When I saw this headline at CNN, I thought it was some sort of early April Fools joke, but it’s real: Scalia addresses wild-turkey hunters
Scalia addresses wild-turkey hunters.
Scalia addresses wild-turkey hunters.
Yes, it’s real.
(Actually, there’s nothing necesarily wrong with a Justice addressing “the nonprofit turkey federation” which “is dedicated to conserving wild turkeys and preserving hunting traditions.” But it’s still a funy headline.)
Marty Lederman, a man not given to false alarms, eyes the panic button as he contemplates Sen. Specer’s ‘reform’ of FISA. See Balkinization for the gory details.
My dad forwarded me this interesting article in Le Monde, Wanadoo et Free : des clauses abusives à haut débit.
Following a trail blazed by AOL and Tiscali, supposed good-guy ISPs Wanadoo.fr and Free have been found guilty of violating French consumer protection law. Wandoo now becomes the holder of a special booby prize (Le Monde calls it a gold medal for abusive clauses), having been ordered to revise no less than 32 clauses in its standard form contract that were found to be “abusive or illicit”.
Among the clauses ruled illegal by the court were those which:
(all translations are mine).
I’m sure almost every reader of this blog in the US is party to one or more contracts with clauses like these. But good luck getting anyone to declare them illegal (although conceivably a state court might refuse to enforce one or two of them if push came to shove).
Via Boing-boing, a link to this absolutely amazing piece of investigative reporting: Police Station Intimidation-Parts 1 and 2 in which “CBS4 News found that, in police departments across Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, large and small, it was virtually impossible to walk in the door, and walk out with a complaint form.”
Given I am currently doing work on ID cards, I was particularly struck by this transcript of the reaction of the Sea Ranch Lakes PD in Broward County, not all that far north of here:
cop; We don’t give you — we don’t give you a form. Where do you live?
tester: I don’t want to say.
officer: You don’t want to say?
tester: Where are you going?
officer: You want to play hardball? We’ll play hardball. I want ID.
tester: For what?
officer: I’m asking you for ID right now, that’s why. Here, hand it to me. Hand it to me.
tester: Are you kidding me? Here.
officer: I said, hand me your ID. What are you doing here? This is —
tester: I came to ask you how to file a complaint.
officer: This is very suspicious.
tester: Asking how to file a complaint is suspicious?
officer: Why don’t you shut up?
officer: I say this is very suspicious, that you pull in here at this time of night —
tester: Eight o’clock?
officer: You’re constantly butting in.
tester: I’m constantly butting in?
Mike: Sir, I would like to leave.
officer: I would love it, but he’s got your driver’s license, so you’re just going to have to stay.
Mike: Sir, are you detaining us?
officer: Okay, could I give you a ticket right now for improper backing.
Mike: You can do whatever you want, I suppose.
officer: Okay, that means yes, I guess you’re saying, right? ANd for backing up, correct, yes?
Mike: I was backing up, sir, because I was leaving.
officer: But because I’m a nice guy, okay, I’m going to give you a warning. Is that fair?
Mike: Yes, sir.
officer: Okay.
The TV station that broke the story reports that “Remarkably, of 38 different police stations tested around South Florida, all but three had no police complaint forms” yet it nonetheless felt obligated to introduce its report by saying that “Most police officers are a credit to the badge, serving the community and the people who pay their salary, getting criminals off the street, making the community safer for everyone.” Guess none of those guys happen to work the front desk, eh?
And much of the report is also devoted to quoting Miami police chief John Timoney saying that stuff like this can’t and shouldn’t happen, if it did it would surely have consequences. Not one suggestion that maybe Timoney himself might be a poster child for intimidatory policing.) To be fair, though, Timoney’s department, the City of Miami was one of the few south Florida jurisdictions that actually had complaint form on hand, and trilingual ones at that. Could be due to the high demand?
Via Wampum, whom I have inexplicably failed to blogroll until now, comes Hotter Than A Pistol, the sort of story that could make a grown man get a bit misty-eyed.
It’s so nice to read about ordinary goodness.
The administration is fond of throwing statistics about how there are 100 or so Iraqi brigades in the new refored Iraqi army. Subtext: the US can pull out soon, leave things to the Iraqis. Progress.
In fact, however, not at all:
The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.
It reminds me of a Vietnam war cartoon which unfortunately I’ve been unable to find online: as I recall it, Herblock’s everyman is pointing to traintracks that lead to a dark tunnel into the mountain and saying, “No there isn’t: There’s a tunnel at the end of the tunnel”. (I couldn’t find that one, but I did find this classic Herblock cartoon, which is similar.)
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