News & Media
Scott Greenfield – The Conscience of the Bar
Between his criticism of scaring clients and the difference between “anyone can blog” and “everyone can blog”, I think that Scott just might have a higher calling than his practice. I know I might sound like I am being a smartass. I am not (this time). If Scotty were in charge, this would be a better profession — to the benefit of all.
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Eric Holder in his younger days. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pK5HmuCMBM]
Mickey Mouse sues Donald Duck
Yes, really. The sad thing is, its not the dumbest complaint I’ve ever seen filed in the Southern District of Flori-duh.
Porn is "inescapable"
Monica Hesse, a writer for the Washington Post, seems to have a porn paranoia issue. Her article “Publicly, a whole new lewdness” has a decidedly Comstockian bent to it. But, the subtitle is even more hilarious: “Everywhere you look, porn is suddenly inescapable.” People like Hesse are proof that evolution has failed. If she finds porn to be “inescapable,” I wonder how her ancestors avoided predatory animals. I mean, escaping from a hungry saber-toothed tiger required someone to run, jump, climb, and hide. “Escaping” from porn requires that one merely LOOK SOME FRIGGING WHERE ELSE! I see things that I don’t like to see every day. I see ugly people. I see morons. When I do not like it —
This is SPARTA!!!!
Okay, not exactly… but the Citizen Media Law Project has launched its Online Media Law Network. Good coverage of it here by one of my favorite journalists.
Jackassletters.com
This must be one of the strangest, but (to me at least) funniest public hobbies on the internet. Christopher Jorgensen writes letters with just the right dash of snark and silliness and sends them off to various companies and famous people, and then posts their replies. He has suggested a urine absorbent thong line for Victoria’s secret, called hooey on 2,000 flushes (he only got 1,864 flushes), and informed Robitussin that their product makes a great cocktail ingredient. All had really funny replies. Needless to say, most targets of his Jackass Letters don’t get the prank, and wind up seeming humorless or silly. Mr. Jorgensen even sent yours truly a letter. Lulz ensued. His site really is a funny corner
Will Phillips, age 10, First Amendment Bad Ass
Will Phillips – you are the First Amendment Bad Ass of the month. Will’s family has a number of gay friends. In recent years, Laura Phillips said, they’ve been trying to be a straight ally to the gay community, going to the pride parades and standing up for the rights of their gay and lesbian neighbors. They’ve been especially dismayed by the effort to take away the rights of homosexuals – the right to marry, and the right to adopt. Given that, Will immediately saw a problem with the pledge of allegiance. “I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.” After asking
Anonymous Hooker Blogger Outed
by Jason Fischer If you’re a fan of Showtime‘s adult series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” (or even if you aren’t), you may be interested to know that the real-life anonymous author of the blog and book that inspired the series went public earlier this week. (Source) Dr. Brooke Magnanti, Ph.D. in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science, in an interview with The Times, talks candidly about how she got into the biz of having sex for money. Dr. Brooke Magnanti(a.k.a. Belle du Jour) I was finishing my writing — I was getting ready to submit my thesis. I saved up a bit of money. I thought, I’ll just move to London, because that’s where the jobs are, and I’ll
Belichick made the right call
Statistically speaking. UPDATE: Freakonomics concurs.
Even Sarah Palin is Awesome Sometimes
In her “book,” Palin throws a little unoriginal wit at prey vegetarians. “If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” (source) I say “unoriginal,” because I had a T-Shirt that said that back in 1989. Nevertheless, it is nice to see that Palin and I agree on something. I still think that Palin is dumber than veganism, but its nice to see two forces of stupidity duke it out.
ABA seeks a bailout – we should bail out the legal profession by disbanding the ABA
The American Bar Association thinks that the U.S. government should give law grads a bailout by letting them convert their private loans into government loans. (source) The American Bar Association thinks that there is a crisis in the profession caused by too much debt. Yes, the ABA — that festering slop bucket of do-nothing bozos who stamped their seal of approval on every head injury clinic that wanted to call itself a law school, as long as its faculty and administration dropped to their knees and fellated the ABA’s absurd “educational” requirements. The ABA, the same organization that gave accreditation to Liberty, Regent, and Ave Maria indoctrination centers for the developmentally disabled. Yes, that same ABA. This is the same
Rhode Island Governor Carcieri – You're a Dick
So much for me being a smug New Englander who thinks that the Northeast is intellectually superior to the peckerwood hellholes of the Confederacy. Hot on the heels of Maine voters deciding that they don’t want all eight gay couples who live in Maine to have the right to marry who they want, Rhode Island Governor Carcieri vetoed a bill that would allow domestic partners to make funeral arrangements for each other. (source) In his veto message, Republican Carcieri said: “This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue. (source) Yeah, because allowing someone who has lived with
MEEP – M33P is teh L33T!
Today, I was at the Children’s museum in San Diego, and I scrawled MEEP on the chalkboard. You know why? Because it’s my goddamned right to do so, and because Danvers High School is run by asshats. Apparently, students at Danvers High, in Massachusetts, have adopted a little meme of using the word “meep” as a catch-all / one-word-sentence. This is just one of those things that teenagers do. This is one of the things that makes teenagers awesome. They come up with goofy antics that make us shake our heads, it makes them laugh, we move on. Well… that is…. unless we’re asshats. Then, it just steams us up that the kids don’t respect our authoritah. Danvers High Principal
Damn Dirty Apes! A Call to Arms!
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a few questions for you. I’m just asking… no, I’m not just asking, I’m RAISING THE ALARM!!!!! More terrifying than SARS, Bird Flu, and H1N1 combined. More scarier than a SHOE BOMB wearing SOCIALIST! Its…. THE DAMN DIRTY APES!!!!! Everyone laughed at Zippy the Chimp, and Clyde from the Any Which Way movies… but did anyone see how the apes were plotting their attack? Placing “Ape Cells” among us? Jesus fucking christ on a crutch! There are organized groups of apes in EVERY MAJOR CITY!!!! And now THEY are on the move. To make sure that NONE of us feel safe, they attacked in Stamford, Connecticut — one of the whitest, safest, richest places in
I Believe . . . South Carolina Just Got Schooled On the First Amendment
By: Zac Papantoniou “Whatever else the Establishment Clause may mean (and we have held it to mean no official preference even for religion over nonreligion), . . . it certainly means at the very least that government may not demonstrate a preference for one particular sect or creed (including a preference for Christianity over other religions). The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” – U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, ruling in the case of Summers et al v. Adams et al, quoting from Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion in County of Allegheny v. ACLU Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U.S. 573, 590 (1989) On Tuesday, a federal
Best. Wedding. Ever.
The St. Petersburg Times reports: TAMPA — Mary Wright, 74, was thrilled Sunday night to see her grandson marry his longtime sweetheart in a beautiful, white wedding at the waterfront Rusty Pelican Restaurant. Thrilled, that is, until she found herself with a stranger’s hands around her neck — amid a sprawling melee involving 30 to 40 wedding guests that resulted in a flying brick, the appearance of a gun, a call to the cops and, inevitably, a bride in tears. (source) H/T to Alexis
Ike Turner was just trying to teach Tina about critical race theory!
Lionel McIntyre, a black Columbia professor, got drunk and pissed off about “white privilege,” and at a white female colleague who didn’t seem to agree with him. So, what did he do about it? He laid the smack down on the uppity bitch. That’ll teach her. But Professor McIntyre wanted to make sure that he got his pedagogical message across to the whole class. He didn’t just lay down one smack, but brought a whole can of whup ass. The other patron involved in the dispute said McIntyre then took a swing at him after he yelled, “You don’t hit a woman!” “He knocked the glasses right off my face,” said the man, who would only give his first name
The USPTO Embraces the Blogosphere, Lobbies for First-to-File
Kappos: “Hey Ted, can you show me how these here tubes work?” The U.S. Government Agency that is responsible for validating which technologies are new and useful has discovered a not so new, yet highly useful tool: web logs. In an effort to open a line of communication between the USPTO and the practitioners who deal with the office on a daily basis, newly sworn in Director David Kappos published the inaugural post on his new blog. In it, he takes up the long-raging debate over whether moving to a first-to-file system of prosecution would have a drastic impact on the U.S. patent system. The United States is unique in its position that the first to invent, not the first
Hipcheck16 is no Turk 182 – but Anonymous Political Speech is Sacred
This one is a little disturbing. Political Race Gets Nasty During an election in Buffalo Grove, Ill., an online debate started about a candidate for Village Trustee, Lisa Stone. During that debate, this public official’s 15 year old son, Jed, got a little upset about some harsh statements lobbed at his mother, so he joined the debate — in particular, getting into a flame war with “Hipcheck16”. At one point, the teen asked to know the poster’s identity and challenged him to debate the issues in person. Declining an invitation to pay a visit, Hipcheck16 posted a response that said, according to court documents, “Seems like you’re very willing to invite a man you only know from the Internet over
