Wayne LaPierre
National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA 22030

Dear Wayne,

I just received your letter of July 18, 2011 inviting me to your upcoming American Values Leadership Forum at the end of September. I must say, the guest list looks like a conservative all-star lineup -- Michele Bachmann, Haley Barbour, John Boehner, John Bolton, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Oliver North, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney -- although, as a libertarian, I was disappointed to see you did not include Ron Paul. I guess he would have freaked the traditionals, huh?

By the way, I can't help notice you call them all "invited speakers," as if some of them haven't actually agreed to appear. I sure hope that's not the case, otherwise people might think you're padding the list to make yourselves look important. Ha, ha.

My reason for writing is to let you know about a matter of incompetence among your staff that reflects badly on the NRA and on you personally. You see, I was pretty excited that you, the Executive Vice President and CEO of the NRA, wrote to me personally to say, "I'm extending to you this invitation to be my personal guest at NRA's 2012 American Values Leadership Forum." So you can imagine my surprise that your letter was accompanied by an "Official R.S.V.P." that in included a list of ticket prices ranging from $125 all the way up to $1000!

I know! Right? You're a sophisticated Washington insider, a power broker representing millions of NRA members. There's no way you'd commit the serious etiquette breach of inviting someone to attend a gathering as a personal guest and then expect them to pay to be there. You need to look into this, because someone in your mail room is making you look like a total ass.

I just thought you should know.

In any case, as I am starting a new job and it would be imprudent to take the time off, I regret I must decline your kind invitation.

Sincerely,

Mark Draughn

Jonathan Turley links to yet another story of TSA idiocy:

The family was going through security when two TSA agents singled Drew Mandy out for a special pat down. Drew is severely mentally disabled. He's 29, but his parents said he has the mental capacity of a two-year-old, which made the experience that followed at metro Detroit's McNamera Terminal that much harder to deal with.

"You have got to be kidding me. I honestly felt that those two agents did not know what they were doing," Mandy told us.

Dr. Mandy claimed they asked Drew to place his feet on the yellow shoe line, something he didn't understand. They proceeded to pat his pants down, questioning the padding which was his adult diapers. When the agents asked Drew to take his hand and rub the front and back of his pants so they could swab it for explosives, his dad stepped in and tried to explain that Drew was mentally challenged.

"They said, 'Please, sir, we know what we're doing,'" Mandy said.

The TSA agents saw Drew holding a six-inch plastic hammer.

"My son carries his ball and his hammer for security. He goes everywhere with (them)," said Mandy.

The TSA it seems saw the toy as a weapon.

"He took the hammer and he tapped the wall. 'See, it's hard. It could be used as a weapon,'" Mandy explained.

So the TSA took the toy hammer away. Because they're assholes.

A little over four years ago, a gunman entered a building on the Virginia Tech campus and started shooting. By the time it was over, he had killed 32 people. After the fact, a lot of pundits said stupid things (e.g. blaming it on video games or the gays), but probably the worst comment was from John Derbyshire:

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake-one of them reportedly a .22.  At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage-your chances aren't bad.

At the time, I went into a great bit of detail about why this kind of thinking is wrong-headed, but it basically boils down to the fact that people in general aren't very good at responding to unusual situations under stress.

About a year later, a bunch of pundits got upset about a 78-year-old man who was supposedly hit by a car and left lying in the street as people walked by. It was apparently a great opportunity to decry the moral poverty of our society, and again I explained why they were overreacting.

I can't say for sure why people at the scene did what they did, but I think we should cut them some slack for the inability of this crowd of strangers to quickly organize a response to an unusual and frightening situation.

Maybe it's because I've spent so much time wrangling computers for busy executives, university professors, and engineers, but I'm not surprised or disappointed when very smart people have trouble figuring out what to do in novel and complex situations. And I've done enough reading about how people respond to crises to know that stress only makes it worse.

Now some people are criticising Dr. Mandy for his handling of the TSA agents who mistreated his mentally disabled son:

Whether it's the parent of a mentally challenged young man, or the mother of a baby, at what point does a parent decide not to back away and acquiesce in the abuse of their child?  Apparently, the tipping point is when told to do so by anyone wearing the uniform of a government agent. 

No doubt Dr. Mandy, an osteopath specializing in pediatrics per a quick search, has spent a good part of his life helping his son to enjoy life as best possible.  He likely a wonderful, caring father who has shown love and devotion to Drew, and that's great.

But some parents would rather take a bullet between their eyes than allow anyone to do harm to their child.  This situation hadn't escalated to the point where bullets were in the offing, and yet Dr. Mandy complied with the instructions of his TSA handlers.  Was there something about them to suggest they really did know what they were doing?  It's hard to believe.

So why did he just back off and let the TSA do as they pleased?  Where is the outrage?  Where is the will to tell the blue-shirted monkeys that they don't have the first clue what they're doing, that they are doing pointless harm to your child and that you are not going to be compliant sheep?

First of all, Dr. Mandy's a mature, accomplished individual. He's wealthy and white. This sort of treatment is probably a bit unusual, and he wasn't prepared for it.

Second, beyond explaining his son's problems to them, what would arguing have accomplished? Yelling at people always feels good, but could he have changed the TSA goon's mind? Gotten him to stop annoying his son? I doubt it.

Third, those TSA people are sort-of cops, but they're the worst kind of cops: A cop with very little power except for one specific area. That you happen to be in. Anyone who's run into a self-important mall cop knows what I mean. Escalating the situation could lead to the family being separated for questioning. Worse, if the father got himself arrested, Drew could have been tossed into some sort of state welfare system until he got out. (Or, since we're talking about the TSA, he could have been left to wander the airport, which might actually be safer.)

Years ago, I read a story by a tough-sounding criminal defense lawyer who got stopped on the highway by a cop who wanted to search the car. He knew he didn't have to let him, but he let the cop do the search anyway because the cost of a confrontation would be too high. You see, the lawyer had his dog in the car. If he got arrested, he was afraid of what would happen to his dog while he was locked up. How much more concerned do you suppose Dr. Mandy was for his son?

I've told my children that my love for them is such that I would jump in front of speeding bullet to protect them.  There have been moments when I'm put to the test, fortunately not a speeding bullet but a time when I am faced with the decision to either stand up and protect them at my own risk, or snivel and justify why I backed away.  I've made my choice. How any parent could back down is unfathomable to me.

Eh, the TSA goons were annoying his son, and they took away one of his toys. Maybe his father should have put on a symbolic show of resistance, but he only had a few seconds to make up his mind, and this is what he did.

And then he got the TSA to apologize and change their training, and the whole stupid incident was turned into a three-minute news segment that's getting attention all over the internet. It's quite possible that mentally challenged air passengers will be treated better as a result. It's not exactly a bad result.

God, Michael Moore is such a partisan freak sometimes. Here are his "Five Ways the Democrats Can Avoid a Catastrophe and Pull Off the Mother of All Upsets":

1. Immediate Wall-to-Wall TV Ads, Internet Videos, and Appearances Hammering Who the Hell Put Us in the Misery We're In.

That would be George Bush and the Republicans...and Barack Obama and the Democrats. The Democrats, including Senator Obama, weren't exactly shut out of Congress for the last six years or so. And if Obama and the Democratic Congress had focused on straightening out the economy instead of grandstanding on healthcare and paying off their union buddies in the auto and education industries, we'd probably be doing a lot better by now.

2. Indict the Criminals.

Announce that the Justice Department will seek indictments against both those who caused the economic collapse and those who became war profiteers. Call it for what it is: organized crime.

I agree in principle--although I don't think very much of the economic collapse was due to out-and-out crime--but good luck with that. Your man Obama has adopted a let's-not-dwell-on-the-past approach when dealing with crimes committed under the Bush administration. But that didn't stop his Justice Department from indicting some guy who blew the whistle on the previous administration. Oh, no, wouldn't want to encourage any more of that kind of thing.

3. Announce a Moratorium on All Family Home Foreclosures.

Eh. Losing your home has got to suck. A lot. But you know what else has got to suck? Wanting to buy a home and not being able to afford a nice one because thousands of homes are being held off the market by people who aren't making payments on them.

I suspect there's probably some sort of everybody-wins compromise here that no one in the government will ever consider. If we really aren't going to let the perfectly legal foreclosures go through, maybe we could set up some kind of fast-track owner-to-renter transition. Ownership of the homes would transfer to whoever could afford to buy them at whatever the price the bank was willing to sell them, but the current occupants would get to stay for a while as renters for, say, three years. This would clear up the mortgage logjam and maybe shift housing prices down into reasonable territory while still limiting disruption to families.

I don't know, that probably wouldn't work, but there's got to be something better than just robbing the banks.

4. Announce a New 21st Century WPA.

Oh God no. We don't need more government employees.

"Who's hiring? THE GOVERNMENT IS HIRING!" Put together a simple plan to hire enough people to repair our roads, fix up our aging schools, and rebuild our infrastructure. Fund this by taxing the richest 1% who have more financial wealth than 95% of Americans combined! Unemployment will drop to 5%.

Only if the Bureau of Labor Statistics is allowed to pull numbers out of their ass like Michael just did.

5. Declare That No Democrat Will Accept ANY Wall Street Money in the Next Election Cycle.

Pick a day in the coming week. Have all your fellow Democrats in Congress stand in front of the Capitol (with President Obama) and pledge that if America allows you to retain control of Congress, none of you will take a penny from Wall Street for the 2012 election. Instead, promise to accept donations of only $2, $5 and $10. You will also pledge not to take a job as a lobbyist or lawyer for ANY corporation for ten years after you leave Congress.

Expand that pledge to include unions and government agencies at all levels, and you just might have something, but...

The message will be a powerful one to the average American fed up with corrupt political hacks.

Oh, yes, Congress may be filled with corrupt political hacks, but I'm sure they'll shape up if they just make a fucking pledge! This won't do any good unless it has the power of law, and since Congress makes all the laws, even that won't do any good.

Radley Balko has been covering the issue of citizens who take videos of cops and get arrested for it. It's only illegal in a few states (including Maryland and Illinois) but that doesn't mean you can't get arrested for it anywhere. In Radley's latest piece, he interviews two prosecutors and the head of the Fraternal Order of Police, and they say some of the stupidest things I've ever heard.

Start with Joseph Cassilly, a prosecutor in Hartford County, Maryland:

"The officer having his gun drawn or being on a public roadway has nothing to do with it," Cassilly says. "Neither does the fact that what Mr. Graber said during the stop could be used in court. That's not the test. The test is whether police officers can expect some of the conversations they have while on the job to remain private and not be recorded and replayed for the world to hear."

In the Graber case, he was making a helmet cam video while riding on his motorcycle when a motorist cut him off and jumped out waving a gun. This crazy motorist turned out to be Maryland State Trooper Joseph David Ulher, driving an unmarked car and dressed nothing like a cop. This was all caught on the helmet cam.

Now Cassilly is prosecuting Graber for violating the wiretapping laws. Apparently, Cassilly thinks a cop somehow has a right to privacy even when he intrusively inserts himself into a video that started recording before he got there.

The second badgelicker is right here in Illinois. Here's the background:

Crawford County State's Attorney Tom Wiseman is currently bringing five felony charges against Michael Allison, a 41-year-old construction worker who recorded police officers and other public officials he thought were harassing him.

Now here comes the crazy:

"The only person doing any harassing here is Mr. Allison, who was harassing our public officials with his tape recorder," Wiseman says. "They may have problems with some bad police officers in some of your urban areas. But we don't have those problems around here. All of our cops around here are good cops. This is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. If we had a bad police officer here, we'd know about it, I'd know about it, and he'd be out. There's just no reason for anyone to feel they need to record police officers in Crawford County."

You say something as stupid as "we don't have those problems around here. All of our cops around here are good cops," and you expect us to just take your word for it? And obviously there was a reason for someone to "feel they need to record police officers in Crawford County," because somebody did. That feeling may not be justified, but without the recording, how would anybody know?

The king of the badgelickers is Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. His job is to stand up for the cops regardless of whether they're right or wrong, so he says the stupidest things by far:

Pasco, who supports these arrests, says he's worried that video could be manipulated to make police officers look bad. "There's no chain of custody with these videos," Pasco says. "How do you know the video hasn't been edited? How do we know what's in the video hasn't been taken out of context?

When a witness testifies that the defendant assaulted him, how do we know he's not lying? I think this is one of the reasons we have trials and lawyers and judges and juries, to figure out these kinds of things.

With dashboard cameras or police security video, the evidence is in the hands of law enforcement the entire time, so it's admissible under the rules of evidence. That's not the case with these cell phone videos."

Really? So if I witnessed, say, three gang members beating down a cop on a subway platform and I recorded it on my cellphone, I could testify to what I saw, but the video would be totally useless to the prosecutor? No one has ever made a case off an unofficial video? How stupid does Pasco think we are?

But what about cases where video clearly contradicts police reports, such as the McKenna case in College Park?

"You have 960,000 police officers in this country, and millions of contacts between those officers and citizens. I'll bet you can't name 10 incidents where a citizen video has shown a police officer to have lied on a police report,"

And if it's illegal to make videos of police on the job, we'll never be able to.

(Actually, I'm pretty sure I could just search The Agitator and Simple Justice for the word "video" and come up a lot more than 10 incidents.)

"Letting people record police officers is an extreme and intrusive response to a problem that's so rare it might as well not exist. It would be like saying we should do away with DNA evidence because there's a one in a billion chance that it could be wrong."

Uh, the malfeasance rate among cops is a lot higher than 1-in-a-billion. Just here in Chicago, we've had cops taking bribes, cops robbing stores, cops running hookers, cops working for street gangs, cops running jewelry theft rings, and cops killing people for money. On average, seven Chicago police officers each year are prosecuted for crimes. Are we supposed to believe that these guys wouldn't fudge their reports?

Heck, my last traffic ticket, the cop changed his story between the time he stopped me and the time he testified in court. It was probably an honest mistake, but if I'd been rolling video, he wouldn't have gotten away with it. Video doesn't just catch lying cops. It also catches honest mistakes and keeps them from corrupting the justice system.

"At some point, we have to put some faith and trust in our authority figures."

Yes, at some point we do, but why rely on faith and trust in the kinds of situations where we can have evidence? 

I mention Michael Allison's case to Pasco, and ask if he supports the Illinois law.

"I don't know anything about that case, but generally it sounds like a sensible law and a sensible punishment," Pasco says. "Police officers don't check their civil rights at the station house door."

Maybe not, but there is no right to privacy in a public place. That's why it's called "public."

We're talking about the right of ordinary citizens to make video recordings in a public place. In general, if you or I are out on the street and we discover someone is making a video of us, there's nothing we can do about it. Anybody can roll video at any time as long as they're not trespassing. How do you think all those celebrity gossip shows get videos of Lindsay Lohan behaving scandalously? How do you think 60-minutes can do ambush interviews?

Finally, isn't it ironic to hear cops and badgelickers talking about other people being "intrusive"? These are the guys whose job it is to butt into everyone else's business. They pull cars over in traffic and ask the driver for identification. They detain random people on the street and pat them down for weapons. It's more-or-less what we pay them for, but I have no sympathy for their complaints when it's their turn.

This is the seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of which I am not an employee or representative:

I am not trying to deceive you into thinking I am an agent or representative of the FBI, nor am I trying to assert any authority, FBI-like or otherwise. No matter what those goofballs at the FBI think.

(Hat tip: Popehat, Gideon, Mark Bennett, Jeff Gamso, and Scott Greenfield)

P.S. You can tell I'm not an FBI agent because in my picture I don't look like one. This is what an FBI agent looks like:

This bit of embarassment to my whole gender has already been shredded here and here and here, so let me just offer a constructive suggestion:

Dear Anne,

Congratulations on your wedding day. I wish you and Robert all the best.

Kind regards,

Andrew

Would that have been so fucking hard?

If you've ever spent time editing digital audio recordings, you know that they can become hard to understand when you compress them just a little too much...

(The story follows a short commercial.)

Radley Balko points out that former president Bill Clinton has an ugly editorial in the New York Times. It's the anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people. Clinton goes through the motions of mourning their deaths, but then he moves on to casting blame:

Finally, we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.

Clinton is, as usual, being careful with his words. He never quite comes out and accuses the "increasingly vocal minority" of causing the Oklahome City bombing, but there's a clear implication that those of us who question big government are somehow culpable.

As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged.

No. That's dead wrong.

I assume responsibility for what I say and what I do. But my words have no power to compel other people, so I'm not responsible for what other people do upon hearing them. And I'm certainly not going to assume responsibility for what happens when my words reach the "delirious" and the "unhinged." It would be foolish for Americans to censor their own voices in our democracy out of fear of how some unknown madman might respond.

Civic virtue can include harsh criticism, protest, even civil disobedience. But not violence or its advocacy. That is the bright line that protects our freedom. It has held for a long time, since President George Washington called out 13,000 troops in response to the Whiskey Rebellion.

Would that be the same George Washington who just a few years before had lead the armed insurrection against the British government? An insurrection which started, on this very day, in 1775 when local militia members killed 73 British soldiers in the battles of Lexington and Concord?

It's assinine for someone like Bill Clinton, who for eight years commanded the most powerful army in the world, to say that violence has no place in civic virtue. If violence can never be virtuous, then why do we have a Department of Defense? Why do we arm our police officers? Why does our government have within its grasp, the power to kill millions with the push of a button?

The answer is that although violence is terrible, it is sometimes also the only way to protect ourselves against those who would do violence against us. In our civilized world, we have agreed to limit the use of violence, wherever possible, by empowering a democratic government to act violently against those who threaten us. This near-monopoly on the use of violence is the defining characteristic of government. George Washington understood this well:

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -- it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Which is precisely why our government is the single greatest threat to our freedom. What other threats could there be? The Russians? The Chinese? North Korea? Criminal gangs? Deceitful bankers? None of those threats compare to the harm that could come if those who should serve us try instead to become our masters.

Back to Clinton:

Fifteen years ago, the line was crossed in Oklahoma City. In the current climate, with so many threats against the president, members of Congress and other public servants, we owe it to the victims of Oklahoma City, and those who survived and responded so bravely, not to cross it again.

No problem. I'm just a blogger. All I've got are words. I have no blood on my hands.

Bill Clinton cannot say the same. It was his administration that sent the ATF into the Branch Davidian compound to start a violent confrontation where none existed before. He commanded the army that killed a thousand people in Mogadishu in 1993. He launched cruise missles into Afghanistan and the Sudan.

Whether you believe Clinton was right or wrong to use force when he did, it's absurd that a man who has held the power to kill and used it should try to cast blame on those of us who only use words.

[Update, 12/29/09: the village idiot himself weighs in; see the comments.]

Here we go again . . .

Near as I can figure out, Josh Hendrickson of Minnetonka MN, didn't have anything useful to do last Saturday, so he headed on down to the Obama Worship Seminar at the Target Center, where thousands and thousands of Minnesotans were assembling to hear Barack Obama explain that the folks who had done such a wonderful job with delivering our mail are now ready and eager to take over our health care, or something like that.  

I can actually understand why somebody who has a Minnesota carry permit (often mistakenly called a "conceal and carry permit") might reasonably choose to carry a handgun under his outer clothing when heading into downtown Minneapolis -- or, actually, anywhere else.  Bad stuff can happen anywhere, and the area outside the Target Center is not a mugger-free environment, nor is the walk from there to wherever one parks.  As Hendrickson later, in a moment of lucidness, said to a Star Tribune reporter, when he leaves his house, "I grab my wallet, my keys, and my gun."  Nothing wrong with that.   .

And I can certainly understand why somebody would want to be part of a counterprotest against Obamacare.  "We are Americans.  We have the right to disagree and debate with any administration," as Hillary Clinton said, back before she joined this administration.  She was right then; she's right now.

So far, so good.

And it was also, all in all, pretty good that somebody in the Secret Service and/or MPD apparently spotted a telltale bulge at Hendrickson's waist.  Concealment isn't difficult, mind you, but a lot of folks who have taken inadequate carry classes haven't been given good directions as to how to do that, and some who have taken good carry classes weren't paying attention.

So, it was perfectly reasonable that a couple of MPD cops came over and checked out his carry permit -- something they've every right to do, under the law -- and then a Secret Service agent stopped by for a quick, professional chat.  It's not like there was any chance that Hendrickson was going to get near the President, after all -- hell, he couldn't have gotten inside the building without going through a metal detector -- and while there's no reason at all to think he planned on shooting President Obama, it didn't hurt to check him out.

But then, his little incident having been concluded with no muss, no fuss, and no arrest, Hendrickson proceeded to chase down the nearest reporter, and make sure that he got the attention that he so desperately craved.  Apparently dressing so that the authorities would "accidentally" see the bulge in his clothing hadn't gotten him enough attention, the poor dear.

He did get his attention, and he isn't liking it. The idiot's been posting up a storm, ever since. 

As it turns out, Josh Hendrickson's is pretty lengthy, and pretty bad:

• CASE NO. 27-CR-08-57490 June 8th, 2009 Convicted-5th Deg. Assault-Intent to Cause Bodily Harm

• CASE NO. 02-CR-07-7671 Oct. 6 2008 Convicted Disorderly Conduct-Brawling or Fighting

• CASE NO. 10-VB-07-8199 Apr. 16, 2008 Convicted Disorderly Conduct

• CASE NO. 27-CR-06-084595 Feb 14, 2007 Convicted 3rd Deg. DWI

• CASE NO. 27-CR-04-014473 Sept 29, 2004 Convicted Disorderly Conduct

• CASE NO. 27-CR-03-025265 Apr 21, 2003 Convicted Interfere with Emergency Call

• CASE NO. 27-CR-99-011521 Feb. 18, 1999 Convicted Alcohol con. .10 or more

• CASE NO. 27-CR-98-086285 Sept. 14, 1998 Convicted Reckless Driving

• CASE NO. 27-CR-96-109111 Jan. 9, 1997 Convicted Disorderly Conduct

Yucko.  Four convictions for disorderly conduct?  How the hell does anybody manage that?  Discon is, often, one of those bogus charges that cops throw at somebody who they really don't have anything on, and which quickly gets dismissed as soon as a real lawyer enters the case.  Four of them?  Interfering with an emergency call?  Two DWIs?  And let's not get into the pepper-spraying incident that cost him his most recent conviction for 5th Degree Assault.

Why somebody with that kind of record would try to draw both police and public attention to himself is pretty easy to explain. 

See, there's apparently been an open position in Minnetonka for a village idiot, and, having gotten fired from his job as a security guard for pepper-spraying a customer, Hendrickson was just looking for work.

Earth to Josh Hendrickson:  the position of village idiot doesn't pay well, or at all. 

Sheesh.  I was going to be blogging about another idiot, but . . . some other time. 

Addendum:  a fair number of folks have asked why this nimrod had a carry permit in the first place.  It's a good question.  The Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act is, by design and intention, a liberal law -- the notion is that somebody should not have a fundamental right restricted, except under unusual circumstances.  Hendrickson would have lost his right to possess firearms -- and his carry permit -- if he'd been convicted of any felony, or a domestic violence misdemeanor.  Among his cornucopia of convictions -- including an amazing four disorderly conducts, a couple of DWIs, interfering with a 911 call (!), and his latest feat:  the assault where he spend thirty days in the more structured environment suitable for his special needs -- there aren't any of those.

But there is some hope, and it's in the law:

(c) The sheriff of the county where the application was submitted, or of the county of the permit holder's current residence, may file a petition with the district court therein, for an order revoking a permit to carry on the grounds set forth in subdivision 6, paragraph (a), clause (3). An order shall be issued only if the sheriff meets the burden of proof and criteria set forth in subdivision 12. If the court denies the petition, the court must award the permit holder reasonable costs and expenses, including attorney fees.

Yup.  Hendrickson's sheriff can, if he chooses, file a petition to have Hendrickson's permit yanked, on the grounds that "there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under a permit."  Hendrickson's due process rights would be intact -- and, if he managed to beat the petition, he'd be awarded his lawyer's fees.

I don't think that's likely, though.  Sounds like a slam dunk to me, and I wouldn't find it at all surprising if Hendrickson loses his permit, sooner than later. 

I guess we'll see. 

Radley Balko once again demonstrates his total awesomeness.

Actually, Radley's not all that awesome, it just that his opponent at the Republican Liberty Caucus of Illinois is incredibly stupid. He accuses Radley of padding his resume by falsely claiming to be a biweekly columnist for Forbes.com, and then demonstrates that a search shows only two of Radleys columns.

The problem is that Radley doesn't claim he's a biweekly columnist for Forbes, he's a biweekly columnist for FoxNews.com.

Well, the folks at the RLCIL have changed their stupid post. (Radley still has screen shots of the old one.) Now they're claiming they actually searched the foxnews.com site and found only three links for Radley's columns. I tried it in Google myself, and I found four links, which is close enough, I guess.

However, I then spent another 30 fracking seconds poking around the Fox News site to get this complete index of all 50 of Radley Balko's columns over the last two years. These idiots don't even know how to navigate a web site!

Update: They've taken down the page, but Radley still has screen captures.

You know, when I look at the RLCIL's "About" page, I like what I see. Supposedly, they support:

Lower and fewer taxes
The right to privacy
The right to keep and bear arms
Balanced budgets through spending cuts
Educational choice
Freedom of speech
Protection of property rights
Market-based health care
Alternatives to the drug war
All-volunteer armed forces
Term Limits
Sound monetary policies
Deregulation
Phase-out of foreign aid
Ending federal welfare
Private options to Social Security
Free trade Privatization of government functions

I agree with most of those things, and so does Radley, so I find the fight between them confusing. 

 

I don't make this stuff up, you know.  So, here we go again.

For those who came in late, let's go back to the Assault Weapons Ban.  Passed in 1994, the feature of it that drew most attention from people who don't own guns was the ban on the importation, and manufacture of some scary-looking (to some) kinda sorta military-looking rifles, like this one. 
Understandable, really, given all the mass killings by pretty Wiccan girl -- oh, nevermind.

Less remarked upon, outside the gun community, was the ban on the sale of new standard capacity magazines -- that's the black, boxlike thingee that the cartridges go into. The theory was that since nobody -- other than a cop -- needs a magazine with more than ten rounds, and since magazines with more than ten rounds are bad if you don't need them, much -- or, at least some -- goodness would ensue. Now, yeah, I know that's silly.  Granted few people can switch mags as fast as this guy, but realistically, it wasn't much of a muchness to most people.  A bad guy who wanted to murder a bunch of people with his Glock would, instead of carrying a couple of spare 15-round mags, would carry three ten-round mags. 

A good -- or, at least, okay -- guy, who thought that he might need more than ten rounds would just carry a spare mag, or buy one of the "pre-ban" mags which were still available, to those who had the cash.

But something did happen.  Since manufacturers could no long make guns for the noncop market that were designed around, say, fifteen-round magazines, they started designing more guns around ten-round or lower-capacity mags. 

The Assault Weapons Ban inspired a new class of smaller guns -- pocket pistols with ten rounds in fairly large calibers, like, say, these: (Two of the above are in 9mm; one's in .45.  Perfectly reasonable self-defense calibers.)

Which, naturally, made the folks in the anti-gun industry happy?  Nah.  They decided that the relatively new, smaller guns -- largely a response to their own sponsored legislation -- were evil:  "Pocket Rockets". 

Well, the Assault Weapons Ban has been dead for four years, and people can, if and when they want to, buy new, standard-capacity magazines, even if the mags happen to hold fifteen or sixteen rounds, but the "pocket rockets" remain.  (And for good reason; pocket carry, while not a cop thing, is often a very useful way for somebody who doesn't want to draw attention to himself to keep a self-defense tool handy.)

Now, it would be untrue to say that the gun manufacturers are terribly sympathetic to the hysterical shouts from the antigun industry, but they do listen.  Smith and Wesson, after some years of development, came up with a brand new handgun, developed around a brand-new round:  the .500 Magnum: As a carry gun -- for either good or bad purposes -- it would be pretty hard to imagine a worse choice.  For one thing, it's a great, big, heavy sucker -- even empty, the lightest variant weighs three and a half pounds.  It's hideously expensive to practice with -- each trigger pull is going to throw almost three bucks downrange.

Basically, it's designed for folks for whom dealing with humongous recoil is a lot of fun, who are maybe going to be hunting something like grizzly bears with a handgun, and who have definitely have lots of money -- forgetting ammo, the gun itself is going to run around a grand.

Surely, it's something that even the hysterics at the Brady Center and the VPC couldn't complain about.  Heck, if Plaxico Burress had been trying to hide .500 Magnum in his shorts --

No, I'm not going to go there.  Never mind.  Back to the antgun folks.  Having nothing real to complain about, they decide that the .500 is a "big boomer" (yeah, it is; I've been around one going off, once; it is kind of loud) and a "vest buster".

There's just no pleasing some people.

Media mogul Ted Turner, being interviewed by Tom Brokaw:

MR. BROKAW: You met Vladimir Putin when he was just an aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg. ...most people see not in his eyes a soulful person, but the eyes--three letters, as someone has put it: KGB. That he is...

MR. TURNER: Well, he had that background. But you know, we have an FBI and, and, and, and, and we're not prejudice against somebody who's worked at the FBI. It's an honorable place to work. And the KGB, I think, was an honorable place to work. And it, it gave people in the former Soviet Union, a communist country, an opportunity to do something important and worthwhile.

What a clueless cretin. For all its problems, the FBI is nothing like the KGB. Not even close. Lubyanka Prison made Gitmo look like Club Med.

(Hat tip: Kip)

People are sometimes shocked that I'm wary of laws requiring sex offenders to register. How could I possibly object to alerting communities about rapists and child molesters?

Because the laws are written by grandstanding legislators, and grandstanding legislators are often stupid and callous, and stupid, callous legislators are a much greater threat than some sex offenders.

New Jersey resident Ryan Narciso could get three years in jail for having an air-powered pellet gun in his car, according to a story by Ken Serrano at MyCentralJersey.com:

The gun, a Gamo P-23, was sitting under the rear window of the 2004 coupe. Looking like a larger-caliber handgun, the firearm drew a quick response from the bicycle-patrol officer who stopped Narciso for doing 40 mph in a 25-mph zone. With gun drawn, the officer arrested him.

Granted, it was a little foolish of Narciso to keep a realistic-looking gun in his car where it would be visible through the window. Even if the cops didn't spot it, there's a good chance someone would try to steal it.

Still, a three-year prison term for illegal possession of a gun seems excessive. It's not as if he was brandishing it, or even carrying it.

Also, did I mention it was an airgun? Since when are air-powered guns (pellet guns, BB-guns, etc,) considered firearms? When I was a kid, I used to shoot a pellet gun in my backyard in Chicago. Nobody cared. I guess nowadays the people who run our local governments are just pussies.

Based on the story, it seems unlikely that when the New Jersey legislature increased the penalties for unlawful gun possession, they intended to include airguns. This sort of inane law enforcement seems like a good scenario to use a little prosecutorial discretion...or jury nullification.

The story Radley Balko was in town for last month is now officially out in the open, with an op-ed in the Chicago-Tribune:

At Reason Magazine, we recently took a look at how the 35 most-populous cities in the United States balance individual freedom with government paternalism. We ranked the cities on how much freedom they afford their residents to indulge in alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex, gambling and food. And, for good measure, we also looked at the cities' gun laws, use of traffic and surveillance cameras, and tossed in an "other" category to catch weird laws such as New York's ban on unlicensed dancing, or Chicago's tax on bottled water.

The sad news, Chicagoans, is that your town came in dead last. And it wasn't even close.

The comments at the Trib are interesting. One of them rightly questions the methodology of the study---this sort of thing is hardly subject to scientific rigor---but others go a long way toward explaing why we're dead last:

The more dense cities get, the more rules that are needed to force, yes force, people to live together peacefully. Many people living in cities today grew up in the 'burbs where they were pretty much spoiled rotten. Uncouth, loud, self-centered, demanding, no sense of community, in other words, typical Americans.

Right back at you, pal.

Then there's "Matt Was Here" with this gem:

The headline to this article should be "Chicago Tribune headlines neocon propaganda on its web site." The restrictions on smoking in those taverns has allowed me and everyone else who likes health and clean air the "freedom" to frequent them.

Matt, ignoring for the moment that you're using "neocon" as a synonym for "opinions I don't like," if smoking in taverns took away your "freedom" to patronize them, don't you think that outlawing smoking in taverns has taken away the freedom of non-smokers? You got what you wanted by taking away what other people wanted. You're a thief.

As is "maddog":

Yeah, your right - if I could sit in a smokey bar with a prostitute eating trans fats shooting geese with my handgun and eating their artificially enlarged organs, Chicago would be much more fun. Idiots. Do you ever think that it is more fun to go to a bar to see a band and not come out smelling like an ashtray? Or that trans fat do not make foods taste better, they just risk your health so corporations can make their crappy food cheaper?

Did you every think of finding or founding restaurants and music venues that that meet your standards instead of relying on the city to force all of them to meet your standards?

MDK writes in response to another commenter:

Maybe you are too young to remember what Chicago was like in the 60's and 70's. A **** hole. This city was a dump! It's so beautiful now that tourist even come. We used to be known as the slaughterhouse capital of the world with gangsters at every corner. Now we are known for our culture, architecture and beautiful lakefront.

And, as always, our political corruption. Also, I live here, why would I give a shit what the tourists think? I want a city that works for me.

ADK says:

Chicago in last place among cities to do dirt in? I'll take it. That's called progress... Who says hanging out in bars and pouring poison down one's throat ever added to the quality of life in any city?

People who live here and like to hang out in bars maybe? If they didn't like it they wouldn't do it. A lot of policies sound like good ideas if you don't care about the people they hurt.

And the Unclear On the Concept award goes to "matty" for this:

I'm fine with most things listed. I just wish the city wasn't so anti-art shows, dancing or having fun in general.

Sigh. There's no hope for us, is there?

Morons insult us because of our weight.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Rush Limbaugh and the things he stands for, but a surprising number of his detractors feel compelled to point out that he's fat.

It was the same with Rosanne Barr when she started her sitcom. Lots of people commented on and complained about her weight, without noticing that her show was brilliantly written and very funny.

(For that matter, why do so many people mention Monica Lewinsky's weight without noticing that she was easily the most honorable person involved in that whole scandal, on either side.)

I knew that posting video of myself would lead to similar comments, but I didn't expect them quite this quick. Somebody apparently named Tony Picerella posted a comment on my piece about the California school that faked student's drunk driving deaths to scare their classmates into not driving drunk:

You obviously don't get the problem we have here in California with teen drivers but instead jumped on the bandwagon to bash the program and the CHP officer. You are also a fat stubby ugly man, stop video taping your self, stick to firing off shots from the safety of the soapbox you have been given.

Hey Tony, nobody gave me this soapbox. I built it, thank you very much.

And you know what? At least I don't tell disturbing lies to high school kids. That's not a very nice thing to do, which was the whole point of picking on the cop: He wouldn't like it if somebody used terrible lies to teach him a lesson.

(To be fair to Officer Newbury, he may well think this is as stupid of an idea as I do, but it's what his bosses are making him do.)

As for the drunk driving problem with California teens, I'll take your word that there's a problem, but what I don't get is how a stunt like this could be the solution. Is there any evidence that telling traumatic lies like this has ever improved any public health problem?

Teen pregnancy? Drag racing? Huffing solvents? Smoking? Obesity? Anything?

Update: I keep thinking about that comment. "Fat" is a medical observation, and "ugly" is in the eye of the beholder, but "stubby"? What the hell?

Update 2: Hmmm. Fat, ugly, and mumbling...it's like I'm Marlon Brando!

Mike at Crime & Federalism says "Yes, they do."

His evidence is pretty compelling: The story of a 78-year-old man being hit by a car and left lying in the street as people walk on by. (You can click to see security video of the hit-and-run. It's a little shocking.)

A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver and lies motionless on a busy city street as car after car goes by. Pedestrians gawk but appear to do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. A man on a scooter slowly circles the victim before zipping away.

The chilling scene -- captured on video by a streetlight surveillance camera -- has touched off a round of soul-searching in Hartford, with the capital city's biggest newspaper blaring "SO INHUMANE" on the front page and the police chief lamenting: "We no longer have a moral compass."

It sounds like another shocking case of people doing nothing to help someone in trouble. We hear about these things every once in a while, and then all the pundits start ranting about indifference, cowardice, and the shocking selfishness of our times.

I don't believe it.

Most of these cases have more nuance to them than the first reports---and subsequent rants---reveal. In this case, for example, a passing police car stopped at the scene a minute and a half after the incident. So when we read that nobody did anything to help, it really means that nobody did anything in the first 90 seconds.

Stop right here and ask yourself: What would you do? Your first reaction is probably that you'd help the guy. Great. Now how would you do that? Exactly what would be the first thing you do to help the guy? Would you walk up to him? Why? What will you do when you get there? Unless you have the training, you probably have no idea how to treat someone with such severe injuries.

From the time you read "Stop right here" at the beginning of the last paragraph has probably been about 10 seconds. You have 80 more seconds to figure out what to do. Think about it.

Unless you have emergency medical training, the most obvious thing to do is to call 911 and tell the dispatcher what happened. As it happens, the Hartford 911 center got four calls about the hit-and-run within 60 seconds.

About the only other thing an untrained person could do is block traffic so the poor guy doesn't get hit again. Since, in fact, he didn't get hit again, perhaps this wasn't necessary in the time frame.

Now let's back up a bit and think about the mental state of the witnesses. Before they could respond to the accident, they had to recognize it as an accident. That's not as easy as it sounds.

One night a few years ago, a friend of mine was driving along the street when he saw one guy shoot another guy. His only thought at the time was "That was rude!" It wasn't until he'd driven on another couple of minutes that he really understood what it was he had seen and realized he needed to talk to the police.

My friend is not alone in this. Plenty of people have witnessed robberies, rapes, and murders and not quite recognized what was going on. It's not something you're used to seeing, it's not something you expect to see, so it takes a little time to sink in.

And that's only if you actually see the accident. Anybody who wasn't watching the street as the accident happened only heard a crashing noise, maybe a scream or two, and when they looked around there was a guy collapsed in the street. It takes a few precious seconds of mental work to figure out that the guy must have just been struck by a car.

Witnesses to the accident could also have been hampered by their own body's reaction. Any sudden change in the environment---especially if it appears violent or threatening---can trigger the human flight-or-fight reflex: Chemicals pour into the bloodstream to prepare the body and brain for a life or death struggle, making the body faster and stronger.

These temporary superpowers come at a price, however: People get stupid. The theory is that the brain cuts the higher reasoning centers out of the decision-making process because they're too slow. People running in this mode can perform learned behavior very quickly---running, fighting, even driving a car---but they lose most of their ability to adapt to novel situations. Never having seen a hit-and-run accident before, they are literally unable to think about it clearly.

(Those of us sitting back and watching the whole thing on video don't have that problem. We can can think clearly about the situation, and we can make unrealistically harsh judgments about the people who actually experienced it.)

Finally, there are the effects of crowd psychology to consider. When people in a crowd encounter something new, they look to other members of the crowd for cues to proper behavior. It's harder to overcome your personal confusion and help an accident victim if nobody else has stepped forward to help. In the video of the scene, you can see a group of people taking hesitant steps toward the victim, each step presumably reinforcing their sense that they're doing the right thing.

On the other hand, the presence of a crowd tends to diminish a sense of personal responsibility. Most people at the accident scene have no clue how to help the victim, so they wait for someone to step forward and take charge. From the television interviews, we know that people at the accident scene were standing around horrified that no one was helping that poor man lying in the street, not realizing that they themselves were the only help available. Eventually, people realize what's going on, and the spell breaks.

I can't say for sure why people at the scene did what they did, but I think we should cut them some slack for the inability of this crowd of strangers to quickly organize a response to an unusual and frightening situation.

Scott Greenfield was ranting against relying too much on "common sense":

One of the offshoots of the push that resulted in the elevation of George W. Bush to the presidency was the empowerment of "regular" people.  This meant that views and opinions, under the category of "common sense," were raised to a level equal to, or above, that of thoughtful analysis.

...

One of the things I hope to bring to the conversation is the rejection of those who, through their prolific attacks, their vapid points and their offensive vehemence, push "common sense" at the expense of actual thought.  I understand that thinking hurts, but no pain, no gain.

Some of the folks Scott is talking about don't just ignore thoughtful analysis, they attack it. When their opponents offer data and theories and analysis, they accuse them of attempting to confuse people, of attempting to obscure the obvious truth revealed by common sense. We see a lot of that in the blogosphere, a fair amount of it from mainstream media pundits, and all too much of it from our political class.

Years ago, I read an article by economist Paul Krugman in which he gave people like this a very appropriate name. He calls them accidental theorists.

Regardless of what you call it, any general claim about how the world works is a theory. You can call it common sense or plain truth or straight talk, but if you make any claim more general than an observable fact, you're essentially proposing a theory. This theory can be examined and tested and compared to other theories about the same subject.

Some of these "common sense" theories have been tested and found wanting. Others don't even have to be tested because they are internally inconsistent. Many are rhetorical tricks that have no substance.

That's not to say that common sense theories are always wrong. It's just that they have to be checked, like anything other theory.

Over at the conservative blog Illinois Review, John Ruskin quotes with approval from an unnamed letter writer who has a few things to say about the recent protests against stronger immigration enforcement (elisions mine) :

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests. Let's say I break into your house. Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.

But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).

...

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.

It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house.

And what a deal it is for me!!! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.

Hmm. That's an interesting analogy, and I know there are advocates for illegal aliens who've made absurd demands.

That said, let me offer another analogy:

Let's say I own a house, and I've hired you to tend my lawn. It's a great deal for both of us. You get money and I get a great lawn.

However, my neighbor doesn't like you, so he forces you off my property at gunpoint, and just to teach me a lesson, he steals some of my stuff.

You and I point out that our work arrangement doesn't involve him, and it's none of his business, so he should stay out of it. In his imagination, however, if I hadn't hired you I would have hired one of his friends, so he insists that you've stolen the money that his friends would have earned if I'd hired them instead.

Furthermore, when his wife sees how hard you work and offers you some lemonade, he accuses you of working on my lawn to make it easier for you to steal his lemonade.

When you and I point out how irrational he's being, he responds by accusing you of trespassing on his street, ignoring the fact that it's my street too, and I invited you.

There's a place for reasonable immigration rules, but people who try to use the force of government to control who the rest of us are allowed to do business with are the moral equivalent of the playground bully who doesn't like it when his friends play with kids he doesn't like.

Lindsay Beyerstein links to an Ad Council ad that's apparently trying to encourage kids to be careful what they post online. You can see it for yourself here, but to save you time, Lindsay's description will do:

The ad shows a girl called Sarah silently enduring public harassment from a series of progressively older and creepier strangers who have been reading her webpage.

Lindsay thinks the ad is a bad idea:

Unfortunately, this ad does nothing to empower kids to stay safe. Instead, it sends the message that girls who are being harassed by adults brought their misfortune on themselves.

I see what Lindsay's getting at. Women who are attacked by men are sometimes accused of leading them on, perhaps by wearing sexy clothing or some naughty flirting. Some people blame the victim.

But it's not always blaming the victim to point out someone else's risky behavior. Suppose I pay my bill at a bar by pulling out a large wad of cash and peeling off a few bills, then when I leave the bar someone follows me out, beats me up, and takes my money. The following statements are both true:

• The guy who took my money committed a crime.
• I was foolish to flash that much cash.

It's the same if, say, a woman spends every weekend going to nightclubs, getting drunk, and meeting strange men. If one of those men rapes her, we can make two observations:

• The guy committed a violent crime.
• She engaged in high-risk behavior.

Admittedly, some people would use her risky behavior as a way of blaming the victim, but there are also plenty of good reasons for pointing out her risky behavior, such as instructing her how to reduce the risk, or instructing others how to evaluate the risks inherent in their own behavior.

Predictably, the Ad Council's message is "Think before you post, little girl." Just once I'd like to see a campaign called "Think before you stalk, dude." Or: "Just because a minor posted this doesn't give you the right to throw it in her face, creepy adult."

Guys who harass young girls are a lot less likely to be affected by a public service announcement than the girls they're harassing. To illustrate what I mean, let's take away the sex and gender politics. Suppose we want to craft a public service announcement to fight the Nigerian scam email problem. Which message would be more effective?

1. Nigerians asking for help getting money out of their country are just trying to scam you.
2. Hey Nigerians, stop trying to scam people!

Sometimes it's a lot easier to educate potential victims rather than to try to change the behavior of predatory criminals.

I'm especially disturbed by the scene where the school coach yells "Loved your tattoo, Sarah" as the main character walks by football practice. In real life, such a coach would be fired for harassment.

Really? I don't have good sense of what constitutes harassment at the high school level, but are tattoos considered sexual? Is it because he apparently doesn't know her? Are coaches at high schools not supposed to look at student web pages? Are male employees at schools simply not supposed to comment on the appearance of female students? Where do they draw the line? "Nice breasts" is obviously wrong, but how about "Nice hair"? Seriously, the coach's comment does strike me as a little odd, but is it really that bad?

Besides, the point of this spot is that stuff you post might be seen by people like your teachers.

Why is the AC making it seem as if clear-cut sexual harassment is a natural "consequence" of posting personal info online?

This campaign is obviously supposed to help minors avoid adult sex predators. It's irresponsible for the AC to present the image of a student suffering in silence as men catcall and harass her.

First of all, what "clear-cut sexual harassment"? Here's what happens in the video:

1. A cute guy she doesn't know says "Hey, Sarah."
2. The coach says "Love the new tattoo, Sarah."
3. Sarah overhears two guys on the mall escalator talking about her.
4. Ticket taker at the movie theater says "Hey Sarah, what color underwear today?"
5. Guy cleaning tables in the food court says "Hey Sarah, so when you gonna post something new?"

Yes, the guy who asks her about her underwear is going too far, but what's so sexual about the other comments?

Second, the reason Sarah suffers in silence is that the video makers wanted to present all these strange encounters without revealing how these people knew so much about Sarah. If she asked the coach how he knew about her tattoo, it would reveal the point of the message too early.

The take home message is straight out of Ann Althouse: If the internet becomes your scarlet letter, it's your own damned fault.

No, the point is that if strangers find out stuff about you because you posted it on the internet, it's your own damned fault. Because it is.

It's the chance I take by running a blog, and it's the chance everyone on MySpace takes by posting a profile. That's the whole point of the public service message.

The irony is that this message is probably supposed to be aimed at boys and girls--but it's backfiring because it's sending kids, especially boys, the message that it's okay victimize people who are indiscreet.

Now I'm just totally mystified. If I email you a photo of my naked ass, and you reply "Nice ass!" you have not victimized me. And if I post a photo of my naked ass on my blog and you run into me tomorrow and say "Nice ass!" you still have not victimized me.

I really don't understand how people can post something on the frackin' World Wide Web and then complain when somebody says something to them about it. It's like Britney Spears posing naked and pregnant for a magazine cover and then whining to the press that she has no privacy.

Yet I've seen a number of people who post stuff on livejournal.com and and then are shocked—shocked!—when strangers comment on it.

I had my own run-in with that attitude when someone instant messaged me and told me she liked my photography. I thanked her, and then out of curiosity I decided to check for some kind of AIM profile. I double-clicked on her screen name, and that led to a search box which lead to her MySpace page. It turned out she was only 17, but since making contact was her idea, I invited her to be one of my MySpace friends.

She said it was creepy for me to do that. I think it was a little naive of her not to realize that the contents of her public MySpace page is...public. The Interweb is not a well-kept secret.

Later on, in a comment, Lindsay says this:

We're meant to infer that the coach has been reading this girl's MySpace page without her knowledge. That would make him at best a skeeve and at worst a consumer of child pornography.

Reading her MySpace page without her knowledge? What the heck is that supposed to mean? Are we supposed to let people know when we read their web page? My MySpace profile has been viewed just over 2300 times since I posted it, and less than 1% of those people have let me know they were viewing it. That's how MySpace works. That's how the World Wide Web works.

On the internet, everyone can hear you scream...or see what your tattoo looks like.

Apparently, Senator John McCain has a MySpace page. Rather than using the boring default design, whoever built the page for McCain used a customized MySpace template that he got from Mike Davidson.

Only problem is, he forgot to credit Mike, which is all Mike asks for if you want to use his template.

Well, that wasn't the only problem. The web designer also left in the original image URLs, so that the template images were being served from Mike's server rather than McCain's server. Essentially, although probably unintentionally, the McCain campaign was stealing bandwith from Mike.

Mike didn't like that, so he decided to teach them a playful lesson. You see, when you pull your page content from someone else's server, you give them control over your page content... Visitors to Senator McCain's page got a little surprise this morning:

This hack was in no way illegal, of course, because Mike is free to change the content of his own server any time he wants.

You can read Mike Davidson's complete explanation of what he did.

(Hat tip: Sour)

"I didn't know the president would get bumped off. I thought maybe he would get wounded."

According to this Reuters piece, that's Cutter Cash, age 44. He's talking about the movie Death of a President.

Exhibit 1: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are all over the internet, and Stephen Colbert talks about his YouTube popularity on the show. It's the internet buzz that everyone on television wants for their own show.

Well...everyone except the folks who run the Comedy Central channel:

I received a couple of emails from YouTube this afternoon (see below) notifying me that a third party (probably attorneys for Comedy Central) had made a DMCA request to take down Colbert Report and Daily Show clips. If you visit YouTube, all Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park clips now show “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

This is legally correct—they own the show and have the right to control its use—but what the heck are they thinking?

I can understand the case for South Park. They sell the South Park seasons on DVD. As I write, the 8th season is in the top 200 of all DVDs sold on Amazon. If all the best parts of South Park are available free on YouTube, who will buy the DVDs?

But when it comes to the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, are they insane? What else are they going to do with the old episodes? It's current events television. Nobody wants to even watch last year's episodes on TV, let alone buy DVDs full of the stuff. Amazon has only one listing for Daily Show DVDs, and that's for the Indecision 2004 Special

Exhibit 2: Universal Studios presumably decided to greenlight the movie Serenity largely because the series it's based on, Firefly, had such a rabid fan base. To take advantage of this, they provided an unusually large amout of artistic and promotional material and encouraged fans to participate in the marketing of the movie by setting up web sites and printing bumper stickers.

It seemed to work fairly well:

While the theatrical release of Serenity met only modest success at the box office, the Browncoats campaign maintained momentum through the DVD release, whose success spurred additional sales of the original Firefly DVD. At one point following the release of Serenity on DVD, both Serenity and Firefly were #1 and #2 on Amazon.com's bestseller list despite the Firefly DVD being over a year old.

But now, this:

"11th Hour Art’s offering for sale and sale of unauthorized “Serenity” shirts may give rise to multiple violations of law, giving rise to various causes of action for copyright infringement, counterfeiting, and unfair competition, among other claims. Recovery on one or more of these claims may include attorney’s fees, treble damages, statutory damages, and punitive damages."

-------------------------------------------

The Demand continues, and includes such stipulations that within 72 hours I must agree to: pay a retroactive $8,750 licensing fee; the permanent closing of my shop; turn over any merchandise referring to the Universal Property; and provide the last 12 months complete sales records... there's more, but that's the gist... oh, except for the threat of federal court and the statutory damages thingy of $150,000 per infringed work... don't want to go leaving that part out.

I guess you can stop the signal.

Again, Universal is legally in the right. Or maybe it's Fox forcing Universal to do it. This was a woman selling Serenity-themed T-shirts without licensing the rights.

But what the heck are they thinking? For $8,750 they're going to alienate a huge number of fans of the show. Not to mention that next time Universal tries to enlist their fans in promoting a movie, they'll probably get a cold reception.

Or an invoice.

[Update: I have corrected the gender of the artist behind 11th Hour based on a comment by Tom McAllister. His comment also had the best summary of the situation: "this was a ham-fisted first approach by the legal department of a corporation that the fans had thought of as their partners in fantasy." That's beautifully put.]

The oft-brilliant Jennifer has found another example of TSA cluelessness.

Hawaii has suffered a stong earthquake which has knocked out power all over. Tourists are stuck there with nothing to do except be a burden to the troubled state. They want to leave, and local emergency workers would like them to leave.

Fortunately, the airports have emergency power and are quite capable of managing flights. Unfortunately,

Rod Haraga, director of the state Transportation Department, told KSSK said that inbound flights were being allowed to land, but outgoing flights were not taking off because the TSA doesn't have enough power to screen passengers.

Because, you know, how could anybody at the Transportation Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security—which also runs the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—have anticipated that some sort of crazy emergency would make make the power go out?

Jennifer explains how to beat TSA security. As you might suspect, it's not very hard.

Michelle Malkin
5777 W. Century Blvd.
Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045

Dear Ms. Malkin,

I don't really know who you are, but it's all over the blogosphere that you are apparently upset about this picture of you in a bikini:

Actually, I see you're claiming that isn't a picture of you. You're saying it's a fake. I believe it. After all, why would you lie about something like that? It's not like it's pornographic or even nude. It's just a bathing suit.

Yet your reaction was...interesting...

The idiots are so blinded by hate they can't see a two-bit Photoshop from some hater's bogus Flickr site? And they couldn't bother to ask me before attempting to embarrass me and calling me a slut?

You embarrass yourselves.

Rather than demand that they take their lying lies down, I am asking that they leave their smears up for all the world to see.

***

I am also filing a complaint with UNC School of Law Professor Muller's employer. Here's the dean's contact information. This has gone too far.

Wow. Um, Michelle...as LeShawn Barber says:

By the way, even if the photo were genuine, posing in a bikini is not the same thing as being a skank.

Which is sort of a good point.

Yet here you are, acting like it's a terrible thing they're accusing you of. Wearing a bikini. I mean, I can tell there's some history there between you folks, but how is a fake picture of you in a bikini a sign of hate? In this later posting, you even talk about suing.

I think your sarcasm detector is a little out of spec.

On the other hand, you seem to be drumming up a lot of traffic for your attackers, and all of it over accusations of a slight character imperfection on your part. In that spirit, I'd like to draw your attention to this exclusive copy of an Olive Garden restaurant receipt proving that on the evening in question you left the waitress a measly 6% tip:

Note that the waitress in question has signed and authenticated this copy for for me, which is proof positive that it's real.

I am eagerly awaiting all the page hits I'll get when you respond.

Sincerely,

Mark Draughn

[Update added July 2009: I can't believe I have to make this explicit, but I guess enough time has passed that the context has been lost and people no longer remember how silly this was, so let me make this plain. The photo is fake. We know this because people have found the original image that had a different head. The receipt is even more fake. I know this because I created it in Photoshop to poke fun at the whole issue.]

Sort of:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Get ready for a segregated ''Survivor.'' Race will matter on the upcoming season of the CBS show as contestants will be divided into four tribes by ethnicity. That means blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians in separate groups.

The announcement was made on CBS' Early Show. Host Jeff Probst says the idea ''actually came from the criticism that 'Survivor' was not ethnically diverse enough.'' He says the twist fits in perfectly with what ''Survivor'' does, saying the show is ''a social experiment. And this is adding another layer to that experiment.'' Probst says contestants had mixed reactions to the racial divisions.

Can a reality show re-creating slavery be far behind?

"It'd be better if I had cancer, then you wouldn't tell me what I'm going through is just a phase...You wouldn't see my condition as a lack of willpower, but the disease that it truly is."

So begins one of the new public service announcements from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America—the geniuses who brought you "This is your brain on drugs." They also have apparent drug addicts claiming they'd be better off with diabetes and AIDS.

I wonder how people with cancer, diabetes, or AIDS feel about that? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that—unlike drug users—people with cancer can't just decide to stop having so much cancer.

Strangely, they missed the one actual advantage of cancer, diabetes, and AIDS: No jail time.

(Hat tip: Hit & Run)

The story is a little vague, and there may be more to the incident, but it seems a Philadelphia police officer has proven his ignorance of the rights of the free press:

PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia family said they are outraged over the arrest of one of their family members.

The family of Neftaly Cruz said police had no right to come onto their property and arrest their 21-year-old son simply because he was using his cell phone's camera. They told their story to Harry Hairston and the NBC 10 Investigators.

...

Cruz said police told him that he broke a new law that prohibits people from taking pictures of police with cell phones.

"They threatened to charge me with conspiracy, impeding an investigation, obstruction of a investigation. ...They said, 'You were impeding this investigation.' (I asked,) 'By doing what?' (The officer said,) 'By taking a picture of the police officers with a camera phone,'" Cruz said.

The police eventually let Cruz go, telling him some story about how there was no supervisor on duty so they couldn't charge him. That's nonsense and they know it.

It's established law, based on the constitutional freedom of the press, that you can take pictures of anything you can see from anywhere you are allowed to be, unless the owner of the property you're on tells you not to.

Cruz says he was in his own yard. The police say he was on public property. Again, it's established law that when the owner of the property is the government, constitutional rights kick in, and the government can't prevent you from taking pictures on public property as long as you have a right to be there. (There are some exceptions to allow military bases to restrict photography in certain areas.) The police might be able to order you to leave the area under certain conditions, but they have no right to tell you to stop taking pictures.

Come to think of it, if this cop thinks you can interfere with something by taking pictures of it, he's also ignorant of the laws of physics.

(Hat tip, The Agitator)

Here's some really bad AOL customer service. I've had sales people treat me like that.

This happened back in April, but it's worth telling, because you just can't make up this kind of stupidity.

At Los Angeles International Airport, employees of the Transportation Security Administration discovered that passenger Daniel Brown was on the no-fly list, so they grabbed him before he boarded his plane and interrogated him, despite the fact that he was a uniformed Marine.

He had his military identification and his travel orders, and he was traveling with 26 other Marines who could vouch for him.

Wait, it gets better.

You might think, as I did, that this was one of those name mixups we keep hearing about where someone has the same name as a terrorist and the TSA is just too stupid to realize this. After all, these are the guys who detained Senator Ted Kennedy because some terrorist once used "T. Kennedy" as an alias.

But no, it wasn't a case of mistaken identity. USMC Staff Sergeant Daniel Brown really was on the no-fly list. The reason? On a previous trip, when Brown was returning from a tour in Iraq, the TSA found gunpowder on his shoes.

Imagine that. Gunpowder residue on the shoes of a U.S. Marine returning from a war zone.

The same article that reports this story also mentions a recent Government Accountability Office report leaked to NBC News concerning recent security tests. GAO security testers tried to bring bomb-making materials through the TSA security checkpoints. They tried this at 21 airports around the country, and succeed at every single airport. With these kinds of decision-making skills, that doesn't surprise me.

When the TSA folks finally kicked Daniel Brown loose, he caught another flight to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where he found that all 26 of the Marines he had been traveling with were waiting for him, so they could take the bus home together.

That doesn't surprise me either.

(Hat tip, Reason's Daily Brickbat.)

Sozialgericht Bremen is some kind of governmental entity in Germany. Bjoern Harste is a German blogger who owns a supermarket and runs a blog called Shopblogger about shopping...or something, I don't read German.

Anyway, the clueless folks at Sozialgericht Bremen have discovered that when you search for Sozialgericht Bremen at Google, one of Harste's posts appears in the top ten, and they don't like that. They're writing letters of complaint (which may or may not be a legal term).

The jerks at Sozialgericht Bremen are clueless for two reasons. First, it's Google that decides which links to return when you search at Google, not Bjoern Harste. If this is really a problem for them, they should be contacting Google, not Harste.

Second, the link text is much more important for Google ranking than the page content, and there's not much that Harste can do about other people's links. For example, every mention of Sozialgericht Bremen on this page is linked to the Shopblogger page (except the title and the link at the end), and there's nothing Harste (or Sozialgericht Bremen) can do about it.

I got this story and the idea for linking from Philipp Lenssen, whom I'll also link to with a Sozialgericht Bremen.

[Note: Comments have been disabled because this posting attracts too many spam comments.]

Radley Balko points to this newsday article about a couple of the guys the government has been protecting us from.

From Yahoo's New Orleans Weather page:

Tonight: Bands of heavy rain containing strong gusty winds at times. Low around 80F. NE winds at 25 to 40 mph, increasing to 70 to 90 mph. Rainfall over two inches. Winds could occasionally gust over 100 mph.

Tomorrow: Bands of heavy rain containing strong gusty winds at times. High around 85F. Winds NNE at 70 to 90 mph. Rainfall over two inches. Winds could occasionally gust over 100 mph.

That's got to be computer generated.

Meanwhile, just to the right of that are three Google-style content-triggered ads. Two of them are for New Orleans hotel reservations. The third is a little more practical, it's for a home builder.

I've just been reading through the last few days of snail mail. I get lots of stuff purporting to be "great opportunities" or "exciting promotions." Here's one telling me how to "get the most" out of something. There are lots of exclamation points.

The thing is, all these letters ultimately want me to pay them money. Some of the things being offered might be interesting, but there's nothing terribly exciting about me paying them. Really exciting would be them paying me.

I got some interesting email today. It was titled "Link exchange proposal," which I assumed was some other blogger who wanted to swap links with me. But as I was clicking on it, I realized that this had to be some kind of link scam. Bloggers don't make agreements to link to each other. If someone really likes my site, they'd just link to me.

Sure enough:

 Hello

I propose you link exchange between my Casino sites and
http://www.windypundit.com. If you agree to be my link partner please
add my links to your resource pages and send me your information:

Title, Description, URL and preferred Category. 

We would add your link to our sites shortly.


Our information is the next:

URL: http://www.0-casinos.org/
TITLE: Casino
DESCRIPTION: 0 Casinos.org - Online Casino.  

URL: http://www.0-gambling.us/
TITLE: Gambling
DESCRIPTION: Best Gambling Online!

URL: http://www.1-video-poker.us/
TITLE: Video Poker
DESCRIPTION: 1 Video Poker.us - Online Video Poker!

URL: http://www.777-keno.com/
TITLE: Keno
DESCRIPTION: 777 Keno - Keno Online

URL: http://www.baccaratonline.us/
TITLE: Baccarat Online
DESCRIPTION: Baccarat Online. Play Baccarat Online!

URL: http://www.baccarats.us/ 
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Oh yeah. Like that's going to happen.

When you search on Google, it figures out the order to show the results based on a score that Google calculates. Google is secretive about the details of this process, but a big part of that score is something called "page rank." Basically, sites are rated by the number of links to them from other sites. In general, the more inbound links a site gets, the higher its page rank. The inbound links themselves are weighted by the page rank of web page they're coming from.

If you make real money off of website traffic (I don't) your location in the Google search results is real important to you, so it can seem like a good idea to try to manipulate Google. Given the importance of links in determining page rank, it soon occurs to people to set up a few dozen fake websites—or if they have the budget, a few hundred or a few thousand fake websites—that all link to each other to drive up the page rank. Sometimes a company that does this will sell outbound links to other sites that want to raise their page rank, or several companies will get together and build a pool of these fake websites.

This arrangement is called a link farm, and that's what I was being invited to join. The idea is that we can all raise our page ranks by linking to each other.

For Windypundit, that's a really bad idea on so many levels.

First of all, if you have a content-oriented site like a blog, it's just generally a bad idea to change the site in order to try to game the search engines. People visit your site and link to your site because of what you have on it, not because of search scores. Content is king.

(Things are different for commerce sites, because they need to do well in search engines. But things aren't that different. I bought my Tivo upgrade kit from this guy. He works out of his house, and he's got the top spot at Google for the phrase "tivo upgrade". How? Because his site is full of useful information about how Tivo works and how to upgrade it. You can do the entire upgrade yourself based on his detailed instructions, without buying a thing. He won the search engine battle by giving away great content.)

The second reason to avoid link farms is that Google and other big search engines have somehow learned to recognize them. If the Google page ranking algorithms decide to flag your site as part of a link farm they will bury you. This apparently happened to SEOInc, one of the big search engine companies. Try to Google "SEOInc" and see if they show up in the results.

Third, www.windypundit.com has a page rank of 4 (on a scale of 0 to 10) according to Rankwhere.com. (You can also view a site's page rank on the Google Toolbar if you have it installed.) That's not a terribly high rank, but it's not bad for a small-time blog like mine. On the other hand, every page on the list above has a page rank of ZERO. Why would I want to link to them? I'm bigger than they are!

Heck, my friend Gary's new blog—gary on tv (and stuff)—also has a page rank of zero because he's just starting out, but at least he's got real content.

[Note: Comments have been disabled because this posting attracts too many spam comments.]

Eric Zorn has an article about Richard Sherman who was almost hired to teach science in High School District 211 in Palatine. Last Monday, however, the officials at the District changed their minds and decided that they weren't going to hire Sherman to teach there after all.

Eric Zorn:

It couldn't be--could it?--that officials at High School District 211 in Palatine yanked a job offer away from a prospective teacher this week simply because administrators don't like the religious views of that teacher's father?

...

Sherman, 23, is the son of civil rights activist and atheist leader Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove, whose relentless crusades of the last 20 years, most over church-state issues, have alienated many who don't share his interpretation of the Constitution or God.

One of Zorn's readers, Andy, responds:

Richard Sherman doesn't have a God-given right (pun intended) to work at District 211. The district can hire whomever they determine is the best candidate for the job. All they are guilty of is poor judgment in even considering hiring this guy. There are enough liberal wackos attempting to poison the minds of our youth working in the public schools already...

Well, Andy is right that Richard Sherman may not have a God-given right to work at the District, but he certainly has a Congress-given right. Employment descrimination against an applicant on the basis of his beliefs about religion has long been against the law.

Good and thoughtful people sometimes disagree about whether the proper response to discrimination by private employers is government regulation. Some people feel that getting the government involved interferes with the natural progression towards tolerance, or that it causes problems that are worse than the problem of intolerance, or that the private employment decision simply isn't a proper matter for government scrutiny.

But this isn't a private employment decision. High School District 211 is the goverment. Maybe the government shouldn't force other people to be tolerant, but the government damned well ought to be religiously tolerant itself. The establishment clause is in the constitution for very good reasons.

Oh, and one more thing. By all accounts, Richard Sherman isn't an atheist like his father.

In a Spectator article on "The triumph of American values," Mark Styne writes:

A few weeks earlier, Libya was elected to chair the UN Human Rights Commission.

Somebody tell me he's kidding. He made that up, right?

Bill Dennis argues that, contrary to the common sentiment on the web, web sites have a moral right to ban deep linking. He regards it as simple respect for the property rights of others, and he rightly dismisses one of the most common arguments:

Those who ridicule companies for their opposition to deep linking say the practice only encourages more visitors, who end up browsing through the site. That argument is also used to defend posting of copyright songs and software. It doesn't wash. Companies have the right to decide whether or not it wants to market its product by giving away free copies.

Exactly. The issue isn't whether or not a company would be better off giving away content for promotional purposes, it's who gets to decide. Clearly, the owners of the content should decide.

However, several of the comments point out that the technology exists for companies to have their web servers prevent deep linking automatically, without the need to resort to legal restrictions. Bill Dennis doesn't think that's an important consideration:

I agree that any Web site that wants to ban deep linking has technology to do so (at least for the time being). That doesn't prevent mirror imaging. Nevertheless, failure to prevent deep linking is NOT the same thing as giving someone permission to do it.

I disagree. Failure to prevent deep linking IS the same thing as giving someone permission. In the main article, Dennis compares sites that don't want deep linking with magazines that are wrapped in plastic to prevent people from browsing them on the rack without buying. I believe sites that don't block deep linking are like magazines that aren't wrapped in plastic. It's okay to link, just like it's okay to look.

The publishing metaphor for web content causes some confusion. The content of a web site is just files on a computer. What makes it published content, what makes it a web site, is the web server, which is a piece of software that makes the content available to other computers on the Internet. Web servers are active participants in the hyperlink mechanism, including deep linking.

In paper publishing, the printed copies are distributed to retail outlets everywhere, but on the web, copies are only sent out when people ask for them. That is, when their browsers send an HTTP request for a copy. More to the point, people only receive copies when the server grants their request. That is, when the server sends an HTTP response with the requested content.

The HTTP protocol used by web servers offers a complete, well-supported standard mechanism for controlling access to content. If I create a deep link on my site to content on another site, all I'm doing is providing some pieces of the HTTP request for that content. Browsers can take those pieces and assemble a complete HTTP request, but readers of my site can't actually get the content unless the other site's servers decide to honor the request. That decision is entirely a matter of how the server and web site are configured by their owner.

It's ridiculous to allow sites to make up for their misuse of the protocols by trying to control access using legal terms and conditions. They are in the same ethical position as a man who freely, albeit perhaps foolishly, gives out $10 bills to anyone who asks. If he wants to stop losing money, the solution is not to complain about people who publicize his gullibility, but simply to stop giving out money!

I'm sure I've got the quote wrong, but I believe there's an episode of the old Mary Tyler Moore show in which Mary is complaining to her boss Lou about her pay. In typical Lou fashion, he tries to reassure her that

"It's not because you're not doing a good job. It's just because you're a woman."

I was reminded of this by a story that Bill Dennis and Eugene Volokh are writing about. It's been reported that Jewish comedian Jackie Mason had local Chicago comic Ray Hanania kicked out as his opening act at Zanie's comedy club because Hanania is a Palestinian.

There's some question as to what really happened, but quotes from Mason's manager don't sound too good:

"It's not exactly like he's just an Arab-American. This guy's a Palestinian. We were not told about it ahead of time," said Jyll Rosenfeld, Mason's manager. "Jackie does not feel comfortable having a Palestinian open for him. Right now, it's a very sensitive thing, it's just not a good idea."

and

"Nothing personal against this fellow," Rosenfeld said. "Jackie doesn't even know him."

Of course, that's exactly backwards: It's precisely because this is "nothing personal" that it is wrong.

If it had been personal, if Mason thought Hanania was humorless or that his style was wrong for opening the show, that would have been a reasonable artistic judgment on the merits. Heck, even if Mason simply didn't like Ray Hanania, at least he knew the guy before he judged him. People might have called him "childish," but no one would have called him a racist.

Update:

(Wrong already. I've softened the original piece slightly to reflect some new information.)

Either the Mason folks are improving their spin technique or this is turning into a non-story. (Not that it was ever much of a story.) Another Chicago Tribune Article makes it sound more like a clash of styles: Hanania, a Palestinian whose wife is Jewish, has obvious opportunities to use the Israel-Palestinian conflict as background for his humor. Mason, on the other hand, (1) doesn't think the violence and terrorism can be made funny, (2) felt that Hanania's publicity for the event was further exploiting the conflict, and (3) felt that Hanania wasn't experienced enough to be his opening act.

It seems that either Jackie Mason and staff made a nuanced artistic decision, or they've offered three excuses for the same bad behavior.

I should have known better than to try to talk about showbiz

Yet more proof that the feds are wasting time instead of fighting terrorism: Our U.S. postal service (the people whose response to Anthrax contamination of their facilities was to immediately send a piece of mail to everyone) is now wasting time prosecuting a South Carolina college student for allegedly selling used underwear on a web site. (via Reason)

This federal crime could earn her five years in prison or a quarter million dollar fine. On the other hand, if she had sold actual sex instead of panties, she would probably spend only a few days in lockup.