A thug by any other name

One thing I have noticed cropping up from time to time in the Wisconsin blogosphere is some controversy over the word "thug" and its application.

For example, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran reminds us that a local police captain once produced an internal memo using the word several times and was subsequently disciplined.

The thug memo was deemed not to be promoting good relations between the police and the neighborhood in question. "Call them like they are," advises McIlheran, and I have to agree.

That's what words are for and if somebody is a violent malefactor, then they are a thug, by definition. And I think it's safe to say that shooting four people to death at a house party certainly qualifies and whoever did it is a thug. And much worse.

Of course when the police, or anyone else, refer to an entire Milwaukee neighborhood or aldermanic district as being inhabited by thugs, that's a different story. The offensive implication, I presume, being a racial one, because "thug" has been appropriated practically as a term of endearment by hip hop culture (I'd be more careful where I pointed that gun, young fella).

In that context, thug is constructively a compliment.

But even so, when Captain Glenn D. Frankovis was referring to the thugs of Metcalfe Park, he wasn't talking about the non-thugs of Metcalfe Park. Only the thugs. I don't think he meant that everybody in Metcalfe Park is a thug, simply that there are thugs in Metcalfe Park. Which is kind of a blinding glimpse of the obvious because there are thugs, and potential thugs, everywhere.

Another J-S columnist, Eugene Kane, is occasionally taken to task for describing criminal ne'er-do-wells as "knuckleheads." Evidently his detractors would prefer that he use stronger language, because knucklehead sounds like something out of The Three Stooges.

Maybe one man's thug is another man's knucklehead but somebody can be a knucklehead without being a thug. See, e.g., Ben Stein.

So in the spirit of compromise should the topic arise at this blog, the preferred usage shall be "ruffian." I'm slightly more partial to "blackguard," but given the apparent racial implications for some of "thug," that's likely not the best choice either.

Jensen interceptor

Not only does this Connecticut attorney think Mark D. Jensen will get a new trial, he predicts Jensen won't even be convicted:

In the Jensen case, defense counsel and prosecutors appear to agree the Giles decision raises the strong probability the Wisconsin appeals court will grant Jensen a new trial. If the state is unable to demonstrate the requisite intent described in Giles’ case, it is unlikely Jensen will ever be convicted again in the poisoning death of his wife.

Bold prophecy! Thanks to Justice Scalia.

WMC can't spin away from lies

Dave Zweifel in the Capital Times relates an amusing anecdote, in which a spokesmodel for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce calls up to complain about one of Zweifel's previous columns.

According to Zweifel, WMC's Jim Pugh "insisted ... that the 'Loophole Louie' label they tagged on Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler was simply good-natured ribbing."

Is that so.

Consider WMC's teevee ad "Looking for Loopholes," in which an all-but-tearful narrator intones from the following script:

We've heard it before. Judge cites loophole, sides with criminal that threatens our safety. Take Justice Louis Butler. His colleagues called him Loophole Louie. ... A husband poisoned his wife. Butler cites a loophole, almost jeopardizing the prosecution.

The poisoning case to which WMC refers is State v. Jensen. The ad is one of two that WMC produced devoted to Justice Butler's opinion in Jensen.

Merriam-Webster defines "loophole" as "a means of escape; esp. an ambiguity or omission that allows one to evade the intent of a law or contract."

Justice Butler was the lone dissenter in Jensen, as against the six Justices in the majority, led by WMC's "traditionalist" avatar, former Justice Jon P. Wilcox. (That's how you "almost jeopardize" a prosecution, apparently.) This is what the majority held:

Today, we explicitly adopt this [forfeiture by wrongdoing] doctrine whereby a defendant is deemed to have lost the right to object on confrontation grounds to the admissibility of out-of-court statements of a declarant whose unavailability the defendant has caused.

In this instance, the "loophole" is the forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine and the application of that "loophole" is its explicit adoption by the Jensen majority.

From the opening paragraph of Justice Butler's dissent in Jensen:

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him" (emphasis added). Article I, section 7 of the Wisconsin Constitution similarly provides: "In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to meet the witnesses face to face" (emphasis added). The operative word in each of these constitutional provisions is the word "all." Neither provision creates a homicide exception to the constitutional guarantee of confrontation.

Facing precisely the same question arising from another State, the United States Supreme Court agreed with Justice Butler. From the Giles v. California syllabus:

Held: The California Supreme Court’s theory of forfeiture by wrongdoing is not an exception to the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation requirement because it was not an exception established at the founding.

The author of the majority opinion in Giles? Conservative standard-bearer Antonin Scalia, joined in full by Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justices Thomas and Alito.

To be sure, should the man convicted of poisoning his wife, Mark D. Jensen, receive a new trial — which seems likely — it will be thanks to Justice Scalia and his conservative colleagues, and certainly not to Justice Butler's one-man dissent. In other words, Justice Scalia closed a loophole, he didn't discover one.

And the loophole Scalia closed is exactly the one to which Justice Butler objected. Elsewhere a WMC spokesmodel referred to Butler's objection, an objection grounded in the original understanding of the United States Constitution, as "a needless technicality."

Last week WMC issued a brazenly hypocritical press release, accusing its critics of waging "an organized campaign of misinformation." I would go further. WMC's characterization of Justice Butler's dissent in Jensen is beyond misinformation. It's a flat out lie.

Julaine Appling wants gays imprisoned

"What are you in for?" "Selling crack outside an elementary school. You?" "Coming home from getting married in San Francisco."

Julaine Appling, chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Family Council, said the statutes are clear and the law should be enforced.

"If it were challenged and the courts decided to basically wink at it, and refused to enforce [sic] the law, we have a problem," she said.

Good luck with that. The statutes Ms. Appling is referring to are meant to discourage bigamy or the marriage of first cousins except where one of the first cousins is a female over the age of 55 or where either first cousin is permanently sterile.

Whether the statutes would find application under the Wisconsin constitution's marriage amendment is an open question and in the unlikely event a prosecutor sought to enforce them, I expect lawyers would be lining up to offer pro bono defense. And winning.

Source.*

See also: "I think we’ve been extremely tolerant in allowing them to live wherever they choose" — Julaine Appling.

* Why can't reporters ever report the statutes they're reporting on? It's Wis. Stat. § 765.04(1) and the penalty is at § 765.30(1).

Lucinda Williams

Essence

A non sequitur of Epic proportions

Epic Systems, the big medical software company building a campus just outside of Verona proper, has laid down the law to its building contractor, J.P. Cullen & Sons.

Epic has told J.P. Cullen that if it wants to keep wetting its beak in a construction project expected to total a half-billion dollars before it is through, it will have to wear, like an Ed Gein mask, Epic’s politics.

And in offer of proof for this alleged corporate telling?

Nothing. (The link is to a dictionary of construction terms.)

Behold the balance of David Blaska's baseless drivel. Does he get paid to fabricate rubbish? Or does being a conservative in Madison confer special license to be that much more of an embarrassing dissembler?

Still waiting for somebody — anybody — to make the case for a causal connection between Epic's informal procurement protocol and J.P. Cullen's withdrawal from WMC with something other than pure speculation and unsupported inference ...

GTA: Chicago St.

My friend capper has inaugurated a new blog, Cognitive Dissidence, and for his initial contribution discusses a controversial U.S. Army recruiting station at Summerfest.

The controversy arose over the presence of a computer game, America's Army: Special Forces, where 13-year-old kids could mount a Humvee and spray machine gun fire at full-size virtual human beings.

The exhibit is advertised in Summerfest's official guide as "Experiential marketing, a unique venue for discovering and interacting with brands." And then machine gunning them to death.

There was something of an outcry yesterday and reportedly the Summerfest Army has since substituted "targets" for the human figures as well as restricting entrance to the age of majority (18).

Reliable sources inform me that Milwaukee's medium wave talking orangutan Charlie Sykes spent the better part of two hours in the morning* crying over the objections to the exhibit because, you know, every music festival should include an opportunity for seventh-graders to pretend at killing people with machine guns.

Last year, it was the right-nut wing going appropriately ballistic over an appearance at Summerfest by the hip hop performer Ludacris, which they predicted would instigate a reenactment of Detroit 1967. Needless to say, nothing even remotely of the sort occurred.

I have a better suggestion for the Summerfest Army. Never mind the targets, just reconfigure the life-size humans to resemble bespectacled, hair-helmeted AM radio squawkers running back and forth parroting GOP talking points so we can all get in on the fun.

From whence the protests might emanate then, I wonder.

* And is weeping copiously still. Accolades are being extended to the initial objectors, but I reserve mine for those who can actually stomach listening to that idiot for more than a minute or two.

The Milwaukee Fed Sox

I keep meaning to toss a kudo or several the way of the Milwaukee Federalist Society, whose weblog here is maintained by Terrence Berres, an occasional commenter at this location and at the Shark's lair with an especially dry and therefore winning sense of humor.

While I likely wouldn't be caught dead at a Federalist Society shindig — not even to pilfer the brownies — Mr. Berres's weblog is a very useful one-stop shopping repository of Wisconsin State court opinions complete with links to relevant commentary and so forth.

I also just noticed the other day that one of Mr. Berres's colleagues, David Ziemer, is a contributor to the Wisconsin Law Journal,* where he produced a good piece about a case called State v. Jensen and its future in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Giles v. California that I've written about a number of times here.

A very highly recommended local blog, and much appreciated.

* Hard copy subscriptions: $500-plus per annum.

Six degrees of Catholic bacon (or lard)

Here's another amusing thread courtesy of our friend Dad29, in which he accuses me of "misquoting" a two-paragraph item in the Chicago Tribune the other day.

Apparently he thinks I missed the part where the Archdiocese's spokesmodel described prayers for transgendered human beings as "inimical" to Church teaching. Trouble is, I specifically mentioned that part.

I wondered how come entire Catholic Masses for dogs dressed as babies and clowns might be celebrated, but the Chicago Archdiocese deems it "not possible" to even mention transgendered human beings for prayerful purposes on Church property.

And it's "not possible" because it's "inimical" to Church teaching. Yeah, I got that, and mentioned it. There was no misquoting.

I'm admonished by an apparent Defender of the Faith that, "Any parish that holds those Masses [for dogs dressed as clowns] doesn't understand the teaching of the Church on the sacredness of liturgy. Or much else."

Yet according to the collection of wild-eyed heretics at Catholic.org, there are prayers for not only animals — alive, diseased, and dead — but a variety of inanimate objects, such as bedrooms, cornerstones of buildings, and even bacon:

Bless, O Lord, this lard (or bacon), that it may be an effective remedy for the human race, and grant that through the invocation of Thy holy name all those who eat of it may obtain health of body and protection of their souls. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

So, Catholics may pray for bacon (or lard) but not for transgendered human beings. Bacon! Which is something that not even Jesus as an adherent to Jewish dietary proscriptions would have eaten.

Why a slab of cured and sulfite-infused pig meat merits prayer but not an actual, living human being who may have happened to have been born with ambiguous genitalia according to God's Divine Plan strikes me as just a bit, well, odd, to say the least.

Maybe the healing properties of lard (or bacon) can cure teh gay?

Happy Canada Day

Celebrate your favorite Canadians.

I choose Joni Mitchell and The Band (save Levon Helm, who came from Arkansas with Ronnie Hawkins, but we'll let him hang out).

Coyote

WMC apologist quote of the week

Early on in the most recent Supreme Court race, WMC put Justice Louis Butler in its sights simply because he had demonstrated a taste for judicial activism, particularly aimed at the business liability [sic].

Which is why WMC's ad campaign concentrated on — and falsely portrayed, at the expense of the U.S. Constitution by distorting its system of justice — Butler's record in adjudicating criminal appeals.

Judith Faulkner owes success to WMC.

So, let's see. You deliberately distort a respected judge's record in criminal cases when you don't care for his dispositions in civil ones, and one day Wisconsin is America's tax hell and its "Alabama North" and the next it's the best environment for companies like Epic Systems to thrive in. I guess you have to get pretty deep down in the free market think tank to come up with stuff like that, thus the attendant confusion and memory loss is understandable.

Stevens Derangement Syndrome*

I often get a huge kick out of our favorite Brookfield curmudgeon Dad29, but I'm concerned he's losing his grip on reality as we know it here (not that it was anything except tenuous to begin with).

* By its acronym, this common conservative affliction is interchangeable with "Souter Derangement Syndrome," or, to opposite symptom and effect, "Scalia Derangement Syndrome."

Lawyer eschews double negative

From Chief Justice John Roberts's dissenting opinion in Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc., decided June 23:

The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing. "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose." Bob Dylan, Like A Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).

When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose.

Nice try. Best stick to the light operetta, C.J.

Kazakhstan is not in Russia

But who cares when you're more interested in running video footage of a bloodied, suicided corpse laying on a Manhattan street accompanied by breathless "legal" speculation,* eh Geraldo?

* Several orders of magnitude more offensive than any corpse.

Judith Faulkner, corporate heroine

Epic has not run a press release for 18 years. In fact, the only advertising the company has sponsored was a billboard with the slogan, "Marketing Sucks ... Epic Systems."

The notoriously publicity-averse Judith R. Faulkner made very positive news last week with her principled stand against a business association, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, and its opprobrious conduct during last winter's State election campaign.

Ms. Faulkner is a remarkable entrepreneur. She founded Epic Systems, a developer of healthcare information software, in 1979 with $6,000 and last year its sales topped $500 million. She remains in firm control of the privately held operation, which employs more than 3,000 and is looking for many more.

Judith Faulkner, much like a lot of us, didn't take kindly to the numerous and varied deceits that WMC produced attacking a sitting Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Louis Butler.

Last Wednesday, Epic published a statement referring to the campaign as a "travesty of ethics" and suggesting that WMC was largely responsible.

On Friday, Epic further clarified, “We believe that what we tolerate is what we stand for, and as corporate citizens, we stand for the preservation of the foundation of the judicial system.”

To that end Epic will "try to work only with vendors that do not support WMC with its current management."

Good for Judith Faulkner, and good for Epic Systems.

Epic management said that they could not support WMC's role in the Supreme Court race, which saw WMC pour approximately $1.8 million dollars into an ad campaign on behalf of Judge Michael Gableman.

Whether that money was spent on behalf of Gableman or purely on egregiously deceitful attacks against Justice Butler is a close question.

WMC barely mentioned Gableman, likely because there was little to say on behalf of him to begin with, and especially while Gableman's own campaign descended to previously untrolled depths of patently false and disgraceful innuendo, a campaign Gableman actually claimed to have been proud of.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science hints darkly at illegal activity:

Epic's threat not to work with another company based on an election campaign appears to be the first of its kind nationwide, said Howard Schweber.

"We should be uncomfortable when private businesses have enough power to coerce businesses or other organizations to change their political views or affiliations or keep them secret," Schweber said.

Why? Epic Systems isn't colluding with its competitors to freeze out or favor a vendor. It's acting independently. Vendor selection and purchasing policy isn't limited to commercial considerations of price and delivery.

In fact Epic may only injure its own bottom line if avoiding WMC-affiliated suppliers results in higher priced or longer delivery items. A WMC spokesguy is defiant, or something, saying he won't be "intimidated." Bully for him.

Placing principle above lucre is nothing to be sneered at, especially in this case, where the principle at issue is central to the continuing success of the republic: the integrity of the courts.

In addition to the irony of the apparently unwitting reference to coercive corporate power — the abuse of which is Judith Faulkner's concern, not partisan politics — Prof. Schweber misses the point.

Epic's approach has nothing to do with partisan views or affiliations, it has to do with ethics, plain and simple. WMC waged a mendacious campaign of deliberate misinformation against a State Supreme Court Justice. Epic would prefer at the least not to mingle its lucre with that which is trading in sleaze.

Just as Epic can choose not to cut purchase orders to suppliers that engage in shady business practices so can it rebuff those connected to WMC's unseemly tactics. Selecting against WMC-affiliated suppliers is little different than purchasing only recycled toilet paper or only company bowling team shirts not manufactured in Bangladesh sweatshops.

It seems to me Epic's policy is laudable. Corporations may choose to express civic responsibility in a variety of ways, and this is one of them, based on a particularly admirable principle.

And WMC, having spent nearly $2 million on effectively attempted character assassination, certainly understands the coercive — and corrosive — power of lucre. If some WMC-affiliate suffers financially as a result of Epic's policy somehow, it will be a small price to pay for the sins committed earlier this year and beyond. Free market, the invisible hand and all that, coming back to slap you.

Prof. Schweber's discomfort would be far more accurately directed at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and not Epic Systems.

eta: Without providing a lick of evidence for either assertion and indeed in the face of evidence suggesting otherwise, Rick Esenberg describes Epic's statement as a "threat" and one of Epic's building contractors' withdrawal from WMC as a "submission" to that "threat."

But he does admit he only "imagines" it.

No prayer for you

It's "not possible" to mention lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered humans as the object of prayers on church property, sez the Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis.

Not possible? To simply say those words is "really inimical to the teachings of the Catholic church." Which themselves are really inimical to the teachings of Jesus, apparently.

On the other hand:

Hundreds of dogs, many dressed as babies or clowns, were taken to celebrate mass in this Nicaraguan town on Sunday, an annual ritual where the owners pray for their pets to be cured or avoid falling ill.

Dogs dressed as clowns entitled to entire Mass.

Not the logical successor to Randy Travis

Eric Englund is his name

h/t the Recess Supervisor.

See also: Big Bad John Cornyn

Doin' the Lord's Work and enjoyin' a Good Brew.

The synth line in the intro has a suspiciously Middle Eastern quality.

Best of the Right-Wing Reactionaries

It just wouldn't be Saturday night without yet another howler courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "Best of the Wisconsin Blogs."

This week's "best blogger" claims that D.C. v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court's big gun case, was decided "5-4 in favor of the individual right to bear arms."

One wonders how a best blogger could make such a rookie mistake, since the four dissenting Justices also agreed that

The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a "collective right” or an “individual right.” Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.

In fact that is the opening paragraph of the lead dissent and is reiterated even more clearly in Justice Breyer's dissent:

The Amendment protects an “individual” right—i.e., one that is separately possessed, and may be separately enforced, by each person on whom it is conferred.

So, first of all, collective vs. individual right was not at issue and secondly, had it been, the result was 9-0. And even then, only within federal jurisdiction. And then only in your home.

In hopes of overcoming his initial gaffe, the best blogger continues:

My favorite quote so far:

"In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority 'would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.'"

Except, of course, the part where they passed the 2nd Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights.

Nope, just more gaffes. And that is the entire "Best of the Wisconsin Blogs" blog entry, by the way.

No self-respecting, self-described political blogger would ever rely on the Associated Press for the substance of court opinions, so is it any wonder that a newspaper editor would find professional and maybe even personal vindication that some clown in the "new media" had so relied, and wished to congratulate him on suitably irrational grounds. These days, the opinion appears online before the news report, so there's not even any need to rely on the latter.

Not only that, but despite the AP editor's period within the quotation marks, it's only half a sentence, which is one of the myriad reasons for not relying on Associated Press reports of court opinions. Here, the AP actually cut an entire sentence, and thereby its meaning, in half. That's bad enough, but to see a blogger enshrined — by newspaper editors, no less — to "Wisconsin Best" status simply for mindlessly duplicating deliberately negligent journalism and attaching an allegedly droll yet ultimately irrelevant one-line quip is ludicrous.

The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable gun control policy. Absent compelling evidence that is nowhere to be found in the Court’s opinion, I could not possibly conclude that the Framers made such a choice.

As it turns out, Justice Stevens was talking about something quite different than Wisconsin's best blogger understands. And, like many conservatives, he seeks to ignore what the Court calls the Second Amendment's prefatory clause, the one that refers to a well regulated militia, never mind even the majority's acknowledgment that militia use of arms is different than civilian use, whereas the Second Amendment describes only regulation of the militia.

The choice to which Justice Stevens refers is not whether elected officials may regulate civilian use of arms — they certainly may — but whether the Framers meant to leave it to the courts to define the policy contours of the contemplated regulations. Even the majority recognizes that the right to keep and bear arms is not absolute, and is therefore subject to some regulation.

Normally, conservatives would side with Justice Stevens's admonishment of the majority for interfering unwarrantedly in the political process, but apparently this principle may itself be quickly abandoned for expedient political purposes. Or even just dimwitted ones.

Justice Stevens offers as illustration in a footnote a comparison between the Court's active involvement in federal election districting cases, another area one might imagine to be the exclusive preserve of the political branches of federal government. But whereas the political branches were "manifestly unable" to solve the districting problem, "no one has suggested that the political process is not working exactly as it should in mediating the debate between the advocates and opponents of gun control."

Indeed, Heller was entirely a controversy of judicial manufacture in the first place. The Cato Institute hand selected six potential plaintiffs and threw them into federal court. One, Richard Heller, stuck. And only on appeal, at that, having been initially dismissed along with the other five for failing to successfully argue standing.

But ultimately, and most importantly, Justice Stevens at the conclusion of his dissent is expressly addressing two specific and related claims alleged by the majority, that

“the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home” is “elevate[d] above all other interests” by the Second Amendment.

and that

a [legislative] policy choice that denies a “law-abiding, responsible citize[n]” the right to keep and use weapons in the home for self-defense is “off the table.”

To be sure, Stevens isn't talking about whether the individual right to keep and bear arms is "off the table," he is criticizing the majority for defining the contours of acceptable legislative policy, and declaring as if by fiat the limits of those contours, despite no indication of the Court's constitutional power to make such determinations.

These are sentiments occasionally guaranteed to warm the so-called judicial conservative's heart. In fact they are the precise lines of argument conservatives adopt to criticize judicial results they don't personally care for, whether they understand — or have even read — the decisions themselves. All of which is simply more evidence that accusations of "judicial activism" emanating from political conservatives are essentially a hollow partisan farce.

Seriously, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, this is hardly the best Wisconsin bloggers have to offer. At least spend five minutes investigating the context of what you're memorializing.

Peter Wehner reads this blog

If Christian conservatives want to be taken seriously, they need to make serious arguments and speak with intellectual integrity. In this instance, James Dobson didn't. He has set back his cause and made some of us who are evangelicals and conservatives wince. — Peter Wehner

Except for the wincing part; James Dobson doesn't make me wince so much as wonder why anybody takes him seriously.

Scalia & Co. affirm Louis Butler

Hot off the press:

We decline to approve an exception to the Confrontation Clause unheard of at the time of the founding or for 200
years thereafter.

Giles v. California (.pdf; 58 pgs.).

Mark D. Jensen's defense motions should be hitting the Kenosha County clerk of courts' counter right about ... now.

It wasn't hard to predict.* Congratulations to Justice Butler on an impressive and impressively affirmed exercise in constitutional law.

* Maybe for some.

Why is James Dobson famous?

James Dobson is "making stuff up," says Barack Obama.

Not that that's news, of course, since for people like Dobson, making stuff up is a base function of the medulla oblongata. As Obama reportedly put it, "Somebody would be pretty hard-pressed to make that argument" — that he was distorting the Bible.

"Argument" is a generous courtesy on Obama's part, since Dobson didn't "argue" so much as whine noisily. I know this because the national press deems his wailings and gnashings practically lead-in material on the evening news.

Why this is is an interesting question on its own. In a more perfect world, Dobson would be wearing a sandwich board and ringing a bell on a street corner somewhere. People would pass him by, maybe give him a dollar or a cigarette or a half a bagel, but otherwise ignore his fevered gesticulations. He might even get arrested.

But Dobson apparently has "influence" over a considerable number of people including — it is rumored — the ear of the current president himself and all that entails.

Last evening CNN devoted an extended segment to Dobson's unwittingly doltish performance during which, it must be gratefully acknowledged, the laughably inept Tony Perkins was definitively flogged by Al Sharpton, Roland Martin, and Anderson Cooper in turn (even though both Perkins and Sharpton shared a round of guffaws about Cooper, who is gay, burning in Hell. Which would be funny if not for Perkins and Sharpton actually believing it).

And Perkins needed to start making more stuff up when he was shown portions of the speech featuring Obama criticizing hardliner secularists and acknowledging not only the existence of Judeo-Christian moral principles in the American system of law, but also the fact that many are appropriately enforceable. Perkins then tried to make it about Obama's personal faith, which it wasn't at all.

Dobson, who is incompetent even as a conservative radio host, a position created for incompetents, commits the same clear error.

It's obvious why Dobson dug up Obama's 2006 speech to a Christian group. Because he doesn't want his own little farce exposed. And because of Obama's emerging strategy to woo some of the Christian "values voters" over and from whom Dobson demands exclusive preserve, allegiance and, ultimately, control.

Dobson hasn't a clue what Obama was talking about and when Dobson weeps about being prevented from pushing "partial birth abortion" legislation he's flatly lying. He can push it wherever he likes.

Obama's speech was informed by political theory, not aversion to "orthodox Christian" dogma, as Tony Perkins calls his own personal, subjective version of objective morality.

What Obama is saying is that there are a number of approaches a rational political society may take in order to arrange a widely applicable system of ethics. Because it's impossible for everyone to agree on everything, Obama is initiating a dialogue to determine whether there are some things that almost everyone agrees are destructive to the polity's ethic, theft of property or child sexual assault for example.

When more subtle ethical questions arise, religion presents itself into the calculus and because religion wouldn't be religion without dogma, Dobson's dogma ultimately faces off against one of the other televangelists' dogmas.

The Bible that James Dobson is whacking is a very complicated assembly of disparate and highly derivative texts whose influence in many, many ways shaped Western civilization itself, not to mention civilizations elsewhere, still in existence or otherwise.

It accreted over centuries and various bits and pieces of it have been adhered to — or not — by hundreds of separate and distinct societies over a few thousand years.

Obama is not saying that only his interpretation of the Bible is inherently correct; it's Dobson and his ilk that are making that baseless insistence. Obama is simply pointing out that sectarian dogmatism in the false guise of absolute morality is a stumbling block to constructing the political ethic, by definition.

Dobson needs to understand that he's not going to convert all the people of America to his particular flavor of so-called Christianity. And obviously he can continue to insist on his own special divine insight.

The point is, if you are going to use the Bible as a source of ethical guidance, that's perfectly appropriate. Even I would use it. Selectively, of course, as I'm not about to give up calamari or cotton/rayon blends.

And it's also perfectly appropriate to attempt to codify that Biblical guidance in legislation and turn its enforcement over to the D.A.

But you have to support it with some argument other than, "Because I speak personally on behalf of the Almighty True God and you must Obey." Legislation formulated on such grounds are the mustard seeds of theocracy, a form of polity favored by America's enemies.

Obama's speech is simply a reminder of a few glaringly obvious historical facts of which Dobson evidently insists on remaining ignorant, which proves Obama's point precisely, hence the self-defeating, humiliatingly ironic quality of Dobson's reaction.

Rational people probably need to start ignoring anachronistic cranks like Dobson and Hagee and Swaggart and the rest or else consign them back to their bells and their sandwich boards.

While I'm suspicious of "leaders" on general principle — Al Gore's repeated invocation of the term to describe Obama during his endorsement was downright Orwellian creepy — Obama is demonstrating leadership by laying out the terms of a national discussion, as he did for the Christian group in 2006.

And it's a welcome initiative, given religious dogmatism's often fractious and deleterious effects in this society, something even the Framers of the Constitution were well acquainted with.

Incidentally, Dobson's most recent fit of the vapors did serve at least one useful purpose, apart from their usual entertainment value. It unearthed a speech of Obama's comparing the admonitions of the New Testament with the policies of the Department of Defense.

It's not something you hear from a candidate for the U.S. presidency very often and it's refreshing as hell. That sort of talk is guaranteed to inflame the Dobsonian followers of the Prince of Peace but politically moderate Christians are guaranteed to respond well.

And if they are disillusioned Republicans or otherwise undecided, then hopefully Dobson's hysterics cement the deal for Obama.

Book of Armani 4:1-12

This deserves its own post.

h/t the mysterious scribe Heraldblog, whose portfolio includes a brief stint working for homeschooled copy editors.

On the local yokels

Some classic Plaisted here.

What I find amazing is how anybody in his right mind* could assert matter of factly and presumably with a straight face that "about 2,500 people rioted."

Although, I reckon even on a clear day it's tough to see all the way to 12th and Vliet from a basement in West Bend. Interesting!

Even better, though, is a contributor to the comments thread deriding Plaisted for raising issues of "racism," and then declaring, "Blacks en masse are always a recipe for trouble."

And I did learn that people who are a bit on the heavy side are not allowed to be hungry or get their hair done.

Good times.

* I take that back. It's precisely a "right mind" that would deliberately fabricate such an outlandish distortion. I also take back finding it amazing. I find it depressing.

Women wearing pants

A thoughtful essay from the folks at Conservapedia:

The woman who pioneered women wearing pants was the actress Katharine Hepburn. She became rich and famous but never experienced a happy marriage and never knew the joy of having children. Her philosophy of life of being unfeminine resulted in her not fulfilling her purpose of life. We reap what we sow. There are consequences for actions. Women wearing pants is cross-dressing. It should be looked down on as much as men wearing dresses. The social experiment of feminism to destroy any sense of difference between male and female in the twentieth century has resulted in women wearing military camouflage fatigue pants and boots. The Bible says cross-dressing is an "abomination of God."

And yes, that's the whole essay.

h/t Submitted to a Candid World.

(Richard Lenski's second reply to Andy Schlafly is priceless.)

Dead-on deadpannery

Republican operatives, in their drive to politicize court contests, may want to target [Chief Justice Shirley] Abrahamson for being too independent and too committed to the rule of law as opposed to the service of special interests.

Touché.

Presidency hinges on correct exegesis

James Dobson* is always good for a laugh.

Mind you, Obama is asking for it. Full points on the shellfish/abomination number, though.

* Focus On Your Own Effin' Family.

Legitimizing pseudoscience in the NYT

In lieu of ever getting back to my friend Thomas Joseph on the larger question of famed blogger PZ Myers' contributions to the so-called culture wars, I'm able to note in the meantime that Prof. Myers' criticism of the New York Times here is very much misplaced.

Or, more to the point, his reasons are sound, but the Times' item about Philadelphia's Darwin Year commemorations is not the most appropriate place to proffer them. Myers complains that where only science is at issue, reporters needn't solicit the observations of some random creationist fruitcake, in this case, the high wanking Antipodean jackanapes Ken Ham of "Creation Museum" fame.

Myers is certainly correct about that, and the example he gives of Jerry Coyne's inquiry of the NYT's science editor is much more suited to its object, which was an otherwise straight news report on a fossil discovery.

For the Times to ask the notorious Duane Gish what he thought of Tiktallik is irresponsible. Gish is a young earth creationist so adept at comically dissembling evasion he even has his own "debating" move named after him: the Gish Gallop. If credibility may be expressed in negative numbers, Gish's is in the triple digits.

I also agree with Myers that the Times science editor's reply to Prof. Coyne was unsatisfying. Because when it comes to reporting science, creationists like Gish and Ken Ham are the functional equivalents of mentally unbalanced panhandlers muttering gibberish on street corners.

That the Times sees fit to memorialize the alleged insights of these deliberate ignoramuses confers a patina of legitimacy where absolutely none is warranted.

And that effect is compounded when their statements are placed alongside those of professional credentialed scientists in the interest of supposedly presenting "both sides" to the story. Sometimes, there aren't "both sides" to a story and the goal of trying to invent one of them is not well served by soliciting the opinion of a thoroughly discredited crankpot who harbors borderline psychotic delusions.

As a general press criticism, that much is fair. Newspapers do assume some measure of responsibility simply by presenting themselves as newspapers.

But as for the Philadelphia Darwin exhibits, it was their own spokeswoman who opened the door:

The intent of the citywide event, said Janet M. Monge, one of the organizers, is to increase public understanding of evolution and science in general at a time when polls show that a majority of Americans believe God created man in his present form and that the number of people who accept the evolutionary model of human origins is declining.

She said the Philadelphia events were also intended to encourage people to consider the evolutionary alternative to the biblical account of the origins of man, as represented by the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., a $35 million institution that has attracted more than 400,000 visitors since it opened in May 2007.

Enter Ken Ham necessarily who, despite his undeniable grasping idiocy, is the chief minister of the said "museum."

Thus the question is whether Ms. Monge should have adopted the defensive pose, and not whether Ken Ham should be invited to disgorge yet more absurdist effluvia.

If the foregoing implied statistics from polls are any indication, proponents of sound science will likely find them alarming. I have little doubt that PZ Myers would — and does — and so Ms. Monge's declaration of intent is at least well intentioned.

What's troubling to me about the Times piece is that evolution is depicted as an "alternative" to the "biblical account," as if the latter was the reigning scientific paradigm, which it hasn't been for several centuries, if it ever was.

But if a majority of Americans really do believe that about the "biblical account" and whereas sound, valid science is merely an "alternative" to ancient Mesopotamian folktales, then I submit we have bigger problems than the occasional New York Times reporter offering an undeserved megaphone to a jumped up street preacher.

Scalia to come out guns a-blazin'

According to SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein, who hazards that Justice Antonin Scalia will be the author of the U.S. Supreme Court's much anticipated Second Amendment ruling, D.C. v. Heller.

Sheriff Scalia is expected to come barreling through the swingin' doors this week, with Deputy Anthony Kennedy riding shotgun.

Keep an eye on the dissent(s) to see who blames Scalia for "almost certainly caus[ing] more Americans to be killed."

Jeff Beck

Because sometimes people forget what a great guitarist is
Jeff Beck, who turns 64 tomorrow.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Blue Wind

(Since for some reason user CloudFROST doesn't tell you, that's Fernando Saunders on bass.)

Evil Atheist Cabal expels 20% of members

Seventy percent of the [religiously] unaffiliated said they believed in God, including one of every five people who identified themselves as atheist.

What the.

In the lapse of the gods

Milwaukee's Catholics are abandoning the Mass in droves, reports the Journal-Sentinel's Tom Heinen, who covers the religion beat.

Only 24% of the Archdiocese's 680,000 registered Catholics performed the mandated series of deep knee bends and abracadabras last season, according to its Archstatistics.

The Quesosphere's in-house papal bullshitter Dad29 tries to gin the figure up to 30% but finds even that less than inspiring.

The question is, where are they going instead?

If it occurred to them that they can demonstrate to their neighbors the old "peace be with you" routine sans the medieval death cult rituals, then I say that's a step in the right direction, maybe even an inspiring one.

But if they're opting instead for one of the continually splintering Protestant rackets, as Archbaptist Al Mohler gleefully suggests, then, not much of an improvement.*

* That's a joke, as Al Mohler is a poor substitute for a Jesuit.

George Carlin in Milwaukee

In the Bullshit Department, a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman. 'Cause I gotta tell you the truth, folks. When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims: religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told.

Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you.

He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow ... just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

Sun worshipper.

Tonight's forecast, dark.

Certifiable, not certified

Other findings show that Freshwater taught that carbon dating was unreliable to argue against evolution.

That's not the clearest sentence right there. What the reporter meant to say is that John Freshwater "argued" against evolution by attempting to point at the unreliability of carbon dating.

But, that's true enough. Radiocarbon dating is useful only to determine the age of organic materials within the last few thousand years so it is an unreliable method of attacking evolution, which has been going on for much longer than the half life of carbon-14.

Of course that doesn't stop creationist nuts from using it anyways.

Here's the worst bit: science is all this guy knows:

A former superintendent said he tried to find another position for Freshwater but couldn't because he was certified only in science [sic].

Much more.

Coach Dave "Teach the Controversy" Daubenmire sez:

Minutemen United are individuals committed to furthering the cause of Christ through non-violent means.

Thanks for clearing that up, Coach.

Grand Old Piety

Seems Grumps found a lapel button for sale at a GOP clambake in Texas implying the spectral incongruity of a Barack Obama living in a White House. Courtesy of, says the Dallas Morning News, RepublicanMarket.com.

Here are a few other of their "Patriotic Products."

They really don't like Hillary Clinton:



This one's a bit dodgy, but definitely a common sentiment 'round the internets tubes (and elsewhere):



These are my favorites, naturally:





What do you call those ... hubris? Or something less kind.

Middle age sucks

Dayum.

Get the hell well soon, Counselor.

Demons, they're everywhere

Including the State Capitol:

Addressing his colleagues in the Assembly chamber, Rep. Terry Moulton pleaded to Jesus.

"In your name, and by the power of your spirit, I come against the Evil One. And I ask that he be cast from this place, this day," he said as the Assembly opened a floor session last July.

A visiting State senator, Glenn Grothman, was immediately removed from the Assembly chamber.

h/t Emily Mills.

Skepticism has been expressed

Andy Schlafly, spawn of Phyllis and founder of the hilarious homeschoolers' website Conservapedia, is demanding data from Richard Lenski, a professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University who studies evolution in E. coli bacteria.

PZ Myers has Lenski's reply to Schlafly here. As is typical of creationist numbskulls, Schlafly is asking for information that is already contained in the research paper in question, and is demanding an explanation for a claim that Lenski never made.

Presumably Schlafly, in classic creationist fashion, is after something he can misinterpret and garble for his credulous audience of conservative Republicans and other assorted homeschooled dupes.

Here is an excerpt from the Conservapedia entry on kangaroos:

According to the origins theory model used by young earth creation scientists [sic], modern kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood. It has not yet been determined by baraminologists whether kangaroos form a holobaramin with the wallaby, tree-kangaroo, wallaroo, pademelon and quokka, or if all these species are in fact apobaraminic or polybaraminic.

After the Flood, these kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia.

Nobody cares enough to demand from Schlafly the data underlying these claims, or else they already have it.

Beatle B-Day

Dr. McIlheran's advice for rape victims

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "generally right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran thinks it's wonderful that a Washington, D.C. pharmacy has stopped dispensing contraceptives altogether.

That's because if the pharmacy bans all birth control pills (which have other than contraceptive purposes), then that would necessarily include the so-called "morning after pill," Plan B, since, McIlheran claims, it's been shown to prevent implantation of fertilized eggs.

As evidence for the foregoing proposition, McIlheran links to a spec sheet that suggests in passing that Plan B "may inhibit implantation" of a fertilized egg despite the drug's explicit formulation for preventing pregnancy and the spec sheet's bold, underlined warning that Plan B "is not effective in terminating an existing pregnancy."

But that remote, merely alluded to possibility is good enough for McIlheran. And more than sufficient for Patrick McIlheran M.D. to describe Plan B as an "abortifacient."

Then McIlheran goes on to compare being pregnant with having the flu. Well, it's not exactly the same: "You generally don’t just unknowingly catch it" (pregnancy), observes Mr. Dr. McIlheran.

Doc Mac admits (albeit parenthetically) that some women do "catch it," for example, you know, victims of rape. But according to Dr. McIlheran's professional colleagues at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, "this is a comparative handful."

So to blazes with them, because the alleged comparative handful of inhibited implantations of two haploid cells clearly trumps the documented comparative handful of rape victims.

Zygotes FTW!

And anyway, advises Herr Doktor Patrick McHippocrates, y'all rape victims can just up and locate another pharmacy, because you have all of 72 hours before Plan B doesn't work at all anymore.

So go catch a bus along with your flu/pregnancy by rape.

Of course if one pharmacy refusing to dispense contraceptives according to so-called "moral objections" is wonderful, then more pharmacies similarly refusing must be even more wonderful and the next thing you know, your 72 hours starts running down in a hurry.

Thus proceeds the logic of the male "pro-life" aficionados, and woe betide those women who "unknowingly catch" a pregnancy.

More demons in the news

What an absolutely horrific tale.

A witness said Aguiar "wasn't acting like a crazy person, running around or screaming. He said, 'I've just got to get the demons out of him.' He was very calm."

I wonder where he got that idea.

Advice from the Chronicle story's comment thread:

If your baby has demons, for goodness sake, please call a priest. Don't take the exorcism into your own hands. Exorcisms are best left to professionals.

Whether that's serious, who knows.

Bob Barr's marriage now legally worthless

Partners of 50 years wed in San Francisco.

Oh well, Bob can probably still procure a table dance.

Coming soon: The Dog Rogerer.

h/t Rick Santorum.

Gudbuy T'Jane

Slade — Gudbuy T'Jane

h/t Tim Cuprisin.

A bill for Bobby Jindal

Louisiana's SB 733 (.pdf; 3 pgs.).

If the bill passes the Senate, it is uncertain how Governor Jindal will respond.

I think we have a pretty good idea how.

The Discovery Institute creationists to the rescue:

Critics have smeared the bill by falsely claiming the law would allow the teaching of creationism or other religious beliefs, when doing so is in fact forbidden by the act.

Well of course it allows the teaching of creationism. That's the whole point. The danger, however, is that a course in critical thinking, which SB 733 purports to foster, would have its graduates collapsing in mirth at just about every press release the mealymouthed Discovery Institute "fellows"* ever issued.

But at least they admit their version of creationism is a religious belief also. How about a terrorist fist jab for the DI.

* Even the women are fellows, which doesn't say much for their expertise in biology.

Bobby Jindal: Creationist buffoon

I think local school boards should be in a position of deciding the curricula and also deciding what students should be learning.

Especially when they're loaded with creationists.

Secondly, I don’t think students learn by us withholding information from them.

Then why do you support "abstinence only" sex ed.

Some want only to teach intelligent design, some only want to teach evolution. I think both views are wrong, as a parent.

You want to make a politician look foolish, ask him about science. John McCain should do a whole Town Hall meeting on population genetics and another on astrophysics.

I personally think that the life, human life and the world we live in wasn’t created accidentally.

Who said it was, Mr. Strawman.

I do think that there’s a creator.

Bully for you. Prove it.

I’m a Christian.

So what.

I do think that God played a role in creating not only earth, but mankind.

Prove it.

Now, the way that he did it, I’d certainly want my kids to be exposed to the very best science.

So much for creationism, then.

I don’t want them to be — I don’t want any facts or theories or explanations to be withheld from them because of political correctness.

No, let's teach them stuff Bobby Jindal dreamed up.

h/t Crooks and Liars.

Bobby Jindal is also an exorcist and a magickal oncologist. And, naturally, a conservative Republican.

See also: Bobby Jindal, ignorant genius.

Caption contest

Photo source.

McAdams red-lines the spin tachometer

This is hilarious.

Some time ago, a reporter asked Barack Obama whether, if he is elected president, his administration would investigate alleged criminal acts by the Bushies related to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In response to the hypothetical question, Obama was careful to distinguish between disagreeable policy and actual, substantive crimes. This was clear to competent readers of English.

Several months later, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran completely ignored Obama's own response and fantasized that the Bush administration would be criminally prosecuted simply for poor policy decisions, and even desperately suggested that Obama's Department of Justice will prosecute "things" that were not even crimes, a truly remarkable feat.

We all had a good laugh about it here and here.

Yesterday, the comically oblivious John C. McAdams, an actual professor of political science at Marquette University who routinely demeans the intellectual competence of his academic colleagues — a textbook case of a pot calling the kettle black — repeated McIlheran's nonsense pretty much verbatim.

Challenged by a number of commenters at his blog to address Obama's clear statements, McAdams instead derided them for suffering from "Bush Derangement Syndrome," a phony diagnosis fabricated by the irascible Faux News "expert" Charles Krauthammer to assist conservatives in avoiding responding to legitimate criticisms of the current Republican administration.

Now, challenged by several more, McAdams still resists engaging plain English and posits that Obama (whose name McAdams can't even spell correctly) be investigated for "possible connections with terrorists" and calls the commenters "Bush bashers," even though all any of them did was ask McAdams to actually read what Obama said.

"If [Obama] broke the law, he definitely should be punished, don't you think?" says McAdams, despite that being not only essentially what Obama had said in response to the Philly.com reporter's original question, but precisely what McAdams's own interlocutors are asking of him and which he refuses to answer.

Does Allen-Bradley make an explosion-proof irony meter? If so, Professor John C. McAdams is in dire need of one.

Lest anyone finds it damn nigh impossible, as I do, to believe that John McAdams is really a university professor of political science, here is evidence.

It's a good thing for McAdams that Marquette maintains that webpage, because there certainly isn't any such evidence at McAdams's personal blog but rather much to mitigate against it.

He does, however, perform a hell of a job in demonstrating the expression "political science" to be a contradiction in terms.

Meritocracy

Faux & Friends's Steve Idioocy makes $5M+ a year.

Also, Ben Stein lied, but that's not news.

And he's read every single one of them

"[Boumediene is] one of the worst decisions in history," said McCain.

George Bush's reaction was the McSame.

American Presents! John McAdams

John "Perfesser" McAdams's appearance is part of a yearlong series of comedy blog posts which American TV co-sponsors with Marquette University and 620 AM WTMJ.

Obama May Prosecute Bush Administration For War Crimes

And don't you dare attempt to question McAdams's delusions, lest he personally diagnoses you with "Bush Derangement Syndrome," always a compelling rebuttal. This guy is an actual university professor.

Hard to believe.

Who. Cares.

Hey white boy,
What you doing uptown?
Hey white boy,
You chasing our women around?
— Lou Reed, I'm Waiting For The Man

SHE NEVER SAID 'WHITEY'
— actual Chicago Sun-Times headline