News & Media
The Star Spangled Banner in Minor Key
This seems much more appropriate than the original. It conveys the fact that everything it once stood for is dead. Especially the “land of the free, home of the brave” line. We are neither. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_PtnvVQhqA]
15 Year old Texan – First Amendment Bad Ass
Mason Michalec is a 15 year old in Needville, Texas. He prefers not to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. His principal decided to take him on and gave him in school suspension for not adhering to the required political orthodoxy. Michalec does not seem to be backing down. That principal is going to get spanked if he pushes this. (source)
Pope Francis, Awesome Again
It really makes it hard to be an Atheist when the Pope is so fucking awesome. Maybe that’s the point. Atheist or not, Pope Francis is one of my top living heroes. Pope Francis called Friday for governments to redistribute wealth and benefits to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the “economy of exclusion” that is taking hold today (source)
Donald Sterling and Privacy
This article I wrote on CNN.com got a little bit of attention. Much more than I expected.
Section 230 Appeal in The Dirty
It sounds like oral arguments in Dirty World v. Jones went well for Mr. Nik Ritchie. (source) I certainly hope so, as my client was an amicus in that case. (Amicus Brief)
Celebration, Florida: 20 years later
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Celebration, a master-planned community adjacent to Walt Disney World designed by Disney and intended to be a suburban utopia. I remember reading about Celebration when it was announced and being vaguely creeped out by the idea of a suburb engineered by the Magic Kingdom. Photos of the place didn’t help this perception, given that it looks more like The Truman Show than a real community. However, for the past nineteen or so odd years, I haven’t really given the place a second thought. Gizmodo recently posted an interesting article about what Celebration has become. In many ways, it is now just another (overwhelmingly white) suburb with the expected crime and foreclosure problems. However, even as a Las
Adam Steinbaugh – Anti-Involuntary-Porn Bad Ass
Kashmir Hill at Forbes has a great piece on a guy I’m proud to call a friend.
"Female Privilege"
I generally can’t stand critical race / gender theorist types who whine about “privilege.” Yeah, there are advantages to being whatever the fuck you are. There’s a time and a place when being a transgendered Azerbaijani will come in handy (although probably less often than being a white guy in America). Accordingly, I don’t subscribe to the views in this piece on “female privilege,” but it does lay bare the whiny shit you read on pseudo-feminist blogs that cry about “male privilege” in order to end conversations that aren’t going their way. Although I will side with the “I hate my dad” crowd, if they want to put a cactus up the ass of the douchebag who wrote this
Strippers at Funerals! (Yay Taiwan!)
In Taiwan, they have strippers at funerals. I want strippers at my funeral. If I don’t get them, I’m coming back to haunt you all.
This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps
This is a pretty familiar story line. A businessman wants to open a strip club. Some members of the local community decide that they do not want that kind of thing in their town. The resistance is usually faith-based (which is where the wheels really come off). I fail to understand how anyone can believe in a supreme being, who created all of heaven and earth, but would be upset at some boobies. The City this time is Destin, Florida. As reported in their local paper, it seems that the driving force behind the attempt to keep the strip club out of town was “ a vocal group of citizens determined to keep an adult entertainment establishment away from a
Breaking news(?) Babies intentionally cockblock
Babies cry to make sure their moms aren’t getting any. Yep… little tiny cockblockers. (source) Couldn’t we just assure them that we’re using birth control?
Judge Admonishes Expert Witness – Expert Witness Sues Blogger Who Reported On It
By Marc J. Randazza When a New York Supreme Court Judge told Dr. Michael Katz, the medical expert for the defense in a personal injury case, that he was lying about the medical examination he conducted, Dr. Katz knew the judge was wrong. So, of course, Dr. Katz responded as any aggrieved professional would – he filed a lawsuit. Because suing the judge who called him a liar would be an exercise in futility, Dr. Katz did what he believed to be the next best thing: He sued a blogger who covered the case — a blogger who reported on the judge’s comments, as enshrined in the public record. Dr. Katz’s complaint is the latest in a long line of
Bloggers are protected as "Media" – Comins v. VanVoorhis (Chapter 2)
It’s an all-too-common scenario: A blogger criticizes someone online, and then gets sued for his statements. But two things make this case unique: First, the plaintiff sued because of the blogger’s characterizations of him shooting two dogs at close range; second, the defendant blogger was in Florida – and thus protected by Fla. Stat. § 770.01. (I am proud to have represented Mr. VanVoorhis, the blogger in this case). Florida’s pre-suit notice statute, § 770.01, requires defamation plaintiffs to alert defendants to the allegedly defamatory material before filing suit. The statute reads, in its entirety: 770.01 Notice condition precedent to action or prosecution for libel or slander. Before any civil action is brought for publication or broadcast, in a
Law Enforcement Priorities
I’ve been involved in the debate over whether we should criminalize “revenge porn.” As much as I despise the practice, I don’t agree with new criminal laws to punish it. In fact, I just spent some time on a panel at Stanford Law School, in the company of three people I greatly admire — one of whom (Attorney Erica Johnstone — one of the founders of “Without My Consent“) is a strong proponent of enacting new criminal laws to punish “Non-Consensual Porn.” We had a very respectful debate over our differing opinions. During that discussion, I shared one of my rationales — that law enforcement just won’t give a shit. I’ve personally spoken with prosecutors about revenge porn cases in
Natural Selection in Action!
Once more, with feeling…. I will NOT listen to clergy members (at least if they tell me to let a hyena eat my balls)
I wish I was a good enough person to have thought of this
Great “protest” at Fred Phelps’ funeral. (here)
Revenge Porn Scumbags Spanked With $385,000 Judgment
Founders of the revenge porn site You Got Posted, Eric Chanson and Kevin Bollaert, have been ordered to pay an Ohio woman $385,000, including $75,000 in punitive damages, for distributing child pornography – photos of her when she was underage. (judgment) The plaintiff, represented by Randazza Legal Group, sued You Got Posted’s operators after finding several sexually explicit images of herself as a minor on the site. The $385,000 judgment is the end of her case against two of You Got Posted’s operators. The woman sued as “Jane Doe,” and the federal court for the Southern District of Ohio awarded her a judgment of $385,000 against Kevin Bollaert and Eric Chanson on March 18, 2014. The Court awarded the plaintiff
Was Saint Patrick Really Italian?
Irish is, without a doubt, the dominant immigrant culture in Massachusetts. Growing up there, in a town where Sicilians were the plurality, St. Patrick’s Day was always a little underwhelming. Instead, we celebrated St. Joseph’s day on March 19. Of course, every St. Joseph’s Day, someone would bring up the old story that St. Patrick’s day should be “our” day too — since St. Patrick was really Italian. We wanted to believe it, so we did. Every year, articles pop up repeating the story that St. Patrick was really Italian. Even GoErie.com repeats the tale. St. Patrick was born around 432 AD and died around 461 AD. He was Italian not Irish. Story is that St. Patrick was kidnapped at
No…. Section 230 does not prohibit you from being responsible
There are three kinds of people who talk about Section 230: 1) Those who know the law and speak the truth, 2) Those who know the law, but lie, 3) Those who don’t know the law, and still spew stupidity. I’m not going to try and separate the 2s from the 3s. I just want to spread the truth. But, once armed with the truth, would you dear readers please yell BULLSHIT at the 2s and 3s when you hear them speak? A really brief overview: 47 USC Section 230 is the federal statute that provides legal immunity to online service providers for lawsuits based on content provided by third parties. Because of this law, if someone posts a defamatory
Happy 50th Birthday, New York Times v. Sullivan
By Reed Lee, Esq. Today rings in the 50th anniversary of the SCOTUS decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. In my view, this was the single most important free speech case the United States Supreme Court has ever decided. Alexander Mieklejohn described the Sullivan decision as “an occasion for dancing in the streets.” I would like to suggest its 50th anniversary as an occasion for reflection on some of its most powerful words, which encapsulate its meaning: Thus, we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government
