Bloggers get junk mail from people who want to write "guest posts" advertising their own web sites or commercial services all the time. Most I delete without reading. This one, though, caught my eye, because the proposed guest post was so inappropriate for this site, and so poorly expressed.

Hello,

My name is Marie, and I am a writer for criminaljusticedegree.net. I happened upon your site recently and would like to ask if you accept guest posts. If you do, I'd very much like to contribute a piece discussing whether or not alcohol should be illegal. Alcohol is a drug so why are other drugs illegal and alcohol not? The piece would focus on legalizing other drugs because alcohol itself is a drug and thus, should be illegal like other drugs or the law should consider legalizing other drugs.

Of course, if you're interested I would welcome your input and suggestions for the topic including a preferred word count. Additionally, I am happy to provide links to previously published posts of mine on other blogs at your request.

Please let me know what you think.

Sincerely,
Marie

Marie's site appears to be a few pages of insipid fluff posted to draw hits to their links to for-profit schools with criminal justice programs:

In most civilized nations, including the United States, the criminal justice system is comprised of several departments working cohesively to control and deter crime. And though jails and prisons are often at maximum occupation, a functioning criminal justice system works to prevent and moderate criminal activity, and maintain social order.

And so on, like that, only even more so.

"Guest bloggers" spam hundreds or thousands of these things to blogs, hoping that a few will be gullible enough to accept the "guest post", and that the "guest post" will raise the spammer's site's visibility.

(Note that I have used the nofollow tag to avoid that here.)

I was about to delete this when it occurred to me to wonder — who falls for this?

So I Googled the gmail address that "Marie" used. It took me to a "guest post", the second link of which was a "criminal justice degree" hyperlink to her site.

Who fell for it?

Feminist Law Professors.

Guest Blogger Marie Owens: Are Criminal Justice and Law “Masculine” Professions?

A skeptic might read the site-pimping guest post and conclude it looks like something generated in a content-mill to promote a commercial site.

But then, perhaps the bar over there is not set terribly high.

Please do not let this observation lead you to believe I have anything but the utmost respect for self-avowedly feminist legal writing.

Edited to add: FLP has deleted the hyperlink to the commercial site that Marie put in the post. Just so there's no doubt that it was there, here's a screenshot.

Jesus wept.

You remember John Fitzgerald Page, right? Freakish narcissist and oaf who failed to consider what would happen if his boorish behavior became widely publicized?

Johnny, meet Hermon Raju. I just know you kids will hit it off. You've got so much in common! Let's see: there's cringeworthy hubris about your educational background, frontal-lobe-damage-indicator sense of entitlement, pathological lack of shame, capacity for maniacal rudeness to strangers, and general insufferability!

And, hey, the internet has helped you both forge your destiny forever!

You kids have a good time. I want an invitation to the wedding, now!

Edited to add: A follow up thought . . . .

Since bullying people into taking down unflattering web sites blog posts is increasingly pointless given the Streisand Effect, I understand that reputation advisers nowadays generally tell people like Hermon Raju to create many, many new blogs and web sites and forum posts with positive references to themselves, in an effort to drive negative references lower in the Google results. Some reputation and PR firms even do this as a service, foisting a blizzard of cheery references to their clients onto the internet in a desperate gambit to game Google.

Hence, the remedy for narcissistic behavior that draws negative attention may be systematic narcissism.

It's a funny old world.

Edited again to add: More than three years ago I wrote about the modern consequences of such dickery in the context of another oaf; many of the same points remain.

Remember the unspeakably evil Dr. George Rekers, simultaneous critic of gays and customer of rent boys, who conducted a hideous experiment too see if psychological torture would eradicate "feminine" behavior from a little boy?

CNN is running a three-party story about the experiment. The little boy, Kirk Andrew Murphy, committed suicide at age 38 in 2003. His siblings are now telling his painfully sad and chilling story. This is not a happy link. It will depress and infuriate you.

Rekers is unrepentant.

"I only meant to help, do the best I could with the parents, and I've written articles you can look up, too, on the rationale for our treatment. And the rationale was positive; to help children, help the parents who come to us in their distress asking questions, 'What can we do to help our child be better adjusted?' " Rekers said.

What could they do? Rekers told them to beat the kid if he acted girly.

According to Rekers' case study, blue chips were given for masculine behavior and would bring rewards, such as candy. But the red chips, given for effeminate behavior, resulted in "physical punishment by spanking from the father."

By the way, Rekers' "research" is still cited by anti-gay groups for the proposition that one can "cure" people of being gay. Do you suppose they know what Rekers did to produce the "data"? Do you suppose they care?

You've probably heard that San Francisco voters will consider a ballot measure to ban circumcision in the city. It's a controversial topic; there are hotly contested medical, social, and individual rights arguments on both sides. I'm not going to try to resolve them: I was circumcised, my son isn't, I see arguments on both sides.

Some Jewish leaders view the initiative as an anti-Semitic attack. It need not be one, necessarily — the circumcision rate in the United States hovers around 50%, while Jews make up only about 2% of the U.S. population (and observant Jews less than that). Moreover, there are many arguments to be made against circumcision that do not depend on denigration of religion.

It would take a heroic effort to frame this dispute as primarily one of anti-Semitism in time for the vote.

Help us, Foreskin Man!

Continue Reading »

Goofus pursues a public relations strategy guided by a room of sugared-up ADHD ten-year-olds.

This week, Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner went all Goofus on us, lurching from one odd stance to another in what almost seems like a deliberate attempt to publicize as widely as possible allegations that he tweeted a picture of his dick. He's not an NFL quarterback, so the picture (which I refuse to post) features an underwear-clad male in what the old obscenity laws refer to as "a discernibly turgid state" (which does not, I learned in law school, refer to Florida). Weiner has gone from asserting that his Twitter account was hacked, to refusing to talk about whether it was hacked, to lashing out at journalists, to answering questions in a thunderously inane manner:

NBC’s LUKE RUSSERT: “That’s not a picture of you?”

REP. ANTHONY WEINER: “You know, I can’t say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated, pictures can be dropped in and inserted.”

Shwaaaaaaa?

Weiner appears to be taking a wide stance here, maintaining the ability to argue that maybe it's a picture of him, maybe it's not, maybe it's a picture of him that's been altered.

It's funny, because I think most of us know right away, off [pardon me] the top of our head, whether or not we have a picture of our own boner. I know I don't. I'm almost 42 and tired and overweight and by the time the medication kicks in my vision is too blurry to use the camera function on my iPhone.

Some smart people I respect have argued that this ought not be a story at all, because what a government actor does in their private life isn't news. I have to agree in part and disagree in part. I don't care if Rep. Weiner and his wife have an understanding involving social media, his genitals, and third-party coeds with handles like @gullibleforDems. This isn't a morals issue. This is a intelligence/judgment/self-control issue. If a politician's Gary-Hart sexual antics suggest that he lacks sufficient self-control to avoid engaging in activities highly likely to get him caught and publicly humiliated, there's reason to question whether he has the self-control necessary to deal with more politically substantive temptations. If a politician can't address a personal crisis without flopping all over the networks like a dying fish on a dock, then there's reason to question whether he can manage crises of leadership. Hell, even if a politician is falsely accused of sexual impropriety, if he adopts a strategy that makes him look like he's being controlled by that alien who wore Vincent D'Onofrio for half of Men in Black, then it's reasonable to question whether he can hack the big jobs.

I want our leaders to be able to grasp the most basic principles of crisis management, like shut up until you have your story straight and don't go off all half-cocked.

So, Goofus, if news stories about your erection persist for more than four news cycles, consult a public relations professional. Right now, your strategy is so very, very bad that I'm beginning to suspect that you came up short when the Democrats drew straws to see who'd be the guy to create a diversion while they carried a dead hooker out the back of the Capitol building.

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.

DON'T FIGHT THE CRIME IF YOU CAN'T DO THE TIME. "The Petoskey Department of Public Safety said officers pulled the man back onto the roof and found a baton type striking weapon, a can of chemical irritant spray, and a pair of lead lined gloves. … He is being kept in the Emmet County Jail."

"THESE TWO GENTLEMEN PROBABLY DON'T SPEAK A WORD OF ENGLISH, but they're about to receive a lesson in the universal language: Pain."

THE TERM "STREISAND EFFECT" doesn't do this justice. In the the far future, when all of life is experienced through the universal mind-machine gestalt, historians will recognize Joseph Rakofsky as the first man to commit virtual suicide.

RELATED: NOW YOUSE CAN'T LEAVE, from one of the defendants, a man who earns his living suing bad cops. If kids in torts class spent more time watching "A Bronx Tale" and less time less time studying emotional distress cases from California, the world would be a safer place. For them.

All right, all right, ha ha, Floridians are stupid freaks, it's an easy joke. They never outlawed bestiality before because they thought animal husbandry meant marrying animals, Fark has a Florida tag because they're so reliably nutty, etc. It's all very tired.

In the last couple of days the big joke has been that Florida finally attempted to outlaw bestiality and accidentally outlawed sex between humans (or, at least, what passes for human in Florida). Everybody's laughing about it based on a post on the blog Southern Fried Science, which pointed out that (1) the law bans sex with "animals", and (2) humans are, scientifically speaking, animals, and (3) therefore Florida has banned humans having sex with humans.

Potentially salutary impact on the nation's gene pool aside, this is too pedantic. As another blogger points out, the statute clearly draws a distinction between "persons" and "animals," and prohibits the former from sexual contact with the later for the purpose of sexual gratification. No judge would interpret that to prohibit humans from sexual contact with humans, even if "persons" are scientifically "animals" as well. Both reason and the rule of lenity prohibit it.

But scientists, and persons who are (not unreasonably) cautious about engaging in sexual contact with Floridians, may want more precision and certainty than that. Fortunately, traditional methods of statutory interpretation can help. All we have to do is see if somewhere else in Florida law there is a statute making it clear that when the Florida Legislature uses the term "animal", they mean the colloquial definition, not the scientific one. Then we can be sure that, no matter what sort of deoxyribonucleic-acid-dump-site Florida may be, and however true it may be that 166 years of imbeciles is enough, the Florida Legislature did not intend to stop Floridians from reproducing.

Let's see. Florida Statutes, Title XLVI, Crime: Section 828.02, Definitions. This should do it:

In this chapter, and in every law of the state relating to or in any way affecting animals, the word "animal" shall be held to include every living dumb creature . . . .

Uh-oh.

So last month I filed a Complaint against John Smith, a resident of Los Angeles California, for causing an automobile accident in North Carolina, on behalf of Big Insurance Company.  Big Insurance Company's policyholder was severely injured in the wreck, but  John Smith evidently believes that automotive liability insurance is optional in this state.

And today Smith sends an Answer, prepared by "A. Hertzberg", a Los Angeles County Notary Public #1908063, "Void where prohibited by law", which contains one of the worst babels of tax resister jargon, complaints that the state of California was not properly incorporated into the union, and seemingly random quotations from Black's Law Dictionary I've ever seen.

Postage for the Answer was twenty-one dollars. And he wants me to send him a copy of my driver's license, to prove that I, and no other AGENT FOR PRINCIPALS, received his Answer.

But strewn among the litter, I found this gem:

"There is NO EVIDENCE that John Smith, Defendant, is not a FICTION. And THEREFORE UNABLE TO OPERATE AN AUTOMOBILE. And Affiant BELIEVES that no such evidence exists."

Signed by John Smith, and A. Hertzberg, Los Angeles County Notary Public #1908063, "Void where prohibited by law".

Now, assume, for the purpose of this post, that what I've told you is true.

Your assignment is to examine the ontological and metaphysical questions raised by the assertion, "There is NO EVIDENCE that John Smith, Defendant, is not a FICTION. And THEREFORE UNABLE TO OPERATE AN AUTOMOBILE. And Affiant BELIEVES that no such evidence exists."

You will receive extra credit for doing so in a psychological framework.

That's how the Pennsylvania Board of Medical Examiners described Dr. Kermit Gosnell's baby-murdering clinic and opium den a year ago, after a raid by federal agents found blood on the floor.

Today the Philadelphia District Attorney described it as a "baby charnel house". Gosnell kept parts of fetuses in jars all over the office. He performed "abortions" on breathing babies by severing their spinal cords after delivery.  According to one report, the place was run as much by Gosnell as by an unlicensed graduate of the medical school we fought to liberate in the Grenada invasion, who doubled as a drug pusher. Gosnell was sued for malpractice 46 times.  Women were butchered by the unlicensed staff, and left to moan in pain all day, until Gosnell arrived late at night with his morphine.

In the understatement of the year, Gosnell's defense attorney described the charges against his client as "very, very serious," and urged people not to rush to judgment. Of course, I agree. I'll presume his innocence right up until the jury pronounces him guilty of the monstrous crimes of which he's as guilty as Judas.

Yet Gosnell's clinic, before it was raided by federal agents in 2010, hadn't been inspected in sixteen years.  Evidently cheesesteak joints are held to a higher standard in Philadelphia than doctors.

The worst part is, the city and state medical authorities knew the place was a filthy malpractice trap, even if they didn't know it was a murder factory.  They did nothing to shut it down.

The temptation, when horror stories like this come to light, is to say "We need more government to prevent this sort of thing," or perhaps, "We have all this government and this is what we get?  We need less government."  That isn't the lesson I take from Gosnell's house of horrors, for which you can read the full grand jury report in all its monstrous detail here.

This is a story about bad government.  The city and state knew, but didn't do a damned thing. Gosnell was enabled by the people paid to watch him.  He was enabled by the attorneys who sued him and advised their clients to sign confidentiality agreements.  He was enabled by the malpractice insurance companies who kept his practice afloat in return for premiums.  Heads should roll all over Pennsylvania.

Or if there's justice, they should be snipped off and placed in formaldehyde jars.

DeLynn Woodside, 7th grade math teacher at Oklahoma City's Roosevelt Middle School, may know all about her addition and subtraction, but she needs a remedial education in law.

A 13-year-old was arrested Friday in Oklahoma City, accused of violating a little-known city ordinance that prohibits possession of a permanent marker in some circumstances.

Delynn Woodside noted the marker had bled through a piece of paper onto the desk and reported to a police officer that she also had seen the teen writing on the desk with the marker, the report said.

Woodside, a seventh-grade math teacher, made a citizen's arrest on the teen, and the police officer transferred the student to a Community Intervention Center that houses juveniles who have been arrested. The name of the minor was not released.

Leaving aside the officiousness of conducting a citizen's arrest!

then having a thirteen year old hauled to jail for writing on his desk with a pen (if that actually happened), Ms. Woodside has completely misread the statute.

Oklahoma City Municipal Code Section 35-202, the statute under which DeLynn Woodside arrested this young man, has this to say about possession of sharpie pens:

No person may possess an aerosol spray paint container or broad-tipped indelible marker on any private property unless the owner, agent, manager, or other person having control of the property consented to the presence of the aerosol spray paint container or broad-tipped indelible marker.

But Roosevelt Middle School is a public school.  It even says so on the Oklahoma City schools website. It is therefore public property.  This boy has as much right to be there as Ms. Woodside.  More right in fact.  He has to be there, whereas Ms. Woodside can quit her job at any time.  While it's true that Roosevelt Middle School may not be dedicated to public use, as with a town square, it is clearly not "private property".

And Ms. Woodside may well need to quit her job soon, assuming that the boy's parents consult an attorney.  She'll need to dedicate herself, full-time, to defending against a suit for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.  Assuming the school board doesn't fire her first.

Which it should.