<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Researchers believe an effective AIDS vaccine is still many years away.
"We have had some interesting results in the monkeys that show we can make an immune response,", Gallo said, noting potential progress on overcoming the problem of mutation of the virus.
But the antibodies produced in his experiments lasted only up to four months, which is far less than needed for an effective vaccine.
"We are making progress with a preventive vaccine, but we are not there yet," added Gallo, who discovered the AIDS virus with France's Luc Montagnier.
Earlier this week Europe's biggest drug maker GlaxoSmithKline Plc announced a plan to develop an experimental AIDS vaccine along with France's Institut Pasteur.
They intend to make the vaccine by fusing genes from HIV on to an existing vaccine for measles. Continued ...
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Vision statement:
InstaPundit strongly supports the use of violent force to save lives of its workers (er, that's me), readers, advertisers, or unrelated onlookers should they be kidnapped, held hostage, or caught in the middle of a conflict situation. The use of grossly excessive or gratuitous violence, while not exactly encouraged, isn't exactly deplored, either.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005


link to boingboing.

False Alarm - see update.

The Deborah Davis case has hit the drudgereport.
meanwhile so has this:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/28/D8E5RPBO5.html
Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.

Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.
shocking part: Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said the Miami initiative appears aimed at ensuring that people's rights are not violated.

"What we're dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution," Simon said. "We'll have to see how it is implemented."

Update: according to Boing-Boing and Washington Post, the drudgereport story is wrong, and there won't be random ID checks.

Delaware and New Jersey
Had an argument one night
So they started up a war
To determine who was right
It was my patriotic duty
To fight the enemy...

Tom Hodukovitch, Radio Free Newark

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case between Delaware and New Jersey.
The real party in the dispute is an oil company that wants to build a natural gas shipping plant on the Jersey side of the Delaware river. The river belongs to Delaware, which won't issue permits. In the 1970s evironmentalist Republicans in Delaware enacted the costal zone act to protect wetlands from New Jersey-style pollution.
Where I lived if I climbed the highest tree in my yard I could see across the river the river into Jersey. My mom was very active in environmentalist Republican circles and probably knows the people involved in this lawsuit. She worked for years without success to try to create a park along the river somewhere - it's blocked off by highways and railroads and industry, and nearly inaccessible.
The constitution gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction in suits between states, sot he oil company was able to do an end run around the usual appeals process by getting the state of New Jersey to bring the suit.
Alito, like Scalia, is from the Jersey side of the river.
Scalia is not expected to recuse. "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned", he told Al Franken.

Monday, November 28, 2005

At redstate.org, the following was posted, emphasis added.
The Vendetta
By: Crank · Section: War

When the history of the decision to go to war in Iraq is written, there's one fact that I have to believe will get more attention than it does today: the fact that Saddam Hussein hired terrorists to murder George H.W. Bush.


I think his point would have been stronger if he'd used less weighted terms.
Saddam hired assassins to assassinate G. Herbert Walker Bush. What's his operational definition of terrorist, or murder? Generally terrorist is used to designate non-governmental actors who target civilians. If government agents who target military figures (the former commander-in-chief) are terrorists and murderers, then it would be fair to use those terms to describe American troops in Iraq, which might not be a result Crank would be comfortable with.
Then there's Vendetta. Recently I finally saw Godfather part II. The new place has cable. Vito Corleone has a vendetta against the mafia boss who killed his father mother and brother. He grows up and gets his revenge, as his children are drawn into the cycle of violence. W is a fourth generation politician - his great grandfather was one of the "merchants of death", buying munitions for WWI. Is the war in Iraq just a family squable between rival warlords? It would have been nice to know of his plans before the 2000 election. What Gore's secret plans were, we still don't know.

I'm having an interesting discussion with Dr Helen, the instawife, about vegetarianism, in the last few comments to this post.

Congrats to Will Baude, newest Prawfessor at UChicago. I was confident he'd be there someday, I didn't expect it would be this soon.
His post is about Posner and billable hours; I'm going to try to stay out of that one for now.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

What I'm not reading:
This book A War Like No Other : How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis Hanson. It's quite likely that I won't reach 50 books in 2005. When I was 17 and went to college instead of staying stuck in public school, one of the professors was, I think, a Straussian, or at least he'd come from the St John's great books program, and taught Thucidides' history of the war of the polo ponies to the other section, and taught me Plato and Machiavelli and Hobbes and Locke. I finally got around to reading some of Thucidides a couple years ago. The war between Athens and Sparta was a clash of cultures which still echoes. The Straussian neocons are said to be zoroastrians, who these days tend to call themselves fundamentalists, seeing humanity as engulfed in a great war between good and evil, jedi versus sith.

Instead, I've been reading Book, is it 44, Piers Anthony, Something or Other, Robot Adept, it'll come to me, who writes books of a clash between parallel words of magic and technology. It's his gimmick, the series goes on for dozens of books, and the main characters of this one are children of characters from earlier books in the series. A light and fluffy [Baude's term is "ephemeral fluff"] sci-fi novel should grab me by the first couple pages; here I had to wade through to about page 100 before I felt entertained, and then barely. I'm also still working through book 43, Act of Treason, which claims that J Edgar Hoover sat back and did nothing knowing New Orleans mafia boss Marcello was setting up a hit of JFK in order to pressure RFK who was at war with the mob. If I read 5 more books during december, they will likely be along the lines of "Dick and Jane go to the Zoo" or "Megatokyo". On the other hand, if I read a book next week, read something on the plane - I'm thinking of flying for the first time since 9/11- and get books from my mom and sister-in-law, 50 might be doable. Mostly I read blogs. Compulsively, from when I get up to long past dark.

One of those, he segways, is crescat sententia, where Will Baude is reading more and better books, and blogging better about them: Steve Martin's shopgirl: a few nice little razors tucked inside the candy.
It's not a book, but the reason I'm stil up at 4 am is I've been reading the Georgia Voter ID decision. Good stuff.


Something familar looking about the design of Hayabusa ('falcon'), the Japanese asteroid mining spaceship.
http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/arbi/325021/

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Word for the day: inculpate.
e.g.: Joe DiGenova (as well as his wife and law partner Victoria Toensing) is a part of the DC Republican establishment who is routinely put forward when legal opinions are needed which exculpate Republicans or inculpate Democrats. - Talking Points Memo

Woody Allen on organized labor
Interviewed at suicidegirls.com
DRE: Could you tell me about Match Point?

WA: It's a film shot in England with Scarlett Johansson who is brilliant and Jonathan Rhys-Myers who is also brilliant. I worked in the summer, it was cool in London and the skies are all grey which is great for photography and there are no unions! That’s a wonderful thing, not only financially but because everyone could help out and do the other person's job without infringing. So it's like making a student film in the best sense of the word. The guy who makes lunch can also stop traffic. It'll be at Cannes and probably out later this year.

Friday, November 25, 2005

From Slashdot:
"Gee, Bill what do you want to do tonight?" "The same thing we do every night Steve. Try to take over the world!"

Usually reliable source sends a message "random lawyerish notes" that included this:

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/local_story_326075957.html
Some prosecutor might actually get to get a grand jury to indict a ham
sandwich...

Robber Allegedly Holds Up Bar With Ham Sandwich
(CBS) CHICAGO Move over Hamburglar. Chicago may have its own ham-robber.
Police say a man used what they call a "gun-shaped" object in his attempt
to rob a Humboldt Park bar at 1013 N. Western Monday night.
But a tipster tells CBS 2 the weapon was actually a ham sandwich molded
into the shape of a gun.
The ham-robber fell on his way out of the bar and was arrested.
Brian Latuszek has been charged with aggravated robbery.
(© MMV, CBS Broadcasting, Inc

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Happy Turkey Day.

Althouse's squirrel picture is better.
I'll be going to a potluck which probably won't be vegetarian, grr,
bringing a bushel of pomegranites and some other stuff I picked up last night.

It was an unusual thanksgiving feast. Instead of a focus on food, we watched House of Flying Daggers and the Butterfly Effect, and a documentary about the dangers of snow crab fishing. The guy who lives in my garage worked on my truck, while I sorted through boxes of old stuff, like a journal I kept when I was 18, old love letters.
Butterfly Effect is an edge of the seat thriller about how different choices we make in live change reality. The boxes of old stuff reflect some of the choices I've made in my life, that have resulted in my winding up in, currently, Indy, shortly Milwaukee.
I have choices to make about where to go from here, and how to get there. Butterfly has a very strong performance from Ashton Kutcher. Then I came home and yelled at my roommates some more about the dishes - I think those noises I'm hearing are dishes getting washed finally. The personal stuff was necessary to make my point about the movie - this isn't a blog about what I had for lunch, I have my webcomic for that. Dill snow crab ravioli, actually.

I have not been a regular althouse reader, but have been dipping into her stuff recently. She spoke at a rotary club meeting. The rotary club has the following creed, called the fourway test. Rotary was started in Chicago by a lawyer concerned about ethics, looking to incorporate small town values into an urbanizing culture. The 4-way test makes for an interesting proposed rule of ethics or jurisprudence or constraint on government action.
Of the things we think, say or do:
1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?"


I wonder whether there have been papers on this, or if it cited in any cases.
Not wondering enough right now to go off and search google, much less westlaw and various databases.

www.tv-rollup-piano.com ... there was a dash in there somewhere... around $70.
Late night TV ad, looked interesting. 88 keys on a rollupable mat and some electronics.
This looks like it http://www.hecsaninc.com


Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Lost in translation:
France to tax air to help poor. What? Oh, just air travel.
Unlike the US which has a terrorism tax on air travel, a tax to to hire terrorists to go through your luggage.


Pyjama game:
[link opens midi file.]
or, banana republicans in pajamas,
or, last night i shot an elephant...
I'd been hearing good things for a long time about pajamas media, a proposed collection of blogs (some conservative, some less so) that would share ad revenues and such. I wasn't too bothered by the name change to and back from, open source media. But Althouse links to Dennis the Peasant's story of being screwed out of his and a friend's at least 40% share of a venture that evolved into pajamas [media?]
That much ill will among founding partners seems likely to kill the deal.
It doesn't seem offhand like one of those suits that crop up when somebody's rejected screenplay slightly resembles a later hit movie (a few of those are genuine, many aren't.) Sigh. Partnerships to do business ventures can be tricky - I used to be part of a two person law firm, and am no longer. Important to have things written down. I do a lot of deals based on a handshake and a willingness to document it later, and they usually work fine, but when they don't, there's no way to put them back together.

At the risk of having my gay.com membership revoked, I'll admit I've never seen the pyjama game, either on stage or the doris day movie, set in part at Hernando's Hideaway. I do remember a Frank Sinatra movie with a party scene where they sing Hernando's Hideaway, and Sinatra does a passable JFK imitation. I don't know if that was before or after Sinatra's mafia buddies [may have] had JFK whacked.
Probably Come Blow Your Horn 1963, so would have been made in 62 before a falling out with Kennedy? Good movie anyway, well-suited to a remake.

This alt house: the Kelo homestead.
I've commented several times here about in Kelo, IJ won more by losing than it would have by winning. Now Ann Althouse, also writing about Kelo, makes the same point, more poeticly.
Can you think of some other examples, in law or elsewhere, where the loser, losing conspicuously, took on some golden glow that served his interests better than winning?

The answers she's getting include Clarence Darrow, Japan, Newdow, Wm F Buckley, Lincoln and Goldwater. Wm F Shatner, Daniel Drezner.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Via Bill Stewart, this just in from Bill Scannell.

Dave,
Can you put this out on wide-scan? It's important.
-Bill

On the 9th of December 2005, a Denver woman is scheduled to be arraigned in
U.S. District Court. Her crime: refusing to show ID on a public bus. At
stake is nothing less than the right of Americans to travel freely in their
own country.

The woman who is fighting the good fight is named Deborah Davis. She's a 50
year-old mother of four who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Her kids
are all grown-up: her middle son is a soldier fighting in Iraq.

One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work.
She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when
a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger
show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called
in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal
misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand.

She hasn't commuted by public bus since that day.

For further information, please visit:

http://www.papersplease.org/davis/


Froomkin already covered it this morning. (Froomkin is one of John Gilmore's lawyers.. maybe that's why I keep bumping into him at Computers Freedom and Privacy conferences.)

update: In a message labeled causation, Michael Froomkin writes: actually, I ended up representing gilmore because I was at lots of CFP's.... which fits the timeline better.

update: boing-boing has it, so the story will hit the mainstream now. I had it here three days before boing-boing.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Howard points to a column by David Hudson of the First Amendment Center on anonymity and blogging, citing Kurt from EFF, which discusses Doe v Cahill.
The usual caveats: Kurt's work is very important. David is an excellent reporter, I've always liked the way he's covered my cases. The defendant's lawyer, who did a great job, was my co-counsel in a previous Delaware anonymity case.
My guess is David has read the Cahill opinion, but doesn't know that it misrepresents the facts of the case, states the right legal standard, but reaches the wrong conclusion and was unjust to Mrs. Cahill. Her defamers disclosed that her husband had hepatitis, and called her an adulteress in a broken marriage. She could have readily withstood a motion for summary judgment if the court had done the right thing and remanded the case for summary judgment proceedings. She might not have prevailed at trial - invasion of privacy cases are hard to win. But she was entitled to her day in court. Proud Citizen was the key witness, who may (or perhaps may not) have known who the other Does were. If Proud has privacy concerns of his or her own, the deposition could have been held under seal. I do not even know for sure if Kurt knows the facts of the case and the injustice that was done.
A case currently pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court raises many of the same issues, in an off-line context. http://ballots.blogspot.com/2005/11/04-0377-lassa-v.html
some of my earlier coverage:
http://ballots.blogspot.com/2005/10/consider-this-story-embargoed-for-now.html
http://ballots.blogspot.com/2005/09/my-usually-reliable-source-on-delaware.html
http://ballots.blogspot.com/2005/08/case-in-smyrna-delaware-raises-issues.html
to do: edit to add links, email dhudson at fac org.

He taped her having sex, and put the video online. She sued, as a Jane Doe, and won, but her lawyer had filed online a brief with her real name in it. Oh well.
I had a case in that court where one of my plaintiffs was improperly dismissed because she needed to remain anonymous. It wasn't one of the points we argued on appeal, since so much else had gone wrong with the case at the district court level.
Updates: Concurring Opinions blog. Crescat.
Chicago faculty blog.

Bowie to play Tesla in flick.
Tesla is the inventor of AC, alternating current, FM, and maybe AM for which Marconi usually gets the credit, harnessed Niagara Falls to produce electricty, died broke and bitter. Probably did not invent spacedrive or the internet. Bowie's an excellent actor, given a decent script. Ziggy Stardust introduced me to rock and roll.

Bush milks a horse.

Another new blog, by some people I respect
http://www.downsizedc.org/blog
including Harry Browne.

Via Volokh, Scott Adams, the guy who writes Dilbert has a blog, that is funnier than the strip.

I saw there was something on fox about Cheney criticizing Bush critics about the war.
My beef, at least one among many, is that, I'm told, Bush planned the war before he was elected, but didn't bother to mention it during his campaign. It's not a lie to have a Secret Plan to start the war, but it's a major material omission. I think, pre-9/11, that this would have cost him what was already a very close election. It's not that I think Gore was exactly better - at the moment Gore is the devil we don't know. Public financing of congressial campaigns is one thing he's admitted to - very bad, but a little less bad than a war.
So what I want to know from Cheney is what did he know and when did he know it -
did he know Bush planned to invade Iraq using Halliburton mercenaries? If he knew that and didn't disclose it, he doesn't have much basis now to be a critic of the critics.

The sound bite missed this part, so maybe I'm taking his remarks out of context. I haven't read the whole speeh.
"I do not believe it is wrong to criticize the war on terror or any aspect thereof. Disagreement, argument and debate and the essence of democracy and none of us should want it any other way," Cheney said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

"Nobody is saying we should not be having this discussion or that you cannot reexamine a decision made by the president and the Congress some years ago
."

Last Wednesday Cheney unleashed a blistering attack on critics of the war, Reuters. It is not known at this time if chemical weapons caused the blisters.
But Cheney added: "Any suggestion that prewar information was... hyped... by the leader of the nation is utterly false."
I can't agree.
Vice-president for torture?
Kerry, the current devil we don't, responds.

Mars news.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Bloggers arrested for blogging.

My friend monkey angst has a webcomic:
http://www.monkeylaw.org/index.php?date=20051118
ROAST STUFFED RACCOON

1 lb Sweet potatoes; mashed
1/2 c Raisins
1 c Bread crumbs
2 Apples; peeled and chopped
1/4 c Butter; melted
Salt and pepper to taste
4 lb To 5 lb racoon

First make the stuffing; mix together all
ingredients (except raccoon, of course) gently
until blended. Set aside. Wash raccoon meat
thoroughly and dry with a cloth. Cut off some of
the fat, leaving just enough for a thin layer.
Salt the inside of the coon. Stuff gently with the
sweet potato mixture and sew opening shut. Bake at
325°. for about 3-4 hours. When half done, turn
over so all sides will be browned. Serve with a
crisp vegetable salad.

A police officer was shot on my street, 5 blocks north of here, this morning.
One block south of me, it's nice houses, tended lawns, fences, young familes.
My block is mostly boarded up. From the next block north, it's ghetto.

“Oh, Aslan, can I take my dog?” “Yes, of course,” he said. “And I’ll get the chickens.” But it did all fit, as much as there was for a day trip.
One of the links there to the left is for Susan's blog from Kazakhstan, which I end up not reading very often, but I'm not sure why not, because she is a wonderful storyteller.

Word for the day, mudlark. Like a beachcomber, but involving river mud.

The occasionally reliable Wonkette reports US torture in Iraq included putting prisoners in cages with lions.

Jeremy Blachman gets jury duty. Nothing much happened, but he sure writes about it well.
He also passed the bar, sent his book to the publisher, and made some brownies.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Baude v Heath
Indiana Law Blog reports on fallout from www.ij.org's other case last year, the wine shipment case, Granholm. Indiana's law policy of banning out of state wine was no good because the state allowed in-state wine shipments, setting up a dormant commerce clause problem. Fort Gratiot was a case about banning out of state trash from New Jersey, that ran into the same problems, I dimly remember from one of my few published articles, circa 1994. So Indiana suddenly banned in-state wine shipments too, except they did so with no legislation, no hearings, no comment period, no due process.
So there are now lawsuits to remove barriers to both sets of wine shipping. Baude here is Patrick Baude. If I have this right, Baude teaches constitutional law at IU, and is the father of blogger Will Baude, who was an intern at IJ while the case was going on.
While no Bainbridges, they seem to know their booze. It doesn't shock me that Indiana (the government) is acting in a cranky irrational manner to protect its fiefdom, at the expense of Indiana (the citizenry.)

Wine into water: continuing the baudewatch theme, some people merely walk on water, this guy writes a paper on it.

Mom versus Pop:
I told them, 'You can't refuse to sell to me. That's unconstitutional'," Chavez told The Associated Press. "I didn't really know if it was unconstitutional, but I said it anyway." Via sploid, which has a good eye for these sorts of stories. Coke fined millions in Mexico.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

04-0377 Lassa v. Rongstad
Justices N. Patrick Crooks and Patience Drake Roggensack are not participating in this case.
Issues: This case originated as a defamation action brought by state Rep. Julie Lassa, who is now Sen. Julie Lassa (D-Stevens Point). Lassa brought this action against Todd Rongstad and unknown others for their role in funding, producing, and distributing a mailing that criticized Lassa for her supposed connections to a senator who was under criminal indictment. The Supreme Court will clarify when the identity of anonymous speakers must be disclosed in a defamation action brought by a public official. From Dane County. I wonder how that one will turn out. I've alerted Paul Alan Levy who does a lot with these sorts of cases.
Some background.
A useful briefing on the case. Since this turns out to be an election law case, it really belongs in my other blog...

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Readers of the Last Aardvark clever title for an article on Cerebus the Aardvark volume #300, found while googling for something else.
Related: A short article on Steve Ditko, co-creator of spiderman.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Better Lat than never department:
That the bloggers I read have been afroth with gossip about underneath their robes blogger A3G's coming out and then sudden disappearance is no suprise, but it's also getting play more broadly, e.g. drudge. Alternatively, drudge is one of the bloggers I read - what he does is essentially blogging, but predates the term. But the northjersey.com link he points to isn't opening for me- ok it works now. NYT also has coverage.

Indianapolis mayor wins war on speech, gets to tear down billboards.
Indy major black bart peterson likes tearing things down and blowing things up.
After blowing up market square arena and a couple of hotels and hundreds of houses, now he'd going after bilboards. The war on billboards is part of a broader war on speech, that has included banning newspaper kiosks, certain murals, and violent videogames.
Indy has a long history of speech supression efforts, e.g. Hudnut v Booksellers.
I hope to update this story with a link to the opinion - I don't know whether the billboard owners cited the state constitution's free speech provisions. (no - article.)

Monday, November 14, 2005

Posner on A3G:
I have a theory that the author is not a she, but a he," Posner says. "The thing is exaggeratedly feminine and constantly drawing attention to her gender."
Right he was.

Sunday, November 13, 2005


Time names Snuppy invention of the year.

Walmart to carry $400 laptops?
There's been some vaporrware coming out of MIT from Nick Negroponte about $100 laptops for third world schoolkids - a good idea ruined by putting governments rather than markets in charge of distribution. $400 is 4 times $100, but it's a step closer.
$400 desktops have been pretty common lately - I'm writing this on a $100 recycled P2, but laptops run a bit more. I havent seen the spec on the walmart product - just a passing mention on fox. But it seems like more proof of Moore's law and the trend toward ubiquitous computing.

Friday, November 11, 2005

Some science stuff:

Red Dwarf:
There's a star 15 light years from here with three known planets, one a rocky eathlike type except too close to the red dwarf star for life as we know it.
I'm personally much more interested in the planets of these relatively nearby stars, than the far away ones, because it's possible I or my hypothetical grandchildren could go there. I'm counting on both significant life extention and space travel such as fusion, within 50 to 100 years. And computers - Let's say I'm 50 now and 100, 50 years from now. In 50 years, a pretty good computer simulation of me could fit in a box the size of a baseball, and a fusion drive unit could get that baseball up to light speed in about 2 months at 20g's of constant thrust, so this star would be 15 years and 4 months away, say a 31 year round trip.
Scientists, on the other hand, are not as interested in this star itself, as the idea that red dwarf stars might have planets friendly to life. This is important for at least two reasons - there are lots of them, about 10 times as many red dwarfs as sun-type G stars, and, they last for many billion years, so it's handy place to keep your stuff for long term storage.

Some guy's invented mini-windmills, for powering low-power devices like, say, remote earthquake sensors.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Hufu. I want some.



This piece, "rewriting the constitution", is one of a hundred items up for bid on ebay in a charity auction for SoulForce. http://www.soulforce.org/auction.
Soulforce is a group based in the teachings of Gandhi and King which fights anti-gay bigotry in US chuches. Please pass this info on via your blog.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The quintessential haiku:

Hippopotamus
Anti-hippopotamus
Annihilation

this was from ahud's sig at tehsoapbox.net.

Not actually book 41:
The Scarred Heart: Undertanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill, for free at www.violentkids.com
Instawife's take on school shootings.
I havent been doing much reading lately. Still working through "Act of Treason", Mark North's book blaming J Edgar Hoover for knowing about and not stopping the Kennedy hit by mafia goons.

Just read in boing boing that one of the guys i went to school with is the CEO for the wrong side in Grokster,
National Music Publisher's Association.

The Little Supremes are “clarifiers,” able to dissect muddled questions and turn them into the ones they want to answer. Via Bashman and UTR, a story of the elect.

Virginia is for haters:
Howard reports on a lower Virginia appeals court that has upheld a sodomy conviction, in defiance of Lawrence v Texas.
I'm angry at the opinion, and the various levels of misconduct by Virginia officials that resulted in the case being heard.
The court said he doesn't have standing to challenge the facial constitutionality of the law he was charged under.
That, and other parts of the opinion, are absurd.
http://legalaffairs.org/howappealing/110905.html#007773
The judge is wrong on standing, wrong on how he characterized defendant's conduct as public rather than private, wrong on whether speech is expressive, right as to many of the cases he cites and procedural issues. Overall, very wrong.

My reaction is not just about sodomy, although I'm a big fan of sodomy,
but is about the nature of the Supremacy of the Supreme Court.
I think the way laypeople think of it is that the Supreme Court makes decisions and lower courts and governments follow them.
My experience has been that the Supreme Court makes decisions and government ignores them until dragged kicking and screaming.
And this results in systemic unfairness and oppression - even when the Supreme Court gets every case right. And they don't, so it's worse.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Arms-bearing banned in SF, CA.
THE PROPOSAL: Proposition H is an ordinance that would ban the manufacture, distribution, sale and transfer of firearms and ammunition within San Francisco. Passing based on early results.

Pirates foiled by sonic weapon on cruise ship.



Actually they aren't really pirates, more like privateers operating under Xeer, Somali law. So they are more of a coast guard. Western media is clueless when it comes to understanding how Somali society functions without a central government. If you want to bring your ship through Somali waters, make prior arrangments with one of the clans. Sometimes this involves the gift of a camel. Then when the "pirates" arrive you can let them know which clan has sponsored your visit. Being well-armed is a good idea too, just in general.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Two dozen killed in Indiana trailer park tornado this morning.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Here's a story from wil wheaton at suicidegirls.com about a guy in racine sued because his grandson downloaded a movie. Parts of that site may not be safe for work.
Which reminds me on thursday I was in Chicago for a conference on this stuff. Cindy Cohn of EFF, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen, and other luminaries, talking about the filesharing suits. It's been an interest of mine since my roommate sid got a cease and desist letter in 1995 - he was an early filesharer.
So I should blog about it, so this is a placeholder mostly.
Everybody settles. They'd like to find somebody who won't settle.
Nice war stories about the boiler room settlement factories.
Currently Shook Hardy Bacon is the law firm handling the settlements - I think just for the music industry. Most go for around $4000. Shook was the 800 lb gorilla when I was in school, the firm with lots of lawyers, tall buildings, whiteshoe.
It could be the setting for a Grisham novel.
I don't know if a whole lot was accomplished, but the idea is a good one - bring together the people fighting the filesharing lawsuits to pool resources and ideas.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Alito: People For the American Way report

People for the American Way has issued a report on many of Judge Alito's decisions. There are only two cases in the report dealing with elections:

Rappa v. New Castle County, 18 F.3d 1043 (3d Cir. 1994) -- at the bottom of page 18

Patriot Party v. Allegheny County Dep’t of Elections, 1998 U.S. App. LEXIS 12688 (3d Cir. 1998), aff’d en banc, 174 F.3d 305 (3d Cir. 1999) -- on page 19
http://www.votelaw.com/blog.

As it happens I know something about these cases.
Rappa is a free speech victory. It found a Delaware sign ordinance unconstitutional.
Patriot Party was a victory for fusion, later eclipsed by Twin Cities. It is cited in Stewart v Taylor.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?