The White Castle lie

 8 Responses »
Jan 282007
 

Clearly living in Ohio has been harder on John Scalzi that he’s willing to admit; he recently bought into the myth that Midwesterners actually like White Castle hamburgers.

As a native Midwesterner, let me set the record straight. Nobody in the Midwest really likes White Castle hamburgers. Nobody. They are eaten for three, and only three, reasons: You are starving to death and White Castle is the only thing open/you can afford; the most common reason, you have never eaten at a White Castle and are dying to find out if they are as bad as everybody says; or, you are dragging a friend there for the first time to torture them, and they aren’t going to eat a “slider” unless you do.

Those people who claim they love White Castle? Paid shills or pranksters, in my opinion. Or they came from somewhere else.

No, for my money, the local regional Weird Food that nobody else in the nation has the stones to appreciate is Vernor’s. At least in Michigan; I have no idea what those oddballs in Ohio eat. Stuckey’s takeout, probably.

 Posted by mythago at 10:35 pm

…but some evidence is more admissible than others

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Jan 272007
 

I’ve had some very trying days in Law & Motion, but nothing as breathtakingly WTF?! as Celia Ambriz. Among the many forehead-slapping errors committed, the trial court had agreed with respondent that certain depositions were inadmissible–even though the respondent used the very same depositions as exhibits to its motion for summary judgment.

I also couldn’t help but think that after everything that’s happened to her, Ms. Ambriz must be one heck of a woman to maintain any faith at all in the legal system.

 Posted by mythago at 10:12 pm

Bill of Rights: Doubleplusungood

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Jan 242007
 

In case there was anyone left who clung to the idea that the Bush administration does not see itself as a monarchy, Attorney General Gonzales was happy to clear that up for you:

Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution declares “habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless … in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” But he insisted that “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”

Continue reading »

 Posted by mythago at 12:39 pm

Stalking the Lie

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Jan 212007
 

emptypockets at The Next Hurrah posts a fascinating account of tracking down the source of a left-wing lie that was carefully tweaked to be spread by the well-meaning, how right-wing blogs picked up and rewrote it to their own ends, and the process of trying to disseminate the truth.

(Hat tip: Making Light)

 Posted by mythago at 4:14 pm

“Activist” courts – criminal divison, part 2

 6 Responses »
Jan 202007
 

Message to drug dealers: if you’re going to trade drugs for sex, pick a single woman.

There’s been tut-tutting around the blogosphere about the ‘crazy’ decision, but the bottom line is that the Michigan court is correct: under Michigan law, adulterous sex is one of most serious sexual offenses, because in Michigan, adultery is still on the books as a felony.

Continue reading »

 Posted by mythago at 10:16 pm

“Activist” courts – criminal division

 10 Responses »
Jan 202007
 

Via Pandagon, the story of Julie Amero, who was obviously railroaded for the crime of failing to erase porn spam pop-ups that mysteriously appeared on a school computer while she was a substitute teacher.

Right? Well, it’s hard to tell from the Pandagon or Alternet articles, which are less about what actually happened and more about righteous indignation that somebody would be convicted of showing porn to 12-year-olds; they’ve already seen porn anyway. And she wasn’t allowed to prove that somebody else surfed onto porn sites. Besides, the school should have stopped it with filters, and somehow, this is patriarchal oppression or something.

My lawyer sense started tingling when I noticed that Amanda had skipped over one very interesting fact: Amero’s lawyer failed to notify the prosecution of the “she was helpless before infectious malware” defense in a timely manner, and so her expert was barred from offering any testimony along those lines. Hm.

As far as her helpless reaction to the porn? Amaro turned one kid’s face away, but they could see the screen from their seats. The police testified that the graphic sites had been accessed during the time Amero was in the class, not before. It apparently didn’t occur to her to, oh, turn off the monitor, turn the screen, or unplug the computer. Or to call the principal’s or custodian’s office for help.

On the “forty years in prison”, this seems to be drawn from Amero’s conviction on four separate counts of a crime that calls for up to ten years in prison. To get forty years, she would have to be given the maximum penalty for each and have the time served consecutively, rather than concurrently. Norm Pattis would know Connecticut criminal law better than I, but I’m not seeing that Amero is likely to be given the harshest possible sentence without some kind of aggravating factors, such as a criminal history, which she doesn’t have.

Is it possible Amero was railroaded by paranoid prudes? As lawyers say, anything’s possible. But the facts that have been floating around so far don’t suggest that we should be checking the Connecticut court for railroad tracks just yet.

 Posted by mythago at 6:11 pm

Do not meddle in the affairs of law firms

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Jan 182007
 

Charles “Cully” Stimson, a Pentagon official, is a former prosecutor and defense lawyer, and therefore should know better. Nevertheless, last week he decided to shoot his mouth off about some large, prestigious law firms who do pro bono work for, if you can believe it, people who can’t afford lawyers–specifically, Guantanamo detainees. Such law firms, Stimson said, ought to be boycotted by their Fortune 500 clients and, even worse, probably rely on Sinister Funding Sources. Stimson also appears to have “>fed this story to that bastions of paleoconservativism, the Wall Street Journal editorial page. (One would call them ‘knuckledraggers’ except that they probably hire servants to drag their knuckles for them.)

I doubt Stimson thought much other than this would get him a double play with the conservatives: bash (other) lawyers and Gitmo-huggers! Unfortunately, he forgot that the law firms he was bashing were, well, law firms. Big, respectable law firms that represent big, Fortune 500 companies and have big, monied connections to the business world and to the Republican party.

The apology was humorous: Stimson said he never meant to bash these law firms, although that’s exactly what he did, and that his statements do not reflect his “core beliefs”. Which is either a flat-out lie, or an admission that he didn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth and it was all fabricated for personal gain.

When even the White House tells you to leave the lawyers alone, you know you’re the last rat on a sinking ship.

Update: FindLaw Writ commentary by Vikram Amar.

 Posted by mythago at 9:53 pm

NYT Prints Another Non-Story, Blathers

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Jan 162007
 

What’s odd is that, for a change, they managed to let a few facts slip into a story about an increase in the number of women living without husbands. Of course, they quickly swaddle the facts in a lot of talky anecdotes from people who are able to fully explain the trend by what they and their friends do, but the facts are still there:

  • The number of women living without a husband in the home is up a staggering 2% since 2004.
  • Since the bar graph includes “widowed” and “divorced”, “single” presumably means unmarried.
  • Lesbians, as usual, do not exist.

One of these days, they’re going to have to take a deep breath and hire fact-checkers.

 Posted by mythago at 9:54 pm

Today

 2 Responses »
Jan 152007
 

A little surprised and peeved that it wasn’t mentioned on Wikipedia’s main English page, but.

You can watch video of Dr. King’s speeches as well as read his works.

Here’s hoping for the day when we won’t have to keep asking ourselves if we’ve put racism behind us.

 Posted by mythago at 11:27 am

Above-Average Voters

 1 Response »
Jan 132007
 

Nole Irritare Leones links to an article citing a Newsweek poll about the chances of electing a female or black President. Respondents overwhelmingly said that they, themselves, would vote for someone other than ‘standard white male guy’, but doubted that the rest of the electorate would. It’s a bit like the poll results showing that most drivers rate themselves above average.

I doubt that the poll tracks anything like the way actual voters would actually behave. For one thing, it probably suffers from response bias; few people are likely to tell a pollster something they feel makes them look like a sexist or a bigot. Worse, though, is that it assumes an answer to an abstract question can be applied to actual candidates. Asking whether a voter would reject a candidate out-of-hand purely because of their sex, or race, doesn’t tell us much about what standards that voter applies to female or minority candidates. Theoretically willing to vote for some female candidate says nothing about how a person will judge an actual female candidate, or whether they will apply biased and/or disproportionately high standards and scrutiny to that candidate.

The shorter, cynical version is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would have been candidates by now if they were white guys.

 Posted by mythago at 5:31 pm
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