Here's the most important thing you need to know about blogger and "investigative journalist" Crystal Cox: when she got angry at First Amendment attorney Marc Randazza, she didn't just register the domains marcrandazza.com and fuckmarcrandazza.com and marcrandazzasucks.com in order to attack him. She registered jenniferrandazza.com and nataliarandazza.com — the names of Randazza's wife and three-year-old daughter.

That's Crystal Cox in a nutshell — an appropriate receptacle.

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Dear Members of the Joint Committee on Judiciary of the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut:

My specific intent in writing this post is to annoy and alarm you.

I am posting this communication to you because of the traits and characteristics that I perceive in each of you, and which I firmly believe you possess. I specifically refer to your venality, your sub-normal intelligence, your poor hygiene, your regrettable oafishness, your indifference to your oath of office under your state's constitution ["You do solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) that you will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Connecticut, so long as you continue a citizen thereof; and that you will faithfully discharge, according to law, the duties of the office of...........to the best of your abilities. So help you God."], and your civil, legal, and constitutional illiteracy. It's not clear to me whether these personal traits and characteristics are the result of poor upbringing, bad pruning on the sad Charlie-Brown-Christmas tree that is your genetic lineage, or the quality identified by philosophers and various Omen sequels as Pure Evil. At any rate, your traits and characteristics inspire me to write about you, and are the subject of my discussion, and I spit upon them like so, ptui.

You have no reason to be in physical fear of me, a blogger on the other side of the country. I am not violent and do not believe in visiting violence upon people like you just because you are oathbreaking censorious twunts. Moral and legal issues aside, there are simply too many of you — including other state legislators like you around the country — and it would be exhausting. I prefer to stay on my couch.

However, it is my sincere hope that by writing to you I will achieve the following:

1. That my message will have a substantial and detrimental effect on your mental health, in that I will help you to realize what an embarrassment to the very notion of responsible self-governance you are, and that you have clawed and bit and scrambled and fought to become dim, petty tyrants; and

2. That my message will have the effect of substantially interfering with your participation in, and ability to benefit from, (a) the academic performance of those of you admirably engaged in remedial math or English classes, (b) with the employment in the Assembly of each of you, and (c) with other community activities or responsibilities (giving speeches, opening strip malls, asking your LAs to write your pro-traditional-marriage speeches while you meet your catamites at the Ramada Inn, collecting your Teamster bribes, etc.). I hope that my message will have that effect because it will show you, and your constituents, that you are worthy of only contempt.

3. Most especially, I hope that this message has the impact of causing you substantial embarrassment and humiliation within the professional community, including the legislative community, the legal community, the political community, the business community, the community of functional illiterates who speechify about education, the community of people who work "liberty" and "freedom" into every speech whilst they find new ways to regulate ever aspect of human existence, and the community of people typically viewed by the general public as slightly more palatable than child molesters but definitely less palatable than car thieves, wife beaters, or lawyers.

Why, you ask?

Well, it's because of Connecticut Senate Bill 456. As the Student Press Law Center reports, you — the members of the Connecticut Joint Committee on Judiciary — have referred Bill No. 456, which expands Connecticut's harassment laws in a stupendously ridiculous and unconstitutional way. How stupendous and unconstitutional? Well, so stupendous and unconstitutional that this blog post could be a crime in Connecticut if the rest of the droolers in your General Assembly approve this turd. Under the current version, it would be a crime to do the following:

(a) A person commits electronic harassment when such person, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person, transmits, posts, displays or disseminates, by or through an electronic communication device, radio, computer, Internet web site or similar means, to any person, a communication, image or information, which is based on the actual or perceived traits or characteristics of that person, which:
(1) Places that person in reasonable fear of harm to his or her person or property;
(2) Has a substantial and detrimental effect on that person's physical or mental health;
(3) Has the effect of substantially interfering with that person's academic performance, employment or other community activities or
responsibilities;
(4) Has the effect of substantially interfering with that person's ability to participate in or benefit from any academic, professional or community-based services, activities or privileges; or
(5) Has the effect of causing substantial embarrassment or humiliation to that person within an academic or professional community.

The statute helpfully provides that the crime is committed where the communication is sent or where it is received, apparently meaning that you might assert that I have committed a crime in Connecticut by this post even though I write it in California.

You've joined the moronic headlong rush towards "cyberbullying" legislation that tramples of our heritage of free expression in exchange for a few local news headlines. You've drafted a bill that is stupendously overbroad and chilling of all sorts of protected expression. Frankly, it is not even a credible gesture towards complying with the United States or Connecticut Constitutions. If your lawyers wrote it for you, you need to stop hiring lawyers from gas-station bathrooms and the alleys behind methadone clinics. If you had even a minimal grasp of the power you wield — or if you cared — you would recognize that this statute purports to criminalize all sorts of criticism, argument, and satire based not on any objectively threatening nature, but on the whiny subjective butthurt of the disagreed-with. I'm guessing you'd say you're thinking of the children. But our children are not helped by teaching them to be bad citizens, by teaching them they should look to government for redress when people hurt their feelings, or by steadily weakening their Constitutional heritage in the name of fashionable concerns.

In summary: you are ignorant censorious tools. If your Joint Committee on the Judiciary passes this bill along in anything close to this form, its members should consider this post directed to them all. If the entire General Assembly approves it, it is directed to them as well. If the Governor signs it, he's on the list as well. I will republish the post when the law becomes effective.

Perhaps some of you, members of the Joint Committee on Judiciary, spoke up about this bill. However, so far as I can tell, there's no record of it, and your state does not see fit to attribute the bill to any particular member. At any rate, if your reaction to this bill was anything but immediate denunciation, consider this directed at you as well.

In closing, snort my taint,

Ken

Edited 3/30: Or, sure, you could discuss this in a polite manner like First Amendment demigod Eugene Volokh. I mean, if that's your thing. He's a busy professor, he probably doesn't have time to be extradited to Connecticut.

If you're on a deadline, and you need to produce written content, the internet makes it ridiculously fast and easy to rip other writers off.

But people who live by the sword also die by it. Once someone suspects plagiarism, the internet makes it easy to search for other people who used your words first. It also makes it easy to spot-check your other work to see if any of it appears lifted from prior sources without attribution. Finally, once plagiarism is detected, the internet — full, as it is, of both successful and frustrated writers — makes word of the misconduct spread like wildfire.

This week's example: the Movie Junkies.

John Scalzi — who hates plagiarism the way you hate Hitler and the way I hate reality TV — writes the Alpha post, noting that MaryAnn Johanson's review of a film — appropriately enough, "Shame" — was plagiarized at MovieJunkies. As Scalzi notes in an update, MovieJunkies has now edited that review, leaving an incoherent mess that still has elements of the plagiarized work. A screenshot is here, and the sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and other errors are in the original:

A powerful plunge into the mania of sex addiction. The feelings of isolation and all-consuming need so piercingly in “Shame”. Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a New Yorker who shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. His troubled sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past and Brandon’s insular life spirals out of control. Sissy is her brother’s polar opposite, and she proceeds to invade his carefully cultivated privacy.

Shame offers something different than I have ever seen on screen in a main stream movie. For the first a main stream audience can see a man with extreme vulnerability. Fassbender is exceptional is expressing is misery and utter weakness in the fight against his obsession and addiction. Most movies that are available to the mass audiences protect the male image and ego. Even male nudity is treated much more tabu than female nudity.

The only issue I had with the direction was that some shots were held for too long where I got a little bored numerous times throughout the movie.

Movie Junkie Rating: GOOD BUZZ Note: GREAT HIGH for Fassbender’s performance!

Now comes the part where other writers — and their fans — start looking for other instances of plagiarism. Scalzi's commenters are off to a good start and have found some strong candidates for plagiarism. Mike McGranaghan of Aisleseat indicates he has screencaps of six reviews plagiarized from him, and is tracking down plagiarism of other writers. Things are swiftly becoming very grim for MovieJunkies. The plagiarism is looking serial and pervasive rather than isolated.

Using the comment form on the MovieJunkies web site, I asked for a comment, indicating that I write about various forms of internet misbehavior and wondered if they had a comment about allegations they had plagiarized multiple articles. Here's the response I got — which I feel comfortable sharing because I made it clear I was writing to get a comment for a blog post:

Hello Ken,

I cannot apologize enough.

It seems some of my views that I passed onto to one of my staff to post on the site have used other sources that should not have been included. I should have looked more carefully and we do so in the future. I apologize for this error. We have removed the requests that have been sent to us.

Please let me know if you see anything else and I will gladly remove it immediately.

Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Michele Schalin

I find this incoherent and unconvincing. To the extent one can parse the main sentence, it's very difficult to believe. Is she saying that she voiced views that happened to incorporate the exact language of other writers' work, and her staff wrote it verbatim? Or that she referred to other writers' work, and they copied it verbatim? It's impenetrable, particularly for someone who supposedly writes professionally. Moreover, it's not believable. The hasty and incompetent editing of challenged posts — which as of now lack any apology or acknowledgement — suggests a guilty conscience, not an innocent error. The number of posts at issue, discussed above, also makes any innocent excuse hard to accept.

The people who run Movie Junkies are poised on a knife's edge. If they handle this situation correctly, with a convincing display to the extent that critics are mistaken, or (more likely) with abject apologies and acceptances of responsibility, the site might survive, even after this goes viral. If they take a dishonest, self-righteous, or evasive approach, they are done: curb-stomped by the internet they used as a source for stolen text. Just ask Judith Griggs

(If memory serves I learned of Griggs from Scalzi, too. Don't plagiarize around Scalzi. Just . . don't.)

Edited to add: another plagiarism victim.

Edited to add: Mike McGranaghan tells his story, and notes that the Movie Junkies site and Facebook page are down.

Edited to add: Eric Snyder talks about how the site plagiarized him, and about his correspondence with Michele Schalin.

I don't recall exactly when I concluded that Spike Lee is an asshole, but I think it was around the time he told Esquire “I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street.” I've long viewed hostility to interracial couples a reliable tell for self-involved douchebaggery, and now that I have a multiracial family my impression is only confirmed. Nobody wants some fashion-victim goateed dwarf glaring balefully at them during a romantic stroll. It's liable to make you anxious about whether you set the DVR right for Game of Thrones.

So: color me utterly unsurprised that Spike Lee is acting like an unprincipled asshat in relation to George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin. I haven't written about that shooting yet; even though the undisputed facts trouble me. Right now the case seems to be a hot mess of unsourced rumors, punditry by Nancy Grace aspirants, racism, and this-fact-favors-my-side-so-it-must-be-true wankery. I advocate a thorough and responsible investigation followed by due process of law — a rare luxury, but good to have when you can get it.

So how does the shooting provide Spike with an opportunity to be like himself? Well, as the Smoking Gun documents, a Los Angeles man named Marcus Davonne Higgins found what he thought was George Zimmerman's address and began publishing it with exhortations to "REACH OUT & TOUCH HIM." He eventually tweeted the address with a request that EVERYBODY REPOST THIS. Spike Lee obligingly reposted the address, and substantially contributed to the tweet going viral.

Among the problems with this was that Marcus Davonne Higgins is dumb and/or a shitty researcher. He got the wrong Zimmerman family, and the wrong address. The Zimmermans who live at the address that Higgins and Lee tweeted are in their 70s; the wife is a lunch lady at a school. After getting hate mail and being pestered by dumb reporters, they left for a hotel. They assert that they attempted to reach out to Marcus Davonne Higgins, and received the response "Black power all day. No justice, no peace." This seemingly self-justifying response is odd. I've certainly litigated against people who are shitty researchers and frankly a little slow, and some of them seem proud of it, but I've never observed them to be disproportionately members of any ethic group.

But the issue is not merely that Marcus Davonne Higgins is a reckless idiot who tweeted the wrong address, or that Spike Lee is a gullible creep who retweeted it to a vast following. The issue is that both were highlighting the home address of a person accused of a crime with the rather clear intent to incite violence against that person or, at least, put them in fear. Exhortations to mob violence are the marks of thugs who are part of the American tradition of lynch mobs, not the American struggle towards justice. By urging angry followers to REACH OUT AND TOUCH Zimmerman at his home address, Higgins and Lee were urging violence, and risking not only Zimmerman's life, but the lives of his family, the lives of neighbors, the lives of law enforcement, and the lives of — as it turned out — the utterly unrelated people who lived in the house that the moron Higgins identified. That was the work of thugs. It deserves our open scorn.

As far as I can tell, neither Spike Lee nor Marcus Davonne Higgins has apologized — not for scaring the hell out of a lunch lady who shared the name of someone they hated, and certainly not for their mob-justice tactic of publishing a home address to angry followers. I doubt they will. If Spike Lee says anything, I suspect it will be something along the lines of "it's typical in racist America that the media is talking about this instead of about violence against African-Americans." The media might, indeed, not focus enough on violence against African-Americans — what with pretty white girls being so prone to getting lost — but that's really not the point, and if Spike Lee said words to that effect, it would be a contemptible dodge.

It's very rare that reporting a story legitimately requires emphasizing the subject's home address. Occasionally it's hard to tell a story without talking about public resources or documents that might lead a reader to a home address; in those cases, caution is warranted. But I submit that it is never anything but vile to publish a subject's home address and exhort followers to go harass them — not when the subject has a political position you don't like, and not even when the subject has been accused of a terrible crime. That's why I called out the asshole Mike Troxel (who, like Marcus Davonne Higgins, was a shitty researcher who published the wrong address, leading to harassment of the wrong party), and that's why the targeting of Michele Malkin was wrong.

Publishing twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, email accounts, and other methods of communication that can be cut off? That's fine. But publishing a home address and sneeringly pointing it out to followers and inviting them to "have a chat," or words to that effect? That's a threat. Threats are for thugs. Don't be a thug. Don't be like Spike Lee and Marcus Davonne Higgins.

Edited to add: Thanks to Bret for a link to this doubling-down tweet by Higgins:

I might be wrong, but I think "THEY" probably means "the Jews," or something.

Edit 2: Thanks to commenter Phil for pointing out that Higgins is now tweeting apologies for tweeting the wrong address — though not for tweeting an address in the first place. Scumbag.

I don't tend to rail against political correctness too much any more. I did when I was living in two of the bellies of the beast in college and law school. But now, I tend to see PC as a self-defeating, feckless thing to be mocked, best addressed with the more-speech remedy. When political correctness is at the root of some actual official act of censorship, I firmly support calling it out — the results are often gratifying. But too often I think that (1) "political correctness" is just another way to say "boo hoo, I can't act like an ass without being called an ass, and it's chilling my speech," and (2) too few people call out politically correct idiocy on both sides.

But now and then, a story of insipid political correctness comes along and grabs my attention. Today's sample comes from the FIRE's Peter Bonilla, who pointed out an embarrassing incident at Cornell. In short, in response to a poster announcing a performance by Margaret Cho, a shadowy student group calling itself "Scorpions X" defaced posters across campus. They didn't do so because Margaret Cho is profoundly annoying. They didn't do so because, as a group with a name culled from the B-plot of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode, they felt incapable of resisting their destiny to engage in minor and ineffectual villainy. No, they did so because the poster had the wrong font.

The font used was Chop Suey, which, according to Scorpions X, has a history of Asian-American stereotyping. In their email, Scorpions X demanded that ALANA “discontinue use of these posters [and] quarter cards immediately and also remove current postings.”

The African Latino Asian Native American Students Programming Board — which, despite encompassing more traditionally disfavored interest groups than Scorpions X, still apparently felt intimidated by them — issued an excruciating apology in which they pointed out that Margaret Cho's people had approved the poster. Oh, THAT'S a denouncing.

But one day later, Scorpions X responded to ALANA’s email, saying that their apology letter was not acceptable and did not adequately address the situation at hand. They said that ALANA was not justified in bringing Cho to campus if her management accepted a poster using a font that, according to Scorpions X, reveals a “one-size-fits-all Asian stereotype.”

And, in a sort of preschool-level version of "death to anyone who says we are violent!", they added:

They added that members of Cornell community have unfairly accused Scorpions X of being “militant, confrontational and angry” for speaking out on racial issues.

Oh, dear.

Look, there's genuine racism against Asian-Americans in this country. It pisses me off, and not just because I'm trying to raise three Asian-American kids. I'm all for naming and shaming racist douches.

But defacing posters that make you mad is a tactic for censorious dipshits, a tactic that resembles its stupid, ugly cousin, stealing or destroying newspapers with articles you don't like. Combining censorious thuggery with adolescent levels of self-seriousness and entitlement, as Scorpions X has done, is hideously counter-productive. Believing that there is only one way to view expression that you don't like, and lashing out at splitters, is embarrassing. I don't think there's a stereotype that Asians are self-parodying, easily butthurt, hostile to dissent, and more than slightly unbalanced, but if there were such stereotypes, Scorpions X would have just dramatically reinforced them. Over a font, a font approved by the artist it depicted.

That's an example of the sort of political correctness that might move me to comment, because it's censorious and regrettable.

Ideal clients and ideal political opponents share an important quality: they'll shut up if you tell them to.

James O'Keefe and Nadia Naffe are not ideal clients, and political blogger Patterico is not an ideal political opponent.

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When I heard about this story from Walter Olson and Amy Alkon:

A 34-year-old Ann Arbor man was sent to the hospital with a head injury after another man punched him on Saturday during a literary argument, according to police.

. . . I immediately thought of one of my favorite satirical poems, by Wendy Cope:

Poem Composed in Santa Barbara

The poets talk. They talk a lot.
They talk of T. S. Eliot.
One is anti. One is pro.
How hard they think! How much they know!
They're happy. A cicada sings.
We women talk of other things.

It's a good thing that there are people, otherwise there'd be nobody to laugh at.

In the War on Dogs, trigger-happy officers have one boon companion, one stalwart friend, one ally who will never give them up, never let them down: the media.

Just ask Chelsea Kay of KRCRTV.

Chelsea reported on a story about cops shooting dogs. In this case, Redding police were looking for a fugitive, who visited a room in a motel. Police nabbed their man and were arresting him when a dog described as a "boxer puppy" "charged" the officers. The officers, apparently in fear of their lives from the puppy, opened fire, killing the puppy and a pregnant Chihuahua who was "caught in the line of fire."

There are many different angles that a journalist could take in a story about police shooting a charging puppy and gunning down a Chihuahua in the process. A journalist might write a hard-hitting story on whether the officers' fear for their safety is rational. A journalist might ask whether, if officers are shooting puppies in a manner that leaves other dogs "in the line of fire," the officers need retraining in firearms safety and use of force, whether that Chihuahua could just as easily have been a child, whether the officers' assessment of the relative danger of puppies vs. gunplay reflects rational thought.

Chelsea took a different angle:

After Redding Police were forced to kill two dogs Friday night, a Northstate family is now offering two puppies to console the family.

Awwwww ….. what an adorable gift-of-a-puppy human interest story! And since Chelsea has dispatched those nasty, uncomfortable, unpatriotic questions by the fifth word of the story — stating, as a given, that officers were "forced" to shoot a puppy — we can rush headlong into nice thoughts about how puppies are swell.

The press acting as the placid lapdogs of law enforcement is not new and is certainly not limited to cops who kill puppies. What can we do about it? We can seek out multiple news sources and multiple types of news sources. We can view journalists with skepticism. We can write about the issues ourselves. We can call them on their bullshit.

What we shouldn't do is be passive viewers. Doing so is asking to be duped, in a world in which nominally dog-loving journalists write docile, canine stories in support of police shooting puppies.

Chelsea joined the KRCR News Channel Seven News Team in November of 2011.

. . .

In her free time, Chelsea enjoys traveling, watching movies, yoga, and the beach. You'll find her spending time with her friends and family and snuggling with her dog, Rocco.

Watch your back, Rocco.

Hat Tip to Radley Balko, who owns the cops-vs.-dogs topic.

Having lots of commenters on your blog is a wonderful thing.

Oh, the ones who consistently leave thoughtful and well-writen comments and engage in meaningful discussion of ideas? Yeah, sure. They're ok, I guess.

I was actually referring to the few who make utter fools of themselves. They don't show up too often. But when they do, the result can be beautiful.

Today's case in point: Ophelia Benson, who one suspects is not a strong booster of Sarah Palin, declined to publish a comment calling Ms. Palin a cunt. The commenter, one Nigel, professed disbelief that anyone would not welcome his trenchant commentary. Hilarity, as they say, ensues. Watch as Nigel works himself into a fury in reaching the conclusion that when people won't publish "Sarah Palin is a cunt" on their blog, THAT'S FASCISM. Also, protip: if it requires 10 paragraphs to justify why you are not being a dick, you are probably being a dick.

One last thing: if you don't want your name associated with such wankery, don't sign your name to abusive emails containing such wankery.

In an at-will state, like California or Florida, you can fire your employees for any reason — however moronic — so long as it is not specifically prohibited by state law. So: you can't fire people based on race or gender, or for reporting unlawful activity. However, you can fire people for all sorts of utterly arbitrary and douchey reasons. Just ask 14 former employees of Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A., a law firm in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

Apparently Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A. fired 14 people for wearing orange on the same day. Most of the employees said they were wearing orange to celebrate it being payday and because they were going out carousing after work — except for one, who says she just likes orange and happened to be wearing it that day. It's not clear what about the orange caused the firm to go nuts — though firm supervisors did apparently invite people to come forward to offer any "innocent" reason for wearing it.

Though the firm has refused comment, some reports suggest the firm viewed the shirts as some sort of protest of some firm policy. If that's the case, it's possible the firm is in trouble under the National Labor Relations Act for punishing "concerted activity." If, on the other hand, the mass firing was simply arbitrary and capricious, it's probably perfectly legal. I think that it should be — the government should not police employment decisions that do not violate specific rights. Is such behavior repugnant? Certainly. But there's a remedy for that — publicize the behavior. Ask yourself — do you, as a potential client, feel comfortable taking your case to a firm Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A. that makes arbitrary and capricious decisions in such a matter? Does the termination of 14 employees for wearing orange inspire confidence in Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A.'s probity and discretion? Given that Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A. handled its pique over a shirt color in a manner almost certain provoke litigation (whether or not that litigation has ultimate legal merit), can you trust that firm to handle your matter in a way that will avoid unnecessary litigation and expense?

I sure as hell wouldn't hire Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A. for anything. And I hate orange. It makes me look like a giant pumpkin.

1. It's easier to get rid of herpes or get out of Gitmo than it is to get off of SiriusXM's incessant-call list. Go get buried in a sweaty guy's crawlspace, SiriusXM marketing executives.*

2. Speaking of asshole marketers: our comment spam is now almost manageable because we've set comments to close automatically after a couple of months. By that I mean I can review the spam filter every few days, save legitimate comments, and put potentially funny or otherwise bloggable spam aside for later. Before this, we got more than a thousand spam comments per day. But — it is absolutely infuriating that we have to do this, because I get a few emails a week from people with a worthwhile comment on an old post.

3. On a (mostly) unrelated note: among many, here's one good reason to avoid defamation litigation and other forms of censorship: the more-speech remedy works. Holy shit, does it work.

*I might as well admit it now, because Patrick will point it out in the comments if I don't — I'm too much of a sissy to use an edgier prison in that line.

There's no point closing the barn door after the horse has left the barn. There's even less of a point once the horse has left the barn, galloped away, been captured by another farmer, put to use pulling plows for a decade, died, sold for meat, turned into glue, and licked off the palm of an ADHD preschooler.

But man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? The traditional media is perfectly willing to go to the pre-school and issue a tendentious lecture to the pre-schooler, and possibly to the glue. In today's episode, highlighted with appropriate skepticism with Scott Greenfield, traditional media figures are approaching the problem of sleazy and dishonest aggregation (or outright theft) of their content by forming a committee, the "Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation," to explain to the internet how it ought to be working. The New York Times highlights the committee membership:

An august list of names has signed on to the effort: David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire; James Bennet, editor in chief of The Atlantic; and Adam Moss of New York magazine. Of course, all three oversee robust Web sites that do a fair amount of aggregating themselves.

The committee includes digital media natives like Elizabeth Spiers, editor in chief of The New York Observer; Mark Armstrong, a founder of Longreads.com; and Jacob Weisberg, chairman and editor in chief of Slate.

So, in effect, it's 1910 and the representatives of Ford Motor Co. and Big Hay are meeting to see how their constituencies can share the streets.

It's nice of them to try. But changes are not going to happen because a well-intentioned committee proposes ethical guidelines. It will come, as Scott says, organically:

Just as growth in the blogosphere is organic, so too is its ability to self-police, which it's been doing since the beginning. Someone says something stupid or does something inappropriate, and someone else jumps down their throat. If a blog sells crap, no one reads it. If a blogger steals from others, others call it out and ridicule it unmercifully. This was how the wild west and the blogosphere worked, and worked incredibly well.

So, best of luck there, Council. As Scott points out, like any good modern movement, they're concerned with graphics. They've decided that the best way to convey their steely grasp of new media is to ask everyone to denote attribution by using symbols reminiscent of the one Prince used to signify his flagging career in 1993.

This post was inspired and based largely on the work of the lawyer usually known as Scott, and occasionally as "stop making fun of my marketing ideas, asshole."

I don't say it enough: you people are awesome.

So. I'm going to steal an idea from John Scalzi at Whatever and have an open pimping thread. Please use the comments to this post for shameless promotion of a blog post you're proud of, or a new online venture, or some achievement, or some topic you're into. All normal social conventions regarding self-promotion are suspended for the duration of this post. Have at it.

[Some comments may get caught in the spam filter. Be patient. Email me if you comment and it takes more than half a day to appear.]

Today I write in praise of First Amendment attorney Marc Randazza.

Frequent readers of the blog know that he's a friend. Today, I'd just like to articulate a few reasons why I admire him.

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The response to this Popehat Signal has been awesome and touching. I'm taking down the details now for strategic reasons. Thanks to all.