Nobody's Business

Because The Last Time I Checked, Wearing A Pin Is A Tell-Tale Sign Of One's Patriotism...

If you're not living in a cave at the moment, you obviously know that Barack Obama is campaigning to be (and by the looks of it, will be) the Democrat nominee for President.  What you may not know, is that he seldom wears a lapel pin of the American flag, unlike the majority of his fellow politicians.  By not doing so, he has been called everything from "Un-patriotic" and ""Un-American" to (heaven forbid!) "Un-Christian."  Mr. Obama has said many times that he does not where the pin because, "...[O]ut of an objection to hypocrisy in some politicians."  Now, please do not think that I am attempting to show my support for any candidate in the upcoming Presidential elections... do think, that I am pointing out the ridiculousness of being labeled un-American or un-patriotic by political opponents and some "news" outlets (ok... mostly just Fox News) for not wearing  a fucking pin.

Yesterday, Reuters published a piece (on top of dozens of stories over the last few months from other "news" bureaus, i.e. see "Fox News" above) about Mr. Obama coming under fire for his decision to only sometimes don the pin; in the most recent instance, in front of a group of veterans to which he was speaking to.  Let me get this straight... we are talking about a cheap piece of plastic (probably made in China) being the source identifier of a politician's patriotism?!  How about discussing their "ear-marked" expenditures, bills they've voted on, their actions on the campaign trial and throughout life (i.e. Hillary remembering her "dodging of sniper bullets" when she was the First-Lady, which later turned out to be her walking down an airport runway in front of a marching band of sorts)?  When did we, as a country, start seeing the non-wearing of a pin as a big deal?  Am I alone on this?  I am so sick of politicians not seeing what's important.  Stop spending our tax-dollars on senate discussions about whether to rename "French fries", "Patriot fries"; stop spending our tax-dollars on senate discussions on whether Rush Limbaugh should be officially declared a "hero" or "jackass"; STOP discussing another politicians "patriotism" or "love for America" in the national media and (this one's for the national media) STOP giving such an unimportant, border-line stupid topic so much fucking attention. 

Am I the only one that gets pissed off about this?  Last time I checked, there was a shit-load of better political topics to discuss.  How about less government intrusion on our private lives?  How about legalizing/decriminalizing the use/possession of marijuana (I'll blog separately on this issue, that's a promise)?  How about ideas on curtailing government "pork-barrel" spending on absolutely useless items (such as building and naming public landmarks after yourself Mr. Rangel - for more fun examples see this article)?  How about setting aside stupidity and laziness when attacking a political opponent (i.e. if you're going to attack someone find something better than their lack of wearing pins, their middle name being "Hussein" or a picture of them in an African dashiki)?  How about some common sense for a change?

In summary, not wearing an American flag lapel pin does not equal un-American, this pisses me off when brought up as un-American or un-patriotic by politicians and media, what about you?

I am new at this whole blogging thing, so I'd like you to respond fervently and without holding anything back.  I have no problem with criticism, anger, disdain or unabashed praise for my young  political idealism on the "issues", so comment.

- Zac Papantoniou (Guest Writer)

    

Women Foregoing Their Tops In Public... Right or Privilege?

This morning 2 female columnists (Ellen Koven and Denise Covert) over at newsjournalonline.com wrote an opinion piece titled "Is it ever OK to go topless?"

This particular topic was chosen with a woman named Elizabeth Book in mind. If you're not familiar with Ms. Book's story and the lawsuit she recently settled against the city of Daytona Beach, this link will familiarize you with it. Basically, Ms. Book, a 45-year-old Ormond Beach resident and mother, has shown her breasts publicly since 2004 in protest of the city's public nudity ordinance. She was arrested in March 2004 and again in July 2005. She sued the city of Daytona Beach, seeking $100,000 for attorneys' fees and damages stemming from what her attorney, Lawrence Walters, called negligence, false arrest and malicious prosecution. Courts ruled in Book's favor, so the city changed its ordinance last November to include language from past federal court rulings that say a person does not have a constitutional right to public nudity if they are protesting a nudity ordinance.

To summarize the opinion piece (for those too lazy to click the above link and read it themselves), Ms. Koven wishes women would, "keep [their] shirt[s] on" and Ms. Covert says that, "it's a privilege, not a right" for women to go topless in public. To say the least, their opinions, especially as female journalists, shocked me!

Personally, I find most "American's" prudish behavior with regards to women being topless in public ridiculous. Men don't get any flack for their public toplessness when cutting the grass, while working on their car, or at the beach; so why should women? Broken down on a purely anatomical level, men and women have essentially the same parts upstairs (I read a book once titled "Why Do Men Have Nipples" that explained this is because males actually start off in their mother's womb as females, but later on in the pregnancy develop their male parts, but I don't even want to begin getting into how much that weirds me out).

Now, I know what you're thinking... "You’re a male; of course you love the idea of women topless in public."  While that may be true (because as a heterosexual male, I do love topless women, on a truly prehistoric level); I also believe the old adage that goes something like, "what's good for the goose, is good for the gander." Women have fought hard for decades, through the women's suffrage and civil rights movements, to be acknowledged as having equal rights as their male  counterparts.  We as a society have come a long way, from not allowing women to vote, to having a female Secretary of State in Condeleezza Rice and a viable (at least for a time) female candidate for a major political party's Presidential nominee, in Democrat Hillary Clinton. Why can't we, as a country, get over a woman's exposed breasts?  urope isn't shocked by it, and we (at least I like to think) a far more forward thinking than our European brethren.  This is far from the fact that in the story that started this debate, the women who went topless in public, did so in order to protest and call attention to the equal treatment of women (being allowed to go topless in public) under the law; and the city of Daytona Beach wrongfully arrested her, even though the city ordinance she was arrested under at the time, allowed for public nudity in the name of protest. The government should have no say in whether a women may go topless in public, genitalia is a different story, but boobs are boobs, whether on a male or female... what do you think?  Do you agree with the opinions of Ms. Koven and Ms. Covert? Or do you agree with me; in the opinion that it is a woman's equal legal right to be able to go topless and top-free in the same public settings as a man, and that the government should just stay out of the issue as a matter of equal protection and free expression, two rights guaranteed to all Americans under our great Constitution?   

- Zac Papantoniou (Guest Writer)

Flying the Stinky Skies = $2 million?

CBS Reports:

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ― A New York City man is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because he says a pilot made him give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the toilet for more than three hours on a flight from California.

Gokhan Mutlu, of Manhattan's Inwood section, says in court papers the pilot told him to "go 'hang out' in the bathroom" about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight because the flight attendant complained that the "jump seat" she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said. (source)

This suit set Eric Turkewitz at the New York Personal Injury Blog off on a very reasonable diatribe.  Turkewitz claims that this is the kind of suit that gives personal injury lawyers a bad name - and he is right!  The plaintiff has some opportunistic employment lawyers representing him. 

Why ARE There so many Songs About Rainbows?

Remember that Kermit the Frog song?  I found out the answer!  Obviously, it is because homosexuals are trying to infest our brains with irresistible thoughts of gay sex! 

See I found out why there are so many songs about rainbows

Daughter Fails GED Exam, Dad Goes to Jail

USA Today reports:

Brian Gegner, who lives near Cincinnati, was sentenced last week to 180 days in jail for contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a minor.

He was ordered months ago to make sure his 18-year-old daughter Brittany Gegner, who has a history of truancy, received the diploma known as GED — something that hasn't happened yet.

Brittany Gegner, who said Monday that she plans to take a required GED test this month, said her father shouldn't be blamed for her failure because she has been living with her mother.

"It was my wrongdoing, not his," said Brittany Gegner, whose fiance and 18-month-old daughter also live at her mother's home. "He shouldn't have to go to jail for something I did."

Now Mr. Gegner stands to lose his job.  To make things worse, some so-called "lawyers" think that this is just fine.  In this CNN.com video, former prosecutor Monica Lindstrom, argues that the judge was "well within his purview" to impose this punishment.  Lindstrom either has no idea what she is talking about, or didn't understand the question. 

Maryland Expands DNA Database

CNN reports:

On Tuesday, Maryland starts expanding its DNA database, collecting samples from people arrested for murder, rape, and assault instead of just collecting DNA from convicted criminals.

Maryland is joining a dozen other states in expanding its database, and walking straight into controversy. To supporters, building DNA databases with samples from the unconvicted is no different from collecting fingerprints. Critics say it's a complete violation of civil rights.

I'm as suspicious of government as anyone, and this plan gives me the creeps.  Someone accuses you of assault (which doesn't even require that you touched anyone, just that they were in fear that you might), and your DNA goes right into big brother's big DNA logbook.

The feds are implementing similar policies, but they assure us that the data will never be mis-used.  They will show us the data on that once they find the WMDs in Iraq.

The woman who pushed for this expansion is the victim of a serial rapist that would have been caught, had this measure been in place years ago.  As much as I want my civil liberties kept inviolate, how do I tell the next victim, or string of victims, that we could have caught the scumbag - but we thought that it was more important to protect our civil liberties?

Answer?  With more tact than I am capable of.  Anyone want to volunteer? 

Hillary Needs to Fire Her Speech Writer

I swear, I'm not making this up.

Hillary Clinton likened herself to a teabag yesterday when asked why she refuses to drop out of the Democrats' presidential nomination race. Quoting former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, she said: "A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she's in hot water." (source)

Teabag... heh heh

More Drug War Stupidity

The Associated Press reports that a man died after being refused a liver transplant. 

Why was he refused?  Because he followed his doctor's advice and used marijuana to ease the symptoms of his Hepatitis C.

His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class…

The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates.

At some, people who use “illicit substances”—including medical marijuana, even in the dozen states that allow it—are automatically rejected. At others, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months.

A Viable Libertarian Candidate

Former U.S. Rep. and Clinton gadfly, Bob Barr, threw his hat in the ring today for the 2008 presidential race.  Barr intends to seek, and is favored to win, the Libertarian nomination. 

Barr, 59, quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism. He has been particularly critical of President Bush over the war in Iraq and says the administration is ignoring constitutional protections on due process and privacy.

Hmmm, imagine that!

By "viable," I don't mean that he can win.  He can't.  But, given the fact that many libertarian leaning Republicans feel similarly disillusioned by the G.O.P., Barr could mobilize enough voters to take at least one state, like New Hampshire, with its traditionally libertarian bent.  Just as likely, Barr could make enough of an impact somewhere like Florida or Wisconsin to influence the outcome in that state on election night.

Just as importantly, Barr might be able to haul in enough votes for the Libertarian Party to get a seat at the table during the debates. 

I probably won't vote for him (unless Hillary manages to pull off the nomination), but I think that the more viable parties we have the better.  America's political spectrum is disappointingly duochromatic.  Whether it is a Libertarian, a Socialist, a Green or a Fascist-Anarchist, another voice is always healthy. 

Your Weapon of Choice? M&Ms!

The Associated Press reports:

DES MOINES, Iowa—A college student whose friend was being questioned in a hit and run found himself charged with assaulting an officer with a curious choice of weapons: M&Ms.

Sean McGuire was arrested early Sunday at a convenience store after Drake University security guards noticed the colored candies falling on the ground around the officer. When the officer turned around, an M&M hit his shoulder, according to a police report. (source)

Okay, throwing M&Ms at anyone is uncalled for.  Throwing them at a cop is just stupid.  But, this college student winding up in jail, and having to post a $1,000 bond for throwing candy?  What was this all about?  Was it really about "assault," or was it a case of "you must respect my authoritah!"

Land of the "Almost Free"

It is a sad day when former subjects of the Warsaw Pact deride American freedom as a farce. That day is here, and while this post is inspired by an anecdote, it is backed up by statistics.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Estonia currently ranks third in terms of press freedom, while the United States heaves its way to 48th. Nowadays, we are outpaced by Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Chile. Unfortunately, it is not just our press freedoms that have atrophied. Leonard Pitts wrote an editorial this weekend, centered around a conversation with an Estonian friend who said that "she didn't find this country to be especially free." See Correctness, control, The land of the almost free to speak up.

Americans, she said, love to trumpet their freedom. But it’s hard to square that with political correctness that straitjackets communication for fear of giving unintended offense, hair-trigger litigiousness that requires major corporations to treat customers (”Caution: Coffee is hot”) like idiots for fear of being sued, zero tolerance policies and mandatory sentencing guidelines that remove human judgment from human encounters for fear of rendering unequal justice.

Most people are reading Mr. Pitts' piece as an indictment of right-wing "security theater" and "tough on crime" initiatives.  It is easy to read it that way when we read this passage:

And if this impulse toward uniformity sounds noble in theory, what it leads to in practice is kids kicked out of school because Midol violates the zero-tolerance drug policy, or a parolee getting 25 to life because the pizza slice he stole violates the three-strike law.

However, I see Mr. Pitts' words as cutting both left and right.

[O]originality is anathema to uniformity and, make no mistake, uniformity is what we’re talking about here, the campaign to regulate language, law, culture and every other aspect of human intercourse in the hope of thereby removing from that intercourse every hint of risk or danger of unequal treatment.

I have never heard an analogy more appropriate than the "hall monitor".  Whether it is right-wing neo-fascists in government or left-wing neo-maoists in academia, both come to us with the overwhelming desire to stifle any sense of individuality or dissent.  To force us all into their pre-determined holes, no matter the shape or size of the peg. These people remind me of a character in one of my favorite movies, Happy Feet (yes, really!).  As Neil Cavuto lamented, that children's film is a scathing indictment of the right wing's closed-minded conservatism.  (source).  However, the uptight "Noah the Elder" character's most telling line is this: Dissent leads to division and division leads us to doom! You, Mumble Happyfeet, must go! It certainly is easy to imagine Dick Cheney grumbling these lines.  But, anyone who thinks that this mentality remains on the right hand side of the aisle is as foolish as those who believe that AIDS only strikes homosexuals.  You need only take a look at the comments to this post and this post to hear Noah the Elder speaking with a left-wing accent. It is no wonder that the attempted debate over "Intentional Sex Torts" spawned this (very insightful) blog post "If You Don't Already Agree, Get Lost!"  Nor is it any wonder that a Dartmouth professor is considering suing her students because they didn't kowtow to her orthodoxy, or BJ's won't let a guy fly his confederate flag, or that there are calls for government and tort lawyers to squeeze under our sheets. Mr. Pitts sums up the state of our freedom:

A nation of iconoclasts and originals seems hellbent on becoming a nation of hall monitors. A nation born in revolution has lived to see revolution neutered and co-opted.

Out there, somewhere, hall monitors on the left and the right are scowling down at us... because they just can't stand the thought of us making decisions for ourselves, having fun in our own way, or stepping out of their moralistic line. 

What are you going to do about it?  If I, for one, may be so bold as to ask that you do something about it, I'll not ask much.  I simply ask that you exercise the rights that you have left -- in particular, your right to free speech. 

Chile may have us beat in that department, but we still have enough left that we can stop the bleeding.   Perhaps we can work off our free speech beer gut by exercising our rights a little more often, a little more strenuously, with a little more passion.  Fill the air, and the blogosphere, with your rejection of the hall monitor mentality.  Don't let the hall monitors take one step without resistance.  Don't say "what's the sense?"  Don't wait for someone else to write about it.  And most importantly, don't doubt your ability to make a difference.  Get out there -- find the hall monitors, no matter where they hide, and drown them in the only cocktail that can destroy them:  Equal parts liberty, passion, and free speech — serve scathing hot.

I'm Splitting For a Couple of Weeks, But...

...it shouldn't matter, because my superior ideological twin will be in charge. Attorney and law professor Marc Randazza, of the Legal Satyricon blog, is a helluva writer. Proof positive that he's smarter than me is that, when we were both faced with a very real choice between journalism and law, he picked the latter.

Marc cares about the same things I do and writes about them unacademically — and that's a compliment. I love him because he's a red-meat, no-punches-pulled defender of liberty and choice whose musings on case law and constitutional issues are clear, accessible, engaging, and at times a touch profane. I'm proud to have him run the show here.

If you need a measure of how hardcore and dedicated Marc is, consider this: He's getting married next weekend, and in between the current and future attacks of nuptial bliss, he's still going to guestblog here — my sincere apologies to Jennifer, his beautiful bride. To help out on days that Jennifer would like to enjoy Marc's undivided attention for a while, he has lined up a couple of brave foot soldiers. They're students of his. If they're half as good as their professor, you'll be in fantastic hands.

Meanwhile, I'll be putting my big fat carbon footprint all over Europe for the next two weeks, in a classic Jensen Healey convertible that a friend and I will be driving from Holland to Northern Italy and back again in honor of the Mille Miglia. If and when I can, I'll check in here — but mostly, I'll be busy doing stuff like this, while trying not to soil my pants.

Chef Ramsay:"Ban Out-of-Season Vegetables"

For generations, parents have exhorted their kids to eat vegetables. Today's politically correct (though quite insane) amendment to that rule is: "Unless they're out of season, in which case it's a matter for the police."

Celebrity British chef Gordon Ramsay said restaurants should be fined if they serve out-of-season fruit and vegetables. "I don't want to see asparagus in the middle of December. I don't want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home-grown," he said after raising his concerns with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"Fruit and veg should be seasonal. Chefs should be fined if they don't have ingredients in season on their menu," he told the BBC on Friday.

Last year, this self-absorbed oaf was in the news because he

...lashed out at parents of obese children, calling for them to be taken to court and fined.

Now that smoking has been all but snuffed out — marginalized, forbidden, scoffed at — it's clearer all the time that anti-choice little fascists have turned their attention to food. Fight back now unless you want a world in which candy bars, cheeseburgers, and pastries are preposterously pricey and possibly illegal.

Think I'm too hotheaded, or just crying wolf? Then read the piece William Saletan published on Slate yesterday. This paragraph summarizes it:

[Some health nannies believe that] junk food, like cigarettes, is addictive and should be similarly regulated. Initially, this was just a metaphor. Now it's becoming more than that. Scientists are trying to show that food literally addicts you like drugs.

Whole thing here.

[hat tip: Martin Owens]

Land of the Fee?

Thank god for the Consumer Services Department of Miami-Dade County, FL, and its fearless employees. These unflappable crimebusters go undercover to solicit rides from strangers they approach in stores. If one kindly obliges, cops surround and arrest the mark perp, impound his vehicle, and slap him with a $2,000 fine — for "providing an illegal taxi service."

Good thing the public is being protected from Good Samaritans and/or small-time septuagenarian entrepreneurs, don't you think?

Great Tits Are A-OK!

The BBC writes the headline of the day. Extra points for the second subhead.

'Scuze me while I, um, titter.

Where Men Are Tough and Cops Are Pantywaists

The good news: Cops in Kent won't be harassing partying youngsters anymore. The bad news: It's because it's too dark for the officers to feel safe.

A police force has sparked fury by admitting it is powerless to break up illegal raves — because it's too dark when the party is in full swing.

Chief Inspector Gill Ellis, of Kent Police, blamed the lack of action on "health and safety" regulations when tackled by locals whose lives are blighted by the noisy all-night drug-fests in a wooded property around Sevenoaks.

Chief Supt Ellis told a meeting of concerned residents that it was not safe to disperse revellers in remote locations when it was dark — insisting safety regulations meant officers had to wait until sunrise to break up the bashes.

[h/t: Fark]

Reuters Says Cannabis is a Narcotic

This news report is par for the course when it comes to illicit drugs. Don't ask critical questions. Don't interview cooler heads, a.k.a. drug-reform experts. Don't rock the boat.

The latest twist is, however, that Reuters now calls cannabis a narcotic.

It's like calling a bottle rocket a hand grenade.

Sending a Signal

Allegedly, Mark Robinson was arrested for turning without using his turn signal. But read the story, and it's pretty clear the real reason he ended up behind bars was that he didn't talk to the police officer with the kind of total deference that cops have come to expect demand.

Couldn't Have Happened to a Nicer Guy

Yesterday, with a full-scale raid, federal agents came down like a ton of bricks on Office of Special Counsel chief Scott J. Bloch. The Washington Post has this delightful detail:

Bloch used agency funds to buy for his office restroom $400 hand towels decorated with a special OSC seal, according to another person familiar with the raid.

That's not why he's going down; Bloch's being nailed for obstruction of justice. But man, I can just picture those fucking towels, and suspect he'll have no such fancy linens in the federal penitentiary where his betrayal of his duties ought to land him before long.

UK Top Cop: Surveillance State "A Fiasco"

But he still wants lots of extra cash in his budget — so that one day, all the technology could actually work.

Two Twits For the Price of One

Not getting it:

"Even assuming these books don't violate the law, they are not nice books," [Robert Peters of Morality in Media] said. "If a typical mother invited neighborhood kids over, she wouldn't be leaving these books on her coffee table for the kids to peruse."

That's quite the standard for determining which books may be openly sold. By that measure, anything objectionable should also be removed from the local Barnes & Noble, and of course from amazon.com, where any websurfing teenager might otherwise just bump into a distressing picture of, say, a dollar bill shaped like a cooter (probably safe for work unless you work for Morality in Media or the FCC).

[Concerned mom Marci] Milfs doesn't believe the books [that she was horrified to find at Urban Outfitters] should be seen by children. "It's not freedom of speech," she said. "It's selling adult books to teenagers."

Thanks for that scholarly correction regarding the First Amendment, Marci.

By the way, in case I happen to object to reading the vulgar last name Milfs in the newspaper, is there anywhere I can object?

If I were the manager of that Urban Outfitters, I'd be very publicly selling that T-shirt at right for a while, just for kicks.

Tourists' Laptops Subject To Content Search

Today's assignment: Write your own outraged comment. I'm pretty sure I'll agree.

Tourists visiting the US face even tougher security checks now airport officials can search through mobile phones and laptops. Guards can download any details contained in the items and keep them indefinitely, following a new court ruling. The latest legislation could mean lengthier queues as security copy photos, emails and phone records. Visitors already face hour-long waits while armed officers take fingerprints and photos.

Travel agents' group Abta stormed: "It's another ratcheting up of Fortress America. It's certainly not a good thing for passengers —€” it is rather Big Brother." There are also fears immigration staff may mistakenly corrupt or erase vital computer details. Abta added: "We'd like to know if they're going to be properly trained to check computers and conduct many spot checks they plan to carry out."

Dr Guy Bunker, of UK-based IT security experts Symantec, said: "Hopefully, they won't search everybody's data —€” or we may wait in line for weeks. There's also the chance of data being compromised." He added that some business travellers particularly were now so alarmed they may fly to America with blank laptops. It comes after a US Appeal Court ruled Los Angeles airport officials acted lawfully when a random search found child porn on a passenger's computer. Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said: "Reasonable suspicion is not needed for customs officials to search a laptop or other personal electronic storage devices."

But Shami Chakrabarti, of civil rights group Liberty, insisted: "It's one thing to look for drugs and explosives, another to conduct data trawls without suspicion."

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Libertarians in High Places

Over at Harry's Place, blogger David T explains why he couldn't support a third term for Ken Livingstone as the mayor of London: Ken told David, then a 13-year-old schoolboy who thought he had a love of fire salamanders in common with the politician, to "shut up." OK, it's more complicated than that, but it's kinda delicious to think that Livingstone, a nasty piece of work, narrowly missed out on being re-anointed in part because he mouthed off to a barely adolescent child who, years later, wouldn't campaign for him.

In any case, Boris Johnson, the tousle-haired new Tory mayor, will have to prove that he's a lot more than an underexperienced (if definitely colorful, even eccentric) toff.

Some aspects of Johnson's background are encouraging. He wrote a spot-on preface for Robert Huntington's otherwise mediocre book on the Nanny State a few years ago, and his own columns (Johnson is a former magazine editor and writer) have been approvingly mentioned on this blog more than once.

That said, I've followed the race pretty closely this past month, and Johnson, as is politicians' wont, turns out to have rather malleable principles. When his battle with Livingstone heated up, he made some headspinning pronouncements that called his libertarian bona fides into question, including a promise to appoint a Greater London Alcohol Czar; a vow to put more community police officers on the street (read: poorly trained volunteers in uniforms); and a proposal to expand asset forfeiture laws against alleged drug offenders, presumably because that's worked so well in the United States.

Also, a not-so-old statement of Johnson's came to light that had Hizonner musing that "If gay marriage was OK — and I was uncertain on the issue — then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog."

I'm glad to see Livingstone kicked out. Good riddance to "Red Ken," who compared a reporter of Jewish descent to "a nazi prison guard," who shamed the memory of the 2005 tube bombing victims by repeatedly cozying up to Islamic firebrand preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and who believes that it's perfectly appropriate to give verbal public blowjobs to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez if it means getting some cheap gasoline out of the rabid Castro wannabe (not so different from these guys, really).

Then again, I look at Johnson and realize the perennial wisdom of the phrase "Be careful what you wish for."

Pins on a Map

I picked up a thirty-something hitchhiker last year who told me he's a seasonal worker — mostly house painting about four months a year — who's really a professional traveler. To hear him tell it, he'd been to more than 100 countries, all on a shoestring. Needless to say, he was a colorful guy who had some terrific stories to share.

My own globetrotting is paltry by comparison. Over on tripadvisor.com, I just spent half an hour placing virtual pins on a map of the world — each pin marking a place I've visited — and came away slightly appalled at the huge white areas where I've never set foot (and, realistically, never will).

• View my profile
• Create your own travel map or travel blog
• Visit TripAdvisor.com

I trust that, in an alternate universe, I'm a part-time house painter who's about to apply for his seventh passport in a dozen years because the pages keep running out.

Why the Jersey Child-Abuse Story Disappeared

It started with the discovery of a skull fragment on the site of a former children's home, a find that even so-called "quality" news media, jumping the gun, inexplicably identified as "a child's body" while also reporting that the remains of more children were likely to be found on the same premises. Soon the police and the media — codependents in a lamentably dysfunctional relationship — were convincing everyone that the place had a sensational history of child abuse, pedophilia, and murder.

Then, almost two months later, it turned out that the piece of bone could not be reliably dated, and might in fact be hundreds, if not thousands of years old. It might not even have come from a child.

The case fizzled, though the police investigators kept spinning tales to make themselves seem less Keystone Kops-like.

And the media? They yawned and moved on. Chances are you've heard about the Jersey (U.K.) Haut de la Garenne home and the dark secrets that the place was said to harbor. What you probably haven't heard is the embarrassing denouement. It seems to all have been the product of a culture so mesmerized by any lurid allegations involving child abuse that the slightest murmur, and the flimsiest evidence, can trigger a worldwide media frenzy.

It's all eerily reminiscent of the spate of bogus ritual-abuse cases that gripped the United States in the eighties and early nineties, leading to dozens of convictions of people who were clearly innocent (and who were, in some cases, belatedly exonerated and freed).

The one positive thing about the Haut de la Garenne case is that the witch hunt petered out before it had truly begun, and that no ostensible offenders' lives were destroyed (although suspicions are likely to linger for decades).

Investigative journalist Richard Webster performs the, er, post-mortem. It's as incredible a cautionary tale about the media as you're likely to find.

This Is Lesbos!

Hey, good luck with that:

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian". The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally. The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians. Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece's third biggest island — plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos? The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.

Or they could just change the name of the island to whatever the Greek word for 'inbred nincompoops' is.

Oh, and if I were Dimitris Lambrou, I'd be wearing a little protection around my sensitive areas:

Don't Cross the Crossing Guards

The surveillance society on yonder side of the Atlantic keeps expanding at an ever more relentless pace. The latest? U.K. crossing guards carrying always-on video cameras.

[They] are using a hi-tech weapon to protect themselves against the scourge of angry drivers. Video cameras are being built into their poles and will be worn on their heads so incidents of "lollipop rage" can be recorded and used as evidence to prosecute motorists. The cameras are time coded and mounted in both directions, so that illegal behaviour happening behind them will also be caught on film.

[via Gizmodo]

God Is My Co-Pilot, It's On My Number Plate

That whole church/state separation thing is working out really well in Florida.

Florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the Miami Heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion. The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "I Believe."

Ask Rep. Edward Bullard, the man behind the plan, what the Establishment Clause is, and he'll probably come up empty-headedhanded. As for the rest of the First Amendment, nope, the poor guy still hasn't a clue:

Bullard, the plate's sponsor, isn't sure all groups should be able to express their preference. If atheists came up with an "I Don't Believe" plate, for example, he would probably oppose it.

A principled man, he.

OK then, fine, no atheist version — but special license plates for Flat Earthers (motto: "Like a Pancake. Really.") and for Muslims ("Hit Me, I Can Use the Virgins") should definitely be considered.

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UPDATE: Strangely, the plan has hit a snag. Marc Randazza has more.

The Nose Knows

When you outlaw chair sniffing, only outlaws will be sniffing chairs.

U.K.'s Miserablist Madness: 'Down With Us!'

For a reason story, I interviewed Brendan O'Neill of Britain's spiked-online last week, whose favorite adjective turned out to be "miserablist."

It's a handy word to describe the existential, anti-advancement gloominess of much of the traditional left, a world where progress is never considered a valid cause for rejoicing as long as not every last person can benefit from it, and as long as there are potential downsides to the upsides (of course, true miserablists never stress the latter and only have eyes for the former).

The mindset reaches its apex in the whole wretched Adbusters scene, mostly populated by the sort of moping, misanthropic, free-trade-loathing nihilists who'd gladly shoot themselves if it wasn't for the fact that purchasing a gun and bullets would give aid and comfort to the military-industrial complex.

Has progress brought us cheap and plentiful clothing? Child labor. Does it enable people whose parents never went on vacation more than fifty miles from home to travel to the ends of the earth? Pollution. Has DNA science given us genetically reinforced, bug-resistant wheat and vegetables? Cue the Joy Division tracks, 'cause Frankenfood will kill us all.

Saturday's London Times carried a number of fine examples of the tiresome trend, none more jaw-dropping than columnist Giles Coren's malevolent diatribe against McDonald's. His article is so breezily nutty that it would give Morgan Spurlock pause. The headline in the actual paper called McDonald's counter staff "Spotty, Ugly Losers" (the Times toned it down somewhat for the online version).

What's Coren so upset about? In a word, uniforms.

The announcement that Bruce Oldfield has redesigned the staff uniforms at McDonald's seems to me the most futile exercise in turd-polishing since Adolf Hitler looked in the mirror and thought to himself: “Hmm, maybe I'd look better with a little moustache.”

Ever since the world woke up to the obesity, heart disease, cancer, impotence and misery that a fast-food diet inevitably leads to, McDonald's has done everything in its power to deflect attention away from its hamburgers and on to other things.

McDonald's exemplifies everything that Coren, a former Times restaurant critic, despises, thanks to

...products that lie at the heart of Britain and America's very serious obesity crisis, not to mention the litter crisis, the deforestation crisis, the animal welfare crisis and the nasty smell up and down your high street crisis.

He forgets to blame the burger chain for the clubbing of baby seals, and for the terrible injustice that is Gordon Brown's bunions.

Briefly, Coren does wonder why people go to McDonald's, and his answer is that it's not simply because they like the food, or that it's an efficient option if they have just fifteen or twenty minutes to spare, or that it's an affordable treat. No, the attraction of a Big Mac and fries is apparently that it's comfort food for self-hating, inebriated losers (ugly and spotty ones, I'm fairly sure):

We usually go into McDonald's because we feel terrible. Drunk, hungry, hung-over, barely £2 in our pocket, all self-respect out the window, we push past the weeny bike thieves and kitten-stabbers gathered in the doorway. We keep our stomach together despite the slide of our feet on the cow-greased floor (is there ever not a sign up telling you the floor is slippery?) and the smell of a Swaledale field at the height of the cow-burning epidemic.

"Cow-greased floor"? Note how McDonald's famous insistence on cleanliness — a trait that Coren would surely find laudable in a Michelin-starred restaurant — is turned on its head by his linking the slippery-tiles sign, the very symbol of a place that's just been thoroughly mopped, to a slicked-up slaughterhouse killing floor worthy of an Upton Sinclair novel. The linguistic dishonesty is as brazen as it is transparent.

Just a couple of pages further in the same newspaper, we find a piece by columnist Janice Turner in which she bitchily discusses the revelation by former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott that, while still in office, he was a binge-and-purge bulimic. This news gives Turner license to declare all of England an "eat-shop-purge nation of bulimics" because some people are shopaholics who own 50 pairs of shoes, or they throw out old mushrooms that are probably quite edible despite being slightly "manky."

On these grounds, Turner declares the West "decadent" and complains that our erstwhile "respect for food" has been "eroded by decades of cheap produce." Yes, let's blame the West's "rot" — such as it is — on cheap food. Makes perfect sense, at least if we forget that, in a severe economic downturn a century ago, millions of destitute consumers might have had to eat a mixture of mud, oil and sugar to quiet their growling stomachs; these days, no matter their deplorable income, the poor find plentiful carrots and peas and green peppers, all for a song. Horrible, isn't it?

I had further occasion to reflect upon England's miserablist tendencies today when a British judge, sentencing two lowlife thugs who had stabbed a young man to death, remarked that the crime

...raises serious questions about the sort of society which exists in this country.

What on earth makes presumably sane people — especially sane people working inside a justice system that surely makes no secret of its own successes — issue such alarmist, down-with-us drivel? Violent crime in Britain has been on the decline for decades. In 2007, the risk of becoming a crime victim in the U.K. fell to the lowest number in at least 26 years.

The paradox is obvious: The more successful and peaceful western societies are, the greater the number of utterly disconsolate miserablists they seem to produce. England — clean, safe, organized England, its Tescos and and John Lewis food emporiums so magnificently stocked as to almost pulverize my 80's recollection of the country's depressing fish/chips/curry culture — now seems to have a particularly large and vocal contingent of these people. Clearly, they have taken root, among other locations, in the nation's newsrooms, where they whinge on their word processors as if possessed by the fused spirit of Kurt Cobain and Eeyore the donkey.

You don't have to be a Pollyanna to find their bleatings crass, condescending, and robbed of reality.

Those Marvelous Monarchs

Ah, Thailand. Where you can cavort with child hookers until your cock turns blue, but where they'll throw you in jail if you don't pay the mandatory "respect" to the king.

Chotisak Onsoong was charged with an offence that could land him in jail for 15 years. His alleged crime was simple: during the playing of the royal anthem which precedes all films in Thai cinemas, he had remained in his seat. Mr Chotisak, a 27-year old businessman and political activist, is the latest person to be prosecuted under Thailand’s stringent lèse majesté laws, which make it a crime to “defame, insult or threaten” the King, Queen or heir to the throne. ...

In March last year a Swiss man received a ten-year prison term for drunkenly defacing posters of the King. He was pardoned and deported. Last summer a professor of philosophy at Silpakorn University in Bangkok, Boonsong Chaisingkananont, found himself under investigation for lèse majesté after setting the following examination questions for his first-year students. “Is the monarchy necessary for Thai society? How should it adapt to a democratic system? Discuss.”

Think it can't happen in the West? But it does.

Cigarettes and Learning

The papers in London, where I'm now wrapping up a week's reporting, contain a treasure trove of nanny-related gems. Take this one:

A science teacher who passed a lit cigarette around a classroom and allowed two of his pupils to try it has been allowed to keep his job [he was instead disciplined by the school, RvB]. Jim McIntee, a teacher at the independent Steiner School in Canterbury, Kent, passed the cigarette to pupils aged 12 during a lesson in February about the effects of nicotine on the lungs. Three parents have now taken their children out of the school.

A generation ago, if your parents caught you trying a cigarette at that age, it wasn't unheard of that they made you smoke a dozen or so in a row, until you were green of pallor and empty of stomach, and you never wanted to even see a cigarette again. I guess mom and dad could be picked up on child-endangerment charges if they pulled that today.

From the looks of it, Mr. McIntee wasn't exactly attempting to get kids hooked on tobacco. Quite the opposite: he made his offer during a lesson on what nicotine does to human lungs. Even if he had allowed his pupils a couple of drags in an open-minded, non-judgmental, "you decide" sort of way, it beggars belief that parents would be so horrified as to (a) permanently pull their children out of school and (b) create a media hubbub that's not so very different from a witch hunt. (I wrote about that tiresome if widespread impulse here.)

Such a response isn't about resolving an issue — in that case, the parents could have had a private chat with Mr. McIntee, who might have been receptive to their concerns. Instead, the indignant victims-by-proxy were hellbent on demonstrating their holy outrage to the world, with the goal of publicly establishing just how blessedly pure of heart — and of lung — they themselves are.

Meanwhile, it ought to be clear that kids' respiratory systems are under more serious assault from the parents (assuming that these mums and dads drive petrol-powered cars) than they ever were from a teacher who goes beyond book learning to make his point. One puff of a cigarette versus the 400 to 600 gallons of gasoline that the average car burns in a year, producing well over 8,000 annual pounds of carbon dioxide — well, which do you reckon is more harmful? I'm not knocking cars; I'm just arguing for a little proportionality.

By the way, 'Steiner School" in the newspaper quote above refers to the legacy of Rudolf Steiner, the famed German educator and founder of the Waldorf schools. It might be worth remembering that Waldorf schools were named after the Stuttgart-based Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company of a hundred years ago, and that the schools, including the teachers' salaries, were financed by progressive-minded tobacco tycoon Emil Molt, a friend and admirer of Steiner's. Without tobacco money, it's unlikely that there'd be Steiner/Waldorf schools anywhere today.

I'm just sayin'.

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BONUS LINK: Think you may post photos of kids smoking to Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing site? Think again, you child-corrupting perv. Flickr staff will remove the offending material, explaining itself thusly:

"Minors drinking and smoking are prohibited as they are a no no, have been I think since forever. If it's brought to our attention via Report Abuse, etc., we will review and take action."

"Take action." Fearless Flickr Superheroes swoop in to save the day kids' lungs, heroically expunging those foul images so we can all pretend that no child ever dangles a cigarette from his or her lips! Problem solved! Hosanna!

Anyway, one participant in the discussion thread asks, not unreasonably:

Are pictures of kids playing with explosives prohibited? Kids with firearms? Kids with simulated firearms? Candy cigarettes? Licorice pipes? Licorice cigars?

And that's pretty much when the Flickr moderator permanently shuts down the discussion, because the customers she purports to serve "are making my head hurt."

Lovely.

Every Step You Take, I'll Be Watching You

Ironic that that song lyric was immortalized by a British band called — Well. You know. Make of that what you will.

Britain's all-pervasive CCTV system — a network of five million surveillance cameras — got off the ground in the 1980s as a response to IRA terrorism. And now? Now it's used by municipalities to combat underage smoking and drinking, and to crack down on illegal DVD copies.

A Midland council is using laws designed to combat terrorism to spy on kids they suspect of underage smoking and drinking. Staffordshire County Council has carried out nearly 70 surveillance operations across the county in the last three years. Trading Standards officers secretly filmed underage kids smoking and drinking during some of the investigations — and used informants to identify rogue shopkeepers who sold them the fags and booze. The council snoops used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to tackle the petty offences, yet the legislation was originally designed to prevent terrorism and serious crimes. Other Staffordshire surveillance cases involved monitoring the movement of farm animals and targeting people cashing in on bootleg DVD sales.

The justification for going after the disc bootleggers is particularly farfetched noteworthy. Community Safety Manager Brandon Cooke explains that

"...it is well documented that the proceeds of these kind of goods often goes towards serious organised crime, including terrorism."

Here's a previous story featured on Nobody's Business, involving the authorities' use of hidden cameras to catch people who put out their trash on the wrong day.

[thanks, Nicky!]

An Olympic Bill

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

The bill for the London Olympics could soar by five times the original estimate to more than £12 billion, MPs have warned. Ministers' failure to include "foreseeable major factors", such as tax and security, had already seen costs rise to £9.3 billion.

But this figure excludes the £2 billion cost of actually staging the 2012 Games and the £650 million to buy land for the Olympic park in East London. It also neglects to include the millions of pounds needed for transport and staff, the Commons public accounts committee said.

Petty stuff, that, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell believes:

"We could lay on the Games for the original bill but it would have left no legacy."

Ah, OK then. I'm sure the Brits wouldn't want to get in the way of Ms. Jowell's legacy.

Here's but one aspect of all that carefree spending: the logo. Notwithstanding London's well-deserved reputation as the world's graphic-design capital, it's arguably the most atrocious marque to have been doodled for anything this side of a heavy metal band, and I'm not surprised that the animated version induced vomiting and epileptic attacks in some people — seriously. The cost? A mere £400,000.

Previous not-overly-fond Tessa Jowell mention on Nobody's Business here.

Literally Not Understanding

Another reason to cast a weary eye on fundamentalist Christianity, from a teacher in a heavily Christian community:

The insistence on literal level thinking in regards to accepting the Bible as God's literal word, has bled into classroom practices. Many of our children see no need to think about [an] author's message of a text or to infer why someone might be feeling something in a given text, because if the author wanted you to think that about that, he/she would tell you directly, right?

So I guess the question really is, Is our children learning?

Don't Be Smelly

After you've eradicated smoking from stations and all public transportation — a defensible initiative, to be sure — what's the next goal? Easy: promoting odorless foods, so passengers' olfactory nerves won't be offended by another's takeout. Bus shelter poster seen on Tottenham Court Road, London.

The Commish, As Written By David Chase

Woke up this morning.
Got yourself a gun County Commissioner's job.

A former strip club manager is paid nearly $50,000 a year to work for the Cuyahoga County commissioners and county auditor, but two commissioners don't know her or what she does.

Rosemary Vinci, 50, is on the payroll of Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo. She splits her 35-hour work week between working for Russo and the three county commissioners, Russo's chief operating officer said.

Two of the county commissioners, Peter Lawson Jones and Tim Hagan, said last week they have never met Vinci. The third, Jimmy Dimora, had security officers remove two Plain Dealer reporters from Thursday's public meeting when they asked him about Vinci.

Click on this link [Download commish.mp3] and listen to Dimora dress down the reporters for daring to ask him a question. At a public meeting. The guy sounds like he's Tony Soprano's backwards cousin. He even talks about "snitches" and "stool pigeons" — interesting vernacular. Badabing, badaboom.

London Calling — Blogging Light

I'm leaving for London today to report a feature story for Reason magazine. No idea if I'll have fast, steady, and affordable Internet access, so blogging may be light until my return late next week.

Considering where I'm going, I should find nanny inspiration aplenty. Stay tuned, then, even though I may not be able to blog with my customary regularity.

Saving Private Hubbard

Dear soldier:

Your two brothers died in Iraq, so we're letting you come home from the war under our 'sole survivor' policy. Now, if you'll just give us back $6,000 of your signing bonus — you didn't serve out your contract, after all — and also give up the health coverage for your pregnant wife, we're good.

Thanks a bunch for serving your country,

The Pentagon

Read the story here (h/t Fark). The situation is now being rectified, but only after Congressman Devin Nunes intervened on Army Spc. Jason Hubbard's behalf. Prior to that, the military authorities wouldn't give Hubbard and his family the time of day.

Their small defeat notwithstanding, the beancounters at the Pentagon remain compassionless automatons, of course, just as they were last year when they demanded a signing bonus refund from a soldier whose tour of duty was cut short when both his legs got blown off.

The inhumanity of these people defies description, though I tried.

One Ticket and One Prayer, Please

Swell idea. When you're the local public transportation authority, why only staff the buses with drivers and conductors? Why not team up with the Salvation Army, put pastors on board, and spread busloads of Christian cheer among the passengers?

Pastors are set to board Croydon buses to help control unruly schoolchildren and teenagers. The religious volunteers — or "school pastors" — will also attempt to turn young people involved in crime away from breaking the law and into studying the Bible.

The scheme will be launched in the summer and will be led by The Ascension Trust's director, Reverend Les Isaacs. It will be launched in the Purley area and supported by police. Detective Inspector Jacquie Hands said it would involve faith and community groups providing support on bus routes into the town centre and be co-ordinated by the Salvation Army.

Telling Us What He Really Thought

Here's one man's slightly intemperate take on mainstream pornographic movies:

Judges who seek to find technical excuses to permit such pictures to be shown [in a movie theater] under the pretense of finding some intrinsic value to it, are reminiscent of a dog that returns to his vomit in search of some morsel in the filth which may have some redeeming value to his own taste.

Also, the defense of dirty pictures on First-Amendment grounds

...ought only to be advanced by depraved, mentally deficient, mind-warped queers.

Any idea who might have said it? Some blogger channeling Ed Meese? Notoriously rabid townhall.com columnist Kevin McCullough? Perhaps a South Carolina tent preacher fancying himself the reincarnation of Anthony Comstock?

It was Chief Justice A.H. Ellett, of the Utah Supreme Court, in