After nearly 500 posts, it's time to 86 this blog!

On Monday, I will host Blawg Review for a second time. This edition will be based upon the second cantica of Dante's Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, and will thus be a sequel of sorts to last December's Inferno-themed Blawg Review #35. The submission guidelines are, as always, available at the Blawg Review site.

For those of you keeping score, Monday's post will not only be the eighty-sixth edition of the carnival of legal blogging, but also the five hundredth post to Infamy or Praise. In blogging terms, five hundred posts represents either a significant milestone for this blog or a normal week for Instapundit or Althouse.

Oh, well. As Einstein famously noted, everything's relative.

Random Thought (6)

If we consolidate the Dakotas and Wyoming, we won't need to add stars to the flag when we annex British Columbia and Alberta.

[Previous Thought]

Thirty Words

"Imagine you're given just thirty words in which to persuade someone you've never met that you may be the perfect partner they've always been looking for."

That's the premise underlying They Call Me Naughty Lola, a collection of "Lonely Hearts" advertisements from the London Review of Books. David Rose, the editor of the Lola compilation, was interviewed on yesterday's "Outlook" program on BBC World Service radio (starting at 0:27:30). The Beeb's heartfelt readings of some of the ads, together with a melancholy piano accompaniment, are not to be missed.

Considering my recent struggle to write six words of fiction, I'm especially grateful that I don't need to attempt thirty words of (mostly) non-fiction. (Thanks, Honey!)

Sadly, "extinction" is not a legal remedy.

Back in August, I mentioned that, on behalf of the proprietor of a Barney-hatred website, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was suing Barney's owners. I'm pleased to report that Barney has been vanquished:

Lawyers for the plush children's icon have agreed to pay $5,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed against them in August by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was defending an anti-Barney Web site called the "Source of All Evil."

The settlement, announced on Tuesday, caps a five-year campaign by the New York firm of Gibney, Anthony and Flaherty to rid the Internet of unflattering images of its plump saurian client.

. . . .

According to EFF and scholars of the First Amendment, Barney's lawyers went too far in their frequent legal threats. EFF's lawsuit filed in August sought a ruling that the anti-Barney site created by Stuart Frankel "qualifies as fair use and does not infringe any protected copyright or trademark interest."

The settlement says that, in addition to paying $5,000, Barney's owners will not "sue or otherwise make any claim" against Frankel.

While the settlement technically applies only to the lawsuit involving Frankel, in practice it's likely to deter future legal threats by Barney's lawyers against Web parodies.

"We wish we hadn't had to file a lawsuit to finally get Barney's lawyers to stop harassing a man who was just expressing his opinion about a cultural phenomenon," EFF staff attorney Corynne McSherry said.

Notwithstanding my admitted pleasure over this result, I must confess that I'm neither as pleased nor pleased for the same reasons as "Bonhomie Snoutintroff" from UK's The Register:

I'm especially gratified to see Barney go down for the count, even if, metaphorically speaking, being conquered by the EFF is much like being bitten to death by a duck. I believe he's neurotoxic. I forbid my young son to watch the show, fearing that it will make him dull witted, or gay.

Incidentally, I don't permit him to play with dolls, either, even if they are branded as "action figures". I was given a GI Joe doll as a lad, but quickly, and wisely, lost interest in it. And you see how I turned out: perfectly heterosexual, except for the lightest of crushes on actors Andy Garcia and Johnny Depp. And maybe George Clooney and Russell Crowe too, but I'm not sure.

There were no GI Joes in tight leather jumpsuits or plush talking Barneys in my childhood. I did have a lot of regular stuffed animals, however, all which I loved deeply. None of them were purple or sang gay songs, I can assure you. They remained silent and stoic, even as I lined them up in bed for interrogations each week on prison camp night. There was no wheeney, whiney, pleading "I love you, you love me, we're a happy family" nonsense from them during their simulated water boardings and car-battery 'encouragements'. No sir. It's a harsh world, after all, but I like to think that I brought some joy and tough love into my little corner of it without Barney.

I think the response you're looking for is "no".

From Reuters:

The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 wants a day's leave from jail to discuss theology with Pope Benedict when he visits Turkey this week, his lawyer said on Monday.

"I (Mehmet Ali Agca) asked the Turkish government to release me for one day so that I can discuss theological issues with (Pope) Ratzinger," Agca said in comments passed on by his lawyer Mustafa Demirbag at a news conference.

"I want to discuss with him religious and mystic issues," Demirbag quoted Agca as saying.

Over the weekend, a profile of Pope Benedict XVI in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) mentioned the holy father's punctual nature and tightly-managed schedule. I'm going to hazard a guess that he won't be penciling in Mr. Agca.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Blawg, Blawg, Blawg!

Peter Black, an Australian law professor, gives his American compatriots the long Thanksgiving weekend off by hosting the eighty-fifth edition of Blawg Review at his Freedom to Differ blog. Highlights in this week's issue include The Ashes, Welsh Dragon Sausages, and home invasions by police. Not included but nonetheless worth noting was the ever-anonymous Blawg Review Editor's spirited defense of the neologism "blawg" and those "morons" who coined it.

Despite his blog's title, Black's effort did not differ from the consistently excellent hosting Blawg Review has enjoyed from week-to-week; I make no predictions about next week, however, when I host issue number eighty-six here at Infamy or Praise.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (91) . . . The Sequel!

This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Tuesday, November 21; link good at time of posting):

A fugitive wanted for a double homicide in Arkansas was arrested on the weekend in Wisconsin after he posted his name, picture and address on an online dating Web site, police said on Monday.

Calvin A. Bennett, 26, has been charged with two counts of murder in the killings of Pierce Odell, 79, and his wife, Mary, 78, who were found shot to death on October 30 outside their home in Nashville, Arkansas, about 125 miles southwest of the state capital Little Rock.

"He was taken into custody shortly before noon on Sunday, less than 12 hours after his picture was broadcast on (the television show) 'America's Most Wanted,'" said Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police.

Sadler said that people who had first seen his picture on the dating site had subsequently seen it on the popular television program.

. . . .

One of the messages on Bennett's Web posting said he "liked to cuddle."

[Previous TGIS]

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (91)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Monday, November 20; link good at time of posting):

An Indian carpenter who stole diamonds worth more than a million dollars from a jewelers was arrested in a dance bar after he splurged to ensure the band play one song repeatedly, alerting a police informer, reports said.

Divesh Borse decided to let his hair down in Mumbai after selling part of his haul, the Sunday Times newspaper said.

During two evenings at the bar he spent hundreds of dollars as he requested the Bollywood song "Humko Deewana Kar Gaye" (He Made Me Crazy) by nasally balladeer Himesh Reshammiya be played over and over again.

But when a drunk Borse insisted on the song for a third straight evening others in the bar protested, the Times said.

To try and get his way he started showering 1,000 rupee notes on dancers, but hadn't counted on the presence of a police informer, who alerted his handlers.

Borse was arrested carrying diamonds, which he had stolen while carrying out work at the store, worth 3 million rupees ($67,110).

[Previous TGIS]

Random Thought (5)

Those Thanksgiving turkeys should give thanks for President Bush; if it were me in the White House, not only would I not pardon them, but I'd also send them to Guantanamo.

[Previous Thought]

Good Housekeeping (Update)

As promised, I've updated Infamy or Praise's template to take advantage of Blogger's new support for post labeling. In both the main and post-level views, the sidebar now provides links for the various categories, along with a syndication feed for each one.

Since Sitemeter logs have indicated for some time now that more than 90% of this blog's readership are using screen resolutions greater than 800 pixels in width, I've also modified the template to make better use of that space.

If anyone notes any technical issues with the new template, please don't hesitate to let me know!

Random Thought (4)

If the IRS ever calls you and mentions my name, I'd appreciate it if you'd refer to me as "Uncle Colin" and acknowledge that, considering I pay for your student loans and expensive medical treatments, it's especially regrettable that I've lost such large sums in your start-up company in each of the last several fiscal years.

[Previous Thought]

Now THAT'S Humanizing the Profession!

A few months ago, I wrote an article and argued that legal blogging could humanize the legal profession and result in greater public esteem for attorneys generally. I offer my sincere thanks to those of you who have taken the time to read that piece and especially to those who have written me concerning it.

Those of you who haven't yet read "Humanizing the Profession" shouldn't bother, though; Heather the Carolina Top Cat already has done more to enhance the public's goodwill toward attorneys than an army of legal bloggers ever could:

Cheerleader of the Week Reader Michael Rodriguez, an attorney from Lake Worth, Fla., nominates Heather of the Carolina Top Cats – who is also an attorney. According to her team bio, Heather has passed the state bar and is also training to run in the New York City Marathon. This is one focused, goal-oriented cheerleader! Rodriguez writes, "Can you imagine being her client, turning on the game and realizing your counselor is dancing at midfield on national television? Do you think she'd get continuances for hearings scheduled for Mondays on account of having to perform on 'Monday Night Football'? There are just so many questions I need answered." Your Honor, my lawyer will be here as soon as she finishes posing for the swimsuit calendar. Here are lawyer cheers:

Sway to the left, sway to the right, res judicata keeps me up at night!

Briefcase, deposition, hearing, sidebar – call us if you're ever hit by an uninsured car!

CLASS action, CLASS action!

Where are the other three of you hiding?

Thanks to Scott Henson's personal blog, Huevos Rancheros, I found a nifty site which sifts census data to determine how many people in the United States share your name. My results:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 5 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I already knew about this much more talented Colin Samuels, with whom I jockey for position on Google, but where are the other three Colin Samuelses? Hopefully not nearby, lest a chance encounter cause a rift in the space-time continuum.

"See No Evil" (Update)

Scott Henson has replied to my earlier post in a comment which I'll reproduce here:

Of course, I'm not for a 'see no evil' border policy - I'm for rationalizing immigration laws. For most US history - until the late '60s - there were no, none, zero numerical limits on immigration across the southern border. I'm not arguing for NO limits, but current immigration policy simply ignores the realities of border life, history and economics, and IMO often makes us less safe when the vast sums of money thrown at the issue aren't spent wisely.

I think that's a wise position as far as it goes. No government policy should be considered beyond review, and immigration laws are no exception to that rule. Moreover, if money allocated to enforcement isn't spent wisely, the advisability of the underlying program is largely beside the point, in my opinion. Whether the federal funds studied in the El Paso Times article were spent appropriately is an issue which I don't feel was resolved by the study but which should receive some close scrutiny.

Notwithstanding, the debate whether to "rationalize" immigration laws is a separate one from the decision to enforce existing laws for so long as these are in effect. Any number of existing laws could be changed in the future because these do not properly reflect existing realities, changed attitudes, or economic necessities; the argument that immigration laws should be treated differently than others because they need "rationalization" is unpersuasive.

In my earlier post, to illustrate a point, I mentioned a hypothetical person with a pending bench warrant for his failure to appear and answer for some speeding tickets. In an unrelated encounter with police, would that person get a pass if the existing speed limits needed to be rationalized because they ignore the realities of commuter life or money allocated to traffic enforcement isn't spent wisely? Depending on extenuating circumstances, a particular police officer might let him go, just as a given border-area sheriff's deputy might overlook an illegal immigrant's status, but neither of these discretionary acts should be made a matter of official policy.

To digress a bit from our current exchange, I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend Scott's Grits for Breakfast blog to those of you who do not already read it regularly. Agree or disagree, his thoughts are always worth reading, and I've recommended his posts for inclusion in Blawg Review on a regular basis. The fact that grits indeed make a wonderful breakfast only adds to his credibility.

Is "See No Evil" a Good Border Policy?

Scott Henson of the Grits for Breakfast blog notes a study by the El Paso Times which found that federal funds allocated to sheriffs' departments along the Texas border to combat drug traffic, violent crime, and terrorism were far more likely to result in arrests for illegal immigration:

[Reporter Brandi Grissom] crunched the data and found "border sheriffs are using federal dollars meant to fight drugs and violent crime to enforce federal immigration laws." For every one arrest made, she found, sheriffs' departments receiving Operation Linebacker funds reported seven suspected illegal immigrants to the US Border Patrol.

The article concludes from that 7:1 correlation that "border sheriffs are using federal dollars meant to fight drugs and violent crime to enforce federal immigration laws" and quotes another observer who concluded that "[m]oney the governor is allocating is clearly being misused". Henson has both local insight and legal expertise in this particular area and he seems to like their conclusions; for what it's worth, though, I don't.

Are the sheriffs misusing the federal money? Possibly, but I don't think you can draw that conclusion just from the fact that a disproportionate number of people arrested along the Texas border are illegal immigrants and not drug traffickers, violent criminals, or terrorists. On the contrary, that there are more illegal immigrants than drug traffickers, violent criminals, or terrorists near El Paso is approximately as shocking as the revelation that summers in El Paso are on the warm side. Frankly, I think it would be a true national calamity if it were otherwise, with more drug traffickers, violent criminals, and terrorists than illegal immigrants crossing the border thereabouts.

State Senator Eliot Shapleigh from El Paso, who commented in the article, is probably closer to the mark: "To me, the statistics say that the operation has been, in effect, an immigration operation, not a serious crime operation". "In effect", perhaps, but not necessarily by intention as others in the article concluded.

Notwithstanding the premature conclusions drawn, the study does raise a couple of valid concerns: First, was the federal crime program effectively defined and monitored? In other words, was this money a "blank check" to enable a dragnet operation rather than a targeted investigation? If so, I for one would wonder whether we taxpayers have been misled about the objectives of the program.

Second, what should we do with illegal immigrants who are detained (assume properly so) in the course of a drugs, violent crime, or terrorism-related investigation when they are subsequently cleared by the investigation? If a routine police stop finds that a detained person has outstanding warrants for an unrelated reason, those warrants are executed regardless whether the reason for the initial stop (again, assuming it was a proper one) is validated by the subsequent inquiry. If, during the course of that hypothetical police stop, evidence of unrelated illegal acts is in plain view, that evidence is not routinely ignored.

Establishing identity is a key initial matter in an investigation and an absence of proper documentation is, essentially, in plain view during any meaningful identity inquiry. Otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants run the risk of incidental detection of their situations just as would an individual who has a bench warrant pending for his failure to appear and answer for his speeding tickets. Whether this should be so is part of a broader inquiry, I think.

For my own part, I fail to understand why illegal immigrants should be given a free pass on their immigration violations just because they didn't turn out to be drug traffickers, violent criminals, or terrorists; Henson makes some thought-provoking arguments why incidental enforcement of immigration laws may be counter-productive to investigations of more serious crimes. It's a debate worth having in the course of our ongoing national consideration of immigration-related issues.

[Update]

Transcending Blawg Review

One of the benefits of a carnival-style roundup of legal blogging is the opportunity for bloggers with expertise in particular areas to highlight topics or occasions which might be overlooked or addressed only superficially by others. One such example is this week's illuminating eighty-fourth edition of Blawg Review, hosted at Jen Burke's Transcending Gender blog.

Burke is an expert in civil rights issues and, in addition to collecting the best general legal blogging of the past week, describes the purpose and meaning of today's commemoration of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. She has documented her own struggles with disability in a well-received book and brings a powerful writing style to bear on issues facing the community of people who struggle with gender- and sexuality-related difficulties and prejudices:

Many people first came into contact with the impact of transphobic violence through the story of Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 - December 31, 1993) in the movie Boys Don’t Cry, directed by Kimberly Peirce.

Brandon was raped and murdered after his attackers discovered that he had female genitalia. His story was also told in the documentary, The Brandon Teena Story.

. . . .

In the article “Why Transgender Day Of Remembrance Matters” published at Critical Moment, Cynthya BrianKate looks at the aftermath of hatred: “Our society still undervalues transgender and gender-transgressing peoples’ lives, especially in the law and the media. Killers often go unpunished, or punished in ways that blame victims.” Given these realities, Cynthya sees the work to be done: “We need to know the victims’ stories, especially those who have been denied justice. We need to honor the dead and work to make a better world than the one they were taken from. That’s why TDOR matters.”

Amidst discussion of many transgender and sexual identity-related topics (both legal and non-legal), Burke mentions some ongoing research by Dr. Jillian Todd Weiss concerning legislative developments in this area:

Dr. Weiss covered a recent legislative development in Corvallis, Oregon. The city charter was amended city “to provide non-discrimination for gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation.” As she notes in this post, “The list of cities and counties with laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity keeps growing.” In this post, Dr. Weiss discusses New Jersey’s anti-discrimination bill protecting gender identity: “The bill would add a citizen’s ‘gender identity or expression’ as a basis for protection under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.” In the comment to that post, Dr. Weiss notes “37 Fortune 500 companies in New Jersey that would be affected by the pending bill to add gender identity to the state anti-discrimination code.” The landscape of employment law is changing when it comes to sex, gender, gender identity, and gender identity expressions.

Notwithstanding Dr. Weiss' last comment in the quoted portion above, the issue may not be the adoption of sexuality-related anti-discrimination policies on the corporate level, but rather the enforcement of such policies with legislative and private consequences once companies have voluntarily adopted them. Consider the situation described in the article "The Hollow Promise" from October's ACC Docket (the magazine published by the Association of Corporate Counsel), an article which was co-authored by Yale Law Professor and Balkinization contributor Ian Ayres:

Many companies — more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 and all but one of the Fortune 50 — have adopted policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

. . . .

The reality is that despite the lofty-sounding language in non-discrimination policies, employees in most states have found them difficult to enforce. It may seem inconceivable that a company would announce a sexual orientation nondiscrimination policy and then argue in court that it has a legal right to discriminate, but in fact some companies have done just that — and successfully.

Next week, Peter Black will transcend Blawg Review no. 84 when he hosts no. 85 at his Freedom to Differ blog.

Wanted: One Iraqi George Washington

Charles Krauthammer makes a profoundly troubling observation for those of us who wholeheartedly supported the liberation of Iraq: "We have given the Iraqis a republic, and they do not appear able to keep it." He continues:

In retrospect, I think we made several serious mistakes -- not shooting looters, not installing an Iraqi exile government right away, and not taking out Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in its infancy in 2004 -- that greatly compromised the occupation. Nonetheless, the root problem lies with Iraqis and their political culture.

. . . .

[]Iraq's first truly democratic government turned out to be hopelessly feeble and fractured, little more than a collection of ministries handed over to various parties, militias and strongmen.

The problem is not, as we endlessly argue about, the number of American troops. Or of Iraqi troops. The problem is the allegiance of the Iraqi troops. Some serve the abstraction called Iraq. But many swear fealty to political parties, religious sects or militia leaders.

Are the Arabs intrinsically incapable of democracy, as the "realists" imply? True, there are political, historical, even religious reasons why Arabs are less prepared for democracy than, say, East Asians and Latin Americans who successfully democratized over the past several decades. But the problem here is Iraq's particular political culture, raped and ruined by 30 years of Hussein's totalitarianism.

While that's certainly depressing, Krauthammer goes on to describe a more hopeful possibility:

Is this America's fault? No. It is a result of Iraq's first democratic election. The United States was not going to replace Saddam Hussein with another tyrant. We were trying to plant democracy in the heart of the Middle East as the one conceivable antidote to extremism and terror -- and, in a country that is nearly two-thirds Shiite, that inevitably meant Shiite domination. It was never certain whether the long-oppressed Shiites would have enough sense of nation and sense of compromise to govern rather than rule. The answer is now clear: United in a dominating coalition, they do not.

. . . .

The unitary Shiite government having been proved such a failure, we should be encouraging the full breakup of the Shiite front in pursuit of a new coalition based on cross-sectarian alliances: the more moderate Shiite elements (secular and religious but excluding the poisonous Sadr), the Kurds and those Sunnis who recognize their minority status but are willing to accept an important, generously offered place at the table.

Such a coalition was almost created after the latest Iraqi elections. It needs to be attempted again. One can tinker with American tactics or troop levels from today until doomsday. But unless the Iraqis can put together a government of unitary purpose and resolute action, the simple objective of this war -- to leave behind a self-sustaining democratic government -- is not attainable.

We had our false start as well, remember. The Articles of Confederation were an acknowledged failure before the inadequacies of that arrangement were remedied in an enduring Constitution and Bill of Rights. Even with those documents in place and a national will to succeed, it still took the strength and dignity of George Washington to see the nation through its first few years. We survived those years only to fight a bloody civil war less than a century later; it required a civil rights movement a century after that to guarantee finally the rights of minority groups.

If a modern eye were turned to the fledgling American republic during the dozen years the Articles were effective (de facto or de jure between 1777 and 1789), would we have rated the prospects of the United States very highly? While post-Revolution America perhaps lacked the sectarian animosity of today's Iraq, it also did not have the backing of world's leading economic and military power -- indeed, it had just fought a war of independence from its era's leading economic and military power and would fight it again in 1812.

The Shiites may lack a George Washington, but they will have the active backing of the developed world beyond the Middle East if they nonetheless can find amongst their number some semblance of our nation's visionary founding fathers.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (90)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Monday, November 13; link good at time of posting):

The bandit should have paid closer attention to the used car salesman's "Friends of the NRA" ball cap before pulling his gun. Auto dealer Greg "Lumpy" Lambert, a Knox County [Tennessee] commissioner, said a young man walked onto his sales lot Saturday and was determined to buy a 2005 Ford Focus.

Lambert said he became suspicious during the test drive when the man didn't want to haggle over price or even ask for a mechanical inspection.

Presented with the sales paperwork, the man pulled a .25-caliber handgun from his pocket, apparently to rob him, the commissioner said.

Lambert, a National Rifle Association member who has a ball cap from the group and has offered free rifles with car purchases in the past, was ready with his own .380-caliber pistol.

. . . .

The suspect fled, but left behind his driver's license.

Kane Stackhouse, 19, was charged Sunday with attempted aggravated robbery and was being held in jail with bond set at $15,000 bond, the Knox County Sheriff's office said.

[Previous TGIS]

Good Housekeeping

In its latest version, the Blogger platform supports that tagging functionality which all the hip kids are so darn crazy about.

In Blogger's parlance, tags are "labels" -- probably to promote consistency with Google stablemate Gmail -- but being the Web 1.0 sort of fellow I am, I refer to these as "categories" more often than not. With a nod to Shakespeare, though, what's in a name? That which I call a category by any other word would smell... well, like dust, since I've not cleaned my screen lately. Regardless, Blogger now allows tags and, after several evenings combing through the post archives, Infamy or Praise is now fully-tagged.

For now, I've classified things into nine categories -- "Law", "Crime", "Blawg Review", "Current Events", "Technology", "Sports", "Schadenfreude", "Random Thoughts", and "Worthy Causes" -- with a catch-all for those posts (like this one) which defy classification.

It's very much a work-in-progress, of course. There is considerable overlap between some categories -- between "Law" and "Blawg Review", to mention one example, and between "Crime" and "Schadenfreude". Some categories, like "Random Thoughts" and "Worthy Causes", have few posts, because I'm just getting started on those topics. That "Defies Classification" is currently the fifth-most-used label tends to indicate that either this blog is much more eclectic than I thought or I need to be a bit more discerning in my labeling. Perhaps it's a bit of both, but I'll almost certainly refine the current selection of categories over time, consolidating, adding, and removing tags and reclassifying posts as necessary.

You can already see and use these changes in individual posts. The labels assigned to each post are shown as links; clicking on any of these links will gather all of the other posts in that category on a single page. In the next week or two, once I can digest Blogger's new template methodology, I'll update my template so that the category list will appear in the sidebar.

[Update]

James Ellroy Has Poor Self-Esteem

James Ellroy, the tremendous -- and tremendously strange -- author of many acclaimed crime novels, including L.A. Confidential, was interviewed recently by Deborah Solomon in The New York Times Magazine:

Do you think of yourself as a novelist or as a crime writer?

I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime writer who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music.

How do you know since you say you don’t read other books?

I just know. There is a line from a wonderful Thomas Lux poem: “You’re alone and you know a few things.” I just know that I am that good.

What about Raymond Chandler, who wrote so evocatively about Los Angeles lowlifes before you?

He is egregiously overrated.

Dashiell Hammett, whose name is synonymous with the adjective “hard-boiled”?

I think he’s tremendously great; I just think I am greater.

Are Things Getting Beta or Worse?

Jon Gruber of Daring Fireball tackles a topic near and dear to my heart -- beta software -- and concludes that releasing a product in beta status "is not an excuse":

The sentiment here is that it’s somehow unfair to developers to treat software labeled “beta” with the same critical eye as non-beta software. That’s true, in the case of actual beta software, where by “actual beta” I mean “not yet released, but close”.

Released vs. not-released is the distinction that warrants critical restraint. Film critics don’t write reviews of rough cuts. Book critics don’t review non-final manuscripts of novels.

Released software that is labeled “beta” is still released software, and is fair game for the same level of criticism as any released software. You can’t “semi-release” your 1.0 just because you want it out there but aren’t yet finished. Being semi-released is like being semi-pregnant.

Much as I have, Gruber makes some allowances for software which is freeware or open source and notes, appropriately I think, "That’s not to say such software is off limits for criticism; only that such software, when criticized, deserves at least some degree of slack."

Random Thought (3)

There's no sense in doing an honest thing if you're going to do it suspiciously; there's even less reason to do a dishonest thing suspiciously. Act normally and you can get away with pretty much anything, at least until you write something like this.

[Previous Thought]

Slick Advertising Is Lost on Me

Last week's episode of Lost notably included an intimate encounter between characters Sawyer and Kate which has been described as the "bear-cage-jungle-love scene". In what must be either the most clever advertising placement in the history of online advertising or the least clever, the online replay of the episode was sponsored by K-Y.

Election Day Hangover -- Please Blawg Quietly

Rick Hasen's Election Law blog hosts the eighty-third edition of Blawg Review. Hasen completes the carnival's Election Day bookend posts with a roundup of reaction to and analysis of the historic Democratic victory in the midterm vote.

Demonstrating once again that you can't spell "analysis" without "anal", observers and pundits affiliated with both parties are dissecting the 2006 vote in search of patterns, problems, and political ammunition. The many legal bloggers collected in this week's excellent issue are a more informative, less shrill alternative to the talking (and blogging) heads you'll find elsewhere. Highlights of this week's Blawg Review include election-related problems (some of which occurred, unsurprisingly, in Florida), the pros and cons of divided government, and the probable impact of the election on the law. Some other stuff happened last week, and Blawg Review has that covered as well.

Having spent Election Day in Disneyland, I found it difficult to worry about the state of American democracy, or anything else for that matter. You can take my undergraduate degree in Political Science away for saying this, but this year I'm going to let others do my worrying for me! I for one welcome our new Democratic overlords!

Next week, we'll take a page from Prince's book as the Transcending Gender blog hosts Blawg Review no. 84.

Project Valour-IT Update: Veterans' Day

The Veterans' Day fundraising drive for Project Valour-IT is nearing its close and I'm pleased to report that both Blackfive's Army-affiliated team and the overall effort have exceeded their respective goals!

The Army team has, at the time of this post, raised $46,030.00, exceeding its objective by $1,030.00; the four branches combined have raised $181,170.00, exceeding their fundraising goal by $1,170.00. Congratulations are due all who contributed to this very worthy effort, but especially to the leaders, members, and supports of the Marines' team, which has raised nearly $52,000.00!

My heartfelt thanks again to those of you who contributed via Infamy or Praise!

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (89)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others is brought to you by thousands of brave servicemen and women from the United States and its coalition allies (from Sunday, November 5; link good at time of posting):

An Iraqi special tribunal today convicted Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging for the brutal repression of a Shiite town in the 1980’s.

As the chief judge read aloud the verdict, a defiant Mr. Hussein shouted, “Long live the people! Long live the Arab nation! Down with the spies!” He thrust his finger emphatically into the air as he spoke, then repeatedly chanted, “God is great!”

The judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdul Rahman, tried to calm Mr. Hussein down. “There’s no point,” Mr. Rahman told him.

The verdict, under Iraqi law, will immediately be submitted to an appellate court, which will begin its review within a month, officials said.

Still, today’s verdict represented a moment of triumph and catharsis for many Iraqis after decades of suffering under Mr. Hussein’s tyrannical rule.

Spontaneous celebrations broke out across Iraq in spite of an around-the-clock curfew imposed on the capital and other regions. People fired pistols and assault rifles into the air in a common gesture of jubilation. Residents of Sadr City, a Shiite bastion in northeastern Baghdad, flooded the streets in defiance of a curfew, whooping and dancing and sounding car horns. Even some Shiite police officers joined in the revelry, firing their weapons in the air.

. . . .

The long-awaited verdict today came nearly three years after Mr. Hussein was hauled from an underground hideaway by American troops and more than a year after he and seven co-defendants first appeared in an Iraqi court to face charges of orchestrating what the prosecution called a “widespread and systematic persecution” of the townspeople of Dujail, 35 miles north of Baghdad.

[Previous TGIS]

Out of Office (3)

Out of Office (2)

Out of Office (1)

Project Valour-IT Update: Take the Money and Run

I'm taking a few days off this week, so I'll make this my last Project Valour-IT update. I know the effort is in good hands -- you all know it's a worthy cause and you all know what to do to show your support for our injured servicemen and servicewomen.

Blackfive and the Army are now more than halfway to their objective of $45,000.00, with nearly $25,000.00 in donations received this far; the combined effort has raised more than $88,000.00.

I'm proud to have participated in this year's Veteran's Day fundraising drive. My thanks are gratefully offered to those of you who contributed through the Infamy or Praise sidebar and elsewhere.

Vote Early, Vote Often, and Blawg When Not Voting

Unlike the candidates who campaign a year-and-a-half in advance and call you at the most inconvenient moments, Blawg Review's election focus is a much more manageable two-weeks-long and there whenever you're ready to read it.

That coverage kicks off today, as Edward Still hosts the eighty-second edition of Blawg Review on his VoteLaw site. Glenn Reynolds, Denise Howell, Ilya Somin, and many others weigh-in on topics relating to tomorrow's midterm elections. Lyle Denniston, The Mommy Blawger, Blawg Review's own anonymous Editor, and many others weigh-in on other topics entirely.

Next week, Rick Hasen's Election Law blog will handle post-mortem duties on the 2006 vote.

Attention Oregon State Bar Members!

Some time ago, the powers-that-be in the Oregon State Bar decreed that the bar's official publication would not carry any advertising on behalf of the armed services. The Bar's explanation for this policy is that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy discriminating against open service by homosexuals violates the organization's bylaws.

The membership of the Oregon State Bar is a diverse lot. Some favor the military's policies against service by openly homosexual people, while others oppose those policies. Some favor a broad right of the armed services to advertise, while others support various restrictions on that right. Some believe that the Bar leadership should focus on its mandate to efficiently regulate the profession and should stay away from overt political proselytizing; others believe the Bar should take a stand on controversial issues which do not directly affect the practice of law in the state.

Especially during wartime, whether to discriminate against speech by the armed services which are supporting our freedoms abroad is a decision which should be made by the members of the bar, rather than by a few leaders. Regardless diverse opinions concerning the military, social policy, and politics, I suspect that most bar members share my belief that it was a mistake for the Bar's leadership to impose its own political sensibilities on the organization's membership.

A petition is currently circulating amongst the members of the Oregon State Bar to correct that mistake. Sponsored by eleven bar members, including several regional bar delegates, the petition proposes that the membership be allowed to consider the following question:

Should the Board of Governors immediately allow the Armed Forces of the United States of America to advertise in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, notwithstanding anything to the contrary in Article 10 of the Oregon State Bar Bylaws, or any other bylaw provision, rule, or policy of the Oregon State Bar?

If you are an Oregon attorney who believes that the bar's membership should decide its own position on this controversial issue, contact Region Six Delegate Diane Gruber by phone at 503.650.9662 or by e-mail at "dlgesq@aol.com" to receive a copy of the petition.

UPDATE: Professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy blog has this to say about the petition:

I'm not an Oregon bar member, but if I were, I would sign the petition, and I would vote to exempt the military, for much the same reason as I've given with regard to law schools' failing to exempt military recruiting from their no-sexual-orientation-discrimination rules:

"Perspective," my New Shorter Oxford Dictionary says, is "a mental view of the relative importance" of things. The debate about whether law schools should exclude the military from interviewing on campus is ultimately not about gay rights. It's about perspective.

. . . .

Let's assume the military's discriminatory practices are bad. But isn't the military also doing something good?

The military, after all, protects all of us -— straight and gay -— from foreign attack. That's pretty good. All the rights we have, we have because members of the military have bled to protect them. That's pretty good. During World War II, the American military was racially segregated, which was bad. But it defeated Japan and helped defeat Hitler, which was good. Perspective is what tells us that the good the military does vastly exceeds the badness of its discriminatory practices.

So as a moral matter, excluding the military isn't just remaining pure of complicity with discrimination. Rather, it's remaining pure by shunning the institution that protects our liberty, our equality, and our lives from forces far worse than "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" can ever be.

. . . .

[P]erspective reminds us that those institutions that defend our lives deserve slightly more accommodation -— yes, even despite what we may see as their vices -— than institutions that don't. And any morality and any symbolism that fails to keep this proper perspective is not a morality or symbolism to live by.

Professor Volokh also has made a .pdf copy of the petition available at his site for downloading and (by Oregon Bar members) execution.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (88)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, November 1; link good at time of posting):

A Maine attorney who released information in 2000 about President George W. Bush's drunken driving conviction was arrested on Tuesday after he dressed up as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and waved a fake gun at traffic.

Police in South Portland, Maine, arrested Thomas Connolly, 49, of Scarborough, Maine, and charged him with criminal threatening. He was released on bail, local officials said.

Lt. Todd Bernard said the police department received calls about a man wearing Middle Eastern garb and a bin Laden mask and carrying fake dynamite standing along an interstate highway. When police arrived, they saw Connolly holding a gun.

"They ordered him to drop the weapon several times and he eventually complied," Bernard said.

. . . .

"I didn't expect to be arrested," he said. "Obviously I touched a post-9/11 nerve."

[Previous TGIS]

Project Valour-IT Update: Have Numbers, Lack Tagline

"Jon Carry" managed to avoid putting his foot in his mouth today.

While this may be good for Democratic candidates nationwide, it's bad for me now that it comes time to theme this Project Valour-IT fundraising update. Rather than trying desperately to fill some dead air and risk botching a joke, I'll just move right along to the numbers:

Blackfive, et al. on the Army team have now passed the $15,000.00 mark (better than one-third of the way along toward the team's goal of $45,000.00); the combined effort now accounts for nearly $57,000.00 in contributions for Soldiers' Angels' Project Valour-IT.

Go Army, beat Navy!

Actually, since this is a worthy cause which benefits injured soldiers regardless of their branch of service, go Navy, too! And Air Force! And Marines!

Go everyone, beat al Qaeda!

Domo arrigato gozaimasu! Please come again!

My understanding is that employees of frequently-robbed businesses like banks, bars, restaurants, and convenience stores generally are instructed not to resist a robbery attempt or even to interact with the robber more than absolutely is required. Whether things are just different in Japan or whether this is a tale of one waitress' initiative, I can't say:

Police are looking for a robber who held up a noodle bar in western Japan then paid for his meal and waited for his change before making off.

The young man ate a bowl of "ramen" noodles and a side order of fried chicken at a restaurant in the city of Osaka on Wednesday then produced a knife and forced a waitress to hand over takings of 46,000 yen ($393), the Sports Nippon newspaper said.

When the woman demanded he pay for his meal, the robber gave her 1,000 yen and waited for his 100 yen change before running away, the paper said.

Ask and ye shall receive, I suppose.

Although the article is bit sketchy on the details of the incident, it sounds as though he stiffed her on the tip. If that's the case, he probably shouldn't expect top-flight service the next time he dines at that noodle bar.

Project Valour-IT Update: Kerry On, My Wayward Son

The caissons keep rolling along! Blackfive's Team Army has raised, at the time of this posting, more than $14,500.00 for Project Valour-IT; the four teams combined have generated nearly $53,000.00 in donations to this worthy effort. Nothing to apologize for there!

On the other hand, Senator Kerry did have something to apologize for and, somewhat belatedly but to his credit nonetheless, has apologized for what he and his handlers describe as "a botched joke". Although he's now tacking in another direction, there's still a group of Minnesota-based guardsmen stationed in Iraq who wanted him to know that they still need his help:



UPDATE: The New York Post joins the dogpile: