This Seems Familiar Somehow . . .

Remember when Clinton was accused of being in medias res with Monica while on the phone with various world leaders? Well, it appears that the GOP's own sexual miscreant, Mark Foley, actually held up a House vote while having cybersex with one of his former pages. Too bad Foley resigned so quickly over the weekend. Maybe we could drag him back for some public scolding anyway, huh? Where's Joe Lieberman when you need him?

As bad as Foley's actions are, the right-wing attempt to justify them is even worse. How about Matt Drudge, for instance:

And if anything, these kids are less innocent — these 16 and 17 year-old beasts…and I've seen what they're doing on YouTube and I've seen what they're doing all over the internet — oh yeah — you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture. You're not going to tell me these are innocent babies. Have you read the transcripts that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages, back and forth? The kids are egging the Congressman on! The kids are trying to get this out of him. We haven't got the whole story on this.

* * *

You could say 'well Drudge, it's abuse of power, a congressman abusing these impressionable, young 17 year-old beasts, talking about their sex lives with a grown man, on the internet.' Because you have to remember, those of us who have seen some of the transcripts of these nasty instant messages. This was two ways, ladies and gentlemen. These kids were playing Foley for everything he was worth. Oh yeah. Oh, I haven't…they were talking about how many times they'd masturbated, how many times they'd done it with their girlfriends this weekend…all these things and these 'innocent children.' And this 'poor' congressman sitting there typing, 'oh am I going to get any,' you know?

Wow, sit back and let that sink in for a minute, then consider three things.

First, presumably, the kids who were serving as Foley's pages were children of upper-crust GOP power brokers. If such kids are "beasts," what does that say of all that traditional GOP parenting going on out there?

Second, federal law, which regulates conduct on the Internet (for the most part) universally defines "minor" as someone who is less than 18 years of age. That means, while whatever Foley may have discussed with his pages might have been legal given the age of consent in Florida or elsewhere (I have no idea), the pages were minors as far as federal law goes. Federal law that has become increasingly harsh and unflexible in the past few years (thanks, largely, to people like Foley).

Third, remember how back during Monicagate Clinton was portrayed as the dirty old man, preying on the innocent young intern? Well, she just happened to be in her early 20s.

So which is it? Are 16-17 year olds wily "beasts" who trick naive Congresscritters into talking dirty or are men in position of power predators when they use their position to seek sexual favors from their underlings? I'm perfectly willing to admit that Clinton was a sleazy scumbag for hitting on the help, if the GOPers are willing to say the same of Foley.

UPDATE: Or how about pill-poppin' Rush, who is floating the conspiracy theory that the Democrats set Foley up. For crying out loud, if the Democrats were with it enough to setup someone would it be some nobody Congressman from Florida? Jeez, Rush.

Small World

Sometimes, I think, people believe that all West Virginians are related to each other somehow, often for unseemly reasons. Well, this story probably won't help. It details on ongoing criminal case in federal court involving a former legislator (indeed, I think she represented my area when I moved in) named

Lisa Smith.

The Assistant US Attorney handling case's name is

Hunter Smith.

The defendant's attorney is named

Tom Smith.

OK, I can say with complete certainty, since I know of the attorneys involved, that none of these folks are related - it just looks that way. Nonetheless, some local conspiracy theorist will come up with some scheme that ties them altogether (particularly given the outcome of the hearing).

On the other hand, the transcript probably reads a bit like play-by-play from any of the Korean's games at this summer's World Cup: "Kim to Kim to Kim to . . .".

Bloggers Beware

The cover story in today's USA Today is about the extension of libel and slander laws to the blogoverse and how some bloggers apparently think they're judgment proof. That's almost certainly not the case, particularly when you try something like this:

Rafe Banks, a lawyer in Georgia, got involved in a nasty dispute with a client over how to defend him on a drunken-driving charge. The client, David Milum, fired Banks and demanded that the lawyer refund a $3,000 fee. Banks refused.

Milum eventually was acquitted. Ordinarily, that might have been the last Banks ever heard about his former client. But then Milum started a blog.

In May 2004, Banks was stunned to learn that Milum's blog was accusing the lawyer of bribing judges on behalf of drug dealers. At the end of one posting, Milum wrote, 'Rafe, don't you wish you had given back my $3,000 retainer?'

Banks, saying the postings were false, sued Milum. And last January, Milum became the first blogger in the USA to lose a libel suit, according to the Media Law Resource Center in New York, which tracks litigation involving bloggers. Milum was ordered to pay Banks $50,000.

* * *

Milum says he considers himself a muckraker and exposer of corruption in local officials. In the recent libel trial, his attorney, Jeff Butler, described his client as a 'rabble-rouser' whose inspiration was 'public service.'

Milum lost in court because he could not meet the basic defense for libel claims: He could not prove that his allegations that Banks was involved in bribery and corruption were true.

Keep in mind that opinion, particularly on important political or social matters, is one thing. But slinging accusations of criminal and unethical behavior at another person on a blog is just as likely to get you in trouble (if not more so) than if you said it at the local pub.*

* This should not be construed in any way as me giving legal advice. After all, it's pretty much common sense that you shouldn't verbally write checks that your ass can't cash, right?

Play Ball!

Major League Baseball may have just wrapped up its regular season and Major League Soccer is winding down as well, but today marks opening day of the most important season: the Supreme Court's new term! For an appellate geek like myself, this is almost like Xmas in October (although not quite as good as June, when the term ends and we get opinions coming out thick and fast). CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen has a brief (and light-hearted) look at the upcoming term here.

One quibble, however - there was no "landmark 2004 ruling that required federal jurors to find beyond a reasonable doubt any fact that increased a defendant's sentence." The landmark ruling from 2004, Blakely, applied only to state sentencings, not federal. By the time the federal Guidelines got around to the court in Booker a year later, Blakely was emasculated to the point of being nearly meaningless for the feds (as I argued here on the 1-year anniversary of Blakely). Maybe Cunningham, the California case Cohen alludes to, will fix that, but I'm not overly optimistic.

GOP Loses War on Terror

It's official: the Republican party has lost the War on Terror. Word comes from none other than Senate Majority Leader (and Presidential hopeful) Bill Frist who says it's time to make peace with the Taliban and bring them back into the Afghani government. Great! All that time, effort, and money (not to mention lives) that we've wasted in Iraq running after phantom WMDs could have been at work in Afghanistan hunting down the Taliban. Remember them? The ones who actually were involved with Al Qeada? Way to go, GOP.

UPDATE: Frist cries bullshit, saying he didn't actually say what is attributed to him in the article, but it seems like a lukewarm denial at best.

As to the question from jedi jawa in Da Kron: yes, they do think you're that stupid. Prove them wrong, Ohio!

Flash Fiction Friday #5

Another Friday, another short short story. This one was tough - my first pass was at nearly 800 words before I got the title item involved! Enjoy and, as always, read all the entries for this week.

NOTE: I've taken this story down for retooling and/or submission elsewhere.

Small Town Justice - The Rousing Finale

Just to complete the cycle, yesterday's New York Times had the third and final part of its series on New York's small town "justice courts." Part three deals with the unsuccessful attempts to reform the system in the past century.

Wills of the Rich and Famous

A lot of the cases one studies in first-year property law classes involve wills in which the dearly departed tries to control the ownership of land from beyond the grave. A famous example is Shakespeare, who's will included an outdated olde common law concept called "fee tail male," which passed on land to a descendents female heirs, but required it to be held until a male heir came along. It didn't work.

In today's New York Times there's another tale of a famous man's money and the battle over his will, that of Alfred Nobel, who died in Paris. How can you not read a story that starts out with:

To secret Nobel’s French assets to the Swedish consulate in Paris before claims might be made on them there, the will’s principal executor literally sat on Nobel’s millions as he rode a horse-drawn cab through Paris. 'I sat with a revolver at the ready in case of a direct attack or a prearranged collision with another vehicle, a trick not unusual among thieves in Paris at the time,' the executor, Ragnar Sohlman, wrote in 'The Legacy of Alfred Nobel,' which was published in English in 1983.

The story goes on from there, with lots of interesting details about the Nobel Prizes and how they have developed.

More "Justice" in a Small Town

Part 2 of the New York Times series on the state's small town and village courts is now online. As expected, things don't get any better. As the prosecutor in a rural county puts it:

'The reality is, you basically have to have no qualifications other than be a voter to put someone in jail, and that’s a very alarming situation,' Mr. Champagne said. 'To throw a layperson — some of whom don’t have a high school degree — in that position is just a recipe for disaster.'

And why do these folks become small-town judges in the first place? Well:

Like a lot of newcomers to small towns, [judge Gori] wanted to get involved. But he didn’t like the sight of blood, so that ruled out volunteer firefighting. He was attracted instead to the court in the weathered firehouse. 'Law has always been kind of an interesting thing to me,' he said.

That interest, however, does not include a fascination with the technicalities that occupy lawyers. 'If you look at the laws, it’s all common sense,' he said.

Ultimately, Gori, who makes less than $4000 a year for his services, hits the nail on the head:

Still, he is convinced that he and the other justices across New York are honest people trying to do right. 'Economicswise,' he added, 'you couldn’t get the job done any cheaper.'

And there we have it - how much justice can you afford?

"Justice" In Small Towns

One of the benefits of practicing in Federal court is that anytime I go to court I appear before real judges - lawyers who have years of training and experience being judges. Back in my family law days, I occasionally practiced in front of magistrates in state court who were completely the opposite - not lawyers, with no requirement of even a college education, and little grasp of the legal world.

I was reminded of West Virginia magistrates by this story in today's New York Times about that state's town or village "justice courts." For instance:

Some of the courtrooms are not even courtrooms: tiny offices or basement rooms without a judge’s bench or jury box. Sometimes the public is not admitted, witnesses are not sworn to tell the truth, and there is no word-for-word record of the proceedings.

Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers — have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles. Some never got through high school, and at least one went no further than grade school.

The story, first in a three-part series, then goes on to document egregious acts of judicial malfeasance in these courts. Obviously, not all (or probably even most) of those judges are corrupt wielders of power. However, when the system allows a judge to conclude:'

I just follow my own common sense,' Mr. Buckley, in an interview, said of his 13 years on the bench. 'And the hell with the law.'

In a modern world that is increasingly regulated at the federal, state, and local level, that kind of cavalier attitude is simply not appropriate in a "public servant." And a system that fosters that sort of attitude is profoundly broken.

Life-Changing Tunes

Thanks to The Film Geek, I participated in eclectic guy's collection of "10 albums that changed my life" lists. As usual, I cheated a little bit. Head on over - some interesting reading.

Ah, the Luncay of Reality

If you made this stuff up, they'd think you were crazy. From today's Charleston Daily Mail:

One of the home health workers deceived by a middle-aged Charleston financial consultant who posed as a diaper-clad, bottle-sucking baby in order to grope her breasts said the man deserved jail time instead of home confinement.

Details:

The victim, meanwhile, said she holds no ill will toward Mucklow, who she said made her change his diapers and play 'Barney' children's videos for him.

***

On her first day of work, she showed up at Mucklow's large Wood Road house early in the morning. She passed a woman she did not know coming out of the house. Mucklow was inside sitting on the couch, wearing a cloth diaper, watching cartoons and sucking on a pacifier.

'He always wore a diaper and plastic pants that you pull over them that had all the lace on the back of them,' she said. 'He liked to wear nightgowns and they were pink and ruffly.'

***

In his infantile state, she said Mucklow would grab at her breasts in an attempt to nurse. She said she gently brushed his hands away and rubbed them until he stopped.

Sometimes when she'd arrive for work, Mucklow wouldn't be there. She'd call around looking for him and discover he was at work. Then he'd come home in his car, often wearing a suit, and change into his diaper after entering the house.

Attorneys for Mucklow blame his odd behavior on problems with medication he was taking for epilepsy.

Geez, between this and the Nitro city councilman who sent naked pictures of himself over the Internet, we're quite the little region of kink this week, aren't we? Who says nothing interesting happens here.

Forget It, He's Rolling

Over at Crooked Territory, Glenn Greenwald has been on a roll dissecting the weirdness of the right. Two prominent examples:

• In this post, Glenn discusses how the end times prophecy of many fundie Christians fuels their views -and, potentially, US policy - on Israel and the Middle East.

• In this post, Glenn takes apart Michelle Malkin's recent outrage at the trial and conviction of three Christian "terrorists" in Indonesia. Curiously, she's demanding exactly the same kind of due process protections for those three folks as she and her ilk seeks to deny to people held in US custody during the War on Terra. Guess due process is only important if folks pray to god the right way, huh?

Preach on, brutha'!

So Much for Liberation

The fall-back position for a lot of Dubya apologists for the fiasco in Iraq is that at least the Iraqis are better off under US occupation than Saddam's rule. "Remember the torture rooms?", they plead. Well, to quoth Zappa, the torture never stops. According to the United Nations's torture expert, there is more torture going on nowadays in Iraq than in Saddam's time:

Manfred Nowak said the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents.

* * *

"What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," the Austrian law professor said.

"The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein," he added.

Granted, this is a case of Iraqis torturing Iraqis, rather than the population being abused by US soldiers, but it doesn't speak very well of our ability to control the situation over there.

Flash Fiction Friday #4

Since I missed last week, I figured I'd get this week's entry in early. With title-stealing apologies to King Crimson . . .

NOTE: I've taken this story down for retooling and/or submission elsewhere.

Yoo Gotta Be Kidding Me

In yesterday's New York Times, Bush apologist John Yoo (formerly of Dubya's Attorney General's office and now of some fancy shmancy law school on the West Coast) attempted to defend Dubya's gross post-9/11 power grab. He fails miserably. There's too much wrong there to attack point by point, but the proposition garnering the most press in the blogosphere is this whopper:

A reinvigorated presidency enrages President Bush’s critics, who seem to believe that the Constitution created a system of judicial or congressional supremacy. Perhaps this is to be expected of the generation of legislators that views the presidency through the lens of Vietnam and Watergate. But the founders intended that wrongheaded or obsolete legislation and judicial decisions would be checked by presidential action, just as executive overreaching is to be checked by the courts and Congress.

C'mon, pull the other one. Presidents can ignore "wrongheaded" legislation? That's going to come as some shock to the other living presidents (and, I imagine, most rational folks). Of course, this comes from a man who writes:

The changes of the 1970’s occurred largely because we had no serious national security threats to United States soil, but plenty of paranoia in the wake of Richard Nixon’s use of national security agencies to spy on political opponents.

Ah, I see, it was the paranoia following Nixon's domestic spying operation that's responsible for the weak Presidency, not the domestic spying itself. Got it!

Glenn Greenwald does a good job of dissecting Yoo's arguments here, with help from the infamous leftwing bloggers who wrote The Federalist Papers.

From the Department of the Irony Challenged, revel in this Yoo quote from the Clinton days:

The second thing is that the Clinton Administration has displayed a fundmental disrespect for the rule of law. Not in the sense that they don't make legal arguments to defend their positions, but the legal arguments are so outrageous, they're so incredible, that they actually show, I think, a disrespect for the idea of law, by showing how utterly manipulable it is.

I wonder how Yoo has compartmentalized his memories of that statement during his current Dubya Uber Alles days. One would think his head would explode from cognitive dissonance if they met in his brain.

I Like The Onion, but . . .

I'm a regular devotee of The Onion and it's not-at-all made up cultural section, the A.V. Club. So I'm particularly distressed by today's Inventory selection, "10 Highly Pretentious Musical Instruments." First, I'm assuming they mean ". . . in Pop Music," since it would be hard to hammer too much on the flute and grand piano in the classical realm. Second, they take some pops at a progressive rock staple, the Chapman Stick:

Art rock—especially '80s-00s King Crimson—wouldn't be complete without the Chapman Stick, a combination guitar and bass that looks like a 2x4 and is played by tapping the strings with both hands. (Or with little drumsticks tied to your fingers, if you're Tony Levin.) Though its clean lines look best next to the stylishly bald and mustached Levin, it's forever connected to serious, ponytailed men like Trey Gunn, who look like they treat "picking" and "strumming" with a sniff of contempt. The Chapman Stick is also worn across the chest with the top resting on the player's shoulder, giving the impression that it's so precious, it needs to be cradled.

I guess I don't get "pretentious." The Stick, and its descendent the Warr Guitar, are innovative instruments that do something different than your traditional rock band staples. What's pretentious about that? Or should rock and pop stay in three chords and a cloud of dust territory? If doing something different is pretentious, then I guess I like pretentiousness. Of course, as I write this I'm watching Bela Fleck jam on stage playing jazz banjo along with guys playing steel drums, bassoon, and a sorta guitar looking drum machine - so what does that tell you?

And, for the record, the "little drumsticks tied to your fingers" aren't for the Stick. Funk fingers, as they're known, were developed by Levin so he could get the same percussive bass sound live during Peter Gabriel's "Big Time" as he did in the studio, when drummer Jerry Marotta actually pounded the strings with drumsticks.

But, still and all, they're right about one thing. Bagpipes suck ass.

*runs away after throwing that grenade in Scottish boy's direction*

Flash Fiction-less Friday

The collected entries for Flash Fiction Friday #3 are now available here. I couldn't really get inspired for this week's entry - I'd like to think it's because I write so well that I can't write poorly, but I know that's not true. Hopefully, I'll get something done next week, as we're going with an "Elephant Talk" type vibe. As always, read this week's entries and remember - they're supposed to suck!

I Don't Get It

I'll admit, I've never seen an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter, which follows the adventures of Hawaii-based bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman. I'm not a big fan of reality shows anyway, and I'm certainly not a fan of bounty hunters in general. So I was a little surprised to see the big deal made of Dog's arrest by US Marshals on an extradition request from Mexico. Apparently, Dog followed a bail-jumping serial rapist to Mexico and caught him. The rapist was returned to the United States and is serving a lengthy (100+ years) prison term.

One problem - bounty hunting, as it's practiced in the United States is illegal in Mexico. Thus, in 2003, Dog and some of his crew were charged in Mexico with kidnapping and released no bail. At the time, Dog didn't not seem very indignant about the charges:

Chapman, 50, held a news conference soon after the judge's decision, saying that although he was proud of what he did, he regretted doing it 'in the wrong way.'

'This is an international rapist taken down,' Chapman said.

Chapman said he regretted running afoul of Mexican law but expressed gratitude to Mexican officials for treating him with respect. He also said he appreciated support expressed by people on both sides of the border.

Apparently, Dog and his crew left Mexico without permission. Ironically, a fugitive warrant was issued for him and the Mexican authorities handed in an extradition request to the United States. Why it took three years for all this to shake out, I don't know.

Given all this, I'm someone shocked by the talk over at TalkLeft about Dog's arrest (Mike at Crime & Federalism expresses similar thoughts). I understand that Jeralyn is a friend of Dog's, but her anger over his arrest seems odd for a criminal defense attorney, particulaly one who is rightly quick to step up when the Fourth Amendment is violated in high profile cases. There appears to be little doubt that Dog violated Mexican law in apprehending the escaped rapist. It seems equally clear that Dog engaged in a utilitarian calculus and concluded that the wrong of illegally detaining the guy was outweighed by the need to ship the rapist back to the US to serve his sentence (he had been convicted in absentia, apparently).

If police in this country made a similar calculation - the ends of justice outweighed the cops need to illegally break down that door without a warrant - Jeralyn and other criminal defense attorneys (myself included) would be outraged. The fact that (a) this took place in Mexico and (b) Dog is apparently a decent guy,* isn't really relevant is it (except insofar as the fact that what he did was illegal under Mexican law)? Maybe the Mexican prosecutor's motives in pursuing Dog's case aren't pure. Should that matter? Should a cop who is pure of heart be forgiven for ignoring the Constitution? Why should we expect anything less south of the border? It's hypocritical to, on the one hand, bash the Mexican justice system as corrupt and inefficient, while, on the other, arguing that the state should look the other way in the name of "justice" when a law is broken.

* I have no reason to think otherwise, although the angelic praise being heaped upon Dog is enough to make me suspicious in my own right. When someone praises him for not using a gun, without addressing the possibility that his prior felony conviction legally prohibits him from doing so, you wonder about their objectivity.

Where Are the Tort Reformers?

The House Judiciary Committee has passed a bill dubiously titled the "Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005." What the bill actually does is take away a major motivation for poor people to pursue legal redress when their rights have been violated - 42 USC 1988(b). What 1988(b) does is allow successful plaintiffs in civil rights cases (so-called 1983 cases, after the Code section creating the cause of action) to recover attorney's fees from the defendants. The bill would preclude such fees being awarded in First Amendment religion cases.

In other words - the current system is loser pays. Isn't that the wet dream of the GOP tort reformers? Why would they want to get rid of such a provision? Why, of course, to stop the ACLU from winning also those First Amendment lawsuits. You know, the "frivolous" ones enforcing the separation of church and state that they always seem to win?

More here.

Way to Work a Fragile Psyche, Nancy!

How many lawyers can say that they have cross-examined a witness so intensely that the witness went home and committed suicide? Add another highlight to the stellar career of CNN news harpy Nancy Grace! Last Thursday, Grace executed one of her tradmark rant/interviews upon Melinda Duckett, who reported her son missing two weeks before. Grace knew, with her innate sense of right and more right, that Duckett killed her son and proceeded to grill the bereaved mother. Before the interview aired the next day, Duckett blew her brains out. The reaction of Grace's show was swift:

Janine Iamunno, a spokeswoman for Grace, said in an e-mail that Duckett's death was "an extremely sad development," but that the program would continue covering the case.

Yes, I'm sure it was extremely sad because they couldn't run the interview in the wake of the interviewee killing herself.

Hat tip to TalkLeft.

UPDATE: Although I like my "news harpy" label for Nancy, I also have to admire Norm over at Crime & Federalism for his moniker, "wall-eyed weaselette." Nice turn of phrase.

No Sex = No Violence?

According to this story from the BBC, wives and girlfriends of gangsters involved in one of Colombia's most violent cities have decided to withhold sex in an attempt to stop the violence.

Studies found that local gang members were drawn to criminality by the desire for status, power, and sexual attractiveness, not economic necessity, Colombian radio reported.

One of the girlfriends, Jennifer Bayer, told Britain's Guardian newspaper: 'We want them to know that violence is not sexy.'

I wonder how successful this will be. Given my experience with the criminal element, I wouldn't think that the first response by a violent gang-banger to his significant other holding out on him would be a sincere discussion of what caused her lack of sexual interest. Much more likely, he's just gonna' beat on her until she gives in, even given this precedent from ancient Greece.

Any Goal Is a Good Goal

Soccer analysts will frequently point out when a particularly unappealing goal is scored (like an own goal, for example) that, "hey, it still counts just the same." One wonders if there are any limits on that maxim, given a goal scored in a Brazilian club match last weekend. As you can see from the video, a Santacruzense attack ends with a fierce strike that goes just to right of the goal. The ball boy then rather nonchalantly nudges the ball back onto the pitch and into the goal. As the opposing goalkeeper fishes the ball out of the back of the net, the ref incredibly signals a goal for Santacruzense! It tied the game 1-1. Pretty sneaky use of the home-town kids, no?

For the Earl Grey Set

Since a large percentage of regular readers of this blog (so that's, what, 3 or 4 of you?) are tea drinkers. As a public service, I direct you towards yesterday's article in the New York Times about some sort of revolutionary change in the development of tea bags - they're pyramids now. No word on whether teabagging is making similar strides.

Just Shut Up, Saddam

Not that Saddam Hussein ever had a lot of positive associations in my brain, but ever since South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, I've never been able to shake the image of him as Satan's abusive lover (How did he get there? "It's been six weeks since Saddam Hussein was killed by a pack of wild boars and the world is still glad to be rid of him."), doing song and dance numbers. Now he's come up with another comedy association, after telling witnesses in his Iraqi trial that "we will crush your heads." Great, now he'll bounce back and forth in my head from Satan's lover to Mr. Tyzik's successor. What'll he do for his next outburst? "I'm Rick James, bitch!"?

Gratuitous Dog Blogging

This past weekend, got to experience my first pet adoption. My girlfriend and I braved the wilds of western Pennsylvania (and very unhelpful PennDOT signage) to check out a dog she'd found online. The description she gave me was, to say the least, intriguing - a mixed breed, part Chihuahua, with one eye. The small picture on the web wasn't a great one, so I was interested to see what the little pup looked like.

In person, the pup was about the cutest thing I'd ever seen (aside from the numerous cats in the room, desperately trying to get me to take them home with me). She does indeed have only one eye - she arrived at the shelter with her right eye damaged and it could not be healed. Her ginormous brown left eye, however, is perfectly functional. The looking at her from the left side, she's all sweetness and light. From the right, with the patched up eye socket and little reverse fang protruding up over her bottom lip, she looks like she could hold her own in a bar fight! Not that she'd ever end up in one, sweet little quadruped that she is.

A couple hours after we located the Fayette Friends of Animals shelter, we got to take the one-eyed wonder 'huahua, Maia, home. Here are some pictures of the adorable addition to my girlfriend's menagerie.



The cats dont's quite know what to make of her yet. :)

The Play's the Thing

As we wind down the first weekend of the NFL season, over at PrawfsBlawg, they ask the question, "why do we watch Monday Night Football?" Their theory:

But it is beyond me why people watch a national game of the week that does not involve 'their team.' . . .

Often, though, people will watch Monday Night Football and comparable programs in other sports, because of the program's status as an event. Anybody who's anybody is watching. So how does a sporting event gain this status? My guess is the packaging of the show -- chiefly the announcers. . . .

Whatever you think of, I'm betting it has little to do with the game itself.

Maybe I'm not the right person to answer this question, as I'm not a MNF devotee for the simple reason that the game generally doesn't finish until after my bed time. But when I do watch, unless the Vikings are involved (as they are tonight), I watch because - shock - I actually like watching football!

I've had other people ask me how I can watch a game in which I have no rooting interest. For me, when it comes to my true favorite sports - soccer, road racing, football - I actually enjoy watching the game played at a high level. Most of the soccer games I watch hold no rooting interest for me (Exhibit A - the Reading/Manchester City game I'm watching right now), but I enjoy the game for it's own sake, not for some sort of personal vindication that "my team" won. OK, so a WVU game (against anybody) is more interesting 'cause I spent 7 years in Morgantown, but I enjoyed the end of the Syracuse/Iowa game this weekend just because it was exciting. When it comes to racing, I don't really have any favorites, but I like the racing itself. That's one reason I don't like NASCAR - the racing itself bores me and I haven't been taken in by the cult of driver personality to get invested in how one guy does on a weekly basis.

What's my point? Just that there are some people out there who will watch the game itself, oblivious to the production values surrounding it.

Oh, and, go Vikings!

End of an Era

Yesterday, after a victory in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza that was the 90th of his Formula 1 career, 7-time world champion Michael Schumacher announced his retirement, effective at the end of the season. I've got mixed feelings about Schu's career. On the one hand, he was one of the first "young guns" to get into F1 who I knew about before he broke through. I remember his impressive debut for Jordan at Spa. And, as a long-time Ferrari fan, I've enjoyed the role he's played in the resurgence of the Scuderia. On the other hand, I'll admit that Schu's past includes some shady on-track incidents and realize that the on-track product will probably improve and be more interesting once he's gone.

The BBC does a good job of covering Schu's career, the ups and downs, here. 96 world champ Damon Hill calls Schu "brave" for walking away at the top of his game (presumably to avoid Hill's fate of running with a backmarker in the end). They've also collected a sampling of opinion on his retirement, including this assessment from former team mate Martin Brundle:

'here Schumacher cannot draw the right line is on track. He cannot see when he crosses the line between tough but fair, and ruthless but foul.

That is exacerbated by his total belief that he cannot be wrong. He has a default mode in the car: if you're going to pass him, he will drive you off the road. He even did it to me as a team-mate.

Maybe there's a spot in Dubya's administration for a man with such, uh, "principles." :p

You Know You're a Geek When . . .

. . . you're working on a brief at home that involves a witness named William Byrd, which then inspires you to dig out your Fred Fennell/Eastman Wind Ensemble recording of Gordon Jacob's William Byrd Suite. And I've even been groovin' along with it (played it in high school).

Yikes!

Thank goodness I'm pretty. ;p

Failing Religions

If the success of a religion is measured in terms of numbers of adherents, than the Zoroastrians are in deep trouble. As an article in today's New Your Times points out, the numbers of Zoroastrians worldwide has dwindled to less than 200,000 worldwide. For a faith that predates Islam, Christianity, and Judaism and once covered vast swaths of land, that's pretty depressing. What's particularly interesting is how some believes think the positive aspects of the faith are to blame:

The very tenets of Zoroastrianism could be feeding its demise, many adherents said in interviews. Zoroastrians believe in free will, so in matters of religion they do not believe in compulsion. They do not proselytize. They can pray at home instead of going to a temple. While there are priests, there is no hierarchy to set policy. And their basic doctrine is a universal ethical precept: “good thoughts, good words, good deeds.”

'That’s what I take away from Zoroastrianism,' said Tenaz Dubash, a filmmaker in New York City who is making a documentary about the future of her faith, 'that I’m a cerebral, thinking human being, and I need to think for myself.'

In a way, that's sort of sad, as the religion should be rewarded for being so open-minded and non-political. On the other, I'm not sure what it says about its basic tenets (of which I admittedly know little) that the same open-mindedness apparently leads believers elsewhere for their spiritual nourishment.

What a Loaded Question

From Sentencing Law & Policy comes a post about a recent 2nd Circuit decision that deals with a Guideline enhancement where the victims of a crime are particularly vulnerable. In concluding that the enhancement did not apply, the court said (emphasis mine):

While we recognize that a fraud grounded in religious themes may pose an especially effective threat, membership in religious groups cannot, standing alone, make victims 'vulnerable' for purposes of the enhancement, even where a fraud involves reliance on religious themes or imagery....

We have no reason to believe that evangelical Christians as a class are 'unusually susceptible' to fraud.

The snark-meister in my would argue that status as an evangelical is enough reason to believe those people are unusually susceptible to fraud. But that would be wrong. :)

Futbol Been Bery Bery Good to WVU

During the fall at WVU, the athletic focus is, of course, on the football team. Given their #5 national ranking and opening spanking of in-state "rival" Marshall, that's understandable. But let's have some props for WVU's other "futbol" teams. For starters, the WVU women's soccer team is off to a 4-0-0 start and is currently ranked #9 in the country. The women have been a rising power in the Big East for years and have certainly come a long way since they were regularly shelled by the likes of Notre Dame when I was in law school. This year, the men's team is following the ladies' example, starting off 3-0-1 and being ranked #10 in the country.

Cool!

Flash Fiction Fast Facts

The post immediately below this one is an example of flash fiction. Flash fiction is basically a short story that has somewhere between 200 and 1000 words (an honest to gods short story is typically between 2000 and 7500 words). Why is there flash fiction on my blog?

Well, I write for a living, but I'm hemmed in by two things: the facts and the law. Jaunts of fictional fancy are not encouraged in court, so I've been looking to branch out a bit. While working on other stuff, I came across a post on one of the writers' forums I haunt about Flash Fiction Friday. As the link in the post below shows, every Friday a picture is put up and folks submit a piece of flash fiction inpired by that image. The image this week can be found here.

I hope take part in this on a regular basis. Enjoy the tale of Sid and Maury, and be sure and read the other submissions, too.

Sid & Maury (fiction)

NOTE: I've taken this story down for retooling and/or submission elsewhere.

Do I Make You Hungry, Baby, Yeah?

Today's New York Times has an interesting article today on what it euphemistically calls "sexual cannibalism." In other words, when a female critter, after gettin' jiggy with it, in some way devours her male partner. Thankfully, this only extends to the non-human part of the animal kingdom. Lest you think it's all about a female praying mantis turning Hannibal Lecter on her mate while he's innocently basking in the afterglow, think again:

Male Australian redback spiders court females for up to eight hours by plucking the strands of their web. Once a male starts to mate, he promptly somersaults onto her fangs. He continues to mate as she feeds on him. In some cases, the male crawls a short distance away, courts the female again, and then mates a second time. He flips onto her fangs, and by the end of the second mating he is dead.

How horny would you have to be to throw yourself not once but twice onto the fangs (!) of your woman (assuming, of course, you don't get off on that kind of thing)? Apparently, Darwin is to blame:

Male redback spiders benefit from cannibalism, but not because they can become food for their mates. Instead, Dr. Maydianne Andrade of the University of Toronto has found that males that are cannibalized mate more than twice as long as noncannibalized males. They also father twice as many offspring with a female that mates with other males.

I fail to see the benefits of a large brood to the ex-spider once he's been lunched. It's not like they'll all send him a card on Father's Day.

RIP, Pip

Last week, the musical community lost a huge talent in Pip Pyle. Pip was a drummer/percussionist who was deeply involved in the Canterbury prog scene. His deft and subtle drum work graces two of my favorite albums of all time, Hatfield and the North's The Rotter's Club and National Health's Of Queues and Cures. In addition, Pip contributed strong composition in tracks like "Fitter Stoke Has a Bath" (from The Rotter's Club) and "Binoculars" (from Of Queues and Cures). He played his last gig, with a reformed Hatfield and the North, just two days before his death.

Still Not a Rivalry

As the dust settles after the first annual (?) Friends of Coal Bowl, and WVU's 42-10 demolition of Marshall, I think I may have figured out one reason why so many WVU fans were not "up" for the game. I think it comes down to the fact that the PR folks and Marshall supporters tried to instantly make this game a "rivalry," such that it would be on the same level with, say, WVU-Pitt. The problem is, you can't force such things.

The Backyard Brawl is a great rivalry because of the lack of distance between Morgantown and Pittsburgh, the fact that WVU and Pitt have played 98 times since 1895, and that there have been classic games in that stretch where the better team was upset by the weaker one, that were resolved in the last minute, etc. The WVU-Marshall series just doesn't have that kind of backstory yet. We've only played 6 times in 100 years, WVU won all of them, and only one of them was close (WVU won early games by scores of 92-6 and 81-0!).

By contrast, the WVU-Marshall basketball game is a bona fide rivalry. Since the game was moved to Charleston (from the back and forth of the two campuses), the games have usually been tight and there have been great upsets. The past two seasons, when Marshall struggled to make a winning record and WVU went deep into the NCAA tournament, Marshall pulled the upset and won the game. That's the sort of thing you need for a real rivalry.

That may all develop in time with the Friends of Coal Bowl, but until them it would be better if the hype machine dialed itself back and let the games speak for themselves.

Crikey!

Years ago I went on a Carribean cruise that included a stop in Grand Cayman. While there, my then-girlfriend and I went to an attraction known as Stingray City. Stingray City is an area in the waters off Grand Cayman where stingrays congregate. The water is shallow, and folks boat people out to the area so you can commune with the rays. Along the way, you're told how dangerous they really aren't, just try not to step on them. I was somewhat pumped at the idea of snorkeling with the stingrays.

Once we arrived on scene, things quickly deteriorated. First, there were several boats there and throngs of people. Second, the water was too shallow and too crowded for actual swimming/snorkeling, meaning you'd have to walk around (trying not to step on the stingrays). The plan was to step down ladder at the back of the boat then work your way to the front of the boat to get back on, if you so desired.

I didn't make it to the front of the boat. I got off the ladder, got hit by a small wave, and was instantly freaked beyond reason. "Fuck this," I thought, and climbed back up the rear ladder (my girlfriend, to her credit, made it to the front of the boat before coming to the "fuck this" conclusion). Tromping around with dozens of strangers in a patch of ocean where I couldn't see my feet while trying not to trod upon the stingrays was not my idea of a good time.

Why do I tell this tale (aside from the amusement of everyone I've ever told it to - at my expense, no less!)? Because I feel somewhat vindicated about my stingray fears now that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, has been sent to the great game preserve in the sky (sea?) after being stung by a stingray.

Ironically, he was in the process of filming a documentary called Ocean's Deadliest, which was not (originally, at least) supposed to include the stingray.

Bloggus Interuptus

I'll be traveling on business next week, so the Ranch will be quiet until after Labor Day. Just in time to gloat about WVU's destruction of Marshall, I imagine. :)

Holst Strikes Back

Well, apparently I was premature and ol' Gustav was right. After a week of controversy, a group of astronomers in Prague has cast a final vote to strip Pluto of its planethood. Pluto now has the status of a "dwarf planet," and the Solar system is down to eight functional planets. Which means that Holst's master work was right after all (when the Solar system is viewed from Earth, of course).

Sadly, it appears that Pluto has been paying a little too much attention to the Connecticut senatorial race.

Pandering? What Pandering?

Remember Katherine Harris, the Bush operative in Florida during the 2000 presidential election who parlayed that into a seat in the House of Representatives? One of the greatest of the GOPs many political flameouts this year has been her self-destructing campaign for US Senate. Things being as bad as they are, she's taken a hard turn right to pander towards her base a little bit. As Raw Story reports, Harris gave an interview to the Florida Baptist Witness in which she lays it on the line in terms of God and politics:

we have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.

First, notice the term "rulers," not "leaders." How . . . regal. Second, does that mean that when Harris goes down in flames this fall that it's God's will? I'll keep that in mind.

Dumb Judicial Tricks

Sometimes you wonder just what it takes to get on the bench. Consider these two tales of judicial lunacy, from opposite sides of the planet.

First, as jedi jawa reported, a trial court judge in Oklahoma was sentenced to four years in prison for exposing himself during trial. My favorite part of this case is:

Thompson, who will register as a sex offender, was convicted June 29 of masturbating while presiding over four trials in 2002 and 2003. Allegations of Thompson using a penis pump surfaced more than two years ago and received national attention.

Former jurors and court staffers testified they saw and heard Thompson using a penis pump. Thompson still denies the accusations.

Read that again. They saw and heard him use the penis pump. What, pray tell, was the witnesses frame of reference for what a penis pump sounds like? Looks like I can understand (I've seen Austin Powers, after all), but sound? Must have been some interesting cross-examination.

But, at least ex-Judge Thompson was fully in possession of his faculties while he was, um, fully in possession of something else. A judge in the Phillipines has been removed from the bench for consulting with "mystic dwarves:

He told investigators three mystic dwarves - Armand, Luis and Angel - had helped him to carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers.

The court said psychic phenomena had no place in the judiciary.

Well, that's reassuring. Why am I more concerned that the mystic dwarves (great band name, BTW - particularly on a double bill with Gentle Giant!) had names?

Foxhole Atheists

The old cliche says that "there are no atheists in foxholes." That, of course, is horse shit. And, as this article makes clear, those atheists who serve in the armed services are subject to pressures and disparate treatment because of their lack of faith. Stuff like this:

Just last month Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said, 'Agnostics, atheists and bigots suddenly lose all that when their life is on the line.'

Nice. The non-believers are on the same level as racists and anti-Semites. And people wonder why we don't like Christians?

Get Your Dates Straight

There's been a numerical meme floating around the blogosphere for a few days. I saw it at TalkLeft first, and then I got it in an email today. It's this:

• December 7, 1941 through May 8, 1945 (VE-Day) = 1,248 days

• March 19, 2003 (U.S. invasion of Iraq) through Friday, August 18, 2006 = 1,248 days

The point, it seems, is that the time the US has been involved in Iraq is the same amount of time as WWII. A sobering thought, but it's not accurate. For one thing, combat operations for the United States didn't end until VJ-Day, when Japan surrendered, on August 15, 1945 - another three months. For another, WWII raged long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The usual date for the start of the War is September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Personally, I think it began on July 7, 1937 when Japan invaded China. In other words, we have years to go before the Iraqi quagmire (or the "War on Terra" generally) stretches as long as WWII.

Which is not to deny the mess of Iraq or the toll it's taken on the US and the Middle East. But if we're going to make comparisons with the largest military conflict in the planet's history, let's get the numbers right.

Truth, Justice, Football

How's this for idiocy:

Last November, teens stole the decoy from a man's home, created a base to help it stand upright because it had only two legs, and then drove up and down the road, watching as drivers swerved to avoid it, prosecutor Brad Bailey said. He said Howard did not stop the prank.

Robert Roby Jr. crashed his car into a pole and broke his neck, collarbone, arm and leg. His passenger, Dustin Zachariah, suffered brain damage, Bailey said.

As a result, the idiots in question pleaded guilty to some misdemeanors and were sentenced to serve 60 days in jail. But they can wait a while, 'cause the judge delayed their sentence until after football season:

'I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm going to. I see positive things about participating in football,' Judge Gary McKinley said Tuesday.

You're right, judge - you shouldn't be doing this. I see people sent away to prison every day with no consideration to the disruption of their family lives - mothers separated from children, husbands from wives, sons from parents. For petty shit that doesn't hurt anybody who isn't a consenting adults. Football shouldn't win out over the criminal justice system.

Who Is This God Person, Anyway?*

One of my small pleasures in life is reading the signs in front of the local churches. They're usually good for a laugh now and then, either in their content or execution. My current favorite is one in downtown Charleston proclaiming "The Wages of Sin Is Death," apparently oblivious to the wages of bad grammar. But, alas, I digress.

Here's one from a church near my house that brings up something that really bugs me about our Judeo/Christian tradition.


For a lot of people, the moral weight of Christianity's commands seems to be backed up only by the fear of punishment for ignoring those commands. The unseen man in the sky tells you not to do X, and if you do X he threatens you with eternal damnation. Following such commands based on fear doesn't seem like wisdom so much as simple utilitarian CYA, ala Pascal's wager. Putting aside the question of God's existence for a second, does a God who commands his followers through fear of eternal punishment deserve to be worshiped and followed? No more so than some real-world dictator, in my book.

* With apologies to Oolon Colluphid.

Holst Must Be Pissed

When Gustav Holst wrote The Planets between 1914 and 1916, there were but eight known planets in the solar system. Taking out The Earth, that left seven movements in his suite. When Pluto was discovered in 1930, he refused to add a new movement (although some musical necrophiliac did in 2000). Imagine what he'd do with yesterday's news that scientists and historians (?) have proposed a new definition of "planet" that would not only settle the status of lowly Pluto, but would actually add three new planets to our solar system: Ceres (currently a large asteroid), Charon (previously a moon of Pluto), and 2003 UB213 (aka "Xena").

The new definition of a planet includes "that an object be massive enough that gravity has formed it into a sphere and that it circles a star and not some other planet." Not everybody is happy about this:

The difference, according to the definition, is that the center of gravity for Pluto and Charon is between them, not inside either one. So technically, Charon is not orbiting Pluto but is orbiting the center of gravity of the two bodies. The center of gravity for the Earth and its moon, on the other hand, is inside the Earth. Dr. Boss calls this 'a legalistic definition.'

Gods save us from legalistic definitions!

One wonders what Holst would have made of all this. A four-movement sequel. The Planets, II, I think. Subtitled "Pluto's Revenge," or somesuch. I'm sure Hollywood would make a movie out of it.

Do Jawas Poop in the Woods?

Was jedi jawa eaten by bears? Did he survive another anniversary with the missus? Just what exactly do you do for a week in the woods, anyway? Jedi jawa tells all about his week in the woods with Mrs. jawa (well not all, hopefully) at his new anablog. Yes - it's an analog blog - you got a problem with that? Not me - I own virtual recreations of analog synthesizers, fer cryin' out loud!

P'Burgh Power Trio Ponderings

Over the weekend, my lovely girlfriend indulged my weird musical proclivities and escorted me to see Adrian Belew at a club in downtown Pittsburgh. Belew is one of my favs, for a lot of the same reasons as fellow Zappa alum Mike Keneally - he's an incredibly talented guitar player, skips brazenly across musical genres, and can still come up with catchy tunes. Belew was playing at Club Cafe, a very intimate nicely appointed little club. Belew seriously ripped my head off, but the stars of the show are his current backing band, brother and sister Eric (drums) and Julie (bass) Slick. Any thoughts that these kids weren't up to snuff were blown away as they launched into "Writing on the Wall" from Side One. A set full of cool stuff followed, capped off by several Belew-era King Crimson tunes (I've sung along with "Three of a Perfect Pair" now!). Very very cool show.

And the girlfriend didn't hate it! Thanks, honey. :)

My Favorite New Phrase

From today's Dilbert:

Don't ping my cheeze with your bandwidth.

:)

The Infidel Kenny G

Yesterday, jedi jawa discussed his problems with Columbia House membership and eventually settled on one of the musical criminals of our age, Kenny G. As I said in the comments, the only thing Kenny's noodlings are good for is putting people to sleep. But I'm not quite as pissed with Kenny as guitarist Pat Metheny is. After noting Kenny's "major rhythmic problems" and "extremely limited . . . harmonic and melodic vocabulary," Pat tries to say something nice:

But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again).

That's not what really got Pat's knickers in a twist, tho:

Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track 'What a Wonderful World'. With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.

This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him - and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician.

Don't hold back, Pat! I think it's a bit unfair, tho'. Is the only criticism that Kenny's musical necrophilia sucks, while the other examples worked? In which case, who can blame him for trying? I'm personally not a fan of such stunts, regardless of the outcome (which, I admit, is a little hypocritical coming from a loop-based music guy).

Still and all, Kenny G really sucks.

From the Party of "Smaller Government"

One of the highlights of the Supreme Court's last term was Oregon v. Gonzalez, in which the Court ruled that the Attorney General (it was Ashcroft at the time) could not unilaterally decide that doctors acting under Oregon's Death With Dignity Act were not engaged in the "practice of medicine" and thus liable to lose their Federal permission to prescribe controlled substances. But, as Jacob Sullum points out over at Reason, GOP Senator Sam Brownback (from Kansas - you know, the "no evolution" people) is sponsoring legislation that would achieve the same result dreamed of by Ashcroft. The problem Brownback seeks to cure, however, simply isn't there, as Sullum explains:

The Death With Dignity Act has been in force for nearly a decade now, and it has not precipitated a mad rush for the exit it unlocked. Last year 38 patients used drugs prescribed under the law to kill themselves, almost the same as the 2004 total and down from a peak of 42 in 2003. Close to half of the patients who use the law to get barbiturate prescriptions do not take the drugs, but presumably they derive comfort from having the option.

Brownback and other critics of physician-assisted suicide imagine this highly constrained experiment in expanded autonomy for people on the verge of death will somehow devolve into a homicidal free-for-all featuring involuntary euthanasia and infanticide. This is like assuming that allowing women to get breast implants will lead plastic surgeons to start kidnapping those they deem insufficiently endowed and cutting into them without permission.

A fundamentalist right winger struggling to solve a non-existent problem. And using the power of your Federal government to do it. *sigh*

Where the Happy People Are

Via Volokh Conspiracy, witness this map of the world showing which countries are happier than others. The map, produced by the University of Leicester, uses various measurements to determine which countries come out on top (the redder ones are happier, in an odd color choice). They've put this information in a convenient map form to make it easier for those unhappy folks of the globe to know where to invade first.

I'm Not as Think as You Drunk I Am, Your Honor

I know that sometimes being a criminal defense attorney can drive one to drink (or drink more, in some cases), but you shouldn't really show up for court after a bender. The judge might notice when you come to court slurring words:

[Joseph] Caramango, 41, acknowledged in court that he was drinking the previous night, but maintained he was not drunk.* If convicted, his client faces life in prison.

Thankfully, the judge declared a mistrial, although I'm not so sure this is evidence of intoxication:

'I don't think you can tell a straight story because you are intoxicated,' the judge told [] Caramango as she declared a mistrial for his client.

Since when is that a flaw in a defense attorney?

* That, of course, is Albert Collins's famous "I Ain't Drunk, I'm Just Litigatin'" defense.

What of the Floppy Shoes?

Presented without comment:


Via Pandagon.

*snicker*

Alone, Again (Penally)

A couple of weeks ago (I've been on vacation - so sue me!), NPR had an in-depth series exploring the role of solitary confinement in the modern criminal justice system. An increasingly large number of inmates in this country serve time in solitary, some for their entire terms. Keep in mind that lots of those folks will get out, sometimes released to the street directly from solitary. It's worth considering whether solitary is used too often and imposed too lightly.

Keeping the MLS-Chelsea Match In Perspective

Saturday was Major League Soccer's annual quest to stage an All-Star Game. While such mid (or late) season exhibitions are a staple of other American sports, it's never really worked for MLS. For one things, soccer has natural built in all-star contests in regular competitions between national teams. For another, the usually lax attitude that players have towards all-star games produces things like 6-6 games that don't resemble the real thing. But, MLS wants to fit in, and in the last few years has come up with the idea of having a team of MLS All-Stars play a club from overseas.

This year, the opponent was two-time defending English champions Chelsea FC. Chelsea have become famous for the free-spending ways of its Russian billionaire owner (Chelsea spends more money on payroll than the Yankees with fewer players). Despite the hype (they're not the best team in the world, or even Europe, for that matter - ask Barcelona), they're a very good team and gave the MLS guys quite a test. In the end, MLS pulled out a 1-0 win on a great Dwayne DeRosario goal and some superb defending. While that's cause for mild applause, the overwrought celebrations in the wake of the game make the league look too needy. As Ives Galarcep puts it over at ESPN.com:

Call the painful scene a product of finally having some real ammunition to show the league's detractors that MLS does play some quality soccer. That is, if you believe a win in an exhibition against a team just starting its preseason is some sort of landmark moment for the league. Don't believe the hype. The win wasn't meaningless, but it was nowhere near as meaningful as the match's broadcast and several articles written in the aftermath would suggest.

Is a little perspective too much to ask? In the end, MLS doesn't deserve our support because we can beat Chelsea or Barcalona or anybody else on a given day. It deserves out support because it's our league, for all its flaws.

Don't Give Away Our Secrets, Howard!

Howard Bashman, of How Appealing fame, in his weekly column over at Law.com answers the burning question, "What Do Appellate Attorneys Actually Do?" Howard has a solo appellate practice in Pennsylvania, so he would know. I agree with most of what he says in terms of why we as appellate specialists might have some advantages over generalists trying to work on an appeal. He doesn't give away the secret handshake, however.

Law McNuggets

A few little things that popped up from the legal realm

• I knew parallel parking was dangerous! A teen in New Jersey was being tought to parallel park by her mother when she (the daughter) accidentally ran her over. The girl "won't face criminal charges." Sure, but how long does she have to wait before she gets to take the parallel parking test again?

• Today's New York Times has a disturbing article about a trend among legislatures to scale back the duty to retreat in self defense cases. Traditionally, a person must retreat as much as possible before using deadly force to defend themselves from an attacker. The idea was that deadly force should be the absolute last resort. These new laws, dubbed either "stand your ground" laws or "shoot first" laws )depending on your political persuasion), stand that on its head. Of course, in an era of preemptive warfare, why not have preemptive self defense?

• OK, I'm not a smoker, but I know that if I had to change my opinion on something in order to be released to grab a puff I might just do it. That's the basis behind an argument that an Ohio man is making in an appeal from a murder conviction. The trial judge forbid the jury taking smoke breaks, so the argument goes that the smokers were more apt to vote to convict and get out so they could get their fix.
  

Yeah, Well, F You Too, Pal

Back from vacation with some free time on my hands, so I've got some new music up on ACIDPlanet, "F Me." So-called because most of the loops are my creations and lots of them started on "F." Take a listen and lemme know what you think.

Regular programming resumes on Monday.

Ah, Jurors

There are two pillars on which our criminal justice system is based. One is the presumption of innocence, the other is the concept of only convicting someone after the state proves that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I've long believed that most jurors ignore or misunderstand one or both of those, which casts doubt on the whole process. From New Hampshire comes the story of a juror in a rape case who, days before trial started, blogged about how "he was frustrated to have to serve on a jury that would require him to spend time listening to defendants trying to prove they were innocent." Said defendants he referred to as "riff raff."

Hope you never get falsely accused of a crime, asshole.

Some Randomness

A few bits of interest that popped up over the past couple of days:

Free legal advice: Do not suck strange women's toes in the public library. They will indict you for something, like gross sexual imposition (which sounds like an apt description to me).

Justice is served: Today, a Texas jury returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity in the Andrea Yates retrial. While I'm sure that somewhere news harpy Nancy Grace* is going fetal with rage, I think Andrew Cohen over at the Washington Post has it right:

There is no victory here. Yates will be sent to heavily-guarded mental health facility, where she will probably spend the rest of her life. From time to time she will be evaluated. And, if past is prologue, every time her medicine allows her to regain a little bit of sanity she will realize what she did to her beloved children and then descend again back into some sort of madness. So this story started as a tragedy and continues as a tragedy even with though the defense finally won the day.

* UPDATE: As expected, Grace is going ape shit over this. One would think that somebody as batshit loony as Grace would recognize it in someone else.

Odd art: Via Concurring Opinions, I found this link to "Strange statues around the world." It is, indeed, a blog post full of pictures of odd statuary from across the globe. My favorites are






There are loads more - go see for yourself.

Life Imitates Art

There is an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer (and, in guilt by association, Marge) are kicked out of an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant because, as the owner puts it, Homer "'Tis no man. 'Tis a remorseless eating machine." Homer later goes on to sue the fish joint because, as his attorney (and my legal mentor) Lionel Hutz puts it, "this is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film, The Never-Ending Story."

Homer, apparently, is not alone. Witness, from the BCC, the tale of Rappai, the "monster eater," who has been forced into retirement because of health problems. Rappai's rapaciousness was legendary, to the point that restaurants in his home tome of Trissur, India had to abandon all-you-can-eat buffets:

On one famous occasion, the man who locally became known as Theeta (monster eater) took advantage of a local restaurant's 'unlimited meals' coupon.

He reputedly scoffed three bucketfuls of rice, one bucket of fish curry and 10 kgs of cooked meat.

The restaurant in question ran out of food, and police had to be called in to restore order as a large crowd gathered to watch Rappai in action.

Of course, that's what happened to Homer in the end, too!

Fun With the Fundies

Over at Pandagon, there is a post that discusses a three-pack of lunacy from one fundamentalist Christian group:

• Wicca is part of a worldwide plot orchestrates by Satan,
• Yoga, if done correctly, will subject you to being taken over by evil spirits, and
• Christians have "no right to make use of psychic powers."*

Glad they've clarified those things for us, especially the last one. Read the Pandagon post for full quotes and links.

* You can't beat logic like this: "Sirhan Sirhan, for example, had demonic psychic powers and predicted the day that Robert F. Kennedy died." It's almost like Sirhan Sirhan had something to do with it!

How Did I Miss This?

This is what happens when I go to bed before The Daily Show comes on. Apparently at the G8 summit earlier this week in Russia, Dubya snuck up behind German Chancellor Angela Merkel and tries to give her a shoulder rub. As you can see from the video, Merkel will have none of it and blows Dubya off like the guy in the padded suit at a self-defense class. Guess she wasn't impressed just 'cause he's the leader of the free world, huh?

Talk About Going Undercover

From the BBC website comes this article of a New Zealand police woman who was not making ends meet on just her cop salary. Her solution? Take a second job - as a hooker. Not to worry. Prostitution has been legal in New Zealand since 2003, so she doesn't risk running into another officer running some kind of sting operation on her. Unless he pays extra for that sort of thing.

DC UNITED *thump thump thmp thmp thmp*

USA Today has a nice piece today about the season that DC United is having. Aside from references to "the United" (I never get that - it's not an NFL team, folks!), it's a good analysis of why we're having our best season ever. Unspoken in the article is the fear (that I have, at least) that we'll peak too soon and bomb out of the MLS Cup playoffs again.

BTW, the title is my bad attempt to phonetically recreate the main DCU chant, as heard echoing in the bouncing grandstands of RFK. It loses something in the translation. :)

On Criticism

It stinks!
- flim critic Jay Sherman, describing . . . well, basically any movie.

Being a film critic can be a thankless job. At best, you bring much needed attention to small films that should be seen by wider audiences. At worst, you dump on more popular fare and give off the aura of a stuck-up tight ass who doesn't know how to have any fun. New York Times critic A.O. Scott muses on that problem in a recent piece:

For the second time this summer, then, my colleagues and I must face a frequently — and not always politely — asked question: What is wrong with you people? I will, for now, suppress the impulse to turn the question on the moviegoing public, which persists in paying good money to see bad movies that I see free. I don’t for a minute believe that financial success contradicts negative critical judgment; $500 million from now, 'Dead Man’s Chest' will still be, in my estimation, occasionally amusing, frequently tedious and entirely too long. But the discrepancy between what critics think and how the public behaves is of perennial interest because it throws into relief some basic questions about taste, economics and the nature of popular entertainment, as well as the more vexing issue of what, exactly, critics are for.

Scott's ponderings have led some to lambaste him further, but I think he's just a bit short sighted. Keep in mind that Scott (and other critics) watch lots of movies. I mean a huge amount. And, quite frankly, most of them suck. That's not being snobbish, it's true of any quasi creative art form (gods know, it's true of this blog!). It is, after all, their job. As a result, they seem to sometime lose sight of why lots of people go to the movies in the first place - to have fun and indulge in a bit of escapism. The same reason they watch American Idol and those endless Law & Order spinoffs. Thus, when someone like Scott pontificates on the merits of a movie, it just doesn't matter to most folks.

Also, keep this in mind. Scott is right that financial performance is no indicator of quality, if for no other reason that you can't get your money back if a movie sucks. Once you've paid your money to see, say, The Da Vinci Code, they keep your cash regardless of your aesthetic reaction to the film. After all, you don't go pay them another $10 if you really like a movie, do you? TV, by contrast, allows you to sample a show and either keep watching future episodes or just spend your time elsewhere.

And I will give Scott credit for one thing, a refreshing bit of honesty:

Online, everyone is a critic, which is as it should be: professional prerogatives aside, a critic is really just anyone who thinks out loud about something he or she cares about, and gets into arguments with fellow enthusiasts.

In the end, art is subjective and any critic (provide he's not discussing strictly technical aspects) can basically only tell you in a long-winded sort of way whether they liked the movie or not. If you read the same critics consistently, you can get an idea of how their tastes mirror yours so that a review tells you whether you might like a flick, not because the critic liked it, but because you know why they liked it (or not).

Dubya Finds Morals

Dubya has finally exercised his veto, refusing to sign the stem cell research bill that overwhelmingly passed the Senate yesterday:

President Bush vetoed a bill for the first time today, using his constitutional power to reject legislation passed by Congress that would expand federal research on embryonic stem cells, a step he said would be crossing a 'moral line.'

Wow. I know he's a yutz on this particular issue, but am I the only one who is surprised that Dubya found a "moral line" that he would not cross?

Isn't This Just Vote Buying In Another Form?

Emmy award winning local newscaster Kent Brockman once said, "democracy simply doesn't work." Sometimes I agree. One of the things that makes me agree is the initiative process that is so popular in the western states. This allows a motivated citizen (or, more likely, political action group) to directly amend the state code or constitution by collecting signatures from a certain percentage of the populace, who then vote the measure up or down. Such measures frequently tap into some type of groundswell of popular fervor and turn out to be short sighted at best and jingoistic at worst. In short, they allow for the worst kind of unchecked majoritarian rule.

Witness a new initiative in Arizona that would award $1 million to one person in each election simply for voting. In other words, it's a lottery in which the price of admission is your vote. The logic behind the plan is clear:

Mark Osterloh, a political gadfly who is behind the initiative, the Arizona Voter Reward Act, is promoting it with the slogan,'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Vote!'

Look, I'm all for encouraging participation in the democratic process. Gods know, this country would be a whole lot better of if enough people voted so that the militant wing of one party couldn't win general elections. But this is the wrong way to go about it, isn't it? Wouldn't it be better to deal with all the shady means we use to disenfranchise those voters who actually want to vote?

We've put a lot of people in prison in West Virginia lately because they participated in a vote buying scheme in the southern coal fields. I fail to see how this is really any different. The initiative doesn't require a vote for a particular person or party, but it does provide financial reward for deciding to vote. Sounds like our operation down south. And those votes were selling for a hell of a lot less than $1 million.

Middle East Turning Point?

I still don't really know what to make of the burgeoning conflict between Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas that flared up last week. But, there has been at least one interesting development that I'm not sure lots of people predicted. At an emergency summit meeting of the Arab League this weekend, several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, issued a statement chastising Hezbollah for its role in the violence. Let that sink in for a minute - a coalition of Arab countries have condemned a radical group that is attacking Israel. Pretty groundbreaking stuff. Sure, it may be simply enlightened self interest (nobody likes Iran, apparently), but the fact that something - anything - may trump the historical animus towards Israel might be a sliver lining to this cloud.

Irony

While writing the prior post I was listening to Francis Dunnery's Tall Blonde Helicopter whilst it rained cats and dogs outside, such that the gutters on my deck were swamped. Which songs in particular? "Sunshine" and "Rain or Shine." And I sang joyfully along with both.

That's ironic. I really do think.

Score One for Hollywood (Redux)

Following up on my earlier post, here's a discussion of the "CleanFlix" case from Utah by FindLaw's Marci Hamilton. She makes a good point about the strength of the DVD cleaner uppers' arguments:

The clarity of the law in this case forces me to ask how three companies could believe that such a business plan was legal, or likely to be successful. Did they not consult attorneys before sinking their lives (and perhaps their fortunes) into these businesses? Surely, they must have. So they must have known they were skating on very thin legal ice. Why did they go ahead anyway?

Her answer:

In contemporary America, entities and individuals motivated by religious or moral faith have come to believe that the law should not apply to them when it conflicts with their particular interests and world view.

Pretty strong allegation. She doesn't really present any evidence to back it up, but it seems right to me.

The judge's opinion can be found here. Among the points made:

The counterclaim defendants contend that there is no adverse effect from their use of the movies on the value of the copyrighted work to the Studios. They suggest that the Studios benefit because they are selling more copies of their movies as a result of the editing parties’ practice of maintaining a one to one ratio of the original and edited versions.* It is assumed that the consumers of the edited versions would not have themselves purchased the authorized versions because of the objectionable content and the Studios do not compete in this alternative market.

The argument has superficial appeal but it ignores the intrinsic value of the right to control the content of the copyrighted work which is the essence of the law of copyright. Whether these films should be edited in a manner that would make them acceptable to more of the public playing them on DVD in a home environment is more than merely a matter of marketing; it is a question of what audience the copyright owner wants to reach.

Emphasis mine. An excellent point. One imagines that Stephen Soderbergh (one of the plaintiffs) didn't intend Sex, Lies, & Videotape or Traffic to be viewed "by the whole family." Or even 9012Live, for that matter (I wouldn't subject my niece and nephews to Jon Anderson's early 80s fashion sense). If that's the case, why would anyone attempt to emasculate his work to make it more kid friendly? The world isn't kid friendly, in the first place!

The opinion also answers jedi jawa's question from the other post about DVD players that skip over the naughty bits:

During the pendency of this case Congress enacted the Family Movie Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 1099, 119 Stat. 218, 223224, amending[17 U.S.C.] § 110 to provide an exemption for the editing of motion pictures by a member of a private household if no fixed copy of the altered version of the motion picture is created. That statute eliminated from this case those parties selling technologyenabling such private editing.

* The cleaner uppers required their customers to buy and send them a legit copy of the movie getting edited (although it's unclear quite how that works in a rental situation).