If allegations against Person County North Carolina District Attorney Joel Brewer are true, Brewer's not content to be a prosecutor.  He wants to be a cop as well, complete with a badge and a fast car.

An unnamed female citizen interviewed by [a State Bureau of Investigation agent named] Meyers told him that she was stopped one day in the past five months “by a man driving a dark-colored Corvette, who flashed a gold/bronze badge and who represented himself as a law enforcement officer.

“The man wanted to know if [the female] wanted a citation or a warning ticket for illegally passing him,” Meyers wrote. “When [the female] protested that she had not passed the man, he then wanted to know if she wanted a citation or a warning ticket for following too close.

Supposedly Brewer carried a badge at all times, labeled "District Attorney".  DAs in North Carolina are not authorized to carry badges, nor to issue traffic citations.  Perhaps the badge came from a box of Cracker Jacks, or maybe cereal.  By law, Brewer has no more authority to arrest his fellow citizens than Cap'n Crunch.

“When [the female] challenged the man, he got back into the Corvette and left,” Meyers continued. “[The female] obtained the Corvette’s license number and it was determined the Corvette was registered [to Brewer].”

A separate unnamed citizen, who Meyers wrote was familiar with the workings of Brewer’s office and has known the former district attorney for “a number of years,” reportedly saw “Brewer stop a motorist by use of the badge. …The motorist was stopped because District Attorney Brewer thought the motorist had committed some traffic violation.”

But that's just petty abuse of power, all in a day's work for a cop, even an imaginary cop.  It's the political corruption that makes this story.

Meyers wrote that, according to an unnamed citizen, who was also familiar with the workings of the district attorney’s office, “Brewer would routinely dismiss minor citations and traffic charges for people and then save the pink copy of the citations, which District Attorney Brewer has kept in a manila file folder in his office.”

According to the citizen, Brewer “has referred to the manila file folder, called some of those for whom he has dismissed charges, reminded them of what he did, and asked them for their vote and/or for their help with working the polls.”

So the allegation is that Brewer would dismiss criminal charges in hopes of getting votes and political support.  That's just good politics, all well and good for the people of Person County.  They get out of paying a fine, and in return all they have to do is stand outside a voting station every four years wearing a "Brewer for District Attorney" shirt, or something like that.

Pity about non-residents who get stopped for driving 10 over the limit.  They have to pay the fine and the added insurance premium.

But maybe it isn't the political corruption that makes this story.  Maybe it's the creepy overtone of, well, you decide:

Meyers added that the citizen “heard District Attorney Brewer agree to dismiss a charge for a female, while asking for the female’s phone numbers, which he then wrote on the pink copy of the citation.”

No doubt Brewer wanted the lady's phone number so that he could thank her for her political support.  Or give her a ride in his Corvette.  Or something.

But maybe it isn't the creepiness that makes this story.  Perhaps it's the double standard, and the hypocrisy.

[Judge Gary] Trawick ruled Monday that the search warrant and a portion of Meyers’ affidavit be made public after Brewer, through his team of attorneys, had sought to keep the information sealed.

Two paragraphs from Meyers’ affidavit were redacted as ordered by Trawick before the search warrant information was unsealed and filed Tuesday afternoon.

Those two paragraphs, according to Yanceyville attorney George Daniel, one of three lawyers representing Brewer, contain information that “could very well be prejudicial, detrimental and inflammatory.”

Trawick said during Monday’s hearing, the redacted information “could ruin a man’s reputation.”

Considering what has been made public, it's hard to see how Brewer's reputation could be hurt further.  But riddle me this: When is the last time a District Attorney moved to seal an affidavit or search warrant on the ground that it could ruin a suspect's reputation, when the suspect was not the District Attorney?

I'll wait while you look that up.

There are many reasons to make fun of American high-profile public lefties. The pomposity, the demi-literacy, the fashion choices — it's a satirist's dream. One of the main reasons to despise them, though, is not particularly funny. Like your female friend with the long pattern of getting involved with leather-clad alcoholics who steal her money and treat her like shit, the self-appointed public faces of the American Left have a long history of embarrassing non-sexual man-crushes on despots. Whether it's the shameful history of sucking up to Stalin, contorted apologias for Pol Pot, or the Che shirt un-ironically worn by unreflective assholes everywhere, the American Left has piss-poor taste in foreign leaders.

[This is not to say for even a second that the Right has better taste. The Right's taste is awful in different and exciting ways.]

Today's case in point: Sean Penn, appearing (perhaps as part of the terms of his probation) on Politically Incorrect, achieved the impossible: he managed to sound like even more of a dick than that smirking feculent pus-crust Bill Maher. Penn transcended satire of himself in the course of defending his BFF Hugo Chavez:

PENN: The collaborative opportunity in Haiti, when you talk about Hugo Chavez, and some of the other people who are demonized, and you know, when some of these countries accuse us of an occupation — where I believe this was strictly a humanitarian action by the United States military, and an incredible one – I’m a little sympathetic. Because every day, this elected leader [Chavez] is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.

Yes, that's the sound of an Academy Award winning American actor saying that journalists should go to prison for saying that Hugo Chavez is a dictator.

Sean Penn shouldn't go to prison. But he ought to be treated like the tyranny-apologizing jackass fanatic he is.

Way back in November I had a song stuck in my head, and blogged it out.  I'm in a similar predicament this morning, so without further ado, here are the lyrics to the old-time / bluegrass / gospel classic "Broadminded," by Charlie and Ira Louvin, the Louvin Brothers:

That word "Broadminded," is spelled S-I-N.
I read in my Bible, they shall not enter in.
For Jesus will answer, "Depart, I never knew you."
That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N.

Some people like to gamble, now and then for pleasure
And drink a little whiskey, just to please a friend.
They say it's really nothing, you've got to be broadminded
That word in my Bible is spelled S-I-N.

That broadminded mother goes out and joins a party.
"There's nothing wrong in drinking, and dancing with a friend."
And then on Sunday morning, she'll say she loves her savior.
She should be begging God to forgive her of her sin.

That word "Broadminded," is spelled S-I-N.
I read in my Bible, they shall not enter in.
For Jesus will answer, "Depart, I never knew you."
That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N.

For to be carnally minded is death,
But to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against the mind of God,
For it is not subject to the law of God,
Neither, indeed, can be.
You'll find your word "Broadminded" means sin, if you'll read.

That word "Broadminded," is spelled S-I-N.
I read in my Bible, they shall not enter in.
For Jesus will answer, "Depart, I never knew you."
That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N.

Sadly, there are no online videos of the Louvin Brothers, who were a truly great band, performing this counterrevolutionary manifesto. But there is a live performance by the Clampitt Family, recorded in 2007, that captures some of the flavor of the Louvin original.

In olden times I was a member of a band which covered "Broadminded" frequently at small shows and house parties and the like. But I've learned, and realize that the things we did at those shows, and the irony with which we thought we approached this song, wer nothing but sin.  I'm a better man for the realization.

A bit of spontaneous bathroom humor, captured by the miracle of digital phone camera, about two hours ago.  Don't go beyond if you're easily offended:

Continue Reading »

The Germans have an expression: "too clever is dumb."

Every time you execute what you view as a clever gambit to thwart the government without consulting me, you get one step closer to Club Fed, and I get one step closer to a beach house.

If you've played World of Warcraft for any appreciable length of time (I know that a number of our readers have), would you please consider responding to this anonymous survey?

The survey is promulgated by one of my wife's graduate assistants.  It is not intrusive, nor will it consume a great portion of your day.  It is part of a larger research project on the ways in which self-selecting groups (hence Warcraft) use the internet to obtain desired information from dumps of voluminous yet widely dispersed data.

A randomly selected participant will receive a small cash prize.  I declined my eligibility for the prize, so your odds of winning are that much higher.  As a bonus, by increasing the size of the sample, you will enhance the survey's validity, thereby assisting a promising researcher in her career.

He lost his coat. If you find it, please return it. Hopefully Mr. Ogletree will learn to be more careful in the future.

Lest we lull ourselves into believing that one side or the other has a monopoly on contemptible political rhetoric, Cato@liberty catches John Kerry indulging in familiar "why do you hate America" blather:

What we are talking about is a jobs bill. It is not a climate bill. It is a jobs bill, and it is a clean air bill. It is a national security, energy independence bill,” he told reporters in the Capitol…

“And people are going to have to decide whether they are going to vote for America or against it,” he concluded.

If more people hated America, John, you might be President.

House Resolution 252, condemning the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee today, by a vote of 23 ayes to 22 nays.  Also opposing the bill is the Obama administration (President Obama will presumably veto the bill if it gets through the full House and Senate), even though Candidate Obama stated he would recognize it if elected President.

Because there are a lot more Armenian-Americans than there are Turkish-Americans.  You know why there are so many Armenian-Americans?

Because they came here to get away from the Turks, who killed 1.5 million of them.

That's CHANGE!

I dare say, that of all the captive peoples of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, only one found their situation to be an improvement over independence or freedom.  That would be the Armenians, who would have suffered another genocide if left to the mercies of the barbarous Turks, Azerbaijanis, and other neighbors who surround them.

22 members of Congress (and the Obama administration) opposed this bill, despite the fact that actual survivors of the genocide, somehow, were standing in front of them.  Tottering, actually.  But they came.

I despise people who claim that the "Israel lobby" or "the Elders of Zion" or whatever dominate American foreign policy, because I don't believe it's true.  But I can't imagine House members, apart from maybe an outlying freak like Ron Paul, voting against a resolution to call the Nazi Holocaust a genocide.  Even though it's the unofficial position of countries far more important than Turkey (like Saudi Arabia) that it didn't happen.

I guess the Turks were too efficient.  Not enough Armenians got out of the Ottoman Empire (they were once one of the most important minorities in the Middle East) to concern 22 members of Congress.  To vote in this country.

As for Turkey?  Fuck Turkey.  If the Turks won't come to terms with what they did, they'll do it again.  In Turkey 23 members of the United States House of Representatives would be criminals.

I shall update this post, as soon as the web makes the voting talley available, and name all 22 members of the House Foreign Relations Committee who voted against this bill.

Does the Global Wildlife Center of Folsom, Louisiana cater primarily, or even exclusively, to intractably stupid people?

That's the message it seems to be sending with its recent litigation strategy.

At first glance, the Global Wildlife Center seems to be a pleasant refuge and a good place to take kids:

Vision Statement

We seek to be a center of excellence in education; to create a perfect place in which threatened and endangered wildlife, from around the world, live and flourish in a free-roaming natural environment. A place where children, adults, students, and teachers embrace the values of active conservation and wildlife preservation through hands-on education and first-person sensory experience.

Get ready for a wild adventure at the largest totally free-roaming wildlife preserve of its kind in the country! The Global Wildlife Center in Folsom, Louisiana is home to over 4,000 exotic, endangered, and threatened animals from all over the world.

Aside for indecision about whether to use commas or semicolons, a propensity towards sentence fragments, and a weakness for content-free business jargon like "vision statement", there's no obvious indication on their web site that the Global Wildlife Center's branding strategy centers upon the slack-jawed mouth-breathing set.

But their stance in court is quite another matter.

See, there's a Louisiana blog out there in the 'sphere called the Hammond Action News. It's satirical. Strike that — it's obviously satirical. Strike that again — it's obviously satirical and confesses to being satirical. It's also pretty funny; check it out.

Anyway, the Hammond Action News, in a riff on the recent killer whale incident at Sea World, printed a satirical piece about killer giraffes at the Global Wildlife Center. I'd link to it directly on the Hammond Action News blog, but I can't, for reasons that will become obvious. Instead, I'll have to rely on a version that someone at Fark scooped from Google Cache, that bane of censorious asshats everywhere:

February 25, 2010
GIRAFFE CLAIMS THIRD VICTIM AT GLOBAL WILDLIFE

UNEEDUS, Louisiana – Veteran wildlife guide Dizzy Dimarco was encouraging visitors to hand feed giraffes when one of the 16ft-high animals reached down and grabbed her by the head.

Passengers in Global Wildlife's viewing wagons watched horror struck as the animal repeatedly shook Dimarco before hurling her body into the upper limbs of a nearby tree.

Dimarco's interaction with the animal had seemed friendly and encouraging to visitor Debbie Guidry of Lafouche Parish, "but then the giraffe just went crazy. Stamping and snorting, it clamped a hold to the guide's head and just got to shaking her, " Guidry told HAN.

The wagons quickly returned to the visitor center and mounted giraffe wranglers were sent to the scene. Dimarco was pronounced dead upon arrival at Lallie Kemp Hospital, then again at North Oaks after relatives demanded a second opinion.

Staff have been unable to identify which of the 12 giraffes was responsible for the attack, echoing a similar failure to locate the guilty animal in the two previous giraffe-related fatalities at the center.

In 2001 and 2004 guides working alone in the park failed to return and were later found dead in tree tops. Park officials hope to now identify the guilty giraffe with the help of technicians from Bedico CSI, who will be taking DNA samples from the animals in the coming weeks.

A spokesperson for Global Wildlife told HAN, 'What we have here is what we call a 'rouge giraffe' situation. It's rare, but it happens. After an incident, the animals all herd up together and it's hard to tell which is which. Now with the help of the CSI unit we can name the guilty critter."

Guidry's camcorder evidence from the attack can be seen in an upcoming FPTV Channel 17 special. WHEN GOOD GIRAFFES GO BAD will premier March 12 at 10pm after re-runs of the 2001 spectacular BILL HOOD CATCHES MORE FISH.

No, you might think that there is no one stupid enough to read that and think that it is real. You'd be wrong — or, at least, the Global Wildlife Center thinks that you may be wrong. They sued the Hammond Action News and convinced Louisiana District Judge Brenda Bedsole Ricks to issue a temporary restraining order requiring Hammond Action News to take the story down. No. Really. I'm serious.

See, the Global Wildlife Center insists that people will think the story is real:

The story is “malicious and untrue,” asserted Christina Cooper, Global’s education and development director, in a written statement.

“I have received calls from concerned friends and citizens who took the story to be truth,” she said.

. . .

Alleging the story defames Global Wildlife’s reputation as a safe, family-friendly destination, the center seeks only to have the story permanently removed from the site and to prevent Hammond Action News from ever distributing it, said Robert McComiskey, Global Widlife’s attorney.

And they convinced an actual judge to order the story taken down. Maybe Judge Brenda Bedsole Ricks just hates Louisiana. Maybe she looked at the TRO motion and thought, "You know, this state is so crammed full of fucking idiots that they probably would think this story is real." Or maybe Judge Brenda Bedsole Ricks is, herself, powerfully stupid. Certainly she doesn't seem bright enough to be familiar with Hustler v. Falwell.

Let's be clear: anyone who reads that article and thinks it is real is too stupid to be trusted around animals. Anyone who thinks that article is real is too stupid to have a driver's license to drive to Global Wildlife Center. Global Wildlife Center apparently thinks that a lot of its guests — both people from Louisiana and tourists — are exactly that stupid. Which raises the question: unless you are a pickpocket, a con man, or someone who wants to pick up girls by telling them you're Elvis post-plastic-surgery, why on God's green earth would you want to go to a zoo choked with morons? You just know somebody's going to ding your car in the parking lot and the paths are going to be slick with drool.

Alternatively — even if the Global Wildlife Center is wrong in its cruel assessment of the mental acuity of its prospective guests — why in the world would you want to patronize a tourist spot that prides itself on litigation thuggery? Why would you want to give you money to a place that sues satirists? You wouldn't go to a theme park that took out a page-three advertisement saying "Fuck the Fifth Amendment — execute defendants without trial!!" Why would you give your money to a zoo that pisses on the First Amendment?

Note: I reproduce the entire satirical piece above only because it is not currently available online — even (as far as I could tell) on Google Cache. It's not my work, it's the Hammond Action News' work, and is only reproduced here for the purpose of commenting on how obviously satirical it is. If — as I hope — the Louisiana judiciary buys a clue and rejects the preliminary injunction and lifts the TRO, I will replace it with a link.

Update Wow.

In addition to filing this lawsuit, via email Global Wildlife Foundation president Ken Matherne threatened to file criminal charges, FCC charges, fraud charges, an IRS complaint, a governor’s office complaint, and a federal lawsuit against Brilleaux. Matherne’s email did not explain any basis for the additional threats.

Ken Matherne, you are a gigantic censorious douchebag.

Updated again: At the preliminary injunction hearing, District Judge Beth Wolfe denied the injunction and lifted the TRO. Good for her.

In other news, highly placed sources inform Radar Online that Chief Justice John Roberts' resignation from the Supreme Court is imminent.  And some highly trafficked blogs are treating the anonymous rumor, from the web equivalent of Maxim magazine, as credible.

Incredible.

One of the best bloggers in the short history of the medium, the pseudonymous Jon Swift, has passed away.  His real name was Al Weisel.

Taking the name Jon Swift was a bold decision, but Weisel lived up to it, producing the best political humor site I have ever read, as "a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture."  Of course Swift was no such thing, but he was devastatingly funny.  Where other leftwing blogs that allegedly lampoon conservative politics are often hamfisted and stupid, Swift hit the mark unerringly, and made me laugh out loud even when I strongly disagreed with him, which was more often than not.  The surest way to find one's way into Swift's crosshairs wasn't to be a right-winger: It was to be a right-winger who took himself too seriously.

I had a few email exchanges with Weisel / Swift and found him, in personal correspondence, to be unfailingly gracious and kind.  He was a friend to this blog, and to many other bloggers despite political disagreements.  My sympathy goes to his family, and I urge you to go back and read his blog, while it lasts.

Update: A remembrance from a prominent person Swift often tried (and sometimes failed) to puncture:  "He liked to antagonize me, but that means nothing now, other than that I'm honored to have provided some raw material to a fine writer."

If Swift is still out there, I think he'll agree that's the best tribute he could receive on the web.

A German family applied for (and got) emergency political asylum in the US on the basis of wanting to homeschool their kids. That's right, asylum – normally reserved for people who are being persecuted, fleeing dictators or likely to be killed in their home country.

The Romeike family want to home school their children, which is apparently illegal in Germany. Fine. Really, this post has nothing to do with home schooling. The issue here, is one of scale. How about instead of applying for political asylum you move? Home schooling is perfectly fine in neighboring Austria, and if you are (as you say) really concerned about the impact of culture on your kids Austria would be far less jarring in every way to them.

Apparently, the Romeike's were contacted by a US home school advocacy group, and encouraged to seek asylum here. Hmm. That doesn't seem political at all. I wonder how the religious right would feel if a Salvadoran family applied for asylum under the same pretense? I guarantee you that are inherently racist immigration policies would make it a lot more difficult than it was for the German family. Or how about a gay man legally married in the US? Nope, but let the German family in right away.

The bottom line is that this is a gross misuse of the political asylum statutes. They should be used for people who are in genuine danger, and who do not have the means to extricate themselves from this danger, not for a family that could easily have moved to several Euro countries that are ok with home schooling instead of engaging in political grandstanding.

I'll end with the good news that the US will likely appeal the asylum, and hopefully the family will have their asylum revoked, and be forced to return to the tyrannical regime they fled, the German school district.

Heraclitus tells us that character is destiny. But what about naming — are names destiny? Is someone named Misty more likely to become a stripper? If you call a big marine mammal a killer whale, is it far more likely to kill its trainer?

That's a question for the philosophers. But there are more pressing legal, moral, prudential, and zoological questions: what do you do when a killer whale kills its trainer?

This could be a very complicated and frankly humorless discussion, cheering no one. So thank God for the American Family Association.

They think we ought to stone the killer whale to death. Actually, they think that someone should have done it several deaths ago. The whale in question, you see, is a serial killer whale.

What about the term "killer whale" do SeaWorld officials not understand?

If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone's misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, "When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable." (Exodus 21:28)

So, your animal kills somebody, your moral responsibility is to put that animal to death. You have no moral culpability in the death, because you didn't know the animal was going to go postal on somebody.

I like the way the author is able to transition from "what part of killer whale do they not understand" to "every killer whale gets one free dead trainer" inside barely a paragraph.

Look, the Old Testament contains many ancient legal and social norms that are fundamental to the common law. But the Old Testament is not, itself, the law of this country. Many of its precepts find no echo in modern law — note, for example, the concept of ritual uncleanliness seen in the prohibition against eating the ox once we've stoned it. (I'm reliably informed that angry psycho oxen are delicious.) Sea World's conduct can be evaluated on legal and moral levels without resort to Mosaic law.

Former Agriculture Secretary and current Senator Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska) wants you to know that he supports free trade as much as anyone in the Senate, but he's worried that them Japanese are taking advantage of it:

I'm as free-trade as anybody here, but I can tell you the American consumer is getting tired of this thing if we are getting substandard products.

So he'd like to ban future imports of Japanse cars.

Asserting that the Japanese government has a role in insuring products shipped from its nation are safe, Johanns asked rhetorically, what if: "Until the Japanese government can assure us that all of the defects are out of these vehicles, we're just not going to accept any vehicles from Japan." Referring to restrictions on U.S. beef, he said, "That's what they did with one of our industries."

The Senator was referring to a ban, lifted in 2006, on US beef imports to Japan. Considering that beef is a relatively tiny part of the US economy, while cars are a relatively massive part of the economy, I'm not at all sure that the Senator from Nebraska, where beef is a top industry, was posing his question rhetorically.

And so in that spirit, I'd like to ask the Senator a few questions:

1. Why should the government of Japan be responsible for defects in Toyota vehicles when the United States government isn't responsible for the shoddy output of General Motors and Chrysler?
2. Does your proposed ban cover vehicles manufactured in Toyota's massive United States plant and operations?
3. If it does, what do you say to the company's American employees?
4. If not, why not, considering that many if not most of the allegedly defective accelerators were made in the USA?
5. What did Honda, Nissan, Suzuki, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Isuzu, Kawasaki, and Yamaha ever do to the Nebraska beef industry?
6. Speaking of Mazda, what do you have against the Ford Motor Company?
7. Speaking of the Ford Motor Company, considering that you opposed the government's rescue of General Motors and Chrysler, if your proposal goes forward, can I buy anything other than a Ford in the future?  Or will I have to settle for a Model-T in any color, so long as it's black?
8. And speaking of wasteful government bailouts, what is it with you and the ethanol subsidy? Why is it that corn farmers deserve to receive involuntary transfers from taxpayers when auto workers don't?
9. You've denounced the Obama administration's proposal for a Consumer Finance Protection Agency as a "power grab over the nation's economy".  I happen to own a Toyota and like it.  Isn't telling me that I can't buy a new one a similar power grab?
10. Off topic, but what the hell was that whole Power Panther thing about anyway?

I don't actually expect the Senator to answer my questions, but I assure you that they are not rhetorical.