For the last few decades most White House correspondents have acted like blow-dried stenographers. Not all of them lobbed softballs like the once literal and later figurative fluffer Jeff Gannon, but for the most part, they've been meek.

One notable difference was now-retired Helen Thomas. Unfortunately, the White House press corps has been so relentlessly gullible that Thomas' willingness to express skepticism openly distinguished her, even though nine-tenths of her skepticism was expressed in the form of stupid, naked partisan aggression of the sort you'd expect in a YouTube comment thread.

Thomas quit after she said what she thought — that Israelis (read: Jews) should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home." She apologized. But she didn't mean it. Now she says that she stands by saying that Jews should "go home," and in speaking to an Arab-American group, says that Zionists (read: Jews) control Washington with money:

"Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion," Thomas, 90, told an audience of about 300 during a workshop on anti-Arab bias. "They put their money where their mouth is . . . We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way."

Gosh, we've never heard anything like that before.

Now, I grant you, it may not be reasonable to expect enlightened ethnic and religious views from someone who's been reduced to an extra in The Dark Crystal at this point.

The notion that the Jews control Washington with money is not a new one.

What's new, perhaps, is the prevalence of people equally nuts as Helen Thomas.

Those people help us piece together the other elements of The Conspiracy.

1. Helen Thomas tells us that Jews control Washington and Hollywood with money.

2. We know that the TSA's junk-groping procedures are the bidding of Washington and the Media.

3. Eugene Delgadio, Republican member of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, reveals to us that the TSA's pat-down procedure is a initiative of the Homosexual Agenda.

4. Minister Bradlee Dean of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International reveals that the Homosexual Agenda seeks to implement Sharia Law in America.

The Goldfish Fanciers may or may not be involved.

Therefore, by piecing together information from the media, the Obama Administration, Helen Thomas, Eugene Delgadio, and Bradlee Dean, we can surmise that the Jews are using the Homosexuals to control Washington and Hollywood to cause them to use the TSA to impose Sharia Law, handing victory to the Islamic Extremists. Nominally the TSA and the Jews oppose Islamic Extremism, but conspiracies are funny that way. There are wheels within wheels. Jewish wheels.

Now and then I despair that Americans pay attention to Dancing with the Stars and not to politics. Then I look at American politics. Is dancing really so bad?

My wife, whose political concerns are far different from my own, just came across the TSA breast milk story (which surfaced after Ken's litany of TSA abuses, here).  Evidently the outrage is filtering down from the libertarian fringe to feminist blogs.

She remarked on the funny name of the company which produces the TSA's scanners.

And it occurred to me, that just as with proposed slogans for the TSA, there's a lot of comedy potential in the name "Rapiscan".  Even apart from the missing "T," the name sounds like something out of a 1980s science fiction movie starring the governor of California, or a cyberpunk novel where the antagonist is generally referred to simply as "The Company".  Its chief lobbyist is a former DHS Secretary whose name almost sounds like "jerk-off".  A rent-seeking corporation interlocked with the government, profiting from pure, capitalized EVIL.

What other mottos or slogans for Rapiscan can you think of?

I've given you a starter.  Here's another.

"Rapiscan: Look, those two specimens are worth millions to the Bioweapons Division."

OK, they refer to him as World Free, but still. Hoopism has these very cool word clouds for each of the NBA teams featuring every player ever ranked by minutes played. It's certainly the largest font Jon Koncak's name has ever been put in.

I really enjoyed sliding through the various teams seeing strange little surprises (I had forgotten Hakeem's brief dalliance with Toronto) and people who show up prominently on several teams (Shaq in particular.) But perhaps my favorite part was going through the two teams I love (the Warriors and Celtics) and finding great little memories like any of the Warriors awful late 80s big men – Victor Alexander? Jim Petersen? The immortal Uwe Blab?

This was a lot of fun for me. Hope you enjoy it as well. And yes, I have BGGcon wrap ups coming early next week. The short answer is it was better than last year, even if most of the hot new games were not available for purchase this year.

I joke a fair amount about abusing or weirding out our associates.

But the truth is that working with talented associates on our own terms, freed of the constraints of big-firm bureaucracy and nonsense, has been one of the greatest pleasures of opening a small firm. We've been extremely lucky in the people we've hired — they're hard-working, smart, curious, and have a good sense of humor, all of which are essential.

Yesterday I had a really good day — because I got to take one of them (a young attorney with us for about three years) out for drinks and make her partner. She's our first attorney made partner internally. I also got to counsel another young attorney who has worked with us part time during law school and his bar study, and who was just sworn in this week, about his first solo court appearance today.

I expect great things from our new partner — she's fearless. I also expect great things from our newest attorney. This, more or less, is what I told him about being a litigator when he asked for advice about his first appearance:

1. Don't think about being the best lawyer in the room. Think about being the best prepared lawyer in the room. Being the "best" lawyer in the room comes from a variety of factors, including experience and raw talent and even silly things like looks. Being the best prepared lawyer in the room is achievable right now, and is the most reliable road to success for the client. Preparation frequently beats raw talent — and it ought to.

2. Stand straight, speak clearly and firmly and unapologetically, and act like you deserve to be there — because you do.

3. When a partner sends you to court on a case, no matter how well prepared you are for the issue before the court, sometimes an unexpected issue will come up. "I don't know," followed by nothing, is not an acceptable answer to a judge. "I don't know, but I can give you an answer in ten minutes," or "I don't know, but I can report back to you later today," or "I don't know, but I will take responsibility for a supplemental filing answering the court's question — is tomorrow soon enough?" are acceptable answers.

4. When you stand up in front of a judge or a jury and try to persuade them of something, you've got to believe in something. Believe that you are in the right on the point you are arguing. Believe that our client is in the right in the case. Believe in your role in a system that resolves disputes by allowing everyone to have an advocate who is in their corner, fighting for their interests, no matter who they are. Don't get up and phone it in without believing in anything. Judges and juries smell indifference and going-through-the-motions.

But just in case, I'm ready to go bail him out.

Craig Ferguson explains Dr. Who to Unitedstatesian viewers:

I think I've discovered the part I like best about having my name on the door.

When you take associates to lunch, and the waitress comes to take drink orders, they all look at you. If you order a real drink, so do they. If you order a soda, so do they.

Why couldn't I have had this power in college?

Adoptive parents like measured, positive stories about adoption. We like stories that promote the idea that adoption is an acceptable and normal way to build a family and that adoptive parents and adopted kids are not freaks. It's true that some of us have a regrettable preference for stories that hew strictly to the happy-happy joy-joy stance. But most of us like to see a balance — portrayals that recognize that adoption (like so many other social interactions) can involve very difficult issues, but that also recognize that adoptive families are "real families" in every meaningful sense of that term.

Unfortunately, the media likes to give us stories either in the form of insipid celebrity gossip or in the form of I-know-what's-best-for-everyone pontificating from douchebags like Mike Seate, who think that only certain family racial mixes are socially acceptable.

Part of the problem is people who think they are promoting adoption by tearing down other family choices — choices that are, to be blunt, none of their dammed business. But that doesn't promote adoption. Sneering at other paths to parenthood because they are unusual, or expensive, does not help convey the message that the unusual and often expensive choice of adoption is normal and socially acceptable. Rather, it promotes the default stance of being a judgmental asshole about other people's family choices.

Someone tell Andrea Peyser.

The New York Post pays Andrea Peyser to be an asshole, in print, to people who are famous for no good reason.** This week Peyser is employing her modest typing skills to be an asshole to Alexis Stewart, who is "famous" for the silly reason that she is the daughter of an ex-con housewares fetishist. Peyser, I believe, thinks that she is promoting adoption by savaging Stewart for pursuing various high-tech fertility methods in an attempt to have a child.

Now it's reported that Alexis (pictured right, with Mom) will get her bundle. After wasting hundreds of thousands on unsuccessful fertility treatments — and thumbing her nose at donor eggs and adoption — Alexis is going the Frankenstein route.

She's hired a surrogate, The Post first reported this week. She's picked a rural Pennsylvania woman as her rent-a-womb, wrote The National Enquirer.

A younger woman is just the trick to carrying Alexis' "dry, crusty eggs" — as she told Oprah in a nausea-provoking interview — combined with the sperm of an anonymous donor.

Martha, who nagged Alexis for grandkids to fill a void left by the death of her mother and a breakup with her longtime beau, is said to be thrilled. But at what cost?

Peyser is full of digs at Stewart both for being who she is, and for not choosing adoption:

Alexis, who takes the anti-depressant Zoloft twice a day and exercises thrice, according to the Web site of her Sirius satellite radio show, "Whatever with Alexis and Jennifer," never considered the message she sent to women: By draining all available medical resources, you, too, don't have to settle for a used kid.

Peyser wants us to think that she's promoting adoption and attributing, in what passes for irony, the "used kid" sentiment to Stewart. But Stewart hasn't said anything about adopted kids being inferior; that's Peyser's sentiment. Moreover, Peyser's mountains of scorn for Stewart demonstrate that she thinks that adopted kids really are second class: she thinks that Stewart is a freakish pill-popping narcissist, and that she ought to become a mother to a child through adoption. Huh?

Peyser offers a gesture towards quoting adoption professionals to say that there are kids out there who need homes — but does so only to savage women (not men, mind you) for pursuing biological motherhood over adoption:

People are out of work. Children are alone. But rich, neurotic women spend cash, work out mommy issues, and grab attention by having kids.

With training and therapy, Amanda Peyser could probably learn to simulate a decent human being.

I have no doubt that the various fertility and surrogacy methods that Stewart is pursuing are hideously expensive. But it's her money, and her family that she's building. Would Andrea Peyser be bashing Stewart if she spent the $27,000 per month on apartments and cars and dining out and travel and jewels? Well, probably. Because that's all Peyser knows how to do. But most of the judgmental "adoption proponent" twits who bash would-be parents for pursuing fertility treatments wouldn't care. They live in the sub-rational, my-way-or-no-way universe where it's narcissistic to spend $27,000 to have a biological kid but not narcissistic to spend $27,000 per month to live large. Would I be happy if Stewart spent $27,000 a month to buy a thousand copies of Firefly until Fox renews it? Yeah, sure. But I make an effort not to tell other people how to spend their own money. Being pro-adoption does not make me less of an asshole if I do so.

I recognize that it is silly to expect a New York Post gossiper to act decently. But Andrea Peyser's noisome column illuminates a too-frequent theme, albeit in an exaggerated way. Andrea Peyser – and her more obscure but equally judgmental imitators — are not pro-adoption. They aren't helping promote adoption. They're helping promote the social norm that there's one right way to build a family, and if you don't choose that way, everyone ought to judge you. That doesn't help adoptive parents or adopted kids at all.

** Conflict disclosure: Though Popehat writers receive no monetary remuneration, we are also tasked to be assholes in print to people who are famous for no good reason.

Via Gawker.

Totalitarian societies are fond of little flourishes of power like making the family of the condemned pay for the bullet used to execute him. The United States is not a totalitarian society like that — though when it convicts you of a victimless crime like personal drug use, it will make you pay the cost of your probation or supervised release.

But damn it, it's not for lack of trying.

Via TJIC, I give you a portrait of life in the People's Republic of Massachusettstan, where if you own property, you'd better have money saved up to fix it if the government damages it, or you're going to get hauled into court:

Ian Cotterell got bad news Monday night when he learned that a city tow truck had plowed into a Roxbury apartment building he owns, blasting a hole in the brick facade and forcing his 17 tenants to vacate. Yesterday, he got more bad news: The city is ticketing him.

After building inspectors examined the building to assess damage from the crash, they cited Cotterell for “structural defects’’ including collapsed bricks, damaged windows, and other “unsafe and dangerous’’ conditions, according to an order issued by the city yesterday.

The order noted that a Boston Transportation Department truck “drove into building,’’ but it also ordered Cotterell to fix the problems within 24 hours and appear in court.

You might think that, if your government damages your property while wearing its truck-driving hat, it might take some responsibility for the expense of the damages while wearing its building-inspector hat. But no! We have rules, and due process, you know — at least for the benefit of the government:

Both officials said the city does not want rush to judgment about what happened Monday night, saying accidents unfortunately happen.

“We don’t want to start using words like blame and who’s at fault until the outcome of the investigation is completed,’’ Tinlin said.

You see, there are any number of scenarios where this could have been Ian Cotterell's fault, and not the government's. He could have deliberately owned a building in a place where he knew a city-trained driver might want to drive, for instance. Or maybe he painted one of those Wile E. Coyote tunnels on the side of his place. Those are tricksy.

Now, mind you, that reservation of judgment applies only to the government and its employees, not to peons like Ian Cottrerell:

City officials said that issuing citations to the landlord is standard operating procedure whenever a car crashes into a building, causing damage that makes it dangerous, and it is his responsibility to pay for any damages.

Come to court, and pay up, Ian! Note that this is not a situation where Ian Cotterell left the damage unaddressed for weeks or months or years. No, he was ticketed and hauled into court within a day of the government causing the same damage that it was ticketing him about. Citizen Cotterell should have arranged to have the damages fixed that evening before a building inspector could arrive, you see. That's feasible. Everyone knows how efficient, quick, and inexpensive Boston construction is.

Meanwhile, what about the government employee driving the truck? If this were China, and a party official ran down some citizen in the street, there would be no chance of anything resembling justice. But this is America. We hold government responsible, don't we? If you run a truck into something that is not, technically, in the road — like a building — it's self-evident that you did something wrong, isn't it? There will be consequences, right?

Police are investigating, and the driver is on paid administrative leave while an internal investigation proceeds.

A vacation! God, how brutal we are. And if the government attempts to inflict some actual consequences on the driver that don't involve paying him to watch TV, you can bet that America's party bosses — the public employee unions — will fight tooth and nail to shield him from any consequences whatsoever for his behavior, whatever that behavior might be.

The government's actions here are a signifier. In a government that was actually accountable in any meaningful way to its citizens, government employees would shy away from fining a man for having been harmed by the government. Even if the government employees lacked the rudimentary intelligence, decency, or humanity to recognize that such a citation was offensive and ridiculous, they would realize that the citation was so outrageous as to threaten them with actual consequences from the citizens. They would recognize that hauling a man into court for having had his property smashed by a government driver might result in some negative consequences to them. They would, at least, hesitate.

They didn't hesitate here.

Earlier this decade, when the net was a smaller place, those who hung out on the gaming end of the web might have caught a glimpse of one of the most remarkable characters, an alternately maddening and delightfully funny weirdo who called himself …

U2K Tha Greate$t

By his own account, U2K was going to alter the world beyond recognition before the year 2010.  Come to think of it, he has.  Five years ago you had a decent retirement account, your house was appreciating in value, and good prospects for the future.  Now you live in a decaying nation teetering at the edge of collapse into the third world, and that's if you live in Canada.

Anyway, he's back. God only knows what he has in store for 2015.

Thank you for bearing with us during a period of self-induced absence, as well as to those of you who inquired via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

Blogging will resume at its regularly scheduled time.

Today was completely my fault. Last night I tried to move our email over to gmail. In the process I took down the site. Then Dreamhost shit the bed, and couldn't process any site changes, so it remained down.

Thanks to David for tinkering, and Patrick and Grandy for checking it out. I have been sternly instructed not to do that again.

We apologize for the site's recent disappearance.  We were, in part, caught up involuntarily in a cause larger than ourselves: the great WordPress Autoupdate of 2010.