Lowering the Bar

BREAKING: John Edwards Found Creepy Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

By America, at least; the jury in the campaign-finance case has found Edwards not guilty on one count, and deadlocked on the other five. The judge has declared a mistrial on those counts.

The not-guilty verdict was on the count involving donations from "Bunny" Mellon, which is the one to which the "haircut letter" was potentially relevant. It didn't seem like a good sign for Edwards that the jurors wanted to see that letter last week, but it turns out this is the only count they could agree on.

There don't seem to be any facts yet about how and why the jury split on the others. Sometimes there never are, of course. But I'd guess that some of the jurors will talk in this case, partly because it's high-profile and partly because of the reports that one of the female jurors was actually flirting with Edwards during the trial:

Since the alternates were identified [], it has been impossible to ignore the dynamic between Edwards and one of the female alternates, an attractive young woman with jet-black hair, who seems to have been flirting with Edwards for days.

The juror clearly instigated the exchanges. She smiles at him. He smiles politely back at her. She giggles. He blushes.

We vomit.

None of the alternates deliberated, as it turns out, but they did go to lunch with the other jurors every afternoon. So maybe the flirter happened to say something like "hey, what's sexier than a guy who cheats on his sick wife while running for president and decides to do it with a loon who asks her 'spiritual advisor' for sandwich advice?" I at least would like to know.

Don't Forget to Sign Up for the "Do Not Kill" List

A number of sources (including the Wall Street Journal) report that someone has used the White House's "We the People" website to start a petition asking it to create a "Do Not Kill" list similar to the "Do Not Call" list that has been reasonably successful against telemarketers. This follows the New York Times report that every week or so, a bunch of National Security People get together to flip through some PowerPoint slides and "recommend to the president who should be the next to die." The president, who you may recall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, then personally approves names on the "kill list" for execution targeted killing by drone.

As I have explained before, I get just as excited about a good airstrike as any American, and have no sympathy for actual al-Qaeda members, but am a little concerned about our government bombing U.S. citizens (or anybody, really) without actually having to prove they are al-Qaeda members. At least three citizens have been droned in this way so far. (This is not to say that bombing non-U.S.-citizens without a trial is a good thing, it's just less clearly illegal.) Hence the theoretical appeal of a "Do Not Kill" list.

There may be no need to worry, of course, if you think the government will never get it wrong and target somebody who's actually innocent. And probably that never happens. In fact, it really can't happen, because the administration has adopted a rule defining any "military-age male" it has blown up as a terrorist unless proven innocent:

[The rule] in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.

All perfectly legal under the Fifth Amendment, of course, which provides that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, unless he is probably up to no good." And under the strike-zone rule, you also don't have to worry about killing foreign civilians, because there aren't any, at least not near your bomb. "This counting method," the Times says with some understatement, "may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths." You think?

Probably the administration won't let you take your name off the list, and in fact I suppose signing the petition might very slightly increase the chances that your face will appear on a poorly designed PowerPoint slide. To me it's worth it to get a look at what sort of explanation the interns who run the site might come up with. Maybe they'll screw up and post the mysterious memo that supposedly explains the legal basis for "targeted killing" of citizens. That's probably the only way we'll ever get a look at it.

Another Incident of Taco-Related Violence

Filled with danger

Hot on the heels of this weekend's news that somebody tried to run over another person for canceling a taco order comes this report that a 23-year-old man crashed his truck into a Taco Bell after it failed to fill his taco order. (Both the Taco Bell and the taco-canceler suffered superficial injuries but neither was seriously harmed.)

According to a police report posted by the Smoking Gun, a 23-year-old Ohio man allegedly rammed his vehicle into the entrance of the restaurant and then fled, making this the first hit-and-run involving a Taco Bell of which I have been made aware. Unfortunately for the perpetrator, his truck was leaking fluid and police were reportedly able to follow the trail to the man's home.

Police said the man admitted "intentionally striking the building after realizing he did not get one of the tacos he ordered," which suggests the threshold for Taco-Bell-related violence may actually have dropped slightly. Last year, it took an unexpected fifty-cent price hike on each of seven Beefy Crunch Burritos to cause a San Antonio man to open fire, leading to a three-hour standoff at the end of what the local newspaper termed a "burrito-triggered spree."

On the other hand, there was also the incident in which an alleged failure to provide hot sauce resulted in production of a 12-gauge shotgun, but no shots were actually fired there. So I guess the jury is still out on this one.

Good Reason to Kill #23: Canceled His Taco Order

Police [in Corpus Christi] said a 17-year-old man canceled his taco order when he realized he was late for school. The 19-year-old man followed the teen and tried to run him over with his truck, police said.

He missed, but jumped out and punched the taco-canceler, who still managed to keep running. The 19-year-old then got back in the truck to continue the chase, but lost control and hit a building.

Neither was seriously injured. One was charged with aggravated assault.

Tips on Wearing the Clothes You Just Stole from Next Door

Here are the three that occurred to me right off the bat:

1. Don't wear any of them right away.
2. Don't wear any distinctive items if the owner still lives next door.
3. Should you choose to ignore #1 and #2, don't answer the front door for a while.

These lessons are taught by this tale, reported by WBBJ-TV in Tennessee. A woman there told police she had come home from a trip to find that someone had broken into and ransacked her home. Oddly, her closet and dressers had been emptied out, but while the thief took much of her clothing and underwear, he or she did not take more expensive items like a laptop and jewelry. For reasons not explained in the report, the victim said she immediately suspected her neighbor, a woman named Stormy Winters Moody.

You wouldn't ordinarily expect trouble from somebody named "Stormy Winters Moody," so there must have been some history there.

Probable cause

CSI was not required in order to make an arrest here. When police arrived they "discovered" Moody wearing some of the clothes reported missing. The report provides no detail, so it's not clear whether she was out in the yard (see Tips #1 and #2) or just answered the door while trying on some of the goods (Tips #1-3).

Either way, the victim noted that Moody appeared to be wearing some evidence. I guess it's not impossible that she also owned and was coincidentally wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt and a pair of shorts that were identical to items recently stolen from her neighbor, but I think this would be enough for probable cause. (She reportedly has since admitted to the break-in.)

The tale also suggests another related tip:

4.  If a neighbor's clothing is desired, consider stealing one item
     at a time rather than the whole wardrobe.

This is likely to be less noticeable, at least for items other than Bob Marley T-shirts. Also:

5.  Don't also steal a bunch of other incredibly random items, for
     example:

• some laundry detergent
• a bag of makeup
• a frog shower mat
• one (1) pair black sweat pants
• dishes
• fishing equipment
• one (1) Lava Lamp
• one (1) Shark steam mop
• iPhone
• flat Iron
• curling Iron
• tampons
• a race-car rug
• some toys
• child Seats
• brooms and dust pans
• a blender
• some pots and pans
• cleaning supplies
• picture frames
• jewelry (but not the expensive stuff)
• Proactiv Skin Creme
• one (1) camcorder and bag
• deodorant
• plastic tote (though you may need it)
• hair mousse
• Dunkin' Donuts coffee and filters
• Band-Aids
• DVD sleeves
• one (1) Giant Coloring Book

This will increase your profile significantly. Besides, what are you, the Grinch?

Lawyer's Defective-Breakfast Suit Dismissed

In one of the year's least-surprising results so far, Richard Katz's lawsuit against his health club has been dismissed. Katz sued The Setai Wall Street Club and Spa last year, alleging it had broken a promise to provide him with a free and fully adequate breakfast.

Katz, who is an attorney in Manhattan, was paying $5,000 a year in dues to this place, but while free cereal doesn't seem like too much to ask for that price, filing suit is not the right response to not getting it. (One idea: cancel that nonsense, join 24-Hour Fitness or whatever instead and then buy yourself $4,000 worth of cereal. You're welcome.)

The breakfast crisis began in August 2011, when the club either ran out of the yogurt and cereal he normally consumed or just decided to stop providing it. He complained, and the response was apparently not to his liking. Katz eventually sent an email demanding "WHAT THE F--- IS GOING ON? ... How would you like to explain there [sic] has been no yogurt for two (2) weeks and now no cereal. When does the coffee run out?" he concluded sarcastically.

To me, the great thing about this email is not that a lawyer got furious over somebody failing to dish up yogurt and cereal. It's that even in the grip of fury, he still wrote "two (2) weeks." Why do people do this? Maybe it made sense when things were written in longhand, but now that we have email and printers and whatnot there is generally not much controversy over what "two" is supposed to mean. If you haven't picked up this habit yet, don't.

Anyway, that email was apparently the last straw for the manager, who canceled his membership after that and accused him of "blatantly harass[ing] [her] in a threatening manner ...." Katz then sued, demanding well over $100,000 in damages for the breakfast deprivation, plus $5,000 from the manager for allegedly libeling him in the email, which she shared with someone.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Coin dismissed the case this week, according to the New York Daily News. While there seems to have been no written opinion, according to the manager's attorney the judge told Katz at the hearing that "he should be ashamed of himself" for filing the suit. That's hearsay, but the judge did order Katz to pay $440 in costs, which suggests what she thought of the case. The manager's attorney praised the decision for throwing out a case that was "embarrassing to the profession."

"This restores credibility to the system," he went on. I wouldn't go that far, but it's a good decision.

 

Edwards Jury Asks for "the Haircut Letter"

Well, this can't be a good sign — for John Edwards, anyway. The jury that is currently considering whether to convict him for alleged campaign-finance violations asked yesterday for a copy of the "haircut letter."

Elderly rich person "Bunny" Mellon, then an Edwards supporter, wrote the letter to campaign aide Andrew Young in 2007 not long after it had come to light that Edwards had (1) gotten himself a $400 haircut and (2) charged said haircut to his campaign. "I was sitting alone in a grim mood," wrote Bunny, "furious that the press had attacked Sen. Edwards on the price of a haircut." These dastardly rules that prevent candidates from spending campaign money on themselves were unreasonable, Bunny apparently believed. "From now on," she told Young, "all hair cuts, etc., that are a necessary and important part of his campaign, please send the bills to me. It is a way to help our friend without government restrictions."

Oh dear.

The report doesn't say (and I don't know) whether any haircut bills were actually sent to Bunny, how she thought they might distinguish between haircuts that were a necessary and important part of the campaign and those that weren't, and most importantly, whether the "etc." referred to other luxuries like possibly hiring an untalented videographer to have sex with. But Bunny did proceed to write a series of checks totaling about $725,000, two of which were "funnelled to Andrew Young through an intermediary," which also doesn't sound that good. (The jury asked for copies of those checks, too.)

Defense attorneys suggested yesterday that the jury could be out for a while, but that might be wishful thinking.

Does Congress Need to Be Held Back a Grade?

There are various software tools available that will let you determine the "grade level" and/or complexity of a particular piece of text. The Sunlight Foundation ran a couple of decades' worth of the Congressional Record through one of them, and the results showed a fairly dramatic drop in the effective grade level of speeches given by members of both parties since 2005:

Remedial classes needed?

That's one way to interpret the results, anyway -- that Congress has dropped from high-school-junior-equivalents to high-school sophomores over the last six years or so. This sort of interpretation does provide plenty of amusement, such as (if you're a Democrat) being able to point out that your party is apparently half a grade smarter on average, or (if you're a Republican) pointing to other numbers suggesting that the more liberal someone is, the lower the grade level.

The problem with those particular arguments, at least, is that they're probably backwards.

Writing (or speaking) at a higher grade level is not a good thing, or at least not necessarily. What these particular numbers really measure (at least the Flesch-Kincaid test) is the complexity and length of sentences. It says nothing about how accurate or intelligent the sentences are, and all else being equal, the shorter and simpler something is then the more thought was probably put into it. (This is why people who use legalese because they think it makes them sound smarter are actually proving the opposite.)

Shorter and simpler almost always means better communication, if nothing else. As the foundation points out, the Constitution (a great document, but not the most readable) measures 17.8 on this scale, the Gettysburg Address measures 11.2, and the "I Have a Dream" speech is down at 9.4. President Obama's recent State of the Union was delivered at an eighth-grade level (8.4), well below the average SOTU score of 10.7. FOX News illustrated this news with a picture of a kid in a dunce cap, possibly not knowing that simpler often means smarter or that 8.4 is almost exactly the same as the average American's reading level.

I just remembered that this test is built into most word processors, so I just ran it on my last several posts and the score came out to 10.0. I really have no idea what that means, if anything, but I thought I should disclose it.

Anyway, regardless of whether you think Congress's apparent decline is good or bad, there are so many possible reasons for it that it's hard to draw any conclusions about what's causing it. Since most incumbents get re-elected, it seems doubtful that any particular election year(s) would make a big difference. Maybe existing members just become better communicators as time goes on. Or maybe they really are getting dumber. They do seem to be doing stupid things more frequently, but that's a lot harder to graph.

(NPR via Neatorama)

Hawaii's Now Asking Birthers to Prove Who They Are

Ken Bennett, Arizona's secretary of state, is the latest person to question the President's birthplace, although he's doing it the way people do when they want to call it into question but don't want to seem like a loon. Bennett, a Republican who perhaps coincidentally is planning to run for governor in 2014, said on a radio show last week that he's looking into the issue, and that it's "possible" he might keep Obama off the Arizona ballot in 2012, not because he thinks the President isn't a "natural-born citizen" but because some other people say they think that and so he's gotta look into it.

"I'm not a birther," Bennett said on the show. "I believe the president was born in Hawaii." Oh, well, that seems pretty cl— "Or at least I hope he was." Ah. I see. But despite his own belief and/or hope, Bennett continued, "my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking." He said he had received 1200 emails asking him to look into the matter.

It's good to know, I guess, that 1200 emails will cause an official to spring into action, but what about the potential for abuse? I'm pretty sure there are more than 1200 Scientologists, for example, so will Ken Bennett one day have to look into whether human beings were brought to Earth 75 million years ago by an alien who stacked them around a volcano he then blew up with an H-bomb? Couldn't hurt to ask.

In the meantime, though, he's just waiting (apart from his other secretarial duties) for Hawaii officials to provide verification. He said on the show that he was puzzled it took them eight weeks to respond to his request, and when they did respond they still didn't give him what he wanted.

Instead, they asked him to prove who he was:

On Thursday, Bennett said he sent his request to Hawaii officials eight weeks ago but has yet to get the proof he was hoping for.... In the weeks since then, Bennett said, Hawaii officials have forced him to provide proof that he is who he says he is. They asked him to send them copies of the Arizona laws that prove the secretary of state really is the person in charge of handling the ballots. Admittedly, Bennett said they told him they were "tired of all the requests." But he is continuing anyway.

Emphasis added. Sounds like they are fed up with being bothered about this and have decided to start turning the tables. Bennett said he sent them copies of the state laws in question but still hasn't heard anything.

Strangely, he didn't say anything about sending them proof he is really "Ken Bennett" and that he's the same "Ken Bennett" who is Arizona's secretary of state. I mean, I believe that he is. Or at least I hope he is. I'm just saying that some people would like to see the evidence, that's all.

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

A woman defended herself with a "pooper scooper" for nearly half an hour while a man tried to hit her with another pooper scooper in Plymouth Pillars Park early Thursday, according to the Seattle Police Department.

There don't appear to have been any injuries (let alone beheadings) as a result of this incident, one that a department spokesman described, with some understatement, as an "epic battle." The victim told police that the man fled (or just got bored?) after they had dueled for 20-30 minutes, but police were unable to locate the suspect.

"Unless we get additional reports," the spokesman said, "that's probably the end of it." Don't be too sure.

(Seattle Post-Intelligencer, via Dave Barry.)