Raise your child bilingual, but pick the right second language:

In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction.

By 7 years old, a child who speaks the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr knows north from south from east from west, wherever he is, every moment of his life.  Because he uses these terms to describe the relations of objects to other objects.  He doesn't refer to his left hand.  He refers to his north hand, or his east hand, which could be either hand depending on which way he's facing.

While we don't know what languages the people who originally settled Australia and Polynesia spoke, a tongue like Guugu Yimithirr would be a positive boon to people migrating from Asia to, say, New Guinea, or even in stages to Hawaii.

On the other hand, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr, literally, don't know left from right.  And of course epic feats of navigation have been undertaken by relatively primitive people, like the Vikings, whose languages didn't require them to develop a built-in compass.

What I quoted above is just a tidbit from a longer article by Guy Deutscher, whose book "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages," will be published this month.  The article is well worth your time, and I look forward to the book.

1. Go to Youropenbook.org, which allows you to search the Facebook status of people who have not, for whatever reason, made their accounts private.

2. Search for the word "mosk," which is the way that you might, under some circumstances, spell mosque.

3. Weep.

You'll find two categories of posts:

1. Frightening drivel about the whole "Ground Zero Mosque" thing,

and

2. Elitist assholes (guilty!) and hipster douchebags talking about this search as a result of this Wonkette article. (More specifically, people who are both (a) elitist asssholes/hipster douchebags who like to make fun of sub-literacy and (b) too stupid to set their Facebook settings properly, even after reading a post making fun of people who don't set their Facebook settings properly.)

Nobody is talking about Judge Stanley Mosk. It's a damned shame.

Post your favorite example of either type that you find in the comments.

My favorite so far:

"If the people who are building this Mosk at ground zero are American, Would we consider them to be committing Treasen? I believe so!"

Brownie points to anyone who can help me identify a word likely to be spelled wrong by left-wing loonies to conduct a similar elitist study of them.

More great moments in American education: Nettleton Middle School in Nettleton, Mississippi had an official, written policy of racial segregation of its student government, including a chart that explained which positions (president, vice-president, secretary/treasurer, and reporter) could be held by whites and blacks in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. The highest office to which blacks could aspire was 8th-grade vice-president. [Edit: some news reports suggest that the school alternated years, so students were eligible for different offices depending on race different years.]

The story, broken by a blogger, has hit the mass media. In response, School Superintendent Russel Taylor has posted an awfully tepid statement.

"Student elections have not yet been held at Nettleton Middle School for the 2010-2011 school term. The processes and procedures for student elections are under review. We are reviewing the origin of these processes, historical applications, compliance issues, as well as current implications
and ramifications. A statement will be released when review of these processes is complete."

Yeah, you do that review, Russel.

Wouldn't you love to be in the room when the people who enacted this policy, or turned it into a chart, or distributed it, explain why they thought it was legal or appropriate?

Public education includes many brilliant, dedicated, and skilled teachers and administrators, but also a certain number of people who are so knuckle-draggingly stupid, or so woefully ignorant, that they are able to convince themselves it is appropriate to publish a chart dictating the acceptable race of student government leaders. The size of that category is subject to dispute. The process of weeding out the morons and freaks who create situations like this is stymied by politically powerful public employee unions that frequently make it nearly impossible to fire freaks and morons, or even rate them.

Edited to add: Hey, they've got racially divided homecoming courts as well.

Edit two: they changed the policy.

After being notified of a grievance regarding upcoming student elections at Nettleton Middle School, research was conducted that evidenced that the current practices and procedures for student elections have existed for over 30 years. It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body. It is felt the intent of these election procedures was to ensure African-American representation in each student office category through an annual rotation basis.

It is our hope and desire that these practices and procedures are no longer needed to help ensure minority representation and involvement. Furthermore, the Nettleton School District acknowledges and embraces the fact that we are growing in ethnic diversity and that the classifications of Caucasian and African-American no longer reflect our entire student body.

Therefore, beginning immediately, student elections at Nettleton School District will no longer have a classification of ethnicity. It is our intent that each student has equal opportunity to seek election for any student office. Future student elections will be monitored to help ensure that this change in process and procedure does not adversely affect minority representation in student elections.

Thank you

Superintendent

Russell Taylor

To which I respond: seriously? They did this for 30 years, and nobody said anything? It never occurred to anyone that it was patently illegal? Seriously?

Maybe they can get Jimmy Carter to come supervise the next election.

Don't miss Matt's terrific post in which he describes the interview process for a court clerk job and discusses how California's public unions have changed the public service culture.

Edit: Matt is also to be commended for finding a very diplomatic way of telling me that I can't spell "terrific."

I've been meaning to blog about good news on the free speech front: Congress passed, and President Obama signed, a fairly strong libel tourism bill.

The bill, called the SPEECH Act, limits recognition of foreign judgments. It prohibits any federal or state court from recognizing or enforcing a foreign judgment for defamation unless (1) the judgment creditor can prove that the foreign court offers equivalent protections for free speech as the defendant would have enjoyed in United States courts under the First Amendment, or (2) the judgment creditor can prove he or she would have prevailed even under the stricter standards in the United States. In addition, the SPEECH act provides that foreign libel judgments are unenforceable to the extent they are inconsistent with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides that people who run web sites are not liable for the content of comments left by visitors. Better yet, if a foreign judgment creditor tries to enforce a judgment here and the defendant resists it successfully on First Amendment grounds under the Speech Act, the defendant gets attorney fees and costs. Moreover, a domestic defendant faced with a foreign judgment can bring an action in federal court seeking a declaration that the foreign judgment is unenforceable.

In short, the Speech Act is an effective shield to prevent libel tourists from enforcing shitty foreign defamation laws against Americans. Hence countries that have terrible, censorious libel laws that encourage libel tourism, or have ambitions to police the internet by allowing foreign suits for things written on web sites hosted in the United States, will be thwarted — they'll be left with a useless foreign judgment unenforceable against people in the United States.

Why is this important?

Just ask the folks at the popular blog techdirt.

Years ago techdirt ran a blog post asking whether a company called Jeftel was a front for spammers. The post was long forgotten, and its untended comments ran to spam, cut-and-pasted Bible quotes, inanities, and squabbling. Standard internet stuff, in other words. Years later, a commenter suggested that the owner of the company offered preferential treatment to employees who shared his Jewish heritage. [Review the thread and judge the evidence on the spamming issue yourself; as to the anonymous commenter's assertion, it's obviously foolish and credulous to believe such things because an anonymous commenter says them.]

This drew an extraordinarily bumptious demand letter from a British lawyer, Brian Addlestone of Addlestone Keane in Leeds. Techdirt posts the letter, and I've saved it here as an artifact of extraordinary assholery. Addlestone threatens suit in the United Kingdom, claims that the accusations of spamming are untrue, and complains that the comment about preferential treatment is anti-semitic [sic]. Addlestone, in a flurry of self-important aggression, demands that techdirt shut its site down (not just take the post down, but take the entire site down) or Addlestone will get a British court to do it for him, and give him damages as well. Addlestone explains that he can get a British court to give him a judgment and then enforce it in the United States. So SHUT TECHDIRT DOWN. Or I'll ask again!

Thanks to the SPEECH Act, Addlestone's foolish threats are impotent. Even if he gets some pseudo-court in England to issue an injunction and damages award under the United Kingdom's loathsome defamation law, he'll never enforce it here. It will be, like Addlestone's diploma, an expensive but ultimately pointless scrap of paper. A United States court will never enforce an injunction taking down an entire web site on the theory that a post was defamatory. A United States court will never enforce a defamation judgment premised on a statement by a commenter; that would violate Section 230.

A cautious lawyer, before sending such a strident threat, might have checked first to see if there had been any recent developments in the law governing perfection of foreign judgments, particularly because prior versions of the SPEECH Act have been floating about, well publicized, for some time.

I hope Addlestone's client didn't pay him too much. Remember, kids: however inane your demand, you can always find a lawyer to utter it for you.

A North Carolina mortician is in jeopardy of losing his license because no one would tell him what to do with a corpse:

[The mortician] was waiting for authorization to have 37-year-old [LW]’s body cremated. [LW], of Carrboro, died alone in her apartment from a medical condition in early August and by the time the Carrboro Police Department learned of her death, officials think she was dead for almost a week and her body was already decomposing.

[The mortician] was contacted Aug. 11 to handle the body. [His] Mortuary was one of several funeral homes on a rotating list that the Carrboro Police Department uses. Police struggled to find next of kin so [the mortician] was unable to get her cremated immediately.

So he left the already decomposing body in a hearse.

In North Carolina.

In August.

But he parked the hearse under a shade tree!

Unfortunately for the mortician, he'd agreed to be on a list used by the police to place unclaimed bodies once the police are finished with whatever godawful things it is that police do to corpses.  Probably for a little extra money.  After all most corpses are claimed pretty quickly, especially in a small community like Graham, North Carolina, which resembles Mayberry even if Carrboro, where the body died, is a small-town Sodom.

And then the comedy of errors began.  The mortician didn't have the sort of refrigeration this already badly decomposed corpse needed, or the space.  The police wouldn't tell him what to do.  The state board, which is now investigating him, wouldn't tell him what to do (he asked).  And it's likely, according to the board itself, that if he'd embalmed or burned the body without authorization and a relative showed up to complain, he'd be sued and face disciplinary action from the state board for mishandling a corpse.

And of course, no one would take the body back.  No one wanted that hot potato, or rather, that hot, decomposing, gas-bloated potato.

So under a tree it sat, for 11 days until the Orange County Board of Social Services, a county away, authorized ending the thing with fire.

This is a grimly humorous story, involving a rural funeral director out of his depth, bureaucracy, and a stinking dead body.  It could have been written by Poe, or perhaps H. P. Lovecraft. But it may say something about our society that we're so regulated, and so afraid of lawsuits, that no one will do the obvious thing without a permit from the proper government agency or for fear of lawsuits, even when it involves something as obvious as burning a 20 day old old corpse, in a coastal southern state, in August.

(Note:  I removed all personal references from this post, because I  feel some pity for the mortician, and a lot for the woman who died alone without family.  And because this site has a higher page rank than the newspaper in question, which is kind of cool because I grew up in that small town and I used to read that paper, back in the days before concepts like "page rank" existed.)

I had a deposition scheduled today, but the witness didn't show up. I was left annoyed and in an inquisitorial mood.

Then our HR manager wandered into my office and showed us an invoice for toner for more than $1500 from Network Office Products of Costa Mesa, California, down below the Orange Curtain.

This struck me as odd, because (1) we get free toner as part of our copier deal, (2) we've carefully instructed receptionists not to give out information about our copiers or printers to avoid the toner scam, and (3) inspection revealed that we never received the toner reflected in the invoice.

Time to use some of that inquisitorial mood. FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

1. A search on whocallsme.com revealed multiple reports of toner fraud from the same company, revealing the same phone number (877-689-5659 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              877-689-5659      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              877-689-5659      end_of_the_skype_highlighting) and same address.

2. 800notes.com revealed a similar report.

3. The Better Business Bureau of the Southland has a handy search function. It revealed two iterations of Network Office Products, one in Irvine and one in Costa Mesa. Both have "F" ratings and a history of complaints typical of toner scam operations. Both list a "Tom Miller" as a customer service manager — I suspect that's a pseudonym. They use different post office boxes in the two cities, but the same number for customer service — it goes straight to a recording. Both use fax number 949-715-1531, which according to several reverse directories is a land line in Laguna Beach, CA.

4. A search with the California Secretary of State reveals no LLC or corporation called "Network Office Products."

5. However, a search of Orange County records shows a Fictitious Business Name Statement in the name of "Network Office Products" was filed in June 2009 by "Mark Mushkin." That matches when the complaints began to hit the Better Business Bureau.

6. You have no IDEA how much I could find out about Mark Mushkin on Westlaw if I wanted to pay for that. You'd shit yourself, believe me. For now, several online people finders report a Mark Mushkin in Costa Mesa. They also report he has ties to Newport Beach, CA. I'm toying with spending the $7.95 to find out all of Mark Mushkin's phone numbers, addresses, and other data.

7. Meanwhile, I've reported everything I found to the Better Business Bureau of the Southland, the Orange County District Attorney's Office, the FTC's consumer fraud report system, and the Postal Inspectors.

8. If I were in the mood, at this point it would be ridiculously easy to file a lawsuit down the street against Mark Mushkin dba "Network Office Products" aka Tom Miller. Maybe a class action, on behalf of all fraud victims? Maybe a unfair business practices suit under California's notorious section 17200? I could put it together in an hour, tops. Then I could start hitting the business with deposition notices and document demands and interrogatories, and could hit the business' internet and phone service providers with subpoenas for payment records to find their banks, and then hit their banks with subpoenas to get account information.

I think I'm done playing for today. I need to get a few things done, then we're taking Evan to dinner to celebrate his family day at a decent Korean place.

But if I get another invoice from Network Office Products, or a call . . . .

Edit: I had some down time, so I just called and left a message asking to speak to Mark Mushkin.

Edited again: "Mark Mushkin", if he exists, should not be confused with Julian Marc Muskin of Florida, who appears in the comments.

Schools have bullies.

They always have, they always will.

School administrators tend to respond in a way that reflects their attitude towards the respective roles of the state and the citizen. Some perform the core legitimate function of the state: they punish bullies who physically abuse students, and take appropriate and modest steps to maintain order. Some attempt to micromanage student speech and conduct both on and off campus, to the point of punishing unpopular expression that might hurt somebody's feelings or sensibilities. And some believe it is the role of the school — and the state — to eliminate the occasion of bullying by eliminating any conduct that might draw the attention of a bully. That's the school administrator who tells you, after the tenth time that week you've been sucker-punched or your books thrown in the trash, "You should get to know them and be more friendly. You bring it on yourself, you know."

It looks as if Paul Smithson of Godley Independent School District falls into that third category.

Just ask Chris McGregor.

Chris McGregor is 12. He's trying to go to Godley Middle School in Texas. God knows that middle school, let alone middle school in Texas, is an inherently miserable experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone. But Chris just wants to go to school. He's a good student.

He also wants to wear a truly hideous haircut. Justin Bieber or Anton Chigurh wouldn't put up with this haircut. But Chris likes it, and feels it is right for him, and expresses how he feels about himself.

That won't do.

Godley Middle School and the Godley Independent School District have standards. Nonconforming haircuts don't meet those standards. So they've suspended Chris until he cuts his hair.

Superintendent Smithson explains:

But Smithson said the hair rule protects students and reflects community standards. "There's a reason in Texas they're called 'independent' school districts," he explained. "Bullying's a big thing, and we want to make sure everyone's dressed appropriately, someone doesn't bring attention to themselves so that someone says something to them, and all of a sudden we have a problem."

If you dress, or wear your hair, or act in a nonconformist way, bullies will get you. That's inconvenient for the school. Bullies are troublesome. They often have verminous amoral parents who indulge and defend their behavior. It's much easier to force the nonconforming kids to conform, in the hopes that will make it a bit less likely that the bullies will bother them. Plus, people who are indulged in nonconformism in hair, or dress, might expose other children to other nonconformist ideas.

Now, the cynics among you — a category I'd define as "people who went to middle school and weren't unreconstructed bullies themselves" — know that there's no avoiding a bully. You can dress the same, look the same, talk the same, but a bully will find some reason to bully. If you are the sort who would want to wear your hair differently than everyone else, it is certain that you will stand out somehow. A school policy — like a foreign policy — premised on appeasing bullies is doomed to ignominious failure at the expense of the rights of the bullied.

But that's complicated. Enforcing conformism is easy. Even a man like Paul Smithson can do it. And in doing so, and in enforcing any number of other policies based on inane and nannyish policies about what is in children's best interest, Smithson and his ilk teach the children a lesson — a lesson about the proper relationship among the individual citizen, his fellow citizens, and the state, and a lesson about the relative value of individualty.

I leave it to your imagination whether the Paul Smithsons of the world intend that lesson or not.

Every lawyer who does any courtroom work has encountered bullies in black robes. Some judges are exceptionally decent and keep their temper, even when it would be understandable if they lost it. Some judges, like most of us, have their good days and their bad days. And some judges use their office to indulge all the worst bits of their low character, abusing and belittling and demeaning with impunity.

It's that impunity that makes a bad judge a loathsome bully. Bad judges engage in abuse because they know there's almost nothing anyone can do about it. Under normal professional or social circumstances, if someone you deal with is consistently insulting and abusive, you can shun them, or respond in kind. You can stand up for yourself. But when the bully wears a black robe, there's damned little you can do about it. Standing up for yourself in court will earn you sanctions, bad results, and even jail for contempt. And the commissions and panels that putatively supervise judges routinely give them passes even for contemptible and lawless behavior.

So when the timid and frequently indifferent watchmen actually call a judge to task for bullying behavior, it's a cause for celebration.

At least for most people. For rank ideologues, it's an opportunity for fatuous identity politics.

Our friends at the Legal Satyricon have a good recent example. Yale Law Professor Adam Cohen wrote a piece in Time magazine about the Washington Supreme Court's recent disciplinary action against King County District Court Judge Judith Raub Eiler. You can find the Washington Court's actual decision here, or once that disappears, here in pdf form.

The Washington Supreme Court's opinion, much more so than Cohen's brief summary, paints a picture of a relentlessly snide, belittling, demeaning judge. Cohen put that depiction into the broader social context of a culture that promotes being snide, belittling, and demeaning for popular entertainment. Neither the Washington Supreme Court, nor Cohen, suggested that Judge Judith Raub Eiler's problem was that she is unfeminine.

But academicians and theoreticians can see the words between the lines that mere mortals cannot. Hence Cohen's piece drew an angry broadside at Feminist Law Professors. The screed is anonymous, which I find notable only because (1) it's written by one of the masthead writers who usually goes by their name, and (2) writers at Feminist Law Professors have been highly critical of internet anonymity and its effects. (Consistent with my normal position, I support the writer's decision to be anonymous.) The Feminist Law Professors blogger attacks Cohen, suggests that he is not suited to be a professor at Yale, equates his criticism of Judge Eiler to calling a black person "nigger", attributes to Cohen the position that Eiler's behavior is objectionable because it is insufficiently "feminine," and that Cohen's position is like that of the stereotype-driven chauvinists in the notable discrimination case Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins.

This is, to be blunt, a freakishly biased take on what Cohen actually wrote, and what the Washington Supreme Court actually did. I would be very surprised if the Feminist Law Professors blogger actually read the Washington Supreme Court discipline decision before indulging in this screed. I would be equally surprised if the blogger had ever actually appeared on behalf of clients in front of judges. If the blogger had done either, he or she would know some important things. He or she would know that both men and women complained of Judge Eiler's demeaning conduct. (Perhaps the blogger would dismiss the women's input as false consciousness.) He or she would know that Judge Eiler's conduct — like the conduct of most bullying judges — was disproportionately levied against the powerless. He or she would know that bullying judges — even female bullying judges — often reserve their most vicious behavior for female lawyers and female litigants, whom they perceive as easier prey. He or she would know that holding judges to a standard of decent conduct is essential to protecting the rights of all groups traditionally the object of discrimination, including women.

There's no question that society treats rude conduct by women more harshly than rude conduct by men. But that doesn't mean that the conduct of women ought to be above critique, and it does not mean that every criticism of the conduct of a female public official is a consequence of bias rather than a consequence of behavior we ought not tolerate in our public servants, whatever their gender. Read the Washington Supreme Court decision, and see if anything in it suggests that Judge Eiler's conduct was deemed unacceptable because it was too masculine. Read Cohen's column, and see if anyone but a ideology-addled polemicist would take it as a call for female submissiveness, rather than a call for decent behavior by people in power.

And while you are at it, rest assured that it is possible to be committed to the formal, legal, and social equality of men and women, interested in the ways that law and society thwart that equality, and open to discussion of remedies without being a compete fucking intellectually dishonest ninny. You just might not know that from reading the sort of things that Feminist Law Professors publishes.

We've previously celebrated people who helped define and defend our rights by standing up.

But it would be wrong to let them get all the credit. Our rights would never have been in doubt — and thus judicial enunciation of them would never have been necessary — but for the existence of loathsome, oversensitive twats and the government thugs who empower them.

Junius Peake, former economics professor at the University of Northern Colorado, is one such loathsome, oversensitive twat. Deputy District Attorney Susan Knox is one such thug.

Let us celebrate them.

Junius Peake was minding his own business at UNC when one Thomas Mink, writing at the blog The Howling Pig, began using a satirical character named "Junius Puke" as the Pig's putative editor-in-chief. "Puke" commented on issues of interest to people at UNC and in Northern Colorado. Mink used an altered picture of Peake to portray Puke:

No, Peake does not look like that.

How obvious was it that "Puke" was a satirical character, that Professor Peake was not writing the column himself, and that no honest person with a room-temperature IQ could believe otherwise? Well, ask the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit:

Junius Puke covered subjects and used language that Mr. Peake, a professor of finance, surely would not have. For example, the editorial said:
"This will be a regular bitch sheet that will speak truth to power, obscenities to clergy, and advice to all the stoners sitting around
watching Scooby Doo. This will be a forum for the pissed off and disenfranchised in Northern Colorado, basically everybody. I made it to where I am through hard work, luck, and connections, all without a college degree. Dissatisfaction with a cushy do-nothing ornamental position led me to form this subversive little paper. I don’t normally care much about the question of daycare since my kids are grown and other people’s children give me the willies[.]" Aplt. App., vol. I at 147-48. Significantly, The Howling Pig editorials even contained an express disclaimer regarding the editor: "The Howling Pig would like to make sure that there is no possible confusion between our editor Junius Puke and the Monfort Distinguished Professor of Finance, Mr. Junius “Jay” Peake. Mr. Peake is an upstanding member of the community as well as an asset to the Monfort School of Business where he teaches about microstructure. Peake is active in many community groups, married and a family man. He is nationally known for his work in the business world, and has consulted on questions of market structure. Junius Puke is none of those things and a loudmouth know-it-all to boot, but luckily he’s frequently right and so is a true asset to this publication." Id. at 146. According to the search warrant affidavit itself: "The picture [of Junius Peake] has been altered to include sunglasses, a smaller nose and a small moustache similar to that of Hitler’s. The person in the photograph is identified on the website as Junius Puke. The picture is accompanied by a biography of Mr. Puke. According to the site, its purpose is to draw attention to issues rampant in Northern Colorado and Elsewhere [sic]." Ex. B at 3.

So what did Junius Peake, respected Montfort Distinguished Professor of Finance, do when he discovered that someone had made a cheeky and sophomoric parody of him?

He called the cops.

No, seriously. Professor Junius Peake responded to satire by calling the cops.

And that's not the most appalling part.

The cops got a search warrant and searched Mink's home, and seized his computers as evidence of violations of Colorado's criminal libel statute.

Why? According to Mink, it's because Deputy District Attorney Susan Knox reviewed and authorized the search warrant and instructed the cops to move forward with it. In theory, it's a prosecutor's job to act as something of a bulwark between citizens and utter lawless fuckwittery by cops, who will try to seek a search warrant for all sorts of demented things. If Mink's allegations are true, Susan Knox was a piss-poor bulwark.

No doubt that's why the Tenth Circuit has now twice reversed rulings in her favor in Mink's federal lawsuit against her. The DA declined to charge Mink, but Mink sued under Section 1983 for violations of his constitutional rights. The district court first ruled that Knox was entitled to absolute immunity, and the Tenth Circuit slapped it down. More recently, in the decision linked above, the Tenth slapped down another dismissal, finding that no reasonable law enforcement officer could have concluded that The Howling Pig showed probable cause to believe that Mink committed a crime. Back to the trial court Mink and Knox go. You can read about the decisions in greater detail at the excellent if irritatingly named Cyb3rcrim3 blog.

Susan Knox may yet get her comeuppance for playing the role of the government thug in this case. And Junius Peake? He's not named in the suit. Only word of mouth, and Google, can punish him. Junius Peake was a professor — a teacher at an institute of higher learning, supposedly devoted to open discourse — when he reacted to satire by running to the police. That's completely contemptible. He no longer works at UNC, apparently, but his role in this incident ought to follow him and mark him as a vile little censorious sniveler wherever he goes.

But credit where it is due. If we didn't have contemptible snivelers and thugs, how would we have such good First Amendment caselaw?

The American Family Association is very, very upset that conservative media luminaries Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck are, uh, backsliding on opposition to gay marriage and gayitudeness in general.

Let’s be clear: endorsing homosexual behavior is not a conservative position. Period. Supporting special rights based on aberrant sexual behavior is not conservative, period. Supporting either civil unions or marriages based entirely on using the alimentary canal for sexual purposes is not conservative, period.

The AFA decries Ann and Glenn as "traitors" and "Benedict Arnolds" in the War on Gay — in Ann's case for participating in a dreadful-sounding gay conservative event called "Homocon 2010," and in Glenn's case for going on Bill O'Reilly's show (A LOOFTAH IS NOT FOR PROCREATION!) and suggesting that gay marriage is not the most horrific problem facing our great nation.

AFA demands retraction and repentance, and reminds that in addition to being empowered to define what is conservative and what is not, they define who is welcome in their America and who is not:

Both Ms. Coulter and Mr. Beck seem, at least for the moment, to have forgotten John Adams’ sage observation: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

This adds to the AFA's prior teachings regarding marine-themed amusement parks, proper newspaper nomenclature, and unhappy meals.

If someone could just arrange for Nancy Pelosi to get into a nasty brawl with Bill Maher, I think it would be a perfect week, asshole-vs.-asshole-wise. Or maybe if Harry Reid and Michael Moore. I'm not picky.

In truth, while watching opinion pornstars and frothing ideologues brawl is fun, it's not particularly productive. If I thought it would actually succeed in marginalizing the opinion pornstar/government-as-vindicator-of-religious-orthodoxy wing of the conservative movement in favor of the small-government-and-mind-your-own-damn-business wing, I'd be more thrilled. Still, it's worth the price of the popcorn.

Plenty of people have been having some fun with the news that the Justice Department is seeking qualified Ebonics translators.

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”

It's a little less hilarious in context, though.

If you've ever handled a case with a wiretap or consensually recorded conversation, you'll know what the feds are looking for: they want people who will dutifully translate vague, jargon-laden, often unintelligible conversations in a manner that will support their theory of the case. If the people on the tape say something difficult to hear that might be "shirt" or "thing" or "hat", the feds want a "translator" who will get on the stand and proclaim, with pseudo-scientific confidence, that the person did say "shirt" or "thing" or "hat", and that "shirt" or "thing" or "hat" is necessarily, in context, a reference to large quantities of illegal drugs. Juries, notably and regrettably credulous about law enforcement pseudo-science, eat this stuff up.

There is, of course, no reliable peer-reviewed Institute of Ebonics to which one can appeal for testimony that the translator in question in full of shit. Judges are notoriously lenient about letting such testimony in, and translators (like other technicians serving the prosecution) are notoriously eager to provide the most incriminating translation possible.

Back when I was a fed, my office had a rough patch in its relationship with a local DEA office. It seems that the DEA office just loved a particular Spanish translator, and used her to translate as many wiretaps and CI recordings as possible. The translator advertised vigorously to local law enforcement, sending fliers that said things like "the right translation can make the difference between a guilty verdict and a not guilty verdict" and "how I translate one word can make all the difference to your case." Some defense attorneys got wind of these advertisements and were kicking the shit out of the translator on the cross-examination; the pandering partiality was grotesque enough that even jurors grasped it. My office didn't want her used any more; the DEA office stubbornly refused to stop using her, proclaiming that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with a translator who marketed herself as an open advocate for the government. But her only error was a lack of subtlety. That's the sort of translator DoJ is looking for.

Liberal judges run amok?  "Pro-Life" trojan horse in our courts?

It doesn't matter.  The entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, judges, clerks, courthouse and all, must be quarantined.  Everyone in the area must be tested for infection, and if necessary, they must be SHOT!

The Minneapolis city attorney's office has decided to pay seven zombies and their attorney $165,000.

The payout, approved by the City Council on Friday, settles a federal lawsuit the seven filed after they were arrested and jailed for two days …

In the head!

This is what it's come to.  Not only do we have a police force so woefully incompetent, NO! SUICIDAL! that they merely arrest and jail the living dead…

(And while this site is generally PRO-SECOND AMENDMENT, and PRO-POLICE! (In the words of brother John Birch, "Support your local police department, and keep it independent!") I can't muster an ounce of sympathy for the dozens of officers who were undoubtedly devoured in the attempt to "arrest" these creatures.  I can only pray to a loving God that they were devoured entirely, or were shot in their turn by local militias, who it seems are America's only hope in the battle for survival)…

No, the courts actually set them free, and give them money.  Not that one of these walking corpses would know what to do with a dollar, much less a hundred sixty-five thousand of them.  All they care about is the flesh of the living.

THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS IS A GANG OF NIHILISTIC QUISLINGS, WHO WILL DIE SCREAMING AS THEY ARE DEVOURED BY THE HUNGRY DEAD! AND THEN WILL RISE IN THEIR TURN AS MINDLESS ZOMBIES, DOOMED TO WALK THE EARTH IN SEARCH OF LIVING VICTIMS TO KILL!!!

But they're not the only traitors:  Let's look at Minneapolis city attorney Susan L. Segal, who, rather than manning a barricade with a dozen molotov cocktails and a rifle in hand, surrenders to the living dead!

Minneapolis City Attorney Susan L. Segal said it was in the best interests of the city to settle. "We believe the police acted reasonably, but you never know what a jury is going to do with a case," she said.

If a jury had concluded that the seven plaintiffs' constitutional rights had been violated and awarded $50,000 to each, plus defense attorney's fees, "it could have been quite substantial," Segal said.

GOD DAMN, WOMAN!  Your city is infested with living corpses, and you're worried about their constitutional rights?

This is what the Constitution has to say about the horror that descended on Minneapolis:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The Constitution talks about PERSONS, and LIFE!  A zombie is not a PERSON, nor does it have LIFE!  At most it has a horrible semblance of life, driven by nothing but reptilian instinct, to feed until no one is left.  It has no conscience, and it has no mind.

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop! EVER! Until you are dead!

Fortunately, though there hasn't been any news coverage (they never report on these things) of mass shootings and burnings in Minneapolis, the outbreak appears to have been checked.  If this is how the Minneapolis Police Department treats zombies, I'd hate to think of how they treat citizens accused of crimes.

Ron Paul made a statement about the NYC mosque hullaballo, and to his credit it was pretty consistent with his long standing beliefs. Unfortunately, it also seems to describe his son Rand to a tee.

Sayeth the Father: "Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians?"

Sayeth the Son: "I think reconciliation is best promoted by — instead of having a multi-million dollar mosque — maybe having a multi-million dollar donation to the memorial site, would be better for all.."

Hmm, I wonder if Ron has read any of his son's comments on the mosque? Luckily, they both agree that civil liberties don't apply to those icky gays, or people who want abortions, so all is not Shakespearean drama in the family Paul.

There. Now where's my money?