If Barack Obama wishes to be judged on his own merits, as a politician and a President, rather than as the Norwegian committee's "magic negro," he should decline the Nobel Peace Prize. The Barack Obama who wrote "Dreams from My Father" is a complex and fascinating man.  He is not a token, a fetish, a talisman, or a symbol.  He is not a Morgan Freeman movie character.

And that's all I'll say on the matter.

Update: Well, it isn't all I'll say on the matter.  Awarding the prize to Obama, at this early stage in his political career (he was only a junior Senator this time last year) is the Academy's way of rebuking, yet again, George W. Bush.  The committee had already done that, by awarding the prize to Al Gore.  Bush deserves many rebukes, but the committee has sullied and trivialized itself and its prize with this one.  Obama has not furthered the cause of world peace in any measurable way, because he hasn't had time to do so.  It remains to be seen whether his policies will in fact further world peace.  If the committee gave the prize to Obama as a symbol, on the other hand, as a way of commemorating the achievements of African Americans in rising from segregation to the White House in 40 years, the "magic negro" comment stands.  Awarding the prize to Obama smacks of post-colonial paternalism, and faintly of racism.

"Here's a pat on the head, magic negro.  You've come so far!"

The prize should have been awarded to Richard Holbrooke for the Dayton Accords, his work in Bosnia, and in the Middle East today, or to Harry Wu or another Chinese activist for civil rights.  The only significant war that Obama has resolved is the Henry Louis Gates conflict, and there he had an assist from the makers of Bud Light.  Was Anheuser-Busch at least nominated?

It's good for blogs to fact-check the established media — especially when the media blunders into a blogger's area of expertise and displays subject matter ignorance. We like to call out media ignorance and idiocy, and we like it when others do so.

But if we're to approach this hobby honestly, we need to be willing to fact-check our friends and neighbors on Blog Country as well — even when those bloggers are ideological fellow-travelers and online friends.

This brings me to the subject of George Norris, orchid importer, held up by some small- and large-L libertarians as a victim of uncontrolled federal criminalization of innocent conduct.

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Step one of becoming a criminal defense attorney after years as a prosecutor was learning that clients have entrenched, bizarre, misinformed ideas of how the criminal justice system works.

Step two was learning how to persuade clients gently that these entrenched ideas were not true or accurate without mortally offending them or accidentally convincing them that I am some sort of secret flunky for The Man.

Step three has been realizing that client delusions can be useful, even beneficial, and that it is counterproductive to cure them. Case in point: an astonishing percentage of clients, charged with an astonishing array of banal offenses, come to me convinced that their phones are being tapped by the government. If they aren't connected to a multi-kilo drug trafficking organization, organized crime, terrorism, or an extremely significant crime, that's actually highly unlikely. Wiretaps are a gigantic pain in the ass. Even if you think the universe revolves around you, Mr. Client, the U.S. Attorney's office isn't going to be filling out the mountain of paperwork to go up on a wire on your hundred-thousand-dollar fraud case. I spent huge amounts of time explaining this patiently to clients: no, no, it's not that your affairs are insignificant, exactly; it's just that it's terribly unlikely that the government would choose to pursue them with a wiretap.

Suddenly it hit me. These people are motormouths. They refuse to heed my favorite advice. That's often why they are in trouble in the first place. This level of paranoia is useful for client control. Why the hell am I trying to convince them that they aren't being wiretapped, when that will simply encourage them to call everyone they know (like probable government witnesses) to talk about their case? Why am I not recognizing their paranoia as a power for good?

Patrick, this is for you, but it was too good not to share. I wrote earlier about the first Emperor of America, Norton I. Among his many mandates, he presciently demanded that a bridge be built between San Francisco and Oakland. It only took 50 years, but his bridge was built, and on the site, this plaque (since moved to our main transit terminal) was placed:

In case the picture doesn't come out well, it reads: "Pause traveler and be grateful to Norton I. Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico, 1859-1880. Whose prophetic wisdom conceived and decreed the bridging of San Francisco Bay." I am trying to get out to see Emperor Norton's grave this weekend, but this plaque is a hidden gem of San Francisco (right up there with the Golden Hydrant).

I'm skeptical of the motives of many who complain about gender harassment and discrimination law and policies.  If one listens to the Limbaughs of the world, before the Civil Rights Act and before corporations and universities began to follow policies against sexual harassment, women never faced discrimination, embarrassment, or humiliation in the workplace.  A day at the office was like a Georgia ball, and women who worked were treated like Scarlett O'Hara.  Harassment policies weren't just unnecessary but sinister, an excuse for liberal feminazis who want to sue their bosses for gentlemanly behavior, such as opening the door for a lady.

But now and again a case comes along that fully validates the Hannitys and the Becks.  As with the "Duke Lacrosse" scandal, such cases, in which a well-meant but poorly implemented gender harassment policy is abused, end up hurting women far more than any number of victories over real harassers, because they tar legitimate, well-founded complaints with suspicion.  Such a case is unfolding at East Georgia College in Swainsboro Georgia right now.  The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has the story.

Professor Thomas Thibeault is a prophet.  On August 5, 2009, Thibeault attended a training workshop on the school's sexual harassment policy, given by the school's vice president for legal affairs.  In the course of the workshop, Thibeault asked an uncomfortable question about whether the policy distinguished between subjective harassment (in which some nervous nelly takes offense at innocent or reasonable behavior), and objective harassment (the sort of behavior, like for instance yelling about imaginary pubic hairs on cans of Coke, which any reasonable outsider would consider inappropriate).  He was told it did not.  Then Thibeault asked whether the policy included provisions to protect against obviously false or malicious accusations.  He was told it did not.  All accusations of harassment, no matter how facially implausible, would be treated alike.  Thibeault replied that "the policy is invalid."

Two days later, Thibeault's prophecy came to pass.  He alleges he was called into the office of East Georgia College President John Bryant Black, told he was a divisive force in the college, and ordered to resign at the end of the meeting.  If he resigned, he'd be given a good recommendation for his next job.  If Thibeault chose not to resign, he would be fired and his "long history of sexual harassment" would be made public.  Thibeault chose not to resign, was fired and escorted by police from the campus, and told he'd be arrested for trespassing if he ever returned.

According to Thibeault, it was news that he had a "long history of sexual harassment," but that's what they all say.  What inclines one to give Thibeault the benefit of the doubt is the timing of the action (what a coincidence that Thibeault was fired two days after asking probing and pertinent questions at a sexual harassment workshop!), and the college's own suspicious actions afterward.

For instance, despite three months of requests, by Thibeault, Thibeault's lawyer, and the FIRE, the college has yet to identify an accuser.  East Georgia College is a state school, so Thibeault has a due proces right to this information, unlike what he'd have in a private school star chamber.  The school has yet to inform Thibeault of what he supposedly did, with or without a witness.  Thibeault has been informed by other professors of what appears to be an attempt by EGC to scrounge up evidence after the fact, with faculty being asked if they remember Thibeault reading, in a faculty gathering, from a political humor book with the word "assholes" in the title.

As an aside, if that's the best the college can do Thibeault is going to collect a large damage award at the end of the day.  I socialize with perfessers myself, and they're nothing but old graduate students.  When around people they consider near-equals, or at least not around students, they drink and curse like sailors.  In any case, a college professor at a state school absolutely has a First Amendment right to use language as mild as the almost quaint A-word outside class, and to possess books with salty but non-obscene language.

Also suspicious is Thibeault's classification.  At first, Thibeault was told he was fired.  Then, he was told he was suspended.  Now, he's told he's suspended with pay, pending his hearing, which the college refuses to schedule or discuss despite two months of requests by Thibeault's lawyer.  All of course, with no evidence whatsoever being provided to anyone, not an accusation, not a fact, not a name.

In fact, nothing but the suspicious timing.  From the looks of things, the only person Thibeault ever "harassed" at East Georgia College was its vice president for legal affairs, Mary Smith, and that harassment wasn't sexual.  No, if Thibeault harassed Smith, he did it by asking uncomfortable questions about a potentially illegal and unconstitutional sexual harassment policy.

Questions that the college now is answering, most eloquently, by its silence on the matter.

Why?

Because I think I may have a fever.

Have you checked your temperature?

No.

Well, check your temperature and if you have a fever, we'll make an appointment.

I can't check my temperature.  I don't have a thermometer.

Well, go to your drugstore and buy one.

I am at the drugstore.  They told me to call you.

Oh, you wanted to buy a thermometer.  Sorry, you'll need a prescription for that.  Would you like to make an appointment?

Yes I would.

Please tell us about your symptoms.  Do you have a fever?

This short play was brought to you by Governor Jim Doyle, and the legislature of Wisconsin.

Via Doug Mataconis.

How did San Francisco criminal defense lawyer Eric Safire find himself, mid-hearing, asking the judge and the prosecution for assurances that he would not be arrested?

He engaged in a little courtroom theatre, and it blew up in his face.

Courtroom theatrics are always risky. Just ask the O.J. prosecutors, who asked a ham actor to try on gloves in front of a jury. Sometimes it merely makes a lawyer look foolish, or look like he or she has no regard for the jury's intelligence. Other times it blows up in the lawyers face.

Mr. Safire found himself defending Charles "Cheese" Heard at a preliminary hearing on charges of murder spurred by a bejeweled Bamm-Bamm pendent. [No, really.] When the prosecutor asked the witness to identify Cheese, Mr. Safire apparently made a pre-arranged signal, leading to eight of Cheese's compatriots — alleged by the government to be gang members — to stand up in unison and glare at the witness. This did not stop the identification, but did lead to the arrest of the eight spectators on witness intimidation charges.

Safire — who asserts that his aim was to confuse the witness and leave her unable to pick his client out from the crowd — was reduced to blubbing:

Safire then sought assurances from Judge Wallace Douglass and the prosecutor that he would be immune from prosecution. "Before I continue, I want a representation from the district attorney's office that I'm not going to be arrested," Safire said, adding that the men were "here at my request – I motioned for them to stand up."

He said the men's arrest created a "chilling effect on my ability to represent my client." He threatened to withdraw from the case.

"I can't guarantee that you won't be arrested," Douglass said. "The district attorney can arrest who he wants."

Now, having your client dress like someone else in the courtroom, and sit near them, in hopes that the witness will identify the wrong person is a classic bit of theatre. If it works, and if the case rests on identification, then it's great. Of course, if it doesn't work, then it merely reinforces the strength of the identification. Moreover, it's almost always impractical, because in most courtrooms your client is the guy sitting next to you at counsel table, and few judges will let you seat the client in the audience during a witness' testimony. It's not clear here where Cheese was seated. If Cheese was seated at counsel table (or near it), and Mr. Safire arranged for eight people in the audience to stand up, that seems extraordinarily unlikely to interfere with the identification of Cheese, and profoundly and predictably likely to be taken as witness intimidation. I think Mr. Safire needs to hire his own lawyer.

(via Fark)

Stuffed shirt leftwing elitist Harry Connick Jr. evidently has no sense of humor.  Watch as he imposes his cheerless political correctness on this wholesome Australian television audience.

You may view Connick's overreaction to this innocent bit of fun at about the four minute mark.  Cheers to the host for standing up to Connick and explaining the humor. And cheers to the brave Australian commenters at Youtube, like "uaapd", who points out:

Clearly, it was a PARODY, not an attack on the Jacksons personally, or anyone else, black, white or green. How's your economy going – no recession here. In case the yanks hadn't noticed, you aren't the centre of the universe, but we have sufficient self esteem to ignore aspects of your culture that offends us. Please do the same.

and "doingitlive1" for this:

I was going to write a whole lot of crap but it comes down to one thing really…."get f**ked Harry, I am sick of uptight, politically correct w&nkers" I was offended by the fact that the yanks elected BUSH as president…now that is offensive world wide. …..If your too uptight to get it please stay on your side of the hemisphere and please please please stop starting all the wars

And anyway, it's not as though there are black people in Australia.  At least none who can afford a television.

Via.

If you have a blog, you should republish this disgusting image:

Of course only a pervert or otherwise depraved person would find this photoshopped model attractive (yes, her skull is wider than her pelvis), but publishing horrid images is hardly Ralph Lauren's worst sin.  That's a toss-up between the company's continued encouragement of anorexia and bulimia, or the stubborn, unfounded litigiousness with which Lauren tries to prevent consumers from criticizing it.

While you're at it, boycott Ralph Lauren jeans.

H/t: Overlawyered.

Disgraced former Oakland police officer Karla Rush wants her job back.  Her reasoning?  Although Rush admits she filed false affidavits to obtain search warrants, an offense for which Rush and three male officers were fired, the city failed to meet its quota:  It didn't fire enough men.

The officers told judges that substances seized from drug suspects had been identified by the police crime lab as narcotics when, in fact, they had not, authorities said. Those false statements were used to persuade judges to issue warrants that police relied on to gather more evidence.

Rush said she had never lied. Instead, she said, she had been trained to rely on templates when filing the affidavits, and the templates were based on the assumption that substances submitted to the crime lab would test positive.

According to Rush's attorney, John Houston Scott, 17 other officers, all male, were guilty of the same offense yet kept their jobs.  And that's not fair.  Scott has a point.  If indeed there are 17 officers on the Oakland force who've filed false affidavits in Alameda County courts, that's scandalous.

But should Rush get her job back?  How many people were searched, had their homes invaded by police, lost their property, and were arrested based on false affidavits provided by Rush?  Signed affidavits that stated something very like:

Officer Karla Rush swears under oath that the facts expressed in the attached and incorporated Statement of Probable Cause are true and that based thereon she has probable cause to believe and does believe that property described below is lawfully seizable pursuant to Penal Code Section 1524.

When in fact Officer Karla Rush was swearing no such thing under oath (but she signed it anyway).  Or when in fact Officer Karla Rush wasn't reading her affidavit (but she signed it anyway).  Or when in fact Officer Karla Rush just didn't give a damn whether her affidavit was true or false (but she signed it anyway).

Do the people of Oakland want a Karla Rush back on the force?  Does the Oakland police department, which rumor says has a bit of a cowboy problem, have so few cowgirls that a filer of false affidavits should be given her job back?

Those are far from the only questions raised by Rush's suit.  Here are a couple for Rush's attorney John Houston Scott:

• Did your client verify the truthfulness of the allegations within her complaint?
• Did you go over with her, very carefully, what verification means?
• I mean, very, very, very carefully?
  
• Did you tell her that filing a false statement in a civil court is a crime, just as it is in criminal court?
• Have you informed ex-Officer Rush that the very first thing she's going to be asked to do on cross-examination is to admit that she's here because she swore to give truthful information to the court, and she didn't do that?

And finally Mr. Scott, have you discussed with ex-Officer Rush whether she has a snowball's chance in Hell of getting reinstated to her job?  Or would she be satisfied if the department simply fired a few more men for the same offense?

Just to even things out, of course.

The Federal Trade Commission today approved rules for blogging endorsements.

The FTC said Monday its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve [its] final Web guidelines, which had been expected. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could bring fines up to $11,000 per violation. Bloggers or advertisers also could face injunctions and be ordered to reimburse consumers for financial losses stemming from inappropriate product reviews.

The commission stopped short of specifying how bloggers must disclose conflicts of interest. Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC's advertising practices division, said the disclosure must be "clear and conspicuous," no matter what form it will take.

The upshot is that if a blogger receives a free product, the blogger must disclose that fact if he or she endorses or otherwise writes about the product.  While disclosure of freebies is good ethics for bloggers generally, I predict that the end result is going to be a muddled morass in which nobody, including the FTC itself, understands the rules, but the government moves further toward regulation of blogs.

Yes, I believe in the slippery slope.

"Your honor, the courts have for years upheld the government's authority to regulate commercial speech on weblogs, including mandates for prominent disclosure of conflicts of interest.  If we require bloggers to reveal that they receive free products from Coke or Pepsi, it only makes sense that we require Blogger X to disclose that he is employed by Party Y, or that he receives tips from Campaign Z.  After all, if the government has a compelling interest to require bloggers to disclose commercial conflicts of interest, how much more important is the government's interest in guaranteeing free and fair elections, on the web as elsewhere?"

The FTC's proposal made many bloggers anxious. They said the scrutiny would make them nervous about posting even innocent comments.

To placate such fears, Cleland said the FTC will more likely go after an advertiser instead of a blogger for violations. The exception would be a blogger who runs a "substantial" operation that violates FTC rules and already received a warning, he said.

Define "substantial," in plain English, please.  And also, define how the guidelines will punish those who file frivolous FTC complaints against a blogger for reasons that have nothing to do with advertising.  "Hey, this guy sure does criticize the government a lot.  I wonder whether he's getting free stuff from Amazon?"

Of course the final guidelines, I'm sure, will be a model of clarity, easy to understand for consumers, advertisers, and bloggers alike.  No one will need a law degree to blog.

You can determine that for yourself, just by reading the Commission's EZ-2-Read 81 page Notice of intent to regulate.

Hat tip: Fritinancy, through Twitter.

Update:  Ron Coleman called this over two years ago.

It's my birthday today. I'm 38. Alas, no midlife crisis seems imminent. In the last few years, I have found my decision making being based more on personal happiness than what might seem "rational", especially where my work life was concerned. So, I left what should have been my dream job and am so much happier for it.

So, in the hopes of creating a new tradition around here, I present a random selection of people who share my birthday. It's actually quite a list:

Dave Winfield, Al Sharpton, Biff Henderson, Gore Vidal (yeah!), Ashlee Simpson, Seann William Scott, Gwen Stefani and one of the Backstreet Boys. Add in that October 3rd was one of the best days in Giants History and the debut of Captain Kangaroo and I feel in good company.

Speaking of good company, for the third year in a row I will be lucky enough to spend today hosting a cut-throat minigolf tournament with friends and loved ones. A day I look forward to every year.

Birthdays really don't get much better. Now, to find a mid-life crisis…

Turns out he is of Jewish heritage, probably a convert to Islam.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver. The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Watch for the Human Rights Council to start churning out resolutions against him.

Renate Bowling, a 71 year old widow who escaped to the free world from East Germany, is now a common criminal.  She had the poor judgment to "poke" a 17 year old hooligan who was part of a gang throwing rocks at her house.  While in America or any other sane country Ms. Bowling would have been let off with a warning, Ms. Bowling is not so fortunate.

She has the bad luck to live in the world's worst nanny state.

The Crown Prosecution Service today defended its decision to take legal proceedings against a 71-year-old woman who prodded a 17-year-old youth in the chest.

Renate Bowling, of Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire, confronted the boy in the street after stones were thrown at her home.

The disabled widow, who walks with a steel frame, said she thought it was a "joke" when police arrived at the scene and arrested her for jabbing the teenager with her finger.

While the Crown, which undoubtedly prosecuted this vicious criminal for the sake of the children, claims there was no evidence that the youth who received this vicious jabbing threw the rock, it ignores Ms. Bowling's own account, in which she saw the boy standing in the street, in the direction from which the rocks had been thrown, and later hiding behind a wall.  Ms. Bowling had to toddle out with her walker to confront the little monster.

As we wrote a couple of months ago, discussing a very similar case:

Funny, it wasn’t too long ago that Mrs. Lake wouldn’t have had to strike young hooligans who vandalize war memorials. The police would be doing it for her, and deservedly so. While it would probably set a bad example to actually give her a medal, the most she should have gotten is a strong warning, delivered with a smile.

Shame on the child’s parents, for allowing their son to run wild like a beast in the streets, and shame on the prosecutors who brought charges against her.

What sort of country raises entitled young hooligans, who abuse old ladies by pelting them with stones and calling them "German whores"?  Hooligans who run to the police when they're beaten up by the old ladies? What sort of country tolerates, encourages, and condones this sort of behavior?

It's a good thing that prosecutors in the UK can exercise their discretion.  Otherwise there might be some serious injustice going on.

Why did Altria, formerly known as Phillip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Liggett Myers, and Lorillard go along with the administration's plan, enacted by Congress, to allow FDA regulation of cigarettes and other tobacco products?  Why didn't they try to mobilize the Republican Party, which if anemic is still strong enough to put brakes on various stimulus bills as well as government-run health insurance?  Because it set the tobacco companies up forever.  Because FDA regulation of tobacco establishes a cartel, an oligopoly in which new competitors cannot break into the nicotine market, because new competitors will never be able to afford the hideous costs and hurdles that drug manufacturers go through whenever they want to introduce a new product.

Even if what they want to sell is a competing product which is indisputably safer than cigarettes.

FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey tells a St. Louis paper, "We don't know if this is any better for them." If the FDA really doesn't know whether inhaling water vapor containing nicotine is less dangerous than inhaling smoke containing myriad toxins and carcinogens, it cannot be trusted to make scientific judgments about the safety of anything it regulates. But since the FDA has approved various nicotine replacement products (including inhalers!) as safe and effective smoking cessation aids, we have to assume/hope DeLancey is lying, just as FDA spokeswoman Rita Chappelle presumably was lying when she told NPR "some people may mistakenly perceive [e-cigarettes] to be safer alternatives to conventional tobacco use," thereby asserting that they are not, in fact, safer, even though they do not contain tobacco and do not generate combustion products.

Let's roll that back:  Some people, who cannot overcome their nicotine addiction, may mistakenly believe that e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine-infused water vapor into the nicotine-addict's lungs, are safer than cigarettes, which deliver carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ammonia, toluene, and cyanide into the addict's lungs.  Where is the mistake?  Does Rita Chapelle believe that, in order to make e-cigarettes as safe as conventional cancer sticks, e-cigarette manufacturers should add cyanide to their products?

Of course, in the Cartesian sense, we know absolutely nothing.  For all we know, we're just disembodied brains floating in tanks, receiving stimulus from electrodes.  And for all we know, it's just as dangerous to breathe water vapor as it is to breathe smoke.

But back on Planet Earth, there are three possibilities, not mutually exclusive:  1) Rita Chapelle thinks smokers are idiots.  She may be right.  Taking up smoking, for most who have the habit, was the dumbest thing they ever did in their lives.  2) She also thinks that everyone else is an idiot, if she believes that they'll fall for such a transparent lie.  3) Rita Chapelle is herself an idiot, because she actually believes that e-cigarettes don't reduce their users' chances of dying a horrible death as opposed to the only other palatable means of nicotine ingestion: cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco.

I lean toward possibilities 1 and 2.  It's difficult to believe that the government would hire idiots to run the Food and Drug Administration.