Look, that's almost certainly not a true threat, and you really need to calm down a notch or two, but thanks, I guess." They treat you nicely. People with judgment tend to recognize it for what it is.

Third Edit: Dumb Ken linked the wrong Watts v. United states. Link fixed above.

Fourth Edit: Further hilarity. GottaLaff commenter Wolfe Tone seems to suggest I am guilty of "sedition." Paging Humpty Dumpty . . . .

Fifth Edit: Of course faction A is saying "this is an unprecedented attack on a President," and Faction B is saying "bullshit, your side did this all the time in the last administration." The fact that similar stuff was done to Bush does not make this poll any less contemptible. However, Faction B seems to have one thing right: there were already Facebook groups asking if President Bush should be killed:

Several groups on Facebook are dedicated to the demise of George W. Bush. Most of the dozen or so groups dedicated to killing him however, have only a few followers, but some of them have become quite popular.

For example there is a group named "We all Want To Kill George Bush" with 429 members, and LETS KILL BUSH WITH SHOES has 484 members.

Once again, for the reading-impaired, that does not make the "should we kill Obama" asshole any less of an asshole. It does, however, suggest that (1) the OUTRAGE over this is largely political, or (2) people have a better sense of what is, or is not, a "true threat" when it is not their favored politician being treated badly.

The Fallout games, post-apocalyptic role-playing experiences that are about as good as computer games get, have wickedly satirical introductory movies. In one of them — I think it's Fallout 2 — the narrator talks about the (future) invasion of Canada, and shows a pair of power-armored troopers shoot a kneeling captive in the back of the head, then cheerfully wave at the camera in a big friendly "hi, mom!" gesture. The juxtaposition of brutality and banality makes a deft point.

But that's a fictional stylized post-apocalyptic future. In America's present, we have what Justice Scalia calls a "new professionalism." Right?

Sort of. Injustice Everywhere — which you should not miss if you are interested in police misconduct issues — links to this story, picture, and video from the G-20 conference, where some riot police unit (not yet clearly identified) operating on the University of Pittsburgh campus apparently dragged a handcuffed, masked prisoner — apparently captured during the anti-G-20 protests — and used him as a prop in a group picture.

Say cheese!

(Hat tip to Mike and Radley on the new professionalism meme.)

Roman Polanski is a child-rapist with numerous vile attributes. But one of the most vile things about him is not, strictly speaking, his fault.

It is not Roman Polanski's fault that his apologists and fawning fans, here and abroad, are moral cretins. It is not, strictly speaking, his fault that he draws rape apologists and minimizers like a pile of shit draws flies.

Roman Polanski is in the news again because the Swiss arrested him on an American extradition warrant after he arrived for a film event. There are cries of horror, despair, and outrage from the usual suspects.

Who are those usual suspects? Here's a representative sample. We have the French, who have made him a a symbol of "sexual liberation." [This is only one reason to think very carefully before taking your children to France.] We have Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times, who feels that California lacks the money to prosecute 30-year-old rape cases and that Polanski is a Jean Valjean figure hounded by anti-rape Javerts (and that's his metaphor, not mine). We have Joan Z. Shore at the Huffington Post, who in the course of a grotesquely lighthearted jab at the Swiss for arresting Polanski, grunts out this moral excresence:

But there is more to this story. The 13-year old model "seduced" by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It's probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence.

I met Polanski shortly after he fled America and was filming Tess in Normandy. I was working in the CBS News bureau in Paris, and I accompanied Mike Wallace for a Sixty Minutes interview with Polanski on the set. Mike thought he would be meeting the devil incarnate, but was utterly charmed by Roman's sobriety and intelligence.

The Huffington Post is your go-to internet source for columnists who swoon over child rapists.

And make no mistake: Polanski is a rapist. Even if you only accept the version of events he pled guilty to, he plied a 13-year-old girl with alcohol and quaaludes and then had oral, vaginal, and anal sex with her. But that's only part of it. Polanski's fans studiously ignore her grand jury testimony, which is horrifying and heartbreaking:

Q: What happened after that?

A: He started to have intercourse with me.

Q: What do you mean by intercourse?

A: He put his penis in my vagina.

Q: What did you say, if anything, before he did that?

A: I was mostly just on and off saying "no, stop." But I wasn't fighting really because I, you know, there was no one else there and I had no place to go.

Now, not every witness before the grand jury is telling us the truth. As the Hofstra incident recently told us, rape accusers sometimes lie. But curiously, Polanski's fans very much want us to listen to the victim and take her at her word — now that she is saying that she doesn't want him prosecuted any more. Curiously, they never seem to cite the recent interviews in which she confirms that it was not just statutory rape — that she said no and Polanski did it anyway. Just as Polanski's supporters think you should draw the curtain on the part of his life when he was raping 13-year-olds, they think that you should draw the curtain on the part of the victim's story in which she describes what really happened. That part, they would have you believe, is irrelevant to evaluating the Great Man.

Let me be blunt. Polanski is a child rapist. But these apologists, too, are sick freaks. Given their moral sensibilities, I would no more let Patrick Goldstein or Joan Z. Shore be alone with my kids than I would Polanski. Among the sick or stupid ideas such people are willing to promote to defend Polanski are the following:

1. That it is morally acceptable to gloat over the fact that a rape victim does not want the perpetrator tried, even when she specifically says it is because she can't bear for her family to be dragged through the mud.
2. That the victim's mother fed her to Polanski to promote her career — as if this is a morally significant mitigating factor, as if it in any way excuses the conduct.
3. That the victim — who, in her grand jury testimony, referred to the act performing cunnilingus as "performing cuddliness" — was a sophisticated seductress.
4. That it is irrational or vengeful to pursue a child-rapist for 32 years, because moral responsibility for rape has a shelf-life.
5. That it is irrational or vengeful to fail to forgive a child-rapist, and excuse him from legal consequences, when he previously experienced great hardship.
6. That living a life of luxury in France is a great hardship. (For people with normal moral sensibilities, to whom rape is not properly classified as "sexual liberation," I grant you it might be.)
7. That Great Men of letters exist on a different plane, and that right-thinking people overlook their peccadilloes.
8. That opposition to drugging and having sex with 13-year-olds — let alone raping them — is a sign of Puritanism.
9. That the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine, which generally prevents fugitives from litigating their cases in the forum they fled, is somehow unfair.
10. That a trial judge is bound by the deal a defendant cuts with the prosecution.

Now, it's entirely possible that Polanski's now-dead trial judge was a media-whore weasel and that a new judge should grant some sort of relief as a result of judicial or prosecutorial misconduct. Nothing — other than his unwillingness to expose himself to the possibility of further punishment — prevents Polanski from pursuing that argument here in Los Angeles. Nor does that argument have anything to do with the moral dimensions of apologizing for and minimizing rape. (I should also note that in every guilty plea I have ever seen taken, the judge has correctly warned the defendant of the law: "You've got an agreement with the government. It's not an agreement with me. If I reject it, there's not jack shit you can do about it.")

Fortunately, not everyone is marching in Polanski's parade. As I wrote before, Bill Wyman has already demolished director Marina Zenovich’s Polanski propaganda piece "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." Today, Kate Harding at Salon steps up to the plate and kicks the shit out of some Polanski fans. More of this, please. Let's not let the drumbeat of poor-Polanski prevaricators go unrebutted.

Edited to add: Patterico has a good takedown of the noisome LA Times piece.

Edit No. 2: Patterico is on fire on this issue. Here he links to a new Smoking Gun post containing a transcript of Polanski's plea, and correctly notes that Polanski admitted under oath that he knew the victim was 13 at the time of the incident. I note that the transcript also reflects that Polanski was specifically warned several times, and acknowledged, that the sentence was up to the judge and that the judge might reject the deal between Polanski and the DA.

Our culture has several airhorn issues.

An "airhorn issue" is an issue that people in authority — or their apologists — invoke to shut down debate and avoid uncomfortable questions about whether the Emperor has any clothes. Like an airhorn blown in somebody's face, they are not calculated to contribute to intelligent or meaningful discussion. Rather, an airhorn issue is a shock-and-awe conversational move, meant to shock and silence, meant to be self-justifying and self-perpetuating. It's calculated to be a trump card, and too often we accept it as such.

"OMG 9/11!" is a popular airhorn issue, as is its spin-off "the Great War on Terrorism." But the great granddaddy of all airhorn issues is "oh, won't someone think of the CHILDREN!", especially when combined with the ever-popular "OMG drugs EVERYBODY PANIC!"

Radley Balko picks up on an airhorn issue being used against Indiana grandmother Sally Harpold:

“I feel for her, but if she could go to one of the area hospitals and see a baby born to a meth-addicted mother …”

That line, uttered by Vigo County Sheriff Jon Marvel, is the classic airhorn issue, calculated to make Sally Harpold and anyone supporting her to feel bad for questioning the decisions of people like Vigo County Sheriff Jon Marvel. How can you dwell on such unimportant things when poor little meth babies are dying? What is wrong with you that you don't think of the chiiiiiillllldruuuuuunnnn?

What comparative trifle was Harpold speaking out about? Well, she was arrested, handcuffed, taken to jail, and identified in a paper as a drug offender because she bought two boxes of cold medication within a week.

Harpold is a grandmother of triplets who bought one box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband at a Rockville pharmacy. Less than seven days later, she bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her adult daughter at a Clinton pharmacy, thereby purchasing 3.6 grams total of pseudoephedrine in a week’s time.

That was against the law. See, Indiana, like many states, is in the long, expensive, painful, and drawn-out process of getting its ass handed to it in the Great War on Drugs. Faced with the fact that drug dealers were making a popular and destructive drug — methamphetamine — using legal over-the-counter medications, Indiana stepped up its treatment programs, invested more in street-level intelligence gathering, and embarked on a courageous reevaluation of the entire criminalization/prohibition modality.

No, I'm just shitting you. They made it illegal for citizens to buy more than one box of legal cold medication over the counter per week.

Those two purchases put her in violation of Indiana law 35-48-4-14.7, which restricts the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or PSE, products to no more than 3.0 grams within any seven-day period.

Harpold, whose family persisted in getting sniffles without giving any thought at all to the dangers they presented to meth babies, broke that law. She broke it because she did not pay sufficient attention to the burden that the legislature and law enforcement officials had elected to place upon her — to monitor the frequency of her purchase of legal over-the-counter products and to calculate the amount of methamphetamine precursors contained therein.

It is up to customers to pay attention to their purchase amounts, and to check medication labels, [prosecutor Nina] Alexander said.

“If you take these products, you ought to know what’s in them,” she said.

The legislature — and government officials like Nina Alexander and Jon Marvel — have no problem with imposing such burdens on you, because (1) it allows them to create the impression that they are DOING SOMETHING ABOUT DRUGS and THINKING OF THE CHILDREN, and (2) it grows their fiefdoms, and (3) as a citizen, your job is to suck it up and accept such burdens.

As a result, Sally Harpold got awakened by police banging on her door one morning, handcuffed, arrested, and taken to jail for buying two boxes of cold medication within seven days. Nobody claims that she is involved with the manufacture of methamphetamine. Of course, that didn't stop the newspaper — which is to drug hysteria what a pimp is to a whore — from suggesting that she is involved in drugs:

Her police mug shot ran on the front page of her local newspaper, she wrote, in a letter to the Tribune-Star, “with an article entitled, ‘17 Arrested in Drug Sweep.’”

The arrest and public branding are ridiculous. The arrest and public branding are offensive. The arrest and public branding ought to enrage a free people. What sort of reactions did it draw from our leaders?

“The law does not make this distinction, [between people with, and without, intent to aid drug manufacture]” Alexander said.

“I’m simply enforcing the law as it was written,” Alexander said.

“Sometimes mistakes happen,” Marvel said. “It’s unfortunate. But for the good of everyone, the law was put into effect".

And, of course, the airhorn again:

“I feel for her, but if she could go to one of the area hospitals and see a baby born to a meth-addicted mother …”

Shut up, Sally Harpold and her supporters. Shut up, or it means you hate poor little meth babies. Shut up, or it means you are in favor of people destroying their lives with methamphetamine. Shut up, and don't question government officials when they come up with increasingly arbitrary, hare-brained schemes calculated to make them look like they are doing something. Shut up, and love the little children.

You have the good fortune to live in a country where your freedom to say, and believe, that God hates Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is protected by law.  If Phelps ran the government, I'd go to prison or be executed for saying that:

The U.S. fourth circuit court of appeals said Thursday the Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church were within their First Amendment rights to protest at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder.

The ruling reversed a Maryland jury's verdict in October 2007 to award Albert Snyder, a Spring Garden Township resident, $2.9 million in compensatory damages and $8 million in punitive damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy.

A few thoughts: though philosophically I'm not of the opinion that the First Amendment should provide as much protection from private actions in tort as it does from criminal proscription by the government, the Federal courts, to the extent they've erred in this matter, have tended to do so on the side of free speech, and I approve of that.

A tort action, whether phrased as defamation (traditionally not protected by the First Amendment) or intentional infliction of emotional distress, has just as much potential to shut down controversial, often valuable, speech and debate as a spell in jail.  In this case, a Maryland jury correctly awarded Albert Snyder $10.9 million in damages.

I say that the jury was correct.   Fred Phelps should be bankrupt.  Fred Phelps should live the rest of his days as a pauper, or better still in debtor's prison.  The problem is that the judge should have dismissed this case before it ever got to a jury.  The problem is that if we're going to do that to Phelps, we'll have to pauperize or imprison other people whose ideas and speech upset their neighbors.  Those who blaspheme against the Prophet Muhammad for instance, a direction to which much of Europe and Canada are trending though they're supposedly secular.  Or perhaps those who say cruel things about Republicans or Democrats.  Since I don't want to live in a country where blaspheming against Muhammad, or insulting Republicans or Democrats is a crime, I'm willing to accord Fred Phelps the right to be a non-violent monster, even when he insults dead soldiers.

My heart goes out to Mr. Snyder.  We all know that the best policy with a Fred Phelps is to ignore him, but some provocations are unbearable, and we're human.  The second best might be a punch in the nose, but that is illegal.  As we've observed before, maybe the best practical counter-attack against a Phelps is to do a good deed in his name.

Tomorrow morning Phelps and his crew of bigots will be spewing their homophobic anti-semitic bile at Union Temple, a reform Judaism synagogue in Brooklyn.  If you're reading this, and have a few dollars to spare for a good deed, perhaps a donation to one of their affiliated charities might be in order.

Make it in the name of Corporal Matthew Snyder, for the forgiveness of Fred Phelps.

Why bury the lead? Women in the Swedish military charge that the provided bras are "flammable and prone to coming undone." More shoddy defense contractor work. If you farm your military bras out to the lowest bidder, you have hot scandinavian women whose bras pop open at inconvenient times. This could all be a ploy to increase male enrollment in the armed forces.  Of course, the bras must have been designed by a man…

According to a conscripts rights group, the bras were shoddily made, and are dangerous if they catch on fire. “Our opinion is that the Swedish Armed Forces should have ordered good, flame-proof underwear,” Council spokesperson Paulina Rehbinder told The Local. Apparently, women (who make up a very small percentage of the armed forces) have been having trouble with the military clothes for decades.

I believe the Everett police department was involved in this investigation.

By the way, this link comes courtesy of the ever readable blog Uniwatch, which focuses on the minutae of sports uniforms.

The law holds dogs to a much higher standard.

The saying goes "every dog gets one bite."  That means that the owner of a dog generally won't be held responsible for bad behavior, such as biting people, unless the dog has already shown vicious tendencies.  On the other hand, if the dog has previously bitten someone severely, the owner is on notice, and subject to tort liability.  I've defended a number of bite cases and had to advise clients, clients who owned friendly, wonderful dogs, that the best thing to do with Rover is to send him "to live on a farm" because the law won't be so kind next time some mean kid pulls Rover's tail.

But a vicious policeman?  It's hard indeed to send him to live on a farm. He has civil service protection. Authorities and his fellow policemen turn a blind eye, or tell us we mustn't second-guess. And there is no union for vicious dogs.

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Earlier this week, The Yes Men released a parody issue of the New York Post, chockablock with environmentalist fantasies, written in an attempt at the Post's bombastic style. In conjunction with the release of the fake newspaper, 21 people in Survivaballs began to wade into the East River in order to

"take the UN by storm" from the water, since all the land approaches were sealed. Once at the UN, they would supposedly use the Survivaballs to blockade the negotiations and refuse to let world leaders leave the room until they'd agreed on sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has demanded.

It didn't take long, however, for the cops to arrive, pass out a handful of trespassing tickets and arrest the ringleader, Andy Bichlbaum. So far, fairly standard civil disobedience stuff. The charges were subsequently dismissed and this would be totally uninteresting but for the criminal complaint, in which the arresting officer attested to things that he couldn't possibly have seen.

"The officer said he'd seen Bichlbaum jump over the fence, which was obviously impossible, since the police arrived after the Survivaballs had all entered the beach," said [Wylie] Stecklow, who defended Bichlbaum at his arraignment … "And the officer said there were prominent signs posted to the effect that entering was forbidden – also untrue."

Sadly, the falsification of police reports to support arrests is also fairly standard civil disobedience stuff. For example, this video merges video of police misconduct at a 2007 Critical Mass bike rally with the whitewashing of that conduct in the subsequent police reports. At a 2008 Critical Mass rally, a more famous video of an officer tackling a cyclist off of his bicycle in 2008 made clear that the assault charges filed against the rider, including the allegation that the cyclist "steered into him" were complete fiction.

It is small consolation that the officer in the 2007 incidents were investigated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board and possibly Internal Affairs (results apparently pending) and that the officer in 2008 resigned and is himself facing charges for assault and filing a false report because their actions imply that it is SOP for NYPD officers to lie so brazenly.

Disclosure: I was part of a brainstorming session for the fake New York Post (I don't know if any of my ideas made the final cut), and contributed an article to the New York Times parody last year.

This is Jack.

Lawmakers in the United Kingdom and France want to make sure that you understand that is not Jack's real head you see in that picture there. Depending on the picture you view, Jack's gigantic head is part of a costume, airbrushed, or digitally enhanced.

Lawmakers in the United Kingdom and France believe that you cannot be trusted to understand that advertisements contain trickery, airbrushing, props, costumes, and digital enhancements all designed to make people and things look more enticing or interesting so that you will buy the products they are selling. (If you are in the United Kingdom or France, and have voted for these lawmakers, they might be right about that.) Moreover, lawmakers in the United Kingdom and France believe it is the place of the government to regulate the populace's potential misconceptions about head size.

Lawmakers might not actually have Jack in mind. They are thinking mostly of attractive women. Lawmakers in England and France want to pass laws limiting advertisers' ability to airbrush their models. French legislators want warning labels and fines:

French MPs are demanding airbrushed photos come with a government 'health warning' to protect women from false images of female beauty.

British legislators, by contrast, want outright bans:

The Liberal Democrats today backed a ban on the airbrushing of photos which create "overly perfected and unrealistic images" of women in adverts targeted at children.

The party also formed policy calling for cigarette-style health warnings by advertisers for the adult market which "tell the truth" about the use of digital retouching technology.

It will be interesting to see the Liberal Democrats draft legislation defining exactly what images of women are unrealistic and "overly perfected." Will they use Margaret Thatcher as a benchmark?

Anyway, all of this is premised on the notion that airbrushed models are harmful to the self-esteem and body images of women:

Mrs Boyer, who has also written a government report on anorexia and obesity, added: 'We want to combat the stereotypical image that all women are young and slim.

'These photos can lead people to believe in a reality that does not actually exist, and have a detrimental effect on adolescents.

'Many young people, particularly girls, do not know the difference between the virtual and reality, and can develop complexes from a very young age.

Apparently these legislators believe that women, and girls, are stupid creatures who credit advertising messages uncritically. They also believe that parents are incompetent to teach their children otherwise. This was something of a surprise to me. The most incisive critics of advertising messages I know are women. And I'm already having fun teaching my kids how to spot subtext and message in advertisements. They are doing well at it already, and learning to see it as the game it can be. Perhaps England and the Continent has people who are . . . well, let's let kindness draw the curtain on that.

For as long as there has been advertising, it has been based on presenting fantasy, not reality. Beer will not make you attractive to women, unless it is the women drinking large quantities of it. Your teeth won't look that white. Your hair won't bounce like that. Your hamburger isn't going to look that good. And if you say, "No, dear — to ourhealth," your spouse isn't going to laugh delightedly. He or she is going to get a conservatorship and put you in a home, you nattering old fool.

Do advertisements send messages about body image? Of course they do. They send the message "extremely beautiful people buy our products, and if you buy our products, you will be extremely beautiful too." A warning label that says "This model in the advertisement might not actually look this way if you caught him or her before three coffees, or after a bad day or a pub crawl" does send a counter-message. But that counter-message is not "hey, you are beautiful and acceptable, too." The counter-message is a deeply condescending and humiliating one: "Hey, you are a fucking moron, fatty, and your government cant trust you to sort out reality from advertising unless we spell it out for you."

Critics say that it is terrible that advertisers are creating norms for what is beautiful and what appropriate body-image is. To that I respond: is it better to have the government responsible for regulating what is beautiful and what appropriate body-image is?

Give the lawmakers this, though: they are at least adding value through a combination of self-deprecating ironic humor and brutal honesty:

"Liberals don't like bans," she said. "But we do recognise we all need it to protect children from harm, whether it's smoking, watching violence or sex."

I tried hard to avoid the slur that people supported and admired George W. Bush because they were sheep. I tried hard to avoid the slur that people supported and admired Bill Clinton because he was slick. I tried hard to avoid the slur that people supported and admired Jimmy Carter because they were extremely stupid. I tried hard to avoid the slur that people supported and admired Ron Paul because they were gravely mentally ill.

Though there are certainly some people to whom those slurs apply, for the most part they are vast over-generalizations, calculated to demean and to avoid substantive argument rather than engage it.

In the same spirit, I try hard to avoid the slur that people support and admire Barack Obama because they view him as a Messiah figure.

Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey, you're not helping.

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How would the sort of man who doesn't get responses on OK Cupid reinterpret the classics of romantic poetry and novels?

"if a hotti3 lieks a man & dont ende@vr 2 conceel it OMG he must hit it"

"shl i cmp@r U to a sumrz d@ lol?"

"no i no i shud think wel of myself :-< but that isnt enuff if othrz dont luv me i wud rathr dye then live kthxbye"

"1 day i wr0te hr name up0n tha strand but came tha wavez & washed that sh1t away – wtf"

"yo my l1ps iz 2 b1ush1n p11gr1mz r3@dy st@nd 2 sm00v d@t ruff tuch wit @ t3ndr k1zz"

Of course they're all charming in person, it's not fair to judge a man by his spelling and grammar, and why are you so stuck up anyway, and they'd just love to exchange photos with you.

Hat tip: Flowing Data, through David and Ken.

There is a persistent, and I think true, rumor going around that certain quests within the European version of Blizzard Software's World of Warcraft game have been disabled because they depict the use of alcoholic beverages, specifically, beer.  According to a representative of the company:

The Brewfest quests ‘Pink Elekks On Parade’ and ‘Catch the Wild Wolpertinger!’ were removed to ensure that World of Warcraft contains content that complies with regional game rating requirements.

For those who don't play it, World of Warcraft occasionally features holiday events in game reminiscent of certain real world holidays.  In this case, the deleted quests (which lucky Americans get to experience) are part of "Brewfest", an event modeled on Germany's Octoberfest, in which orcs and dwarves and trolls and whatnot drink a lot of beer.  Just like Germans.

And just like everyone in Europe, and for that matter just like the parents of most European children, who are being protected from this menace.  As though binge-drinking isn't a time-honored, almost cultural tradition in many of the largest European countries, such as Britain, Germany, and Poland.  As though Americans aren't continually told what a relaxed attitude Europeans have about children and alcohol.  "In France, kids drink wine at the dinner table!"

Of course World of Warcraft, even in the barbarian United States, already comes with a parental filter, an "off switch," in which parents may disable violence or blood, or presumably alcohol use, to protect their children.  But in this case, Blizzard didn't feel safe relying on parents to shield their kids from the evils of virtual beer.   No one in Europe can get drunk in World of Warcraft.

Like the United States, the European Union follows a supposedly "voluntary" rating system for games, which in practice isn't voluntary at all considering that a game maker can't get its product into stores without submitting to a rating board and making sure that certain taboos aren't in the game.  Like drinking virtual beer.

In the case of World of Warcraft, the game must maintain a rating of "12+" to be sold in stores.  We're told that a game suitable for 12 year olds:

May contain graphic violence towards fantasy characters, non-graphic violence towards humans or animals, explicit sexual descriptions or images (nude people in a sexual context, although not necessarily explicit in content), and mild swearing.

Meaning in WoW that a child of 12 may summon demons which rain virtual fire on the avatars of other children, who then run around screaming, or stab the avatars of other children repeatedly in the back with daggers coated in virtual poison.

Whereas children may not experience:

encouragement of the use of tobacco or alcohol, sexual expletives or blasphemy

Though little Ian in Birmingham probably gets all three when his dad arrives home bloody fookin' pissed from a night with his mates at the pub.  I'll leave blasphemy for another day but I'll note again, as an American, that I'm continually told what a relaxed attitude Europeans have toward sex and frank discussion of ideas, because as we all know the public television networks in Europe show pornography during prime time, whereas American tv shows depict only mindless violence.  Where games are concerned though, it seems Europe reverses the equation.  Setting one's enemies ablaze is just fine for kids, while the depiction of beer and questioning the Pope's authority as the vicar of Christ are right out.

But again the rating system for European games, where we have this odd arrangement in which children (and adults) may experience and inflict violence of the most horrific sort, while virtual alcohol, or say a bit of pipeweed in a Lord of the Rings game, puts it behind the counter, is perfectly voluntary.  It's pure coincidence that the Pan European Game Information rating system:

has the enthusiastic support of the European Commission. It is considered to be a model of European harmonisation in the field of the protection of children.

I'm sure that if European retailers and game makers decided to abandon PEGI, which produces the perverse situation in which no one at all can play a game depicting such basic everyday European family activities as drinking lots of beer and blaspheming, the European Commission wouldn't do a thing about it.