News & Media
New York's democrats want to legalize marijuana
By J. DeVoy In an effort to bridge a $9 billion budget gap and be more like California, New York legislators want to legalize medical marijuana in order to realize $15 million in licensing fees. Though still subject to senate approval, the plan’s projected revenues have been included in the state’s 2010-11 budget. This proposal is intended as part of a larger, $136.2 billion package of spending cuts and new taxes — though not including new taxes on soda and cigarettes, which the legislature previously considered.
Harvard, Stanford cross the $50k rubicon
By J. DeVoy For undergrad tuition and fees.
Health care reform passes the house
By J. DeVoy Obviously, people have mixed feelings about this. The National Organization of Women is upset that the final bill doesn’t do enough to ensure women’s right to choose abortion. At the other end of the spectrum, Ferdinand Bardamu believes it will raise government expenses and taxes without doing anything to break the stranglehold of HMO’s over healthcare. Roissy’s stream of consciousness rant ties together a number of points about the failure of democracy, which social realists have been pointing out for some time as well. The winners: People over fifty. Not yet in the tender embrace of Medicare, those with the highest expenses due to the problems of middle age, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and heart
Flying cramps my style
By J. DeVoy Which one doesn’t belong? Remember: I am very condescending. h/t: securityeven
“All black people, leave this blog now.”
No, not really. You can stay. (I want you to stay). But, apparently, that statement makes me guilty of the crimes of “bias” and “intimidation and harassment” in the state of New Jersey. A 16 year old boy grabbed a public address system microphone at a New Jersey Wal-Mart store and said “Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers: Will all the black people please leave the store. Thank you.” (source) He and his friends then ran out of the store, and were off to more of whatever it is 16 year old dipshits do. For some reason, this incident sparked an investigation that finally led to this dangerous scofflaw being apprehended. The boy, from Atlantic County, was charged by Gloucester County authorities with
3d Circuit: "No child porn charges in sexting case"
by Jason Fischer The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit handed down its decision this week in the Pennsylvania “sexting” case, in which a prosecutor threatened to press child porn charges against a group of teenage girls for sending cell phone pictures of themselves in bras and underwear. You can read our anti-gender-bias coverage of the oral arguments here. In upholding the preliminary injunction requested by the girls’ parents, the Third has declared that District Attorney George P. Skumanick, Jr., cannot use the threat of prosecution to bully them into a court-ordered “re-education” program. (source) While education may be the right medicine (if you believe that there’s some disease), that decision is for the teens and their parents to
What I wish I had written about Newdow v. Rio Linda Unified School District
For those of you who didn’t notice last week, two judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wiped their asses with the Constitution, presumably because their unethical and spineless souls have been eaten by their imaginary friends. Honestly, this case is about as disingenuous as Bush v. Gore or Dred Scott v. Sandford. In response, I wrote a pretty brief piece on the case. Meanwhile, the anonymous author of the blog, Not a Potted Plant, took his time and really cranked out a piece of brilliant analysis of the case. It is here. It is dead on. It is brilliant. I am sure that he would not think as highly of me (heh). But that’s okay.
Time to Think About Abolishing Public Education?
Probably not. But, if this video is accurate (and the CATO Institute usually is) then it costs just as much to educate a student at the Anacostia school for future dropouts as it does to send a kid to Sidwell-Friends. If that’s the case, maybe those “voucher people” aren’t so crazy after all. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzvKyfV3JtE] H/T: Doski
Will California Mandate Condoms in Porn Productions?
California health and safety authorities are debating today whether performers in adult films should be legally required to wear condoms during porn shoots. California has its own OSHA department that regulates workplace safety matters, and it took up the issue after prodding from the AIDS healthcare foundation. The AIDS healthcare foundation takes the position that this is a workplace safety issue. Michael Weinstein, the foundation’s president, said: “The adult film industry has steadfastly refused to take any steps to protect its workers from diseases spread by blood-borne pathogens, resulting in thousands of employees becoming infected with sexually transmitted diseases.” In frank language, the petition describes all the sex acts that adult film performers undertake in the line of duty, which
Web Site Barred From Quick Release of New Ratings
Explaining the “hot news” exception to First Amendment law and its application to the investment banking sector. Although the exact wording and presentation of news content is copyrightable, facts are not, and can be freely used by all. There is an exception to this rule for hot news, which is news that is obtained because of a superior news-gathering source or mechanism, that does not extend the general First Amendment protection of facts to all other news sources. Read more…
Documents Unsealed in Vicaom v. Youtube — Youtube Shady; Viacom Scorned & Seeks Vast Shift in 512(c) Immunity
Today, a New York District Court unsealed documents in Viacom v. Youtube and my-oh-my there are some doozies inside. Both Viacom and Youtube come out looking like shady characters; Viacom looks like a scorned lover smashing up Youtube’s car up after their failed Youtube buyout and Youtube looks like an prick purposely trying to induce copyright infringement in brazen Napster/Grokster fashion. Although these are juicy gossip nuggets, the real meat here lies in how Viacom is defining service provider immunity under 512(c). Viacom’s argument is that Youtube is not eligible for immunity under 512(c) because they are not engaged in “storage,” but rather acting as a media company outside of what Congress intended to immunize. If successful, this would be
Alex Chilton . . . Rest in Slack
Alex Chilton died yesterday of an apparent heart attack in New Orleans. (source) You kids who think you may not know who he is … you probably do, you just don’t know it.
YKW? WYB. YWIA.
Some blogs and websites use the acronym NSFW – not safe for work – to describe their content. We don’t. We don’t believe in it, and here is why. Nevertheless, we understand that some of you work in environments where the MacKinnonites have ruined everything for everyone. Some lazy ass who is looking for a handout and a pay day could use the fact that you clicked on Adult Video News as a way to get her cha-ching and her vacation from the career that she didn’t want anyhow. So what to do? We’ll label stuff that might get you fired, but there’s no fucking way we’re calling it “unsafe.” We will label things like that with WYB. What does
NOT an Enforceable Trademark
How many times do I have to remind everyone — trademarks are not “word patents.” The adult movie studio, X-Play, has published a series of porno parodies where it throws the word “NOT” before the name of an otherwise well-known title. For example, X-Play published titles like “Not the Bradys XXX,” “Not Bewitched XXX,” “Not the Cosbys XXX,” “Not Married with Children XXX,” “Not Airplane XXX: Flight Attendants.” After a two year struggle to get a registration for the word “NOT,” X-Play finally wore down its examining attorney, and procured a registration. Now it thinks, all giddy like, that it can stop other studios from using the word “not” in their movie titles. with the proliferation and popularity of the
Did Perez Hilton fail to comply with § 2257 guidelines?
By J. DeVoy At True/Slant, there’s speculation that noted celebrity blogger Perez Hilton may have violated Federal obscenity laws. The upshot: According to AVN.com [WYB], the online home of Adult Video News, the adult movie industry’s trade publication, Hilton’s March 15 post, “Chuy Is an Official Porn Star!” [WYB], does not follow 18 U.S.C. § 2257 guidelines. The code requires websites that post explicit sexual content to comply to various regulations and rules, including a link to a “2257 compliance statement containing the name and address of the custodian of records, who is required to keep records relating to the age and identity of the performers in the content, as well as other information,” writes AVN.com’s Tom Hymes. Hilton’s post doesn’t. 2257 regulations were born out
Ninth Circuit denies 1st Amendment protections to brothel advertisements
By J. DeVoy Last week, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Coyote Publishing Inc. v. Nevada that Nevada’s restrictions on brothel advertising are lawful, holding that the state has an interest in regulating commoditized sex. This decision overturned the U.S. District Court of Nevada’s decision, which held that such regulations were unconstitutionally overreached pure commercial speech, and that the state had no compelling interest to support the regulations. The opinion, available here, found that Nevada’s regulations addressed only pure commercial speech. Consequently, the court applied the intermediate scrutiny test enunciated in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation v. Public Service Commission, which provides: At the outset, we must determine whether the expression is protected by the First Amendment. For commercial speech to come
Best puppy name?
By J. DeVoy Fenrir, or Cerberus? If you’re getting several female puppies, or a succession of them, make sure to work Gorgon into their names. Easily the most prestigious sisterhood in all antiquity. Have any national sororities tried to lay claim on the Gorgon name and legacy?
D.C. leads nation in cyber-criminals
By J. DeVoy According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center’s 2009 report on internet crime, the District of Columbia is home to more cyber-criminals per capita than any other state or district. With 116 cyber-criminals per 100,000 residents, D.C.’s concentration of such perpetrators is higher than neighboring Maryland (29.72 per 100k) and Virginia (24.12 per 100k). More information is available in the full report. Some other facts from the Internet Crime Complaint Center: Cyber-crimes are so common victims often neglect to report them. But the number of complaints to IC3 jumped more than 22 percent last year to 336,655. The amount of money victims lost more than doubled to nearly $560,000 from $265,000 in 2008. Non-delivery of goods or services is
Court sentences Erin Andrews's stalker to 30 months
By J. DeVoy Yesterday, Judge Manuel Real of the Central District of California sentenced Michael Barrett, a 48-year-old insurance executive from Chicago, to 30 months in prison for his infamous peephole video of ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews. Barrett had agreed to a 27-month term, but Real imposed the harshest possible sentence under the Federal guidelines. Barrett offered a teary apology to his victim. Andrews wasn’t having it. “You violated me and you violated all women,” Andrews told Barrett. “You are a sexual predator, a sexual deviant and they should lock you up.” After the sentencing, she said, “Thirty months isn’t enough.” All women? Tatiana Von Tauber previously considered this issue, and I think she’d disagree. The issue is that voyeurism
Memo to the Left: The Right now has your playbook
Ken at Popehat critiques the Texas State Board of Education’s decision to soviet-style remove Thomas Jefferson from the state’s history curriculum. You see Jefferson was a deist, and that fucks with right wing dipshits’ fairy tale that we are a “christian nation.” But… Ken stabs right through the Right wing, and hooks around to skewer the left too: What happened before the Texas State Board of Education is appalling. But to the lefties of academia who are particularly incensed, I must paraphrase the pothead kid from the anti-drug advertisements: they learned it by watching you, okay? They learned it by watching you. The academic left has contributed at least equally to the crass politicization of education, knowledge, and epistemology. The
