Well .... I suppose someone had to do it. (What gets me isn't so much that he does it, but that it needs to be done. What the heck are people doing with those things to cause that much damage?) (Well, I know what they're doing with them, I just don't understand how they get so battered. And, come to think of it, I probably really don't want to know, either.)
@ 03:45 PM CST [Link]
And to continue the profane streak ... so fucking WHAT? Do they think a photograph will contaminate their children? I mean, they'd allowed their children to attend that class anyway, so what problem could they possibly have with a simple photo?
@ 01:33 PM CST [Link]
Excuse me, but what the FUCK? If the state agrees that they don't want to enforce the law, then why should they object to class certification? If, technically, they think the city and county attorneys are bound because they bring their cases in the name of the state, then why should they object to something more formal?
The only thing I can imagine is that they foresee being able to prosecute regardless of the previous ruling, or that they see some way of reinstating the law that's blocked if the class of people is certified. Either way, something stinks in Minnesota.
@ 01:26 PM CST [Link]
On her second night in Nashville she saw Steve Earle perform at the legendary Blue Bird Cafe. Soon after, she called him. "She said, `I want to write with you,' and I said, `A lot of people have told me that,' " Earle said. "But I just sort of got intrigued by the whole idea of a Harvard-educated black woman who wanted to write hillbilly songs, so I called her back."
@ 12:15 PM CST [Link]
Oh ... my. I never knew that anyone offered actual lessons.
@ 12:09 PM CST [Link]
They got 60 percent turnout and they're complaining? (And they know who their head of government is, and it's only been a few hours since the election ended. Whatta concept ....)
@ 12:29 AM CST [Link]
There are NO words for how far beyond absolutely disgusting this is.
@ 12:07 AM CST [Link]
"The chain bookstores have stereotypical ideas. They don't
think there's as large a market as there is,'' says Drew Greenwald,
president of Grid Properties, a private company that helped develop
Harlem U.S.A.
It'll be interesting to see if there's as large a market as he thinks there is. I sincerely hope so.
@ 03:27 PM CST [Link]
A jail on ebay? Well, that would certainly be ... different.
@ 03:19 PM CST [Link]
You'd think that being a police officer might get you a special privilege or two, wouldn't you? At the very least, you'd think that other officers might listen when you say, "Hey, I'm a police officer!" even if you're out of uniform. You'd think that, at the very least, saying that would make them say, "Hey, show your ID." You'd think that, wouldn't you?
In DC, at least, you'd be wrong.
@ 01:22 PM CST [Link]
Kenneth Connor, a former Florida attorney who now heads the conservative and staunchly anti-gay Family Research Council in Washington, said Florida's law accepts the premise that children are "best off" in a home with both a mother and father.
The problem is, you know, that it doesn't. If that were true, then heterosexual single people wouldn't be allowed to adopt in Florida, but it seems that they are. The law simply singles us out.
That said, since Florida is one of the states with a broad-based sodomy law, their perfectly legitimate legal defense is that they don't want to place children in a house with people known to engage in criminal conduct. I'm not talking about how reasonable the law is, mind; I'm just saying that given that the law exists, Florida has a defense that a federal court would accept, should they choose to use it. (Florida's sodomy law is so broad as to be almost meaningless; "unnatural act" is never defined, and "lascivious act" is defined almost purely as indecent exposure, but somehow, this covers homosexual conduct between men and between women, as well as heterosexual oral and anal sex.)
ASIDE: heterosexual adultery and cohabitation are both against the law in Florida, as well, but somehow, I don't imagine that it gets prosecuted very often. As a misdemeanor of the second degree, adulterers and cohabitators should receive a $500 fine and a 60-day jail sentence. I'd like to see them enforce that act, I really would.
@ 01:08 PM CST [Link]
I wonder how long it will take for this to get him fired....
@ 12:37 PM CST [Link]
Apparently, it's not just us. Pity; I'd have hoped that people in other countries were more sensible.
@ 12:24 PM CST [Link]
Yet another reason for Puerto Rico to decide whether they're fish or fowl.
@ 12:18 PM CST [Link]
I think they're trying to lull us into a false sense of security, myself.
@ 12:15 PM CST [Link]
Well, it's going to be just fascinating to see what happens with this case on Ashcroft's watch.
It's especially interesting because these sorts of cases seem to be endemic to the governments judicial enforcement branches. The Secret Service, the FBI, the Capitol police -- for some reason, all the enforcement branches of the Department of Justice have repeatedly been found guilty of illegal discrimination. And yet, as noted, they're frequently charged with enforcing certain edicts and protecting people under color of the civil rights laws. What a cheery situation that must be!
@ 11:45 AM CST [Link]
"We're not trying to sacrifice a species."
Horse hockey. Big steaming piles of it.
After all, if the spotted owl goes away permanently, then there's no reason why the government wouldn't then surrender and say, "Go ahead and plunder all the old timber areas. Nothing there worth keeping now, is there?" And since any attempt to reassign the land would eventually wind up as some sort of federal issue, it's much more likely that they'd get a sympathetic view from George II Fraudulency's administration, now isn't it? (And if the people of Washington state let the low tax idiots have their way, the pressure to allow logging to make up for lost state and local revenues will be even more intense.)
@ 11:29 AM CST [Link]
South Africa wonders about the US. Like many countries, their concern seems to be how to deal successfully with the bully with the bankbook and the big guns.
@ 05:03 PM CST [Link]
Florida's conduct of the 2000 presidential election was marked by "injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency" that unfairly penalized minority voters, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has concluded in a report that criticizes top state officials -- particularly Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- for allowing disparate treatment of voters. [...] The inquiry found no "conclusive evidence" that officials "conspired" to disenfranchise minority and disabled voters. [...] "The disenfranchisement was not isolated or episodic. State officials failed to fulfill their duties in a manner that would prevent this disenfranchisement," said the report, the product of a six-month investigation. "Despite the closeness of the election, it was widespread voter disenfranchisement and not the dead-heat contest that was the extraordinary feature in the Florida election."
OK, I just don't get that. They know perfectly well that Florida was warned about the effects of purging the voter rolls the way they did, and they know perfectly well that Florida thought it was just fine and dandy to ignore all the suggested safeguards, being well aware of the effects. How can the commission possibly state that there was "no conclusive evidence" of conspiracy?
@ 01:38 PM CST [Link]
By the time Dennis Green realized he was in a whole lot of trouble and asked for a lawyer, he said, the detectives interrogating him simply refused. [...] After day became sleepless night in the interrogation room, Green confessed to pulling the trigger -- even though he did not have a gun and prosecutors later acknowledged that he was a victim in the melee. [...] a review of hundreds of police and court documents and interviews with dozens of other suspects and lawyers found repeated allegations that homicide detectives violated the rights of suspects during interrogations. Among the allegations: In many cases, detectives backdated documents so that it appeared that suspects waived the right to counsel before they confessed, and turned away lawyers from the interrogation room door with false claims that the client didn't want to speak with them.
Ah, life in our nation's capital. (Or rather, near it.) We can all just be so proud of that, can't we?
@ 01:32 PM CST [Link]
Oops! He did it again! It'll be interesting to see if there's more behind either side of this case than the other one. (Poor Kyle. Forced to sell rights to his image, his domains, his used jockstraps .....)
@ 01:25 PM CST [Link]
Clients can learn social graces -- or suffer the consequences. ... um. yes. Well.
@ 05:47 PM CST [Link]
You know, this has just got to frost the hell out of Rehnquist. I mean, there he was, all set to make his mark on the court, and then along comes this woman and usurps him. Granted, it's still technically the Rehnquist court, but on most issues, people know what he's going to do; lawyers and lower court judges don't really need to keep him in mind when writing their opinions.
@ 05:41 PM CST [Link]
What I would like to know is, what is the rate of the same cancer in women in that building? I mean, if the rate is that high in men, it ought to be running wild in women.
@ 10:25 AM CST [Link]
The warning sirens are wailing, but young black men who are gay don't seem to be listening. And so the march into self-destruction continues. The AIDS virus is being detected in gay black men at stunning rates, comparable to some of the hardest-hit sections of Africa. A study released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed an annual H.I.V. infection rate of nearly 15 percent among young black men who were gay or bisexual. The study, which focused on six cities, was conducted by researchers who reported in February that 30 percent of all young, gay black men were already infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
@ 10:20 AM CST [Link]
This is freakin' ridiculous. One wonders exactly what sparked the International Skating Union to this sudden discovery of "undignified" positions. I'm guessing that it was CBS or NBC or someone saying, "You know, we're getting tired of looking at the gal's panties, here. Doesn't matter that it's a full leotard panty, doesn't matter that we've been seeing the things off and on for ten, twenty years now. It's just not dignified."
I wonder how many judges will actually take the deduction. After all, it's so subjective; it's probably going to be used only against those they don't like in any event.
@ 10:04 AM CST [Link]
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!