Lowering the Bar

City Council Says Listening Requirement is Bad Precedent

The Los Angeles city council has asked its city attorney to appeal a decision last month that rebuked it for failing to pay any attention during a hearing. The Court of Appeal held that attorney Roger Diamond's client was deprived of due process when council members ignored him during a zoning matter. Diamond had produced a video showing the council members conversing, walking around and talking on their cell phones as he made his argument. The court ordered a new hearing.

Last week, the city council voted 10-0 to have its attorney file a petition with the California Supreme Court, probably seeking to have the appellate decision "depublished," which makes it not citable as precedent. The city is apparently concerned that the ruling "could mean that the council must always sit 'still and silent' during any proceeding.'" I don't recall that the court ordered them to sit motionless, just to listen, but a spokesperson for the city attorney's office still thought the order was a bad idea. "We don't think it [listening?] is a good precedent for any time a government body is meeting," she said.

Daily Journal, Jan. 28, 2005

Oklahoma Bill Would Require Cocks to Be Gloved

That's right -- a new bill pending in Oklahoma would legalize cockfighting again, so long as the birds wear boxing gloves.

Cockfighting was banned in Oklahoma in 2002 after complaints about the practice, which then frequently involved battles to the death between roosters fitted with razor-sharp spurs. Senate Bill 776, introduced by state senator Frank Shurden (D-Okla. City), would provide for an exception to the ban so long as the birds wear "sparring muffs," defined as "padded gloves placed over a gamecock’s natural spurs to prevent injury." Hits would be recorded and victory determined electronically, like in an Olympic fencing match.

Shurden told the Associated Press that "[t]o me it answers everything. It saves the industry, takes blood sport out and generates revenue for Oklahoma." Maybe he means this will boost revenue for tourism, which according to the legislature's website is Oklahoma's third-largest industry. You know what? If tourism is Oklahoma's third-largest industry, maybe they should be trying to get another industry in there instead of bringing back cockfighting.

Shurden, however, thinks that everyone will be on board with the new idea. "Who's going to object to chickens fighting like humans do?" he said. "Everybody wins."

AP via SFGate.com
The Oklahoma Legislature

Sorry I Robbed You . . . Are You Busy Later?

This possible worst opening line ever, or something like it, was delivered by Brent Brown, or someone claiming to be Brent Brown, to the Domino's deliverywoman he and his friends had robbed earlier that night. The victim said she was delivering a pizza at about 11:20 on Wednesday, January 19, when three men surrounded her and demanded cash and a couple of pizzas. But some time later that night, she said, one of the men called her cell phone, apologized for the robbery and asked her for a date.

The story is a little unclear as to how the man got her cell phone number. But because he called her cell, she was able to save his phone number and quickly gave it to police. They traced it to him and she was able to pick his picture out of a photo lineup. Just to nail things down, officers found the pizza boxes in the trash at Brown's home the next day, along with the receipt.

Surprisingly, Brown claimed to be innocent. Yes, the call had come from his cell phone, but this was simply because he had loaned his cell phone to someone, you see, who had apparently used it to call the pizza girl and ask her for a date in his name. This person had then eaten the burgled pizza, and broken into Brown's home to place said pizza into his trash. Most dastardly of all, they had apparently given the deliverywoman Brown's picture or somehow tampered with the photo lineup from which she selected his photo as one of the pizza thieves. Damn you, cruel universe! Is there no justice?

Look for Brown and Deliverywoman to be reunited on some future FOX television program.

Delaware News-Journal

Iowa Bill Would Protect Public From Deadly Spinner Hubcaps

The latest deadly public threat to be the subject of legislation is the "spinner hubcap," the flashy spinning wheel covers that have become increasingly popular in recent years. Iowa House Bill 108 would make it a misdemeanor to operate any vehicle bearing any "removable hubcap or wheel cover that is attached to the wheel of a motor vehicle and continues to rotate, or appears to rotate, after the vehicle has come to a stop."

Iowa state representative Doug Struyk (R-Council Bluffs) introduced the bill after he was nearly injured by the deadly spinners in November. Struyk said he was driving a truck pulling a 16-foot trailer loaded with a dozen ladders when he approached an intersection at which was a car bearing spinner hubcaps. He told the Omaha World-Herald that the spinning spinners "made it appear as if the car might still be moving through the intersection, so he braked hard and the trailer nearly jackknifed." Possible solutions: (1) resolve to look in the future at the actual chassis of an approaching car rather than its hubcaps in order to determine whether it is moving or not; (2) outlaw distracting hubcaps. Thus, House Bill 108.

Another suggestion: raise the pay of Iowa legislators to the point where they don't have to deliver ladders in their spare time to support themselves.

Unsurprisingly, representatives of spinner-hubcap manufacturers were not pleased. Brian Kaminski of Wheel-One, Inc., a Los Angeles manufacturer of the deadly devices, said he did not understand how the wheel covers could be considered dangerous. "I've heard of people saying stuff like that," he said. "The way I think of it is, if you can't tell a car's not moving and you start going, maybe you shouldn't have a driver's license." (Let alone a license to haul ladders.) But Struyk defended his bill. "I've talked to fellow legislators," he said," and haven't had anybody tell me I'm out of my mind yet." Hey, that's a pretty good rule of thumb for legislation -- if nobody has told you you're out of your mind, you must be on the right track.

Rep. Struyk's other projects this year include the unfortunately-titled "A bill for an act allowing certain senior residents to hunt deer during the youth and severely disabled deer hunting season," which is certainly bad news for severely disabled deer.

Omaha World-Herald
The Iowa Legislature

Dining With Dignity

A Maine man was sentenced to 90 days in jail last week after pleading guilty to "theft of services" for creatively skipping out on restaurant checks. He would fake chest pains when the check arrived, ride away in an ambulance and then disappear from the hospital before police showed up. The man, Elias I. Elias (and I'm sure that's his real name), 54, of Bangor, Maine, has been convicted of this scam in at least three counties. He has now pleaded guilty to 18 misdemeanor charges involving 13 free meals.

This led to the inevitable quote from Elias's court-appointed attorney, Jeffrey Davidson, who told the court that his client was homeless and unemployed and just wanted to eat a restaurant meal like anybody else. "Even if he didn't have dignity," said Davidson, "he wanted to feel like he did." And nothing makes you feel more dignified than faking a heart attack in front of a roomful of people in order to get a free meal, except maybe when you get up and run out of the emergency room.

Bangor News

Lawyer's Briefs Save His Life

Literally. Ben Lipscomb, a city attorney for Rogers, Arkansas, got lost while duck hunting and was forced to take off his underwear and use them to signal a police helicopter. Lipscomb's camouflage hunting gear apparently made him otherwise impossible to see from the air, and he said the helicopter had passed him over several times before he had the idea to tie his white briefs to his gun barrel and wave like mad.

I have no idea why he couldn't just wave his banjo. Guess it never occurred to him.

Lipscomb said he had been lost for about 12 hours when he was rescued. "To survive," reported CNN, "he drank dirty bayou water and ate a raw duck breast." Personally, I think I could last more than 12 hours before I would eat a raw duck, but I guess you really never know.

Fat Legislator Does Not Blame Food Suppliers For His Fatness

Rep. Ron Iverson, a Republican legislator in North Dakota's House of Representatives, and a frequent visitor to its House of Pancakes, has introduced legislation that would shield food-related organizations from obesity-related lawsuits. He is an ideal sponsor for the bill, as he himself suffers from obesity-related fatness.

The AP described Iverson as "portly," but he admitted he is "fat." He stated, "We cannot, and we should not, hold Burger King, McDonald's … and Taco Bell, restaurants that serve food that people like to eat, responsible. The reason I'm fat is because I make bad food choices, and I don't exercise....[Restaurants] do not force me to pay for their product, and they do not force me to eat it. I do that." (You force you to eat their products?)

A spokesperson for the North Dakota Trial Lawyers' Association said the legislation was a bad idea because juries were capable of deciding the merits of such cases. She was then devoured by Rep. Iverson, who said that no one had forced him to do it, and that she was delicious.

'Survivor' Winner Charged With Filing False Tax Returns

Tax tip for today—if you win a million dollars on a nationally-televised TV show that made you (at least for a while) one of the best-known people in the world, you should probably list that income on your tax return.

Richard Hatch, the first "Survivor" winner, was charged by U.S. attorneys today (Jan. 18, 2005) with failing to report the $1 million he won on "Survivor," as well as another $321,000 that he was paid by a Boston radio station. I understand he won in the first place by being kind of a bad guy, but I don't think the tax code works the same way as the "Survivor" rules do.

Maybe it should, but it doesn't.

Ghostly Villain Unmasked by Meddling Kids

Not really, but it seemed like something that the Mystery Machine might be involved in.

A 42-year-old Polish woman was convicted in January 2005 of harassment after she spent four months pretending to be a ghost in a 15th-century castle. The owner of the castle had reported doors slamming and other unexplained noises in the middle of the night, and police eventually caught the poltergeist after setting up a video camera.

Police said the woman was apparently motivated by "personal rancour" against the manager of a cultural center at Castel Coldrano. They did not explain exactly what the ghost act was intended to achieve, however.

Another Shocking 9th Circuit Decision

From Watts v. McKinney, No. 03-16665 (9th Cir. January 10, 2005):

Denial of defendant's claim of qualified immunity is affirmed where "kicking a helpless prisoner's genitals" constitutes cruel and unusual conduct in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

What next, Ninth Circuit? No human pyramids? No electrodes? Why are you tying our nation's hands, or whatever?

If you have forgotten (or never had to learn it), the defense of qualified immunity protects an official if a reasonable person in his or her position would not have known the action was a constitutional violation. It's designed more or less to protect officials from millions of prisoner claims over actions that may well be reasonable under the circumstances.

Ball-kicking does not seem all that close to the line, frankly.

The court said that the defense lawyer's zeal in making this argument was commendable, but "zeal needs to be tempered by common sense":

To suppose that any reasonable person, let alone a trained prison officer, would not know that kicking a helpless prisoner's genitals was cruel and unusual conduct is beyond belief. The Supreme Court did not need to create a catalogue of all the acts by which cruel and sadistic purpose to harm another would be manifest, but if it had, such conduct would be near the top of the list.

On the other hand, maybe that kind of catalogue would be a good idea.