FTC workin' on the Chain Gang

The FTC, the Federal Trade Commission (by the way, its name has not been changed after the short lived "indictment"of President Obama to "The Federal Traitor Commission") is continuing its investigation of whether a gang that sends out chain letters (a chain gang) has been guilty of making false and misleading statements in the letters' peregrinations around the mails and on the internet. False promises of good luck or false threats of bad luck would violate mail fraud statutes, the FTC alleges. Threats of bad luck for breaking the chain would also constitute coercion in states like New York.

In New York the Penal Law reads as follows:
§ 135.60 Coercion in the second degree.
A person is guilty of coercion in the second degree when he compels or
induces a person to engage in conduct which the latter has a legal right
to abstain from engaging in, or to abstain from engaging in conduct in
which he has a legal right to engage, by means of instilling in him a
fear that, if the demand is not complied with, the actor or another
will:
1. Cause physical injury to a person; or
2. Cause damage to property; etc.

The FTC is looking into claims made in the letters to see if there is supporting evidence. The letters will promise something good in return for not breaking the chair and provide anecdotal evidence (“Enid did, and now her herpes is in remission”). Often, they will threaten bad luck if you fail to do the email’s bidding (“Cyril didn’t, and he suffered another rectal prolapse”)."

Or this one from 1936: "Beware! If you break the chain, you will have bad luck. One woman was in a car accident when she broke the chain. Another woman was sued for divorce. A man lost his job. A high school student failed to pass in three subjects. Bad luck will follow you if you break the chain!" Or this one: "When Anne Wichert got it for the first time, she ignored it and a week later the love of her life dumped her for no good reason so BEWARE, and just send the stupid letter!!!!!! "

The FTC is now diligently searching out Anne Wichert on the internet through one of those lost classmate annoying popup sites, as well as trying to locate and strip search Cyril to get to the bottom of this!

Promises of good luck fall within the jurisdiction as they could constitute false advertising. The FTC has previously put out of business people selling four leaf clovers and rabbit's feet, although they are currently in a titanic tussle with the horse shoe manufacturers, who now can continue in business if they place a products liability disclaimer on the box in which the shoes come that they are meant only for equine footwear, and should not be nailed above doorways where they may fall and injure a person coming through the door.

Similarly, mirror manufacturers are working with the FTC to dispel rumors that breaking one will lead to seven years of bad luck. Does this disinformation go back to Joseph and the cows? Seven lean years for breaking a mirror--surely that's unconstitutional! It would be an Eighth Amendment violation, since it is both cruel and unusual.

The FTC is fresh off their triumphant banning of that Nigerian prince that sends emails trying to give you millions of dollars. It turned out that "Prince" was a dog, and on the internet nobody knows you're a dog!

Speaking of which, it seems a judge on a Family Court has ordered a hearing to determine the custody of a dog. The court noted that it would not consider the best interests of the dog to be dispositive of custody, so I suppose the dog is not entitled to a guardian ad litem to represent him. Maybe he get a guardian ad bitem instead.

North Korea, the quarrelsome bad neighbor of Southeast Asia, announced that its beloved president will now be known as Kim Jong Fatally Il.

The U. S. government has begun a program to get gas guzzlers off the road and stimulate the moribund auto industry now that GM has become Government Motors. Uncle Sam will pay you $4500 for your old, low gas mileage car if you follow the rules found here. Too many people took advantage of it in the first week, so now the government has added one slight modification to the program, your last name must also be Klunker. (Enjoy your new car Irving and Rose Klunker!)

Have you seen the commercial that Jon Corizine is running against Chris Christie where Christie gets up and walks out a Congressional hearing saying "I've have to go! I'm going"? The first time I saw it, I thought it was a Flomax commercial !

Grandest Jury Indicts the Prez But Doesn't know Courting Ritual

We've blogged twice about people desperate to get out of jury duty--desperate enough to die to do it. Therefore, it is refreshing to find a bunch of citizens who just can't wait to serve on juries--literally. They can't wait for a legit request to serve on a grand jury, that is (and an ordinary jury just won't do), so they formed their own.

A bunch of wingnuts formed what they called a super grand jury, although they have left to the imagination what's so super about it. I suppose the title Super Duper Grand Jury or Grandest Jury seemed too pretentious (i.e., too grand), and Baby Grand Jury too musical or too infantile.

Instead of hearing the usual boring federal cases of undercover buy and bust drug sales, and boring accountants droning on about tax evasion in cases when the wingnuts think the feds shouldn't be taxing citizens anyway, they went ahead and indicted the President for treason.

Now, a grand jury is a secret proceeding--and this one was so secret ("How secret was it, Johnny?") that even the members of the grand jury were not permitted to know what they were doing.

The size of the federal grand jury (16 to 23 persons) is set by Rule 6(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Impaneling your own grand jury is a grand idea for any party of 16 to 23 persons meeting in a restaurant (or the food court). They can not only try a new dish they haven't tried before, they can indict the waiter if the service is slow. Where did they get this idea the DIY Justice Network? This group was a Super Grand Jury of 172 --a Grand Jury that had been Supersized.

Apparently anyone who wants to log in on the internet can"sit" on this grand jury as long as they believe that the President is a foreign born national intent on subverting the United States. How being foreign born constitutes treason is not made clear in their "indictment" but then you can't actually expect an indictment to make sense, can you?

The group filed their "return" in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where it landed of the desk of Chief Judge Royce Lamberth. Apparently they were unfamiliar with the rule that a grand jury foreman must shout "Fore" before filing an indictment. Why do you think they call him the foreman, anyway?

Judge Lamberth dismissed the “indictment” in a straightforward, two-page order dated July 2 but released yesterday.

“The individuals who have made this presentment were not convened by this court to sit as a grand jury nor have they been selected at random from a fair cross section of this district,” the judge wrote. “Any self-styled indictment or presentment issued by such a group has no force under the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

I suppose now they'll just have to form their own Super Federal Courts (if they don't want to try to file this one in the Food Court at the local mall). That way the ball will be in their own court.

Or, they could form their own American Super Congress to impeach the president ("The preamble to their Articles of Impeachment reading "Incongruous 2009..."). Then Barack Obama will no longer be the Monarch of Cyberspace, and this disaffected gaggle of conspiracy psychoceramics ( a/k/a cracked pots) will be able to say he is no longer the boss of them.

Those of you who are familiar with the term "runaway grand jury" will wonder if we can't get these folks to ran away somewhere.

Rob's Rules, make that Recomendations, or Suggestions of Order

Most likely you thought that the state of entropy didn't have any rules--only chaos. You'd be wrong. Most people know (of) Robert's Rules of Order. They don't know the rules--but they know of the rules--they are familiar with the concept of having rules for meetings.

It was Thomas Edison who said "There ain’t no rules around here, we’re trying to accomplish something." In the spirit of Thomas Edison there is a more informal set of rules --Rob's Rules Suggestions of Order--for people who want to conduct meetings, but don't want to be stuffed shirt, that's so last century formal about it. So, here are Rob's Rules Suggestions for Order.

First, a quorum consists of the number of persons who have shown up for the meeting, since no one wants to schlepp to a meeting where there isn't a quorum, and everyone has to go home. The quorum continues to exist until a voting member dies or retires. Anyone who asks for a quorum call can be hooted at by the other members of the meeting. The most efficient meeting consists of one person and a dozen or more proxies.

The person who conducts the meeting, instead of being referred to by the formal title of "The Chair" (as if he were an expensive million dollar Chippendale) shall be known by the less pompous title "the stool." Attendees will be told to "address the stool" (akin to being told to "talk to the hand.") Under Rob's Rules, instead of calling the meeting to order as if the stool were the Creator in Genesis 1:1 replacing the Void with Heaven and Earth, the stool simply says "Put away your Blackberries so we can start."

The stool was previously chosen from those persons who failed to attend the last meeting.

Instead of formally raising one's hands and requesting to be recognized, one can simply yell out " YO! Stool!" or "YO! Stoolie!" in order to speak. It the stool fails to recognize the person he may speak anyway, as long as he speaks louder than whoever else is speaking at the time-- a format copied from all TV talk show panels.

The stool can appoint members to committees. In order to get off of a committee, an attendee may raise a point of order by shouting out "Who do I have to sleep with to get off of this committee?' In most instances, it will be a rhetorical question.

A Committee of the Whole (a term that always elicits suggestive and lewd comments) may decide at what age it is appropriate to tell a resolution that it's been adopted.

Many motions are called, but few answer.

Anyone who is out of order may be tasered for the edification and amusement of the majority upon a majority vote. In order to break a tie the stool can vote, or designate a member of the meeting to be ostracized and ejected.

A motion to order out for pizza takes precedence over any motion then on the floor.

The Further Adventures of Moby-Dick as Told to Me

A Swedish author whose new book was promoted as a sequel to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye cannot publish it in the United States because it builds on the main character of Salinger's classic without adequate parody or critique, a judge ruled this month. The author has now appealed (to a broader audience ?).

U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts ruled against the publishers in a lawsuit brought by the 90-year-old Salinger, who sought to restrain the publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.

Batts said Swedish author Fredrik Colting had “taken well more from ‘Catcher,' in both substance and style, than is necessary for the alleged transformative purpose of criticizing Salinger and his attitudes and behavior.” She said Colting's claim that he also wrote the book to examine critically Salinger's most famous character, Holden Caulfield, was “problematic and lacking in credibility.”

Sometimes the author's estate will authorize (is that a word with several meanings in this context?) a sequel. Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind was used as the basis for a prequel and a sequel story about Rhett Butler Tomorrow is Another Day. Bond flicks continue to roll out after the death of Ian Fleming. Wasn't one of them named Tomorrow is Another Day, too, or is that just the motto of the films' writers?

The Colting case has put a damper on my fictional plans. I have been writing a tome for twenty years that follows the Great White Whale, Moby Dick, and his further adventures sinking other whalers, and running the blockade for the South during the Civil War --when he encounters Abraham Lincoln, Rhett Butler and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Hey--it works for E.L. Doctrow--doesn't it?)

In the Gulf of Mexico, south of New Orleans, he runs into a forty three year old Huckleberry Finn, now an international arms dealer, who has taken to smuggling weapons to the highest bidder in the North or South. Huck is accompanied by his sidekick/bodyguard/muscle Jim, and spy/adventuress/paramour Becky Thatcher (also known as "The Pirate Miss Good Wench"), who he stole from her lover Rhett Butler in a cutlass duel and subsequent chase on horseback, in carriages, over the tops of railroad freight cars, in ironclad warships, and hot air balloons (You need a chase scene for the movie). There is considerable dramatic tension between Becky and Moby, whose bones she keeps threatening to use for her corset.

Finn attempts to change the course of the war by selling a cargo of the latest Gatling guns to the feared Simon Legree, whose Louisiana plantation is known among the locals as Tara Bull, and, because of the secretive nature of Legree, "Tara Incognita."

On board Finn's gun running submarine, the Nautilus, (cunning disguised as a drifting raft above the waterline) are two fugitives he picked up off of Siberia, The Brothers Karamazov, who are trying to escape the relentless pursuit of Inspector Javert, who suspects they murdered their father. Also in the crew is a mysterious Wall Street swindler and Ponzi schemer on the lam, the often silent Bartleby, the Scrivner.

The amoral crew that plies the high seas perpetuating complicated, exquisitely timed bunko capers becomes known as the ocean's ten (Do I smell prequel?).

Later Moby encounters a ship sailing to England with Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March on board. Also in the first class section is Daisy Miller, and Lewis Carroll with little Alice Liddell. He breaks up the boat and sends all the inhabitants to a mysterious island that seems to be able to shift around in time and space, until all the data about the island is no more reliable than a corrupted hard drive--one which is even more corrupted than a New Jersey politician.

In the denouement, a Japanese whaler corners Moby Dick and his sidekick, Free Willy, off Baja, California in a furious battle involving many celebrities riding to the rescue in a Greenpeace motorized swift boat.

When you reach the mountains, Bear right; You-- wrong

On the front page of today's New York Times below the fold is the story of the never ending struggle between two sworn enemies--on one hand technology thwarting thieves, and on the other, an industry promising the latest methods of frustrating them. Hackers and the Anti-virus software manufacturers? No--bears and the bear proof container industry.

The article reports:

"The BearVault 500 withstood the ravages of the test bears at the Folsom City Zoo in California. It has stymied mighty grizzlies weighing up to 1,000 pounds in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park.But in one corner of the Adirondacks, campers started to notice that the BearVault, a popular canister designed to keep food and other necessities safe, was being compromised. First through circumstantial evidence, then from witness reports, it became clear that in most cases, the conqueror was a relatively tiny, extremely shy middle-aged black bear named Yellow-Yellow."

First just one tab to open the container (similar to your childproof adultproof medicine containers) was employed--but Yellow-Yellow was able to use her teeth (or her bear hands?) to circumvent it. Then two tabs had to be depressed--but Yellow-Yellow devised a method to open that container, too. It is clear that Yellow -Yellow, in the immortal words of Hanna-Barbara is "smarter than the ave-er-ridge bear."
Yellow-Yellow got her moniker because she has two yellow ear tags the story says. So who is Yellow-Yellow? The computer company IBM has a slogan--"Think." Yellow-Yellow works with IBM (Intelligent Bear Manipulators) whose motto is "Will Think For Food." Her agent tells us she is booked to guest on David Letterman's new segment "No So Dumb Wild Animal Tricks." She is angling to replace the cavemen in a new GEICO commercial, which would have a tag line "So simple even a bear can do it."

In addition Yellow-Yellow will be marketing stuffed plush bears with two yellow ear tags which she has trademarked. Despite her cutsie first name consisting of the same word repeated twice, Yellow-Yellow is not a panda bear like Ling-Ling, Lun-Lun, Zhen Zhen, Gao Gao or Shi-Shi.
(Why pandas got their repetitive names (so nice you've got to say it twice?) is lost in history--but perhaps it's because the first one was in a small iron barred cage that made her appear as if she were imprisoned in Sing Sing.) For years Pandas were thought not to be bears at all but giant raccoons.

In the same section of the Times is an article about Homeland Security trying to interdict illegal aliens entering this country in the same general area of the Adirondacks. Perhaps they ought to employ the bears to "sniff them out."

If Yellow-Yellow is so smart, let's see her devise a health care bill that satisfies both Democrats and Republicans. New York State ought to use her in its "I ♥ New York" campaign to boost tourism in the Adirondacks. "Come see the smart bears of North Elba part of the intellectual capital of New York." Frankly, naming a town North Elba and then expecting tourists is questionable--don't most people associate "Elba" with exile? Then to suggest someone visit a burg that sounds like it is a suburb of a place so remote it is used to safely stash exiled dictators is expecting too much.

So how do we thwart the bears that want to steal our pic-a-nic baskets? It is clear the bears have, like some monkeys and even birds, (especially crows), become adept at using tools. Some of them have ordered Rockwell's 7 in 1 tool that is ubiquitous on weekend TV infomercials. (How have they done it? Easy--steal a credit card and then order on the internet-- because, on the internet, nobody knows you're a bear.)

Why is it so hard to come up with a bear proof container? Couldn't you just use a combination lock with a password--or have the bears acquired an Enigma Machine with which to decode ciphers?

Could you create a bear proof container that worked with the same electronic signal that opens your vehicle--or have bears learned how to imitate 300 or 400 MHz electronic signals ?

Do you habeas enough corpses ?

When Arlington, Virginia resident Billye Brooks-Sebastiani received a letter in the mail on May 28th for her husband, Thomas Sebastiani, informing him that he'd been selected for jury duty at the Cascade District Court, she thought he had a pretty good excuse for skipping out on it since Thomas Sebastiani died of kidney cancer on Oct. 2005.

Why is death an acceptable excuse ? I checked the Virginia Code (§ 8.01-341.1 seen here) and there is no exemption listed there for dead people. Here's an example of someone who was called to serve twice post mortem.

Haven't we all had juries that seemed like they were dead to us? Wouldn't this save Virginia some money, since the dead juror would have trouble cashing the bountiful jury duty check? Dead still vote in many places (including Virginia) ( Do you remember the quip "Here in the shadow of Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the Founding Fathers first voted--and are still voting..."). If dead people vote, they should have to fulfill their civic obligations and serve on juries like the rest of us. Certainly they have the time to devote to the case, having no other earthly obligations. For lunch they can get the bailiff to send out for tombstone pizza !

The weekends at Bernie's may be followed by weekdays on jury duty.

If counties do not allow dead people to serve on juries they may be subject to law suits under the Americans With Disabilities Act--since death is certainly the ultimate disability; although I have met at least one employer's Worker's Compensation doctor who would call it an insufficient reason not to come to work--and one insurer's doctor who would label it a pre-existing condition.

The dead do have some rights--one of which is the right to remain silent. "The law gives the dead certain legal rights but not others. For example, survival statutes allow certain tort claims to be brought after death, most non-personal contracts (except those personal in nature) survive death, and at least one court has suggested that the dead have a nascent constitutional right to reproductive liberty," it says here.


Virginia does not allow convicted felons to vote---so when the dead serve we can avoid having a jury that had literally been hung! A dead juror is not one who will give one of those pesky affidavits afterward impeaching the verdict because of something that happened in the jury room or a change of heart. ((Although the deceased organ donors could be described as having a "change of heart" I suppose).

The dead may think they have a right to rest in peace, but maybe not, if the government needs them to tell no tales while not wearing plaid.

John Adams and Foundling Fathers: Adams Wants More Fathers Found

An Ohio State Representative, John Adams, (apparently no relation to the Federalist John Adams--this one is a Republican) has re-introduced a bill that would prevent a woman from having an abortion until she gets written consent from the biological father. As proposed, the bill triggers criminal penalties against women for “providing a false biological father.” Adams says the “first-degree misdemeanor” would be punishable with up to “six months” in jail and a “$1,000 fine.” Labeled by Adams as a “father’s right bill,” the lawmaker would give men the final say on abortion in the state of Ohio. ( The portion of the bill that also required the written consent of Major League baseball has been deleted.)

In the case where the father isn’t known, House Bill 252 would compel the woman to provide a list of names of people who may be the father in an effort to determine paternity. (We wonder how much proof is needed for the "possibly could be" speculation. Can she follow the examples of D.A.s everywhere and list John Doe 1, John Doe 2, etc.? Do you think most angry women would put "John Adams" on the top of the alphabetical list--considering him to be, if not in some legal "proximate cause" sense then, at least in spirit, the" father" of the child--like George Washington was the father of his country--and Ohio is the Mother of Presidents?) (Has news of DNA testing not reached Ohio yet?)

The bill also would make it illegal for doctors to perform abortions without the father’s consent. Does any Ohio legislator want to offer a "friendly" amendment obligating the father who declines to sign his consent to assume the obligation of 100% of the financial support the child, or be guilty of a class A misdemeanor? It seems like a fiscally sound and conservative approach to keeping Ohio's expenses down.

Another suggested amendment would require every baby born against the wishes of the mother to bear the first name of John and the Middle name of Adams to commemorate the man who made it all necessary.

This bill is similar to the tactic of requiring a waiting period before an abortion, and counseling on adoption or requiring graphic descriptions of abortions to be provided to a woman seeking one. Are these good ideas?

If they are we should apply them to another major life altering decision to be made by women and men-- marriage. So the first branch in the Responsible Marriage Act (Also known as the" In Order to Form a More Perfect Union Law") is a six month waiting period. Why should anyone get married in haste?

The second branch of the law would be the requirement of counseling. Potential brides and grooms should be required to consider the alternatives--like simply living together, taking a vow of abstinence, or moving to a state where they could double their chances of getting happily married because you can marry a partner of either sex.

This branch would also require the written consent to the marriage of any person with whom the would be spouse had lived as a "significant other" for a period of a year or more. If the former male partner, or partners, (following the Adams logic that the male has the say if there is a conflict) declines to consent in writing, the marriage should not be permitted to take place. This will assure the potential spouses that there is not someone else lurking out there whose name will be thrown in his or her face whenever there is an argument--(" I should have married Joe Bagadonitz instead of you." "He signed off on you, remember?") If he does sign off, he can be asked to "give away" the bride at the wedding.

The third branch of the legislation would require that the two would be marrieds be shown transcripts, video tapes and records of bitter divorce trials.

Finally, the parties would be required, before entering into a marriage contract, to do what is traditionally done when a contract establishing a relationship of some duration is signed--that is, post a performance bond. Those promises to love, honor and obey, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health etc. should not be hollow words. They need to have some adverse consequences if they are not kept--like the loss of a bond posted to see that each half of the couple performs adequately in the role of spouse.

Those people who believe that marriage is a sacred institution and in need of defense could not object to this bill to make sure that people do not assume that obligation too lightly.

Gidget Goes Taco Belly Up...

Rest in peace Gidget, the Chihuahua who starred in a series of Taco Bell commercials and made famous the phrase "¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!" Gidget died of a stroke Tuesday at the ripe old age of 15. That's 73 in human years--but for you $69.95 !

Gidget's posse, including some big bruisers hired to chase away the four legged groupies and animal control officers have rented the Staples Center in anticipation of huge crowds from all over the world coming to honor yet another celebrity who passed away in this brutal month. When asked for a comment, Paris Hilton said "Now is the summer of our discontent made nuclear winter but this son of Yucatan," at least according to her publicist. Paris was a big fan of Gidget, although years ago the two had a falling out, literally, when Gidget fell out of Paris' handbag.

In recent years Gidget had been in and out of trouble with the law when it was discovered her personal veterinarians had been prescribing certain drugs that are considered too powerful for chihuahuas--like horse tranquilizers. The drug problem led to several unsuccessful rehab stints at the Liberty Ford Clinic-- a celebrity animal luxury in patient retreat named after Betty Ford's dog.

The Homeland Security folks had been after Gidget recently, and although she claimed to be as American (and, indeed, as Californian) as the movies' Gidget, there was an insinuation that her papers were not correct, despite what her friends at the Kennel Club reported. INS Deputy
Inspector Gorman Seedling, who unsuccessfully pursued Beldar Conehead, was after Gidget for years, claiming she was an alien.

The networks are planing a two hour retrospective of Gidget's work. She was not only the spokescanine for Taco Bell. She was also featured in a commercial for GEICO in 2002 along with the GEICO gecko. In 2003, the dog played the role of Bruiser's mom in Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde. In addition to the planned specials, the network will replay those highlights over and over again ad nauseum in news shows, entertainment shows like Hard Edition and Inside Copy, on Larry King Almost Live, and NPR will even replay a long, introspective Gidget interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air; until every couch potato in America will have nightmares in which he consumes chalupa after chalupa until he feels impossibly full--and then awakens to find his pillow missing.

President Obama sent his deepest condolences. He said that that Gidget was a pioneer, and without her he would never have been elected, because "she made it acceptable to have large ears on television and still be a beloved celebrity."

In recent years Gidget had been known to say that acting was a job that paid the Purina One Diet Teacup Puppy Chow bills, but what she really wanted to do was direct.

Gidget is survived by an agent, a publicist, a Kaballah instructor, a Pilates trainer, a personal assistant, an impersonal assistant, and a dog walker with long pole with a scoop on the end.

Answer to Quiz

The answer to yesterday's quiz is the Mets' Angel Pagan.

"Your call is impotent to us..." (Not a typo)

[Sec. Henry Paulson on the Gazillion Dollar Bill]


Would you pay 23 quadrillion dollars for a pack of cigarettes? I know the government keeps increasing the tax on alcohol, cigarettes and gasoline--but 23 quadrillion is a whole lot of money to pay for one pack, especially in New Hampshire where there is no sales tax, and the state motto is live free or die. Someone wanted John Maszynski to die.

Josh Muszynski checked his account online a few hours after the purchase of a pack of Camels and saw the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars). After he noticed that his debt exceeded the world GDP, and he thought someone has stolen his identity and purchased Europe with it, he decided that he ought to do something, because if he didn't pay it, that might affect his credit rating. That was really his first mistake, because he should have realized that if he owed a financial institution more than the world GDP, he was clearly too big to fail, and someone would have to start bailing him out.

Muszynski spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers — and the $15 overdraft fee. That bank that issued the credit card assured him, in a telephone call he made to them, that his call was important to them, which no doubt reassured him mightily. After the reported two hours on hold listening to the album "Most Unobjectionable Elevator Music of the 60's, 70's and 80's" an agent for the bank with a Far Eastern Subcontinental first name that, coincidentally, also had seventeen letters in it, told him the bank could not do anything about it, because he had to talk to the card issuer--Visa.

He called Visa and, in the fullness of time, after being assured that his call was important by a recorded voice of someone that he had not met, and after being told that perhaps things would go faster if he went online and sent an email rather than waiting to speak to someone who was purported to actually be alive, he was offered a menu. You know the kind: "If you are calling to check your balance, press 1 now, if you are calling to dare question whether we screwed up, press two, if you are calling about a stolen card, press charges, if you are calling about compromising the debt you owe us forget it, if you wish to speak to a live, minimum wage telephone operator in the first month of employment with a book of canned responses press "0" now, which always the smart thing to do before a menu starts. If you wish to hear this menu again, hang up and redial, stupid."

The agent assured him that the problem was most likely with the bank and not Visa. Visa then told him they would connect him with with their computer IT (Indentured Teen) Department. The IT tech told him it was a software problem, and he would have to check with the software company. When Muszynski checked with them, they told him it was a hardware problem, and to call the hardware store. ("Ha, ha," they chuckled, " just a little bit of computer humor--very little.") Muszynski did not think it was droll.

The computer hardware supplier said it must be a problem with the line on which the data was transmitted--and to check with the bank's internet service provider--suggesting that "service" was either used in an ironic sense, or as a verb rather than a noun (as in the sentence "The stallion serviced the mare.").

The internet service company told him that smoking was bad for his health and this was just another reason why he ought to give it up-it was obviously too expensive a habit for him to maintain.

Actually, Visa said the rogue charges affected "fewer than 13,000 prepaid transactions" and resulted from a "temporary programming error at Visa Debit Processing Services ... [which] caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted to a small number of Visa prepaid accounts."

Several habituated Lotto players bet these numbers later that day.

Another Visa cardholder reported that his teen age daughter also spent $23,148,855,308,184,500 during a stop at CVS on Monday which led to a suspended card and a $20 overdraft fee. That's a lifetime supply of lip gloss and Bubbelicious, but she promised to get a part time job on weekends to pay if off.

Deck the Station With ?

The International Space Station (ISS) is a research facility currently being assembled in Low Earth Orbit. On-orbit construction of the station began in 1998 and is scheduled to be complete by 2011, with operations continuing until at least 2015. This week the astronauts brought to the space station an outdoor porch. On Saturday they installed it.

This is a smart move for the cash strapped NASA, because an outdoor deck is the number one thing you can do to a home to increase its resale value. According to the annual Cost vs. Value survey jointly sponsored by Remodeling and Realtor magazines, a typical American homeowner who adds a deck could recoup 75 percent of the total cost if he or she sold the house within a year of the deck’s construction it says here.

Cost and value of decks varied from region to region.

In metropolitan Boston, where a similar deck costs about $7,600 to build, a homeowner can expect to recoup 139 percent of his investment at sale time. On Long Island, where it costs $7,800, the return is 112 percent. In Westchester County, N.Y., Albany, and Baltimore, the return is only about 50 percent. No figures are available for low earth orbit as yet. You know the real estate add will say "spectacular Earth views".

Adding a wooden deck costs $10,601 and adds $8,676 in value, 81.8% of the cost, it is estimated at another website. (We don't know the cost of adding a titanium deck, though. The total cost of the Japanese lab segment with the porch is one billion dollars it says here (and people complaint about the cost of building with union labor!). By comparison, minor kitchen remodeling costs $21,246 and adds $16,881 in value, 79.5% of the cost, it says here. However, the astronauts are once again having trouble with the commodes on the space station, and having enough working bathrooms is important when you go to resell that space station to some third world space agency, or some unsuspecting hick space traveler from a planet in the boondocks of the Milky Way.

The International Space Agency had planned to build the porch last year, but the recession made it very difficult to get a construction loan. Finally they got one, but we suspect that Home Depot or Lowe's may own the naming rights. ("An outer space deck? You can build it, we can help!") Part of the problem may have been that it's a long way to go to hang a "For Sale by Bank" sign if they have to foreclose.

The Italian Space Agency (Italian: Agenzia Spaziale Italiana; ASI) is also participating in the ISS, but they want to build a portico.

Certainly when the astronauts get up in the morning they'll want to step out onto the porch with a cup of hot coffee Tang in a mug, but first they'll have to hold out their hands to see if there's a meteor shower. And if the Pope ever comes to visit, he could bless the entire Earth from this outside balcony. But you really can't sit on the sixteen square feet in a rocking chair or on a porch swing, because without gravity if you rock backwards, you'll just keep going.

It's a great place to hang out with your new solar grill and barbecue a few steaks without smoke and ashes floating all over the inside of the space station.

Next year they plan to screen the porch to keep out those intergalactic insects.

o0o

In other news, an 81 year old man drove in a NASCAR event in California. His left turn blinker was on the whole way.

Quiz for extra credit: What major league baseball player has a name that, on paper at least, is an oxymoron? Answer tomorrow.

Pop Quiz: Compare and Contrast Pres. Obama and Judge Sotomayor

Do you remember the final exam questions that started "Compare and contrast," and asked you to compare and contrast the foreign policies of Chester A. Arthur with those of Millard Filmore?

This weekend's guest Op Ed columnist, Eddie Torriale, was struck with the comparison of Barack Obama's speech to the NAACP (listen here) and the performance of Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary Committee here (where at least some members think that "confirmation" means making sure a nominee will confirm all past precedents-- apparently unaware of the difference between "confirm" and conform.") Eddie Torriale is a member of the Torriale Bros. Intellectual Construction Company, along with his twin brother, Terry Torriale.

{For extra credit (these kinds of final exam questions always had extra credit) you can compare either Pres. Obama or Judge Sotomayor with Abraham Lincoln, because that's the person to whom the extra credit questions always asked you to compare someone. You must go beyond the obvious--they all grew up poor with poor future prospects and had to walk to and from school (or take the subway) five miles uphill in both directions, and that Lincoln and Obama were both typical products of rough and tumble Illinois party politics, That Judge Sotomayor was inspired by Raymond Burr's Perry Mason when she was young (when he won all of his cases--before he became too fat to stand up, and had to employ a wheelchair and become the chief of detectives) (Raymond Burr once voiced Lincoln in a 1956 radio program), and Mr. Obama's diction was inspired by actor James Mason, who played Captain Nemo in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" in which his character attacked a ship called the Abraham Lincoln. Ignore the obvious contrast with Lincoln that neither Obama or Sotomayor has a beard or appers on the penny.}

Op Editor Eddie Torriale writes:

This week the Chameleon in Chief President Obama spoke to the NAACP convention (you can see it here). He has been accused of trying to be all things to all people, and so far it worked well for him in the election where many people saw what they wanted to perceive in his campaign. But one group that was not so sure were those African Americans who questioned whether he was "black enough" to relate to them. So when he appeared before the NAACP this week, the president's mission was, in part, to get the people to whom he was speaking that he was "one of them." He spoke in the cadences and inflections of the traditional black church and earned their empathy.

Judge Sotomayor's mission this week was the same. She came before a group of mostly conservative white Senators to convince them she was not a hot tempered radical bent on rewriting the Constitution in her own image. Her mission was to assuage John Corwyn and assure Orin Hatch that she would honor the doctrine of stare decisis and the great Supreme Court precedents--like the Dred Scott v. Sanford, Buck v. Bell (mandatory sterilization for those with low IQs) and the Japanese Exclusion cases (concentration camps for those of different ethnic background we think might be up to something evil). In other words, she had to convince them she was really no more radical than John Roberts, who answered many of the same questions the same way. Did she agree her job was just to call balls and strikes and not to have balls and support strikes? Would she follow in the hallowed footsteps of Roger B. Taney, or would she be the next William O. ("Bill of Rights") Douglas?

Sen. Sessions was skeptical and quoted anonymous sources that said she was hot tempered, short tempered and quick tempered on the bench. Here is Jon Stewart's take on what anonymous sources had to say about Sen. Sessions. To be fair and balanced, however, here you can find some tapes of Judge Sotomayor questioning lawyers sharply on Second Circuit appeals so you can decide for yourself.

Kurt Vonnegut created the term "foma" for little white lies by which simple people all live. The first of a trifecta of Senate's foma displayed by the committee this week was that judges are just like umpires--calling balls and strikes, fair and foul, and (like appeals) winners and losers. That is, they make only binary determinations. In light of that foma, it is ironic that they were critical of Judge Sotomayor for issuing only a short per curium decision in Ricci v. DeStafano, when it took the Supreme Court 93 pages to exhaust what had to be written about the case. Judges are like umpires, the belief goes, who will have to determine if the infield fly rule applies to a factual situation in the game (or not), but they do not need to discuss it's origin, previous applications, and how it's history resembles the development of the common law (Something you can find discussed in this law review article).

The second foma that Senators espoused was that this was a non-political excursion into the beliefs of the nominee to see that she was qualified for the bench. Does anyone really believe that hokum, and do the senators even think that anyone is buying that line?

The third is that the judge must seek to apply to the 21st century's problems the original unified intentions reached and recorded (employing a sharpened feather on an animal skin) by a group of politicians of the late 1700's. A look at history (such as the debates on the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801) reveal that the founding fathers who wrote and adopted the Constitution could not agree on its intent or meaning--even on such fundamental subjects as whether or not the Supreme Court could review acts of Congress to see if they conformed to the provisions of the Constitution.

If a judge's mission is just to determine whether or not the ball crossed home plate, Senators ought to be replaced by opticians.
o0o
For extra extra credit, compare and contrast the fashion sense and clothes budgets of Mary Todd Lincoln, Michele Obama and Sonia Sotomayor; with particular attention to a discussion of their favorite designers.

The Ends: Weekends, Loose Ends, Tight Ends and Dead ends.

This blog writer's altered ego, Plane Brown, has released his first hip hop album/CD, "Plane Brown, Rapper." It has gone not Platinum, nor Gold but Lead. It's sold in the high two digits, (but has a half-life of 1.9×10¹⁹ years). He has favored us with his new song about the health care crisis--"Unhealthy Skeptic."

UNHEALTHY SKEPTIC

Sittin in an old chair
Freezin in the cold air
In my underwear
Got to wonder where
I get some health care.
No one with wealth'll share.
They say "We paid for yer day care"
Now move somewhere
With universal health care.

So I'm cooking on a hot plate
Sittin' with my soul mate
Thinkin' 'bout my prostate,
Puttin on a lotta weight
Knowin' I don't gotta date
With some guy with a doctorate
To tell me 'bout my body's fate.


Been to the job fair
Here's what I got ta share
My persona ain't grata there
Laid my sole bare
Bitchin' to an ole mare--
A witch outta a cold lair--

I'll tell you what she said there:
"Boy you gotta lead pair
You ain't gotta said prayer--
So get outta my red hair."
It was enuff to make the dead swear.

Hopin' that Obama
Will get health care for my momma
And make it universal
So if I go to a rehearsal
And suffer some reversal
And damage all my bursa I'll
Not wind up in a hearse I'll
Get some medication
From the health plan for the nation
And end my aggravation
From my discombobulation
Cause I'm runnin outta patience.


That's what I gotta share.
Don't get a lotta care
All I got is swear and tear.
Gotta give myself care
If I want some health care
Sittin in an old chair
Freezing in the cold air
Weezin with my bottom bare.

Butter Cow Won't Jump Over Moon Walker

UPDATE from the Website of the Iowa State Fair:

"With a margin of 65.24% “no” to 34.76% “yes,” fairgoers have voted down the inclusion of Michael Jackson in the moonwalk butter sculpture planned for the 2009 Iowa State Fair."

Banning Butter Sculptures--The Slippery Slope?

(Butter sculpture from New York State Fair--photo found here.)

The folks at PETA (People with Erratic Takes on Announcements) have opposed the Iowa State Fair's proposal to make a butter sculpture of Michael Jackson it says here in their press release. (PETA pipers publish a pack of pecksniffian press releases?) Instead, they want Dairy Michaelangelos to use a product called Earth Balance that is a non-dairy butter substitute. (By "non-dairy substitute" they do not mean a temporary teacher with lactose intolerance.) Will they picket with signs "FAIR UNFAIR TO BUTTER FAT" ?

When someone offers me a non-dairy creamer for my coffee, (something I describe as a "white powdery substance" --to use a phrase borrowed from testifying narcotic cops) I ask, "Do you know how they make that stuff?" They often say "No! No! Don't tell me," not wanting to know what is in the witch's brew of chemicals they are dumping in their hot brew. Then I finish the joke by saying "They get cows to graze on Astroturf!" Now that's something the PETA pipers would certainly condemn!

The Iowa State Fair actually asked people to vote on whether to make a butter sculpture of the King of Pop. The voting closed today and the results will be found here tomorrow--the 17th. (See Updated post above this one!)
(Maybe this is the answer to a mystery. When Sarah Palin heard that Iowans were voting, perhaps she thought the state had moved its "first in the nation" caucus of the 2012 presidential race to 2009 to get a jump on New Hampshire, and she planned to scurry on down!)

Is there a connection between Michael Jackson and butter? Do you remember the Pepsi commercial where his hair caught on fire because he used some substance in it to make his locks shiny and manageable? Maybe it was the hair butter on sale here.

And why not Jacko? After all, in 1997 the Iowa State Fair displayed a butter sculpture of his famous father in law--Elvis. Here it is:


Is this a waste of butter ? No, they recycle the stuff--and make new statutes out of the old butter . " A few years ago, sponsors became concerned about the cost of the hundreds of pounds of butter being used every year and [Norma "Duffy"] Lyon, the sculptress, figured out that it would work just fine if the butter was frozen and used again and again -- and again.
"We have to replace some of it from time to time," Lyon the sculptress said. "But it works just great freezing it and thawing it out."

What happens if the Iowa Fair vote comes out in a tie? If the famous Iowa butter cow seen below sees his shadow they'll be six more weeks of arguments about hanging chads, and some good old fashioned litigation.





PETA has also suggested that a similar stunt--the Texas hot dog eating contest-- needs to be replaced by a veggie burger eating competition. I believe they held one once, and the winner consumed one and one half in a twenty minutes. Banning butter sculptures would be the beginning of a slippery slope, I say.

Iowa is not the only state that features butter sculptures. Here is an amazing farm family carved from butter by Jim Victor, and found with many other wonderful dairy and foodstuff art at this website.


I have to wonder if Earth Balance, the PETA suggested medium, will work as smoothly as butter on the artist's palate palette. If it has the same relationship to butter as non dairy creamer has to the real thing, it will be like replacing fine white marble with papier-mâché.

Iowa is not the only state that recycles its butter sculptures. New York turns it's butter sculptures into bio fuel--as you can see in this YouTube video. Does this sound like a yummy breakfast to you--two slices of bread slathered with bio degraded butter and petroleum jelly ?

Non Suit Yourself

We've asked before (rhetorically--we think) and now we ask it as part of the Blogosphere Bar Examination : "If you can't sue yourself, who can you sue?" This is a multiple choice question on the Multiple Mental State (one of which is Imaginary) Bar Examination. (It's like the question that a lawyer I knew once asked me: "If you can't sexually harass your secretary, who can you harass?"--only completely different. Hint: The answer (as they used to say on that TV program about the flying nun) is "none of the above.")

When we asked this question ,the case involved a grandmother who had custody of her granddaughter who she had negligently run over with the family van. She sued in her capacity as guardian of the child. The mother had disappeared and there was no other living relative. She sued herself as the negligent driver--hoping to get her insurance company to help pay some medical bills. So who can bring that lawsuit on behalf of the injured child? A local judge threw the case out on the basis that you cannot sue yourself, even if you hire two different lawyers to do it. If you won, you might be able to collect attorneys fees from yourself, or even punitive damages ! But that's New York.

You can sue yourself in Floriduh, thought. At least if you're a bank you can. Wells Fargo apparently does it in order to consolidate mortgages and clear title so it can foreclose on and sell off those fabulous real estate investments it lent money on (more than once) that are now selling in the high three digits (sometimes including the two to the right of the decimal point).

Why does the bank sue itself? Sarasota Foreclosure Attorney, Dan McKillop says: “The banks don’t take the time to properly file complaints. The same way they didn’t take the time to look at any of the homeowners info. The same way they didn’t take the time to properly assign the notes and mortgages. So, we’re basically in that process now, but it’s the plaintiff’s attorneys who are trying to push through these foreclosures as fast as possible.”

Banks that are too big to fail are apparently too big to know what they're doing, so they need to sue themselves so that the left hand knows what the non functional cerebellum is doing. Maybe this is in fact a clever strategy, or maybe, as a professor quoted by FOX Business suggested, "[t]his is just folks cranking out paperwork without conscious thought." O.K. , if the US governmint is willing to cough up money for you if you made some decision that costs your bank a gazillion or so dollars, do you really need to be conscious? Does your attorney --or can he just crank out papers like a crank ? Just as bad cases making bad law, bad mortgages can make bad lawsuits, it appears.

And the banks have to hire two different law firms to handle the cases, because the plaintiff bank Wells Fargo N.A. has interests that conflict with the defendant bank Wells Fargo N.A. So the bank, or the taxpayers who are bailing them out, have to pay to fund both sides of the lawsuit. But if they win the case they can make it all back from , from, from---themselves ! If this plan unexpectedly fails, and somehow winding up costing money, there's always the government.

See, the stimulus money is already stimulating something--more law suits!

The World According to Jinn ?

A Saudi family has sued a genie, it says here.

"The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper... "We began hearing strange noises," the head of the family, who requested anonymity, told Al-Watan. "In the beginning, we didn't take it seriously, but after that, stranger things started happening and the children got really scared when the genie began throwing stones," " CNN reports.

The genie, or jinn, may have been intoxicated when he performed these bits of mischief. Is a drunken jinn referred to as a jinn Rummy?

Perhaps the strange noises occurred when the genie opened and closed their garage doors as this website notes they are wont to do.

I am not an expert on rules of practice is Sharia Court, but I wonder how you effect service on a genie. Do you throw the summons in a bottle? ( It is a well known maxim of equity that genies who live in glass bottles shouldn't throw stones.) Do you run around the neighborhood in which the offenses occurred frantically rubbing lamps? Can you get an order to serve by publication and if so where? Do they have their own magazines-- with names like The Jinn Mill?

When you need a process server to serve a genie--who ya gonna call--Jinn Busters? It should be relatively easy to find the genie if the cellphone that it stole has a GPS device (Genie Pinpointing Service) in it! If he serves the genie, what does he write in the area in the affidavit of service for the description--"with the light brown hair" like in the song? "Appears to be eight feet tall and one thousand years old with feet of smoke and a ring through his nose "? If you get a genie "summoned" do you get three wishes ? "Since humans usually cannot see them and humans do not appear clear to them, the human "world" and that of the jinn is considered separate, and only practitioners of "black magic" contact them deliberately." Wikipedia reports here.

Do you think the genie will put on a spirited defense? Perhaps the gene has insurance against this kind of suit--household or lampholder's Sharia compliant homeowners' insurance.
Are there exceptions to coverage in these policies for acts of Allah?

You may have to sue a jinn in his own jinn court, in which case he would have a home court advantage. Anyway, the court officers promised to look into this matter--when the spirits moved them.

Monday Musings....

Here are some Monday musings from our half Aphorism Editor, "Zen" Cohen. Here is a photograph (you can click on to enlarge) of a tree that fell in the woods next to my office over the weekend:

No one was around to hear it fall. As you can see from the photo, it clearly hit another tree on the way down. Did it make a sound? If so, was it the same sound that is made by one hand clapping?

A judge once told me I was engaging in a "fishing expedition" with my discovery demand. I denied it, and invited him to search my briefcase for worms. Speaking of worms, we often hear about wormholes in space. Why don't we ever hear about the worms that made the holes? When did worms develop the capability to travel intergalacticlly? Are the worms on our planet aliens from other worlds? And why worms? Are there other kinds of holes in space (No! Not that one that beings with an "A" that some people have difficulty distinguishing from their elbows!) Are the worms any good for intergalactic fishing expeditions?

California called and left a message. Can you lend it $100 bucks or so to tide it over until it gets back on its feet? If not, it may have to resort to something extreme--like selling that stash of "medical" marijuana that its been growing in anticipation of some possible infirmity for which it might need it in the future. California may even have to legalize it in order to have something left to tax that isn't already the subject of a levy.

Is there a scientific argument for legalization? This newspaper that monitors Christian Science noted that the last three presidents admitted to using marijuana, and it didn't mess them up (too bad--depending on whether or not you talk to the opposition party, of course).

Verizon is going to roll out a new, bigger cell phone plan for calling all your friends and family on a your cell phone list--it's going to be called Cell Mates.

And for tonight, that's the last laugh.

Signs of the Apocalypse-- Everything that is Mandatory is Forbidden

(Click on image to enlarge it slightly)

This blog's Chaos editor, N. Tropee, reports that there is another interesting decision of the future that showed up in his email due to a computer worm that morphed into a worm in the space-time-internet continuum.

It has been said that in some societies everything that is not forbidden is mandatory, and everything that is not mandatory is forbidden. This case, Matter of Miner v. Bizzietown Police Department, is unique, in that it deals with something that is, at once, both mandatory and forbidden.

This case involves a lawsuit by a seventeen year old petitioner, Randy Miner, against the police Department of the Town of Bizeetown, who prohibited him from working at his place of employment.

Randy Miner was employed for the summer as an usher at the Bizeetown Uniplex-- a motion picture theater in a small town that has but one screen. The manager of the theater, Ziggy Feld, told Master Miner that he would have to lay him off while an NC-17 rated feature was being shown. The movie, Last Tango in the Pampas, deals with the forbidden love affair between a married conservative Southern governor and an Argentinian beauty, and is based upon a best selling novel which, obviously, was fiction.

Feld reluctantly took this action, he affirmed, because Sgt. Comstock of the Bizeetown police always attended NC-17 rated features, and would insist on removing anyone under the age of eighteen or he would prosecute the manager of the movie house. The rating "NC-17" means than no one under eighteen (i.e., seventeen and under) will be admitted, although the Motion Picture Association of America also notes "NC-17 does not mean “obscene” or “pornographic” in the common or legal meaning of those words, and should not be construed as a negative judgment in any sense."

Penal Law Section 235.21 prohibits disseminating indecent material to minors. The law prohibits someone"
"Knowing the character and content of a motion picture, show or
other presentation which, in whole or in part, depicts nudity, sexual
conduct or sado-masochistic abuse, and which is harmful to minors,...
(a) Exhibits such motion picture, show or other presentation to a
minor for a monetary consideration."

Minor sued, claiming that the police action violates his employment rights because it constitutes discrimination based upon age and sex. His first argument is (will be ?)
that he is old enough to drive, to not be in school, and to marry with parental consent, and yet he is forbidden to see a movie based upon a book that he has taken out of the Bizeetown library and read. With parental consent he could marry, and then engage in the very acts depicted on the screen, but the law forbids him from viewing others simulating them. The law forbids him from actually seeing on screen nudity, for example, which he could see in the mirror, his attorney, Jenny Talia, Esq. argued. He is, because of his age, not permitted to engage in his chosen "profession" or ushering.

The argument about discrimination based upon sex at first seemed far fetched. However, Miner argues through counsel that statues forbid discrimination "based upon sex" (New York Executive Law Section 296, and Title VII, Civil Rights Act of 1964). Talia urged that the statute be read (or misread) literally--and that Miner is being discriminated against "on the basis" of sex, because it is the sex depicted in the movie that has caused him to be discriminated against in his employment.

He argues that discrimination based upon sex is a "suspect category" under case law (Frontiero v. Richardson, 411U. S. 677 (1973). It is widely known, he argues, that the Bizzetown Police always suspect that others are having more sex than they are, particularly the suspects.

This ingenious argument caused the court to consider that what is forbidden is also mandatory. While one statute would forbid Miner to see nude individuals or view even simulated sex, sex education is mandated in our school system after the recent passage of legislation called the Healthy Teens Act, requiring it in schools. In other words, the very sexual conduct that is explained and illustrated in schools because of state law, is forbidden to be viewed by the same students in movie theaters.

The Town Attorney of Bizeetown, Ernest Warder, argued that the two are not necessarily in conflict. Sex education in school is supposed to be educational and certainly not entertaining, he pointed out. The purpose of an NC-17 rating is to prevent anyone who doesn't already possess some intimate knowledge (in several senses of that phrase) of the subject matter from being educated by watching it.

Miner's attorney countered that he already had a working knowledge of sex (he got an "A" in sex education and even completed an extra credit assignment about which the court declined to take evidence); and therefore should not have to stop working "on account of sex" being a subject of the movie. The court asked, rhetorically (?), what would happen if the sex education teacher took the students on a field trip to see and discuss the movie in question.

The petitioner subpoenaed the movie to court in order to show that it would not be contributing to his delinquency to watch it, but that gave the court an additional problem. Town Attorney Earnest Warder moved to exclude the petitioner from the viewing, but his attorney Jenny Talia said he had a constitutional right to be present during the presentation of evidence on his own behalf and as part of his case.

A ruling is expected soon according to the email.

As My Rabbi Says "Thank God it's Friday!"

Sarah Palin has decided to resign as governor of Alaska (an office to which she only had a quit claim deed anyhow) because, she realized, if she can see Russia from her house, then the Russians can see her! Many people are betting they'll be able to see her on the satellite dish much more frequently now as she will likely become a talking head on one of the networks. Fox is thinking of making her its critic to review the performance of late night TV hosts. She'd better be careful what she says or she'll wind up apologizing to a lot of her targets, don'tcha think?

The Outdoor Network wants her for a hunting and fishing show-- shooting moose, gutting fish, filed stripping liberals, executing criminals and generally killing anything that moves that isn't a fetus. She'll teach you how to bail out a canoe--or a kyack--but not a state. The show is tentatively titled "Survivor--2008 National Elections."

She has left the Lt. Governor in charge in Alaska, so he has vacated the Lt. Governor job in Alaska. As a New Yorker I have to ask, "What could go wrong with that?"

In New York, our long state holiday of life without a Senate has finally ended. The two parties have kissed and made up, and are busy patting and stabbing one another on the back. Republican-For- a Month Pedro Espada, who has become a Democrat for the second time this fiscal quarter (we think--can't quite keep count) has gone from being the Republican President of the Senate to being the Democratic Majority Leader. I blame this freakish occurrence on El Niño-- who I think is his campaign manager.

"Senate majority leaders get an additional $41,000 on top of their 'base' $79,500-a-year salary, as well as the right to hire dozens of patronage employees" the Gothamist reports. So Pedro gets to wear that new Majority Leader hat, and, like Cousin Minnie Pearl on the Grand Ole Oprey, it probably still has a price tag hanging from it that we won't get to read--but will get to pay. Rumor has it that part of the deal is that the Dems will not permit anyone to run in their primary against Espada--something he was not so insistent on during the two fortnights or so that he was a Republican.

But, as winning litigants in a lawsuit always say when they are counting the cash, "It was never about the money." {As an attorney, I have found that to be true about my clients--it's never about the money--until it comes time to talk about the money, that is.}

The Republicans, apparent losers (but who knows what deals have been cut) insist that it was about reform of the Senate rules. And they say "it's about time the rules were changed to allow the minority more say", since during the forty years the Republicans were in charge of the Senate that was an often heard complaint from the Democrats. Unfortunately, the Republicans never quite got around to turning their attention to that matter until they became the minority party.

In European sports, in Pamplona a young man running before the bulls was gored to death. Why do people do that? Don't they realize that sometimes you toss the bull, sometimes the bull tosses you? And in France, Lance Armstrong has been diagnosed as being in the early stages of the Tour de France.

And for tonight, that's the last laugh.

People are Always Dyin' to Get on TV

In February 1958 when Hollywood mogul Harry Cohn died, a classic comment (usually attributed to Red Skelton) was uttered when the wit saw the large number of people showing up for Cohn`s funeral: Give the people what they want, and they`ll turn out for it!

The Michael Jackson memorial service was such a big hit in the TV ratings that one network is thinking of making it into a series next year. Many people were wondering how an aging pop star of the rock era would be able to make money now that there's a new generation out there "who knew him not" as they say in Exodus 1:8. The nostalgia tours were wearing thin-- The Rolling Stones Jumpin' Geriatric Tour was not raking in the cash as their fans aged along with the stars. Many former celebrities, too old for "I'm A Celebrity--Get me Out of Here" found themselves between a Rock Cafe and a Hard Place.

The answer may be to sell exclusive rights to cover their memorial services and funerals. One network is planning a show tentatively called "America Had Talent." Death appears to be a good career move for some older stars of yesteryear. Instead of cops and cowboys saying to their sidekicks "Cover me" as they rush the bad guys, aging rock stars will be requesting the newer peripatetic bands of the current era to "Cover me."

Week after week gold caskets covered with Swarovski crystals and more flowers than gangster and/or Princess Di sendoffs will grace America's screens. We need something to boost the economy--and this might be it! Can't you just see the headline in Variety: "Fossils Fuel the Economy! " ?

Throwing the Overdue Book at 'Em ?

From the desk of The Smallest Claims Court Judge, Dee Minnie Moss, sitting in the Village Justice Court of the Village of Picayune, came an unusual masterpiece recently.

It involved a lawsuit by the Picayune Library against a patron, Casey Deetch, concerning an overdue DVD of last year's World Series Highlights-- such as they were. (You can see the Tampa Bay Rays' single victory at their website --Rays' Ipsa Loquitur). The lawsuit was to collect the fine for an overdue item-- a $1.00 a day fine for seven days from Deetch. Nowadays libraries lend out DVDs and other visual media in an attempt to stay relevant, even though it tends to discourage actual reading. They become libraries of incongruous matter. Friends of the Library, a band of citizen-patrons organized to support the library in its time of need (which is always, when it comes to libraries), occasionally volunteered to assist with administrative tasks at the library. The organization took no formal vote to do so, but, from time to time, members sent out postcards with overdue notices like the one in question that asked the purported miscreant Casey Deetch to pay up.

The defendant has a few startling assertions to make when he appeared at the bar of justice. He said it was illegal for the library to charge him anything for this overdue DVD. His argument was that a warning at the beginning of the DVD (not the FBI Warning that if you copy this DVD your name will go on the terrorist watch list--even if this is not the kind of entertainment that is on the lists of what terrorists watch) was placed there by major league baseball. It said that charging a fee for watching this video without the expressed written consent of major league baseball was prohibited. He challenged the library to come up with a letter of expressed consent authorizing it to charge him a fee.

The library countered that it was not charging him for watching the DVD--and it did not care if he watched it or not. Indeed, it preferred him to read a book. It was charging him for not returning the DVD on time.

This was a specious argument, the court ruled. If you go to a movie but you fall asleep, the court noted, you cannot get a refund on the basis that you didn't actually watch the movie, since viewing the production was your avowed intent in coming to the theater. If you take a DVD out of the library, your avowed intent is to watch it--whether or not you get around to it. If this argument were taken to its reductio ad absurdum conclusion, the library would never be able to charge overdue fines on any of the Great Books series, which patrons always take out with the best of intentions, and inevitably return unread.

Justice Moss queried, if you did not charge people to come to your bar to watch the World Series on your 56 inch flat screen HDTV with surround sound, but you charged them a fee to leave the bar, could you circumscribe the major league baseball prohibition on fee charging?

And while the case was nominally about the paltry sum seven dollars, much more could be at stake for Deetch. In Wisconsin you can be jailed for not paying your library fine, as Heidi Dalibor, seen in this mug shot was not long ago. Your credit rating can be affected if the unpaid fine is reported to an agencythat monitors deadbeats. While New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker famously said that he had never yet heard of a girl being ruined by a book, some womens' credit scores have been ruined by overdue ones.

But Casey Deetch was not finished. He had a cross claim to assert against the organization that sent the postcard--the Friends of the Library. (It is not a religious organization--those Quaker "Friends" do hold services where it is as quiet as a library, and may go to the library religiously--but they are not connected with this organization.) Libraries are institutions that could use friends nowadays--what with the cuts in municipal services engendered by the recession.

Yet, there are organizations that have libraries in their gun sights--trying to snipe at them for certain controversial and suprisingly non-controversial books on the shelves that members of those groups find offensive to their morals or tastes. An entire week dedicated to banned books is a result of those people who would censor our reading. These organizations should be known as "Enemies of the Library," but aren't--yet.

Casey Deetch charged the Friends of the Library with being a debt collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), 15 USC Section 1692. The act prohibits, inter alia, anyone who assists a creditor from contacting a debtor using a postcard. Reluctantly, Justice Moss found the Friends of the Library guilty, and fined them seven dollars. She indicated she would stay her fine until the Friends appealed. She also noted that as an unincorporated not for profit association that had not registered under the New York Not For Profit Corporations Law, they were free to disband. Casey Deetch had only sued the organization and not its officers or members. Since unincorporated groups act only through a majority vote of their general membership, (which in this case, did not take place), there would be no entity left to pay the fine or be liable.

I would have liked to present the Justice's opinion verbatim, but she noted on the bottom of it that it could not be quoted without the expressed written consent of the the official New York State Law Reporting Bureau.

Found: Lacking in Common Census

Al Franken has been elected after a longer election night than they have in Alaska. On Ground Hog Day in Minnesota, when the eponymous rodent sees Norm Coleman's shadow, it means six more months of litigation. Minnesota's congressional delegation will range from Franken on the left to Michele Bachmann on the right, that, is from the former intentionally comic, to the current unintentionally humorous legislator.

Recently Bachmann has been carrying on about the census. She says it has been used in the past to round up the Japanese to place them in internment camps. (Did Lou Dobbs respond: "Not that that's a bad thing!"?) So she will not be filling out much of her census questionnaire. "I know for my family the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home," she said. "We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that," the maverick Congresslady said. Since she works for the government, you think they'd know where to find her when the round up begins. Maybe where Uncle Sam sends her paycheck would be a god place to start looking.

If she tells her employer, Congress, that she lives in a post office box (but wait--isn't the post office part of the government conspiracy to acquire knowledge about you--like the size of your zip code?), the sneaky Dems can just put a piece of legislation on the floor to replace the FBI with ACORN and then conduct a quorum call; the equivalent of yelling "Marco," and waiting for her "Polo" in response.

What she said was : "Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps." She is against that, because she does not want the government to force her office to employ a Japanese intern.

She has also voiced concerns that AmeriCorps, created by FDR, will result in mandatory reeducation camps for American youth. On Hardball, she said members of congress should be investigated for being “unamerican”. She has courageously taken a position insisting that the dollar remain the currency of the United States--something that currently is the law of the land (31 USC Section 5103). No one has suggesting replacing it with the yuan yet.

She remarked to the media: "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." The 1976 swine flu scare happened on Gerald Ford's watch.

She is also against the census because she says that ACORN will be doing it. Even if that were true, which it isn't, wouldn't she be better off raising her concerns in some legislation to block it, since that's what congresspersons do, rather than by committing civil disobedience, and risking a one hundred dollar a question fine (13 USC Sec. 221) ? Or does she suspect that not enough of her colleagues share her rampant paranoia about this issue, because they think her elevator doesn't go all the way to her penthouse?

She told Sean Hannity about the census: "They don't ask, "Are you an American citizen?" They don't ask if you're here on a visa or when it expires. We have no real idea how many illegal aliens are in our country. But wouldn't you think, here they are asking every personal question about our lives, they could at least ask if we're an American citizen? They don't bother to ask for that.

Here is where they ask the question on page 18 of the long form census questionnaire. The census has asked that question since 1850.

As we have noted before in this profile, this year the census will nominally be headed by a celebrity--Sesame Street's Count Von Count, the first openly Vampire-American (Blood type V Positive) to have a prominent place in national politics. Vampires are a group traditionally under represented in government (at least on the day shift). (We could only find one. According to this web encyclopedia, he is Karl Rove).

What would be the ultimate irony of a Minnesota census boycott urged by Bachmann ? " The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a fascinating editorial [last week], which pointed out that by urging her constituents not to take part in the 2010 Census, Bachmann may end up costing herself her own House seat, because if Minnesota does lose a House seat, Bachmann seat is a prime candidate for absorption."

And for tonight, that's the last laugh.

HAVE A GOOD 4th OF JULY

Happy 4th of July. Click of Images to enlarge:

BREAKING NEWS STORY: MICHAEL JACKSON STILL DEAD !

Here are two proposed modest memorials to Michael Jackson:

That Geese May Safely Graze.....

Click to enlarge

The Senate that's Not Worth its Salt

Many of the laws of New York set to expire July 1 have had the sun set on them because the New York State Senate refuses to meet and act on them. New York City's school system has expired like a carton of milk with last month's date on it, and they're plenty of sour milk to go around.The State Comptroller estimates that the failure of the State Senate to meet has cost taxpayers three billion dollars.

The New York Senate makes the "do nothing Congress" look like FDR's first hundred days.

Woody Allen is quoted (perhaps incorrectly) as having set that 90% percent of life is showing up. (The other ten percent he doesn't address--it's probably New York State Income Tax.)

The New York State Senate is a house divided against itself, and cannot....be paid? The Senate is not worth their salt. As you know, the word "salary" comes from the time Roman soldiers were paid in salt. Should New York Senators get paid? Can they?

The first problem is who verifies the payroll. The presiding officer in the Senate is supposed to sign the payroll, verifying to the Comptroller that these people on it should be paid. But neither party can agree who the presiding officer is.

"Our belief is that the controller can't really verify that it's an authorized [payroll] form because there is no known authorized presiding officer," the governor said. "It's in dispute right now.

"It is a technicality that - finally, around here - works in the public's favor," the Daily News notes.

The State Comptroller has refused to process vouchers for the Senators, so he will stop their pay. He can't do that, can he ?

Maybe he must. In People v. Ohrenstein 77 NY2d 38 a state senator was charged with creating no show jobs for campaign workers. He defended on the grounds of legislative immunity, but the Court of Appeals wrote :

" But no matter how far the immunity may extend under the State Constitution, it cannot be said that it was intended to provide a sanctuary for legislators who would defraud the state by knowingly placing on its payroll employees who were never intended to do anything but receive state moneys."

Is it larceny under false pretenses when someone claims to be a legislator, but refuses to legislate? Is it criminal impersonation of a State Senator to hold yourself out to be a senator, yet refuse to vote on anything ? Stay tuned.

July--like a Rug ?

Today is July 1--the beginning of the Fiscal New Year! So happy Fiscal New Year to those of you who have a fisc left to celebrate with. It is also the birthday of my youngest son and two eldest grandchildren--so happy birthday all. . . .

It is the twentieth anniversary of WFAN as well. Do you think that all talk sports radio is a blessing or a curse ? "Sports Radio: Threat or Menace" is an article I'm considering. In art, first there was the Age of Modernism and then Postmodernism--whatever that is (probably nothing to do with the New York Post. The New York Post is an institution that disproves the theory of evolution, it's editors/publishers having begun with Alexander Hamilton, but whose current publisher is Ruppert Murdock.) By analogy, we have just lived through the Information Age. With the web, talk radio, a plethora of talking head cable news stations, instant messaging, twitter and You Tube, Face book, My Space, and text messaging, can we call this the Age of Too Much Information? If you don't think so, wait until you get bombarded with the sex lives of Michael Jackson and Mark Sanford at the same time. Do you expect to see a tabloid headline "Mark Sanford is Father of Michael Jackson's Kids?"

If you don't think this is the Age of Too Much Information wait until you get your next discovery motion with an "information hold" request all all emails, IMs, and correspondence. Is an "information hold" that space at the bottom of your ship ?

Today on WFAN someone referred to the Mets as "scrappy." "Scrappy" is a contraction of "It's" and "Crappy." "Scrap" is what is left over after you've made something valuable.