First, the case clearly is not properly before the Court, unless they're suggesting Baby Bear filed a cert petition, and there's no constitutional issue here anyway, and no quorum. Second, Justice Sotomayor should be limiting her review to the record below, not hearing testimony from a couple of Muppets who just walk in off the street. Worse, she was apparently about to hear the bear's argument ex parte, if Goldilocks hadn't shown up when she did. Third, what law is she applying? Any? What jurisdiction is Sesame Street in, anyway?
Coming up: Justice Scalia refuses to stay Elmo's execution despite newly discovered evidence that he is innocent.
I guess if they aren't going to allow cameras in the courtroom -- and sketches are just too boring -- the only alternative is to reenact the day's testimony using hand puppets.
That's what Channel 19 in Akron, Ohio, is doing, in connection with the corruption trial of a former county commissioner. Here's an example from the second day of trial, featuring puppets talking about subjects like bribery and prostitution:
I think that all court proceedings should be reported in this way, but would settle for either puppet coverage of arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court or a full reenactment of the Rod Blagojevich trial.
Here we go again. This time, it's Orthodox v. Armenian priests in a cage match at the Church of the Nativity:
According to multiple sources (I'm citing the BBC because the British narrator makes the clip seem even more like a Monty Python sketch), this fight broke out Wednesday morning while the two groups of Christians were cleaning the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, traditionally held to be the birthplace of Jesus. The church is cleaned between the Christmas celebrations on December 25 (Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) and those during the first week of January (the Armenians and others still on the Julian calendar). It's not entirely clear what started the brawl, but one report said it was believed that "a clergyman of one order ... accidentally pushed his broom into space 'controlled' by the other group." That makes sense, because that's just the kind of border aggression that can spark a full-on monkfight.
As I wrote in 2009 when these same two groups went at it in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, tensions are always high in super-holy places like this because each Christian denomination claims jurisdiction over the whole thing, and they don't like sharing. They do share, under arrangements that go back hundreds of years and give each group control over a particular zone, but they don't like it one bit. And they guard their jurisdiction so jealously that no group will allow any other group even to walk unsupervised through its zone for fear of weakening its claim to exclusivity, and this has often led to conflict.
So it's not surprising that an unauthorized broom incursion ("accidental" or not) could spark violence, as seen above. And you really should watch the clip, not only to witness the spectacle of priests and monks beating the crap out of each other with broomsticks over who owns the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, but also to see the monk recording the whole thing with his smartphone.
Dude, this is so going on Facebook
I guess that shouldn't have surprised me either, but it did.
According to one report, "Brooms, fists and vicious insults flew in all directions" between the 100 or so holy men involved in the rumble, but no one seems to have been seriously injured, and no arrests were made this time around. So, not that big a deal, as religious warfare goes. "It was a trivial problem," said Police Lt.-Col. Khaled al-Tamimi, the kind that "occurs every year."
In what may be the most ironic part of all, the fight between the two Christian groups was broken up by Palestinian police, most if not all of whom, presumably, are Muslim. I don't know that for sure, but Bethlehem is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and I'm guessing that when the monks need police, they don't especially care whether the cops are Muslim or Christian and aren't checking ID. (Nor do I have a reason to think Muslims are not allowed into the place -- as I learned in 2009, two Muslim families have had responsibility for the front door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the last eight hundred years or so, and that still seems to be going okay.) Anyway, I'm going to believe that unless shown otherwise, because that would mean this story involved Muslim cops having to keep the peace between two groups of Christians trying to kill each other due to religious fanaticism. Seems to help put things in perspective.
The LSU Compliance Office has issued cease-and-desist notices telling people to stop selling merchandise bearing the name, likeness, image or nickname of Tyrann Mathieu, LSU's Heisman-nominated cornerback. As it reminded everyone, NCAA rules forbid the use of the name or picture of a student-athlete (I guess some of them do go to class) on commercial products, and that person or institution is required to take steps to stop the activity. So that's what LSU is doing.
Apparently, people have been trying to get around this rule (or maybe unknowingly violating it) by using not Mathieu's picture or actual name, but rather his nickname, "The Honey Badger." The nickname, of course, refers to the utterly great YouTube video by "Randall" in which he discusses how badass the honey badger is, since it eats bees, cobras, and so forth, and basically just "takes what it wants" because the "honey badger don't care."
Fantastic nickname for a cornerback, but LSU says it has become so closely associated with Mathieu that using it is effectively the same as using his name, and since T-shirts like this one (right) clearly associate it with him personally (they tend to use his initials and/or jersey number as well), that seems entirely valid.
LSU has released this podcast in which it tries to address questions it's been receiving, and it sounds like some have been complaining that LSU may be trying to keep all the profit for itself. As they point out here, neither LSU nor Mathieu is allowed to profit from this because of the rule (some would use the word "illusion") that NCAA football is an amateur activity. So LSU is only doing what the NCAA rules require it to do in this situation, namely take some action to stop the activity.
The crazy nastyass honey badger itself, of course, don't care about any of this. But LSU properly do.
One of the many things I will be giving thanks for tomorrow is the South Korean legislature:
Just to be clear, this wasn't tear gas "fired at S. Korea lawmakers" by some outsider - it was fired at them by another lawmaker. Parliament was voting on a free-trade agreement with the United States, which may not seem that diabolical (at least in the U.S.) but has been very divisive in Korea. The ruling party called a surprise vote on the bill, which caught opponents off guard and most of them were unable to show up in time. One who did tried to filibuster the bill in a special way, by setting off a tear-gas canister. Despite the chemical warfare and a physical scuffle, the bill passed 151-7.
"The legislators were passing a bill which will make ordinary people shed bitter tears," said the guy who deployed the gas. "So I detonated tear gas so that they too shed tears, even if theirs were fake tears."
The NYT's report accurately notes that "lawmakers in South Korea are experienced in bare-knuckled politics," although its suggestion that the use of chemical weapons is a "novelty" I think is not quite right, as least if you are willing to include fire extinguishers. See "Legislation Breaks Out During Brawl in South Korean Assembly," Lowering the Bar (Dec. 19, 2008). That one also involved sledgehammers and at least one electric saw, and maybe not coincidentally was also triggered by a disputed free-trade agreement.
Although the Koreans are clearly working hard, I still don't think they are outdoing the opposition in Taiwan, and won't be until they too are willing to try to eat a bill in order to stop it from passing. In both countries, extreme action is, to some, justified by the fact that one party is so dominant that the other(s) are essentially locked out of government. Whether eating legislation is a viable strategy I still think is highly debatable, thought.
The NYT''s blog The Lede put together a pretty good roundup of such incidents in 2009, which is where I came across the judo clip. Turns out there are many more of these, which is either very sad or utterly hilarious depending on your point of view.
In all seriousness, I'd like to think the members of the U.S. budget "Supercommittee" really cared enough to at least consider resorting to fisticuffs, caning, or martial arts before giving up, but they probably didn't.
Those of you who have ever slogged or are currently slogging through a document-review project, which I suppose includes most lawyers on Earth, may want to check out a new web series on Bitter Lawyer called "The Bottom Rung." The first episode was posted today.
The series was created by Matt Ritter, a 2005 University of Pennsylvania grad who enjoyed big-firm "life" for a while before fleeing to comedy. (You can see Matt's left ear and part of his neck in this picture, which for obvious reasons features co-star/producer Jess Garvey instead. But his whole face does appear a number of times in the actual episode.) The style is reminiscent of "The Office," as is the fact that none of the characters are exactly at the apex of their professional lives.
Or maybe they are. One of the series' main characters, played by Eddie Pepitone, has apparently been doing doc review for many years and is really enjoying life at this point. Or as Matt describes it, "[h]is character likes nothing more than to remind the dreamers that they cannot escape document review and that they will die down there." That character is not really in the first episode but clearly has great potential.
See also Bitter Lawyer's previous web series, "Living the Dream."
And then get back to work. Those documents ain't gonna review themselves.
According to Neatorama, this is actually happening:
"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney," the game that lets everyone in on the fun of practicing law, originated in Japan. Its success there led to a 2005 release in the U.S. on the Nintendo DS system, and of course it eventually made its way to the iPhone. Now it will apparently become a big-budget movie. Based on this trailer, it should be as hilariously baffling as most of Japanese pop culture is to me. (I think it's great, I just find it both hilarious and baffling.) I'd recommend making sure subtitles are off to maximize that effect.
The numerous dramatic objections --
-- holographic courtroom evidence displays, and stylin' neckties are all great, but the mysterious and all-too-brief appearance of Japanese Afro Lady (at about 1:21 in the clip) is worth your time all by itself.
Today Boing Boing asks the question, "Is it legal for police to shoot photographers in a public place simply because they do not want to be photographed?" Well, no. No it is not. That includes Oakland.
This video, taken by the shootee, makes it pretty clear that everybody is just calmly standing around until (at about :33 in the video), one of the officers suddenly raises his weapon and shoots the guy with a rubber bullet (or possibly a bean-bag round), for no apparent reason.
It's probably impossible to identify the shooter because of the riot gear -- let alone their habit of covering their name tags with black tape -- but this freeze-frame shows the trail of the actual shot:
The number of recent arrests and even prosecutions (as chronicled at this site) of people who have done nothing more than take a picture or video of police officers in public, or just anything in public, is really pretty shocking. (This case in April actually involved a "wiretapping" charge against somebody who used his phone during a traffic stop -- the officer's voice was recorded in the background, you see.) The only apparent reason for doing this would be to deter filming that might later be used to identify an officer who did something wrong, although I'm listening if anybody has another opinion. (Note: not listening to any "national security" excuses, though.)
This is illegal. In August, the First Circuit Court of Appeals held that it was unconstitutional to arrest and charge a citizen for taking cell phone video of three officers arresting another guy, apparently punching him in the process. The photographer was charged with wiretapping (seriously), disturbing the peace (really) and "aiding in the escape of a prisoner" (honestly?). The State dismissed that last one on its own, but pressed the other two charges. After they were dismissed, the photographer sued, and the officers raised a qualified immunity defense, arguing that "it is not well-settled that [plaintiff] had a constitutional right to record the officers."
Yes it is, said the First Circuit, which had no trouble concluding that there is an established, "fundamental and virtually self-evident" First Amendment right to gather information in this way, and a Fourth Amendment right not to be arrested for doing it in a peaceful and public setting.
I'm pretty sure there are cases holding that shooting somebody qualifies as a "seizure," but even if a rubber bullet doesn't count for that purpose (he can still limp away?), there's still the First Amendment and, here, also the Eighth. It's cruel, even if it is not as unusual as I would have thought.
Hint: if the answer to the question below was "yes," they would not have videotaped him.
In this report from KABC-Los Angeles (via the LA Observed blog), investigative reporter Marc Brown finally caught up with James Farkus Cohan while he was out for a hike one sunny day. This was interesting in itself because people who really have end-stage emphysema, as Cohen claims to, are generally not too hard to catch up with.
The reason Brown was pursuing Cohan, besides just wanting to see what somebody named "Farkus" looks like, is that Cohan has filed at least 161 lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Cohan sues small businesses that allegedly do not provide the required access to the disabled, claiming he has standing to sue because he has "end-stage emphysema." Some doubt had apparently arisen about that, and ultimately Brown headed out with a camera crew to see what he could see. What he saw was Cohan out for a hike in rough terrain.
Experts agree that someone with end-stage emphysema would not be found hiking. "At minimum," said a pulmonologist contacted by KABC, "they need supplemental oxygen because their lungs cannot deliver enough oxygen to the blood to meet their needs." As you know if you watched the video, Cohan did not take oxygen on his hike. (He told the reporter he does have an oxygen tank - he just didn't have it with him.)
Cohan insisted that he does have end-stage emphysema, as he has stated when filing legal documents stating that his condition prevents him from easily doing things like "walking" and/or "breathing," both of which he appears to be doing quite easily in the video. Something else he does quite easily: throw out racial epithets, as he did after Brown asked him whether he makes a living by filing disability lawsuits. Experts agree that racism is not a side-effect of emphysema medication.
It's not clear how much Cohan makes from his lawsuits, but if even half settled for no more than a few thousand dollars, that's still a pretty good living. According to the owners of the businesses he has sued, Cohan typically asks for at least $10,000 to go away. (KABC invited many of these defendants to a local bar - which Cohan is also suing - for a video-watching party.) Whether he has ever actually prevailed in a case is unclear, but seems doubtful.
If Cohan has to make money doing this, maybe his other business is not doing so well. What is that business? Organ procurement. As this Forbes article noted in 2007, Cohan has worked as what he calls a "transplant coordinator," charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to "arrange" organ transplants. The article did not claim he had been doing anything illegal in doing so - he did spend some time in an Italian jail, but lots of innocent people do that - but it is at least ultra-creepy.
In fact, though, while Cohan does not appear to have end-stage emphysema, he does have a long criminal record. Most recently, he pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, or more accurately 34 firearms, along with 31,000 rounds of ammunition. In fact, according to KABC Cohan is currently on probation and supposedly under "house arrest" at the moment. However, "probation officials would not tell Eyewitness News if the conditions of Cohan's house arrest allow occasional hiking trips."
Again proving that he is generally willing to say what he really thinks as long as he's not running for office, John McCain took to the Senate floor yesterday to bash GOP lawmakers who aren't supporting the Boehner plan, and briefly crossed into Middle-Earth to do it:
In their minds, he said, after a default crisis "Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor." McCain was actually reading from this Wall Street Journal editorial, but his endorsement of the dig at Tea Partiers has still created what may be the biggest ruckus in this community since Bullroarer Took fought orcs in the Northfarthing.
McCain also said (still reading), that "[t]his is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees," which would probably sting a little more if the person saying it hadn't turned Sarah Palin into a GOP vice-presidential nominee. Angle fired back by pointing out that "[a]s in the fable [sic], it is the hobbits who are the heroes and save the land." (Well, some of them.) McCain doesn't even write his own material, Angle said, almost certainly reading from a speech somebody else wrote for her.
It also strikes me that probably nobody involved in that skirmish has ever actually read any of the books they're talking about, although Sharron Angle has probably burned them a few times. That appears to include whoever wrote the editorial in the first place -- I don't think you have to be a total Lord of the Rings geek to know that the hobbits couldn't "return to Middle Earth" after going to Mordor because they never left it. (Maybe you do.) But I guess commenting loudly on stuff you really know nothing about is not a new thing in Washington.
I will reluctantly give FOX News credit for referring to McCain as "Lord of the Zings," which is really pretty good.
