Do you think that, just because it is a long, sunny, lazy holiday weekend, people stop coming to Popehat and banging on our doors and peering hopefully through our windows? If only. The Road to Popehat remains open on all state and federal holidays, my friends. Here's a sample of the searches that brought you here just over the Memorial Day weekend:

i will kill myself with a fork I can't tell you how proud I am that we have the first Google result for that one.

does there have to be a victim to be arrested for disorderly conduct: This is like a philosophical question. "If a drunk pees on a mailbox, and no one is there to see it, is he still a misdemeanant?"

can i buy a popehat?: I've decided to start an advice column with that as the title.

what are the most liberal search engines: Because I'm sick and tired of getting answers that don't conform to my preconceptions!

my date gropeed [sic] me and I dint [sic] like it: Katy Perry's first draft needed work.

ass google fuk There's no good way to interpret that.

Joseph Rakofsky and his lawyer Richard Borzouye dealt the hand — now they're going to have to play it.

Randazza and Turkewitz will be appearing for 30 of the defendants — presumably some of the blogger defendants

The chances of Rakofsky and Borzouye getting sanctioned just went up dramatically. Pop some corn. This is going to be fun to watch.

As a rule, I don't sing where people can hear me. It's a vestige of humanity that I cling to, along with liking dogs and despising the Yankees.

If I'm in my car, however, all bets are off. Can you hear me from the next car over? That's your problem. I know it's bad, but try not to drive into a bridge abutment, please.

My habit of singing in the car — together with my awful singing voice and my eclectic taste in music — has led to awkward moments. Take for instance the time one December when a neighbor pulled up next to me at a stoplight and caught me singing along with Handel's Messiah, specifically the part that quotes Isaiah 53:6. Since Messiah is an oratorio, bits and pieces repeat quite a bit. So the neighbor pulled up to witness me singing this at the top of my lungs:

All we like sheep
All we like sheep
All we like sheep

Which comes out sounding like "Oh, we like sheep!" The light turned green before she could hear the next verse, "have gone astray," which takes the quote firmly out of the bestiality-celebrating context. Her expression suggested that her children would not be trick-or-treating at our house any time soon.

Anyway, I'm not new to humiliating myself by singing in the car. But I got a new car last week, and with it a new way to humiliate myself.

The car has a high-tech stereo system that offers, among other things, a way to connect and control one's iPod or iPhone or other overpriced Apple device, a hard disk drive on which one can store music, and most dangerously, a voice-recognition system to instruct the car which music to pay.

Here we encounter my problem. My wife enjoys country music, which tends towards songs with simple words in the title like lost and truck and dog and beer and tractor, arranged in simple declarative statements and the occasional plaintive question. My tastes include some modern stuff, but runs mostly to classical music, particularly opera.

The designers of the voice-recognition system on this car apparently did not foresee that someone would be trying to tell it the names of operas, or bits therein, in their original language. The car responds by suggesting other songs, apparently at random, or possibly in an ironic way to mock me.

I have tried better enunciation. I have tried varying among Italian and German and French operas. As in all difficult foreign language situations, I have tried raising my voice and, eventually, losing my composure.

As a result, these are some of the things I have spoken in an unkind tone of voice to my car this weekend:

"No, NOT JOHNNY CASH. What about LE NOZZE DE MOTHERFUCKING FIGARO sounds like Johnny Cash to you, bitch?"

"JESUS CHRIST, you piece of shit, how do you get from TANNHAUSER to the Beach Boys? They don't sound alike at all. PET SOUNDS DOES NOT HAVE FALLEN KNIGHTS HELD AS SEX SLAVES TO GODDESSES."

"dongiovannidongiovanniDonGiovanniDonGiovanniDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNIDONGIOVANNI I'M GOING TO KEEP SAYING IT UNTIL YOU GET IT DAMN YOU TO HELL!"

And so on.

I try not to do this at stoplights, but I've seen people on the freeway staring at me, so I may be getting kind of loud.

When I use the dial on the stereo to select particular music manually, the car reads it in a monotone bereft of all pronunciation beyond a faint dull twang, sounding like a cross between a circa-1980 voice synthesizer and a teen who has just been asked how school was that day. When I revert to trying to select music by voice, the infernal thing stubbornly reverts to suggesting completely inappropriate alternatives, using a tone of voice that conveys why don't you pick something a little less pretentious, asshole?

It's possible I'm not ready for the digital revolution.

I could go into iTunes and rename all the operas by their English translated names, and even rename all the tracks. BUT THAT WOULD BE SURRENDERING.

Let me start by saying this: you shouldn't be cold-calling a lawyer in the first place.

By that I mean you shouldn't be calling a lawyer because you found him in the Yellow Pages, or because her web site was on the first page of Google results, or because the firm has a bitchin' Twitter feed.

If you need a lawyer, you should be calling one based on the recommendation of someone you trust.

You should be asking friends, and relatives, and co-workers, and your doctor, and your accountant, and your pastor, and your neighbor who is a lawyer, if they can recommend a lawyer with the specialty you need. If they can't, see if they can recommend any lawyer, and then ask that lawyer for a referral to someone with the specialty you need. When people are recommending a lawyer based on their own experience, ask them these questions: was the lawyer honest? Was she responsive to calls and emails? Did he charge [what the client saw as] a reasonable fee? Did the lawyer produce results? Did those results bear any relation to what the lawyer promised? If the person you are asking says that their friend or relative had a good experience with a lawyer, ask if you can talk directly to that friend or relative about their experience.

In short, get a referral from a human being with experience with the lawyer. If possible, if that person had a good experience with the lawyer in question, ask them to make a call to introduce you and tell the lawyer you will be calling, and then call the lawyer yourself.

However, on occasion, you'll need a lawyer with an obscure specialty, or in a remote area where you don't know anyone, or you won't have time to seek a recommendation, or you'll be a reclusive misfit with no friends like me, and you'll not be able to six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon your way into a connection with the sort of lawyer you need. In these circumstances, you might find one online, through a Google search or a lawyer search site or in the Yellow Pages. You might even call the local Bar Association — though in my experience you might as well ask the cat.

So — you have a name. Either it's the name of someone who has been recommended to you, and they are expecting your call, or it's someone who was on the first page of Google results for +oh +shit +need +lawyer +Pismo Beach +dwarf +public +indecency +hedge-clippers or something.

What do you need to do?

Prepare for the call: Oh, sweet Jesus, please prepare for the call. Here's what that means:

1. If you've been sued, or subpoenaed, or searched, or arrested, you've almost certainly received some papers. Look at them. What court is this in? Is it civil or criminal (that means are you being charged with a crime by the government or sued by someone for money?) Does it say "Superior Court" or "United States District Court" or what? Be as familiar as you possibly can with the papers, and have them in front of you when you call. If you don't have the ability to fax or scan documents to get them to the lawyer, figure out ahead of time how you will do so, by going to Kinkos or a friend's house or something. If you have trouble understanding it, ask a friend to go over it with you. If you call a lawyer and don't know whether the case is criminal or civil and don't know what court it is in, the lawyer will suspect that representing you will frequently involve gritting his teeth to stop from screaming at you.

2. Especially if you are calling a lawyer to talk about suing someone rather than facing criminal charges or a lawsuit against you, think about how to explain what you want. If you can't summarize what the problem is and what you want in four sentences, keep thinking until you can. This is especially a problem if you are one of those people, bless their hearts, who cannot explain a straightforward situation in less time it would take James Joyce fully to explore the tension between autonomy and religion. Here's a good example of a summary to start a conversation with a lawyer: "I think I want to sue someone for defamation. My coworker went around telling people that I peed in the coffee pot again, and people have been making fun of me and they put me on the night shift." Or maybe "I want to sue my business partner because we had a contract to split profits from a business and I think he's been cooking the books to hide profits." Rule of thumb: a summary does not have supporting cast, characterization, multiple settings, chapters, or leitmotifs.

Why is that important? Because lawyers are irritated by people who can't convey information succinctly. Lawyers want to go back to screaming at associates and billing current clients, not listen to someone who can't get to the point. Lawyers think, probably correctly, that if you can't discipline yourself to start with a brief summary, then their entire experience with you will be miserable. Every call will be a marathon, and you'll be impossible to prepare for deposition or trial testimony. Are you worried that you only have one shot at telling the lawyer every single fact they will ever need to know? That's not right. Lawyers will ask pertinent follow-up questions to get more detail necessary to evaluate your case. In fact, the lawyer is waiting impatiently to do that right now while you natter on about what someone said to someone else on an occasion entirely irrelevant to the legal issue presented. If you're someone who simply cannot cut to the chase, even when gently encouraged, the lawyer may well decide she doesn't want this case and check out mentally, waiting for a lull in your life story to say this isn't her practice area.

So: prepare for the call the way you would for a wedding toast at a wedding where the mother of the bride is sitting next to you and is notoriously violent and has personally informed you that if you speak for more than forty-five seconds she will be jabbing you in the crotch with an oyster fork.

3. Think about what you want. If you haven't thought up front about whether you are interested in suing or not, and whether or not you are willing to pay any money for legal services, then you're wasting time. Of course you'll want the lawyer's advice, and want to know what the lawyer would charge, and so forth. But don't go into a call like a blank slate without reflecting on what your goals are. The lawyer is not a therapist.

Don't be a know-it-all:

Look. Do you go to the doctor with an unpleasant discharge and argue with the doctor's diagnosis of the clap because you think based on your extensive familiarity with the first three seasons of House that the symptoms seem more like syphilis? Probably not. So, if you need a lawyer to advise you, why the fuckity fuckity fuck are you arguing with the lawyer based on an understanding of the law cultivated by CSI and your aunt Bernice who reads lots of detective novels? Nothing will turn off a lawyer faster than a potential client who must win every conversation, even if the conversation is one in which the client is seeking important advice about an issue on which he is abjectly ignorant. This is in part because lawyers themselves are mostly people who must win conversations and resent you treading on their patch.

This doesn't mean that you're dumb and the lawyer is smart. But you don't necessarily need a lawyer who is smart; you need one who is honest, knowledgeable, and experienced. Albert Einstein or Doogie Howser can get you lethally injected just as fast as a dumb guy if they decide to try their hand at criminal defense; the guy who got Cs all through high school and college can get you off because he's done it hundreds of times and is frankly too jaded to bother lying to you about it.

So: go into the conversation that you are consulting a subject-matter-expert to learn something. Don't be the guy who has never figured out how to replace the batteries in his mouse but still argues with tech support on principle. If what the lawyer says sounds wrong to you, then call a different lawyer and get another opinion. And if you truly do have some specialized legal knowledge, like you know that general legal principles do not apply to your case under the Special Snowflake Act of 2011, and this lawyer doesn't seem to share that specialized legal knowledge, then he's not the right lawyer for you anyway. Go into the discussion to learn and evaluate, not to argue or persuade. Be prepared for the possibility that the law might be something other than what you expect based on your life experiences. A lawyer is not there to tell you what you want to hear. If you insist on a lawyer who will only tell you what you want to hear, you will eventually wind up with one who is (1) meek, and therefore a shitty lawyer, (2) dishonest, and therefore a shitty lawyer, or (3) so desperate for work that they will put up with your bullshit, and therefore a shitty lawyer.

Also, when you're talking to the lawyer, would it really kill you to let the lawyer finish a sentence now and then?

Give a little thought to timing:

On the one hand, if you hear you've been sued or charged or wronged or something, don't start calling lawyers in a panic before you've learned anything. If you're going to be telling the lawyer "my husband says we've been served with legal papers, but I haven't driven home to see them yet and I haven't called him back so I don't know anything, but can you take my case?", then you're wasting time. If you are calling to say "somebody said something bad about me in a newspaper article that I haven't read yet," then you're wasting time.

On the other hand, don't procrastinate. Don't wait to call until the day before that hearing or trial or briefing due-date. If the judge gave you 30 days to do something, don't start calling on day 25. Lawyering is not rocket science, but it's usually not like replacing the toner in the printer either. It can take time to be prepared to do the job right, and the lawyer probably isn't sitting there playing minesweeper waiting for your call; she's got other clients.

Bear in Mind That Lawyers Are Sort of Like People Too, In A Way:

Do you deal with "the public," or "clients," or with strangers asking you for things, in your life? Then you have a sense of what it's like. Lawyers can be insufferable, sure. But you're not talking to a lawyer because he's asking you for a favor. You're asking the lawyer to work for you. And lawyers are human, at least in the bundle-of-flaws sense. So if you are curt and abrupt, if you are openly incredulous at what the lawyer says, if you treat the lawyer openly like someone who is out to cheat you (as opposed to doing so subtly, which is perfectly sensible), if you can't let the lawyer speak a complete sentence without interrupting, if you negotiate in a contemptuous manner as if you are buying a fake Rolex off a guy in an alley, then the lawyer is not going to be enthused about you, and his vestigial humanity is going to lead him to turn you down or charge you more or resent you and work less hard for you. He can't spit in your food the way waiters will if you act like bad consumers, but he can do stuff that's far, far worse. Pretend that the lawyer is a human being with feelings, and things will go much smoother. (But note: do not carry this too far. Get second opinions, exercise skepticism, and do not under any circumstances attempt to have sexual intercourse with the lawyer, or make sudden movements in his presence, particularly while he is eating.)

This is merely a guide for how to handle the initial call with a lawyer when you are seeking counsel. Look for a future guide on sealing the deal with a lawyer and the care and feeding of your lawyer.

Note: if you are saying "I can't believe he thinks he has to tell people these things," then you do not deal with the public on a regular basis.

Edited to add: RL Mullen asked a question that he may have meant ironically, but bears addressing seriously: if you get arrested, should you ask your bail bondsman for an attorney recommendation?

My answer is the Platonic ideal of an attorney response: maybe yes, maybe no; it could work out great, or you could get utterly shafted. Some bail bondsmen take kickbacks for referrals, or have cross-referral agreements, and send clients to similarly seedy and questionable lawyers. They're in it for the one-time-customer volume. On the other hand, some bail bondsmen are reputable and recommend lawyers they think are trustworthy and reasonably priced. They're in it for repeat business and word-of-mouth — they want their clients to have a good experience with their lawyers, because they want their clients to come back if they get arrested again, and because they don't want to develop a reputation for being associated with crappy lawyers.

In general, if you select a quality, reputable bail bonds company, you can at least consider their recommendation of an attorney. When you contact that attorney, carefully evaluate whether the attorney gives you individualized attention and seems interested in your case; if the lawyer has a secretary or paralegal interview you, or seems sleazy or fly-by-night, run the other way.

Every litigator has encountered the theatrical, slightly crazy opponent. Their papers are filled with bizarre accusations and wild unsupported legal theories. They dress oddly. Their affect is off. They act out in court.

Some lawyers and pro se litigants act that way because they are genuinely crazy. But some do it because it puts their opponents off their game. If their inexorable oddness makes you lose your cool in writing, or in court, they win, and suddenly the focus of the proceeding becomes not the merits but their oddness and your reaction to it. Suddenly, it's you — rather than the crazy guy — who is the laughingstock, because you've been trolled successfully. If the troll is sufficiently epic, you become infamous. Take Bill Bone, a Florida defense attorney who was so irate at plaintiff attorney Michael Robb's look-at-me-in-my-humble-old-shoes-fighting-for-the-people routine that he filed a motion demanding that the judge order Robb to wear nice shoes in court.

Or, this week, take Illinois attorney Thomas W. Gooch III, who allowed himself to become seriously discomboobulated. Gooch, who was defending his client Exotic Motors from a lemon-law claim, believed that his opponent Dmitry Feofanov had seated his paralegal at counsel table solely to distract the court with her voluptuousness, and saw fit to file a motion in limine demanding that she be exiled:

Defendant's counsel is anecdotally familiar with the tactics and theatrics of Plaintiff's counsel . . . . Such behavior includes having a large breasted woman sit next to him at counsel's table during the course of the trial. There is no evidence whatsoever that this woman has any legal training whatsoever, and the sole purpose of her presence at Plaintiff's Counsel's table is to draw the attention of the jury away from the relevant proceedings before this court, obviously prejudicing the Defendant's in this or any other cause. Until it is shown that this woman has any sort of legal background, she should be required to sit in the gallery with the rest of the spectators and be barred from sitting at counsel's table during the course of this trial.

You know, the judiciary in this country is made up of a Mos Eisley array of misfits, but I can still confidently say that 95% of judges would read that motion and say "wow, what an entitled dick. I'm going to find ways to humiliate him and screw his client." A smarter and more self-possessed lawyer would recognize that. Thomas W. Gooch III may be smart and self-possessed in other circumstances, but in this circumstance, the most charitable interpretation is that he got trolled in epic fashion. Even if he's right in his accusation, he looks like an ass and his Google results are now 75% boob-related. The harm he's caused to his own reputation, and to his client's interests, is worse by several cup sizes than the hypothetical harm they could have faced from Feofanov's alleged stunt. He got rope-a-doped.

And that's the nicest interpretation. Feofanov says his paralegal is qualified and necessary. Gooch may well just be one of those sexist, narcissistic choads who thinks that all the women in the world get dressed every day specifically to allure men like him — like the guy who gets angry because a woman doesn't wear her wedding ring while working out at the gym.

Either way, don't be Thomas W. Gooch III. Protip: if your conduct of your client's affairs requires you to make a statement reassuring the media that you are not per se opposed to large breasts, you're doing it wrong.

. . . bear in mind that one of the most persistent search terms that brings people to this site is "naked eunuchs," or variations thereof (e.g. today's "nacked [sic] eunuchs").

It averages about 10-30 such searches per month.

Those people are out there. They vote. They want to shake your hand.

n.b. this is Patrick's fault.

As we speak, a woman — a potential client I turned down — is pestering the receptionists trying to speak to someone "in authority" in the firm to complain about me. They'll probably send her to the HR person, who is very sensible and worth her weight in gold and will soothe her. (I asked our HR person to say, if the woman asks for the name of my superior, to respond "there's some theological dispute about that," but she's too sensible to do so.)

The woman cold-called looking for someone to sue on her behalf. After a long backstory (only 2% of cold-call clients can explain what they want in a paragraph), I figured out that she wanted to sue a major metropolitan newspaper for a story that they ran in 1991 that described an unnamed person that she believes was based on her and that she believes was unflattering. I declined and warned her that under California's vigorous anti-SLAPP laws she might well wind up paying the other side's attorney fees if she sues, inasmuch as the statute of limitations on defamation is a year, not a generation.

Apparently I was insufficiently solicitous of her feelings in the matter and did not spend enough time expressing my empathy for how the 1991 article about an unnamed person makes her feel. I am reminded by colleagues that I am capable of diplomacy and ought to exercise it.

Sorry. None left today.

I remember my first trial nearly 20 years ago.

I was still in law school, working as a student prosecutor in a failed and dingy industrial town in Suffolk County, trying a misdemeanor marijuana possession bench trial against a 70-year-old-man with no criminal record who had a nine-inch marijuana plant in a ceramic pot in his back yard. Under the ridiculous rules of the People's Republic of Massachusetts at the time, even if I won the bench trial, the defendant was entitled to ask for a second trial, this time in front of a jury. It's hard to imagine how a real-life trial could have gotten more pointless or free of potential consequences to anyone. The whole sad thing took about an hour and a half. The judge listened respectfully to my earnest opening statement while the defense lawyer rolled his eyes. Then the cop got on the stand and talked about finding the marijuana. He had written in his report that when confronted the defendant said "my ex-wife told you it was there; she ratted me out." On the stand, the cop remembered the statement as "my ex-wife put it there; she set me up." The judge found the defendant not guilty. The deputy DAs who were supervising me — barely out of law school themselves — bought me shots of awful tequila at a dive bar and bundled me through the snow onto the T, on which I threw up into a sack several times and missed my change of trains.

A relatively seasoned DA sat with me throughout that trial, because it would be ridiculous to send a baby lawyer alone into his first trial, even one as pathetic as this. Nobody would ever have let me try a serious case as my very first trial. Even later, when I left the government and became a defense lawyer, with a score of much more complex trials under my belt, I sat second chair as a defense lawyer for a while — because trying a case as a defense lawyer is a very different thing than trying one as a prosecutor. Whatever bad things you can say about my judgment — and you can say many awful things, I'm sure — you can't say that rushed to try cases I wasn't prepared to try.

That brings us to the woeful tale of Joseph Rakofsky.

Continue Reading »

Last night I was driving Evan (10) and Abby (8) home from dinner.

EVAN: Daddy, quiz me on science stuff.

ME: Uh, okay. Here's one you didn't remember before. Who invented the light bulb?

EVAN: Uh — Einstein?

ABBY: Howie Houdini!

EVAN: I don't like that one. Ask another one.

ME: Okay. What is Einstein famous for?

EVAN: He talked about science and the universe and . . . and . . . what he said was important for knowing things in science, and the universe, and how science works in the universe, and stuff.

ME: You'll have to learn to bluff better than that, padwan.

ABBY: Ask another question!

ME: Okay. Who was the second president?

EVAN: GEORGE WASHINGTON!

ABBY: Howie Houdini! Harriet Tubman! SACAJAWEA!

ME: Bzzz. Wrong. Okay. If the president dies, who becomes president next?

EVAN: The vice-president!

ME: And if the president and the vice-president die, who becomes president next!

EVAN: Uh . . . the last president before that?

ABBY: SOME RANDOM GUY!

Evan: The last person who ran for president and lost?

ABBY: ME! HOWIE HOUDINI! A MONKEY SCRATCHING HIS ARMPITS!

ME: We may need to find you two a trade.

You've probably heard that Jesse Curtis Morton, aka Yonus Abdullah Mohammad, writer at Revolutionmuslim.com, has been charged by the feds in Virginia for threats against the creators of South Park.

I've pulled the affidavit in support of the complaint and hosted it here. I'm going to try to write about it this weekend or Monday. It's going to take time — the "true threat" doctrine is one of the more fascinating areas of First Amendment law.

I do, however, have some quick first impressions:

1. Why the hell did they do this by complaint rather than by indictment?

2. Given the significance of this case — both politically and in terms of First Amendment law — I find the affidavit remarkably shoddy. Whoever wrote it, and whatever AUSA approved it, needs to learn about proper attribution. You can get away with all sorts of stuff stateside — or in some federal districts, I suppose — but in a properly drafted federal affidavit, the document should explain exactly how the affiant knows each fact they assert. That's woefully lacking in this affidavit. The magistrate judges I used to practice before would bounce it.

3. I've seen federal complaints and indictments that review, briefly, a complicated statutory scheme in order to provide context for facts supporting charges. But I've never seen an affidavit offer an argumentative First Amendment discussion about the true threat doctrine that doesn't even offer case citations, but asks the judge to accept the legal reasoning based on what the agent has "been informed." It's odd, very odd.

4. The affidavit makes a strong case that the defendant was trying both to convey threats and to stay on the legal side of the line between legal and illegal speech. The implications are complex and quite interesting — in part because over the years the "true threat" doctrine has been in flux as to whether the standard is subjective (the speaker intended that the statement be interpreted as an actual threat), objective (a reasonable hearer would interpret it as an actual threat).

More later.

Edit: It's Draw Mohammed Day again, but I'm too lazy and busy to draw something new, so I'm running a repeat.

It's time for the Road to Popehat,the feature in which we check out the traffic logs, note what searches brought you here, shudder, and drink ourselves into sweet, sweet oblivion.

Shorter this month, because Woopra has been acting up.

is it healthy for kids to eat salmon sashimi Let me tell you this: it's not healthy for your pocketbook. I taught all three kids to like sushi. Now they demand it. The four-year-old yells for a spider roll, eats all the crab out of it, and ignores the rest. It's barbaric.

metaphor for incomptetant [sic] You.

Delaware can I call the police for someone playing basketball in the street Jennifer Griffin, is that you?

white guy that killed more people than Hitler Pat Buchanan has a new historical theory.

will police arrest you in your underwear? "Because if not, I have a really outside-the-box idea for how to get away with bank robbery."

credulity.15 Upgrade to Beta .25 for only $79.99! No checks please. You have a lying face.

. . . has spent in excess of 29 hours visiting us at Popehat, reading for an average of 21 minutes per visit, each time from his or her state-government computer, presumably at work.

I am familiar with the state in question — it's less dysfunctional than my own beloved State of California, and taxed a hell of a lot less. Nonetheless, I am sure there are some (especially in that rather conservative and Tea-Party-intensive state) that would object to a state employee spending 29 hours of taypayer-funded time at Popehat.

Having been a government employee, and being professionally occupied with dealing with state and local employees, I respectfully dissent. The state in question, my own state, and indeed all of these majestic United States would run more smoothly if we paid government employees to read Popehat regularly rather than engage in regulating, prosecuting, and otherwise annoying us. And dare I say that we would have a salutary effect on governance? Yes. Yes I do dare say that.

. . . ask yourself — could it all be utter bullshit?

Sheena now says British tabloid The Sun—which published the first Botox Mom story—orchestrated the whole thing. "I was provided with the story, instructions, and a script to follow for a recorded interview." She made $200. "The truth is I have never given my daughter Botox, nor allowed her to get any type of waxing, nor is she a beauty pageant contestant."

There are plenty of genuinely outrageous things going on in America, and in the world, that we ought to be outraged about and that the media ought to focus on. But those things tend to be uncomfortable, controversial, complicated, and difficult and/or expensive to cover. Why spend $50,000 on a long-term investigation of government corruption when you can spend $10,000 to get some jackass to tell the world she Botoxed her eight-year-old, and get ten times the eyeballs that the corruption story would have gotten?

How can you tell the bullshit from the genuinely outrageous? Well, when the media makes shit up, blows it out of proportion, or plucks it from deserved obscurity to crowd out serious stories, it tends to follow certain familiar themes:

1. That pretty white girl is missing!
2. Holy shit! This product will incinerate/decapitate your kid!
3. He is not married to her, and yet they had intercourse!
4. How could that celebrity have said that?
5. This small-chinned child is in peril!
6. HOW CAN YOU DO THAT TO A LITTLE BABY DUCK, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!
7. Eeeeeew, gross.
8. Ha ha! He totally had his schlong out!

By contrast, if the media reports on one of the following stories, it is generally not made up, because the media doesn't particularly give a shit, and thinks you don't either:

1. Lies by politicians that require more than two sentences to explain;
2. Corruption of a sort that cannot be understood by a five-year-old;
3. Culturally deified groups (cops, firefighters, etc.) misbehaving;
4. People accused of crimes being mistreated;
5. Political leaders making stupid decisions that cannot be described at a sitcom level (e.g. "Ha! He totally choked on a pretzel!")
6. Generally, reality failing to function as TV suggests it should.

Thugs defy or ignore the rule of law, and instead follow the rule that the strong and the politically powerful should prevail over the weak and the powerless. In theory, the government should pursue the rule of law, rather than the rule of thuggery. But reality bears little relation to theory or aspiration, least of all when police officers are involved.

Today's example: Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams, who is pursuing the rule of thuggery over the rule of law.

Radley Balko knocks this story out of the park, so I will be brief (for me). Philadelphia resident Mark Fiorino carried a firearm openly in a manner that was fully legal — at least under the rule of law. But Mark Fiorino erred in disregarding the law of thuggery, not bearing in mind that the police are frequently ignorant of applicable gun laws, frequently have strong opinions of what gun laws ought to be, and are frequently and violently outraged that citizens think they are bound by the former (the rule of law) rather than the later (the law of thuggery). Mark Fiorino found himself confronted by screaming police with guns drawn and threatened with death:

Fiorino offered to show Dougherty his driver's and firearms licenses. The cop told him to get on his knees.

"Excuse me?" Fiorino said.

"Get down on your knees. Just obey what I'm saying," Dougherty said.

"Sir," Fiorino replied, "I'm more than happy to stand here -"

"If you make a move, I'm going to f—— shoot you," Dougherty snapped. "I'm telling you right now, you make a move, and you're going down!"

"Is this necessary?" Fiorino said.

It went on like that for a little while, until other officers responded to Dougherty's calls for backup.

Fiorino was forced to the ground and shouted at as he tried to explain that he had a firearms license and was legally allowed to openly carry his weapon.

"You f—— come here looking for f—— problems? Where do you live?" yelled one officer.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," Fiorino said. "If I'm under arrest, I have nothing left to say."

"F—— a——, shut the f— up!" the cop hollered.

Fiorino lived that day. He was in the right, legally, but he was also very lucky not to be shot, or tased, or beaten into a coma, or sodomized with a broom handle, or arrested immediately for some invented offense.

But Fiorino's experience was not over. He had taped the encounter. He put the tapes on YouTube.

And — as we well know — embarrassing the police is a sure way to get prosecuted by their lapdog prosecutors.

Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams has allowed his office to file charges against Fiorino for “reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct” — two charges frequently employed because there's no explicit law on the books for "contempt of cop." Apparently the government's theory is that Fiorino was "belligerent and hostile” to the investigating police, and that his persistence in asserting his rights required many police to race to the scene to confront him, threatening public order. The police theory of the case sounds similar:

Police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers said the department believes that Fiorino wanted to get into a confrontation with cops, that he wanted to see them lose their cool so he later could file a lawsuit.

The District Attorney and the police, ostensibly guardians of the rule of law, have thus retreated into thuggish wife-beater logic: "you know that you provoke me when you mouth off like that, so why did you make me hit you and make a scene?"

Fiorino walked down a street carrying a firearm in compliance with all applicable laws. Confronted by out-of-control police, he responded by asserting his rights. The YouTube videos put the lie to the government's claim that he was "belligerent and hostile" — at least as free people would define those terms. Assertion of rights is only "belligerent" or "hostile" if the government official hearing the assertion is thuggish, hostile to those rights, or pathologically entitled.

But remember: some cops, and some government officials, feel entitled not only to our adherence to the rule of law, but to unquestioning compliance with their every demand. They expect us to grovel.

The criminal charges pursued by Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams represent the thuggish fist of the government lashing out at a citizen who failed to grovel. Williams is a thug, and should be treated like one.