Ken Nelson

A Mom takes her cute daughter in and sells her images as stock photos.

The Mom is then OUTRAGED when her daughter’s image is used in support of a political cause she doesn’t support.

Well… Mom… maybe you should have read the contract??

She wants an “apology”. Never mind the ad agency that used the images she sold in GOOD FAITH. Never mind the organization that bought the ad that used the image she sold in GOOD FAITH.  It seems, based on the information in the linked article that apologies and money should flow from the Mom to the agency and cause.

So, today, as two examples, we have a sushi customer INVENTING a contract, and  a Mom breaking one.

I’m just not sure where this country is heading. No place good.

BTW: The cause is question is an EXCELLENT ONE.

And keep it coming!

This kind of lawsuit is why people hate the law profession. An all you eat sushi customer, didn’t want to eat the rice too, and has sued:

Two weeks later, Martin filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It seeks at least $4,000 in damages for the "humiliation, embarrassment and mental anguish" Martin says he suffered after being discriminated against "on the basis of his disability."

Basically, he wants another person to subsidize his condition. And he wants to demand that subsidy just for walking into a store.

My son and I eat at All You Can Eat Sushi places regularly. We get our monies worth, and the establishments make it clear that you MUST eat your rice.

That he even thinks such a suit is reasonable is a tribute to all the bad law and big government succoring done over the last few decades.  For instance, the unconstitutional Americans with Disabilities Act that forces businesses to spend thousands to accommodate certain disabilities that have political clout.

Sometimes I wonder what it means to be “American” anymore. To a lot of people it sure means something I’m not proud of.

It used to be the Home of the Free & the Brave. Now… it is the Home of the Gimme That.

 
Obligatory symbolism: kayak = small business. Shark = lawyer or IRS.

An employee, who knows who he is, left to go to law school.  I cautioned “you’ve got to be crazy”.  Even worse, he wants to be a software patent/IP lawyer, an area I think stifles innovation and is just generally wrongly and unevenly applied.  But I like him, so I even sent his school a recommendation letter.  So it pains me to write this… it’s a terrible time to get a job as a lawyer.

And that is a GOOD THING. We have too many lawyers, acting too much like sharks that eat and don’t know why. 

Layoffs of lawyers is GOOD.  Law students claiming their education was a fraud is a GOOD thing.  Lawyers rationalize stupid inane acts that everybody knows is wrong, except them, for a living.  So LESS lawyers is good for the nation. Alas, not for them,  but… their profession has earned our enmity, if just by how many of them are in Congress screwing us up.

What can they do now?  We need more Computer Scientists.  They would be surprised how much the If clauses in contracts are similar to If statements in software.

I don’t think the firing squad is cruel or unusual. Cheap and effective better describe it. We will find out June 18th when Ronnie Gardner is executed by firing squad here in Utah.   The state still permits firing squad if the inmate requests it.

The guns are handed out randomly to the officers. One will be loaded with a blank, so no one will know who fired the fatal shot. By law, the identities of those selected for the firing squad remain secret.

That’s silly. Everybody knows when a bullet versus a blank fires. It’s obvious. Look, if they need people to do it, just ask, lots of folks would volunteer. Give victim families first dibbs, although if that were me, I’d be tempted to wing him, so we have to start again.

The 2nd crime, committed by the state in this case, is that this murder happened in 1985, and he is only about to be executed now – 25 years later. That is stupid and cruel to the victims.

I favor stricter standards for evidence in death penalty cases, and much quicker (like days) carrying out of the sentence.

As to method… as long as it is quick and cheap, I don’t care.

While in Arizona this weekend, I passed numerous “photo enforcement” zones.  Towing an ATV trailer in high winds, I was nowhere near breaking the speed limit but I despised them anyway.

Thank goodness they weren’t making Arizona money, and they are now being canceled.  Don’t fool yourself that this was about safety – it wasn’t then, and cancellation isn’t now, ever about safety.

Janet Napolitano, currently failing head of Homeland Security, and then failed governor of Arizona, instituted the program.  Mistreating citizens while pampering illegals and terrorists seems her modus operandi.

Driving by these things irritated me. Government taking pictures of me as I drive. Sending tickets to the owner, but not driver of the vehicle. Big brother stuff. Good riddance.

Let’s turn Arizona and Utah pink.

Elitists hate it. Old time big business Republicans hate it.  That means, of course, it is a great idea that is long overdue.

Republicans remain idiots if they think they can outbid Democrats for Mexican immigrant votes. They should fight on territory they can win on – like family values, economic opportunity, and lower taxes.  Buying off Mexicans just makes folks like me wash my hands of the Republicans – like what happened during the last Presidential election.

Those who claim that “federal” law trumps state law miss the point. There are many things that are illegal at both the state and federal level.  They don’t mind, for instance, for marijuana, where defendants face state/federal double jeopardy every day.  

Is this law perfect?  No, I’d take it exactly as is PLUS add in employer punishment provisions.  I’d work on the demand side. But I understand that it might not help as much since many of these illegals are just passing through Arizona.

I hope Utah passes a similar law.  Utah’s laws are skewed heavily by Mormon’s being gullible and nice. That is, I suppose, a worthy price to pay for living around gullible and nice people. 

But, as a one famous advisor said, “no crisis should got to waste”. And may be our current economic crisis will shake away Utahan’s normal gullibility and prompt action to stiffen immigration enforcement AND get rid of Jim Matheson.

Future judge?

This set of questions, asked by our Supreme Court, makes me think most of them are morons.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said that a certain amount of personal texting was to be expected. “You want to let them have a few,” Breyer said. “You need pizza when you are on duty.”

or this gem:

“He’s talking to the girlfriend,” Justice Kennedy said, and the caller “gets a voice message that says: ‘Your call is very important to us. We will get back to you.’ ”

They went straight into debating internal police department policies that they have no experience, or standing, to get into.

This is simple. Ontario PD provides a phone, or a pager, and says “you have no expectation of privacy with this device”. End of story.  The officer could say “I need privacy, I quit”. Or he could say “okay, I’ll bring my own phone”.  Ontario’s policy isn’t onerous. It doesn’t say no personal communication – just keep it minimal, and we are watching.

I notice no questions from Justice Scalia – he must have been bemusedly quiet as the other morons on the court had their policy discussion.

Constitutional threat to retire

Justice Paul Stevens, an idiot picked by an idiot, will retire.

Why now? After all, he was ancient and worthless two decades ago. The obvious reason is that he doesn’t think the Democrats will have the Congress after 2010.

An ideologue to the end, he will retire when Obama can put through a worthy Marxist to continue hosing the Constitution and us for decades to come.

Thank YOU Gerald Ford for being a moron.

 
Aerial shot of Kansas City schools

Between 1985 and 2003 Federal Judges took over Kansas City, Missouri and channeled 2 billion dollars to the school district. 

Not only did they double property taxes to pay this huge bill, but they imposed an income tax surcharge on everyone who lived or worked in the city.

…

Despite this massive effort, litigation failed either to improve the quality of education or to reduce racial isolation. Test scores continued to drop, and the percentage of minority students continued to rise. Eventually, black parents—who had long opposed the court’s heavy emphasis on "magnet schools" designed to draw whites into the school system—insisted upon a return to neighborhood schools.

Yesterday, the district voted a plan to shut down half their schools and fire 700 of their 3000 employees.

Why, exactly, do we think the Feds can run our health care any better?

 
Or Privacy SHOULD not be a crime

With Utah just trying, and failing, to do its own Patriot Act for all crimes, I thought it appropriate to look at the Patriot Act, which is up for renewal now.

I’m inclined to not like laws claiming to be patriotic. Nor laws that have names that are really acronyms: Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act

Note that name specifically includes terrorism ONLY.  I do think we need to fight terrorism hard. My main problem with the Patriot Act is that it doesn’t JUST fight terrorism. It also permits intrusive law enforcement techniques for drugs, money laundering, computer crime, border, and crime in general.

And in action most of the uses of the law have NOT been for terrorism. Not just most, nearly all.  For instance, of the 763 sneak and peak warrants used in 2008 only 3 were used for anti-terrorism. 65 percent were used for drug enforcement. And that leaves about 34% for “other” crimes.

I do not support fishing expeditions, like the BLANKET requests  for records on all customers of a number of Las Vegas businesses.

I do not support imprisoning over 200 people under this act for petty crimes committed on airliners. They weren’t terrorists.

This is so like government to use fear of one thing to spur invasive activity in another.

So, in a nutshell, I favor renewing a modified Patriot Act, limited to JUST terrorism.

Frankly, I think the law hasn’t helped anti-terrorism much and I’d be happy to see it die if that was what was needed to kill the non-terrorism stuff in it.

But if we can start over and craft a simple bill FOCUSED on terrorism and not containing every wish list the Federal law enforcement bureaucracy wants to use against citizens, then I’d support it.

Lacking that, I’d just as soon say sayonara to the PATRIOT Act and hello to the POTO (Prevention of Terrorism Only) Act.

 
Old boss, new boss, same boss

Italy just jailed – JAILED – 3 Google executives for not deleting promptly enough a video of a crime committed by others and posted to Google Video by others.

The three were sentenced to six months in jail after being convicted of invasion of privacy, the judge said. A fourth executive was found not guilty.

Apparently the Italy hasn’t moved from from its Fascist days.

This, btw, is what you can expect in “liberal” or “progressive” countries. The US heads there too.

Millions of laws trying to “perfect” society can be as oppressive as one bully trying to do the same.

I can’t help but wonder how fair, honest, and repeatable, our judicial system is when I read articles like this one.

In federal racial harassment cases, one study (PDF) found that plaintiffs lost just 54 percent of the time when the judge handling the case was an African-American. Yet plaintiffs lost 81 percent of the time when the judge was Hispanic, 79 percent when the judge was white, and 67 percent of the time when the judge was Asian American.

And when a judge quoted in the article says this:

Judge Carol E. Jackson of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri said she was heartened that diversity has crept into the federal court system, where today 20 percent of judges are women and 15 percent are members of minority groups.

"It’s important that different voices are being heard," she said.

I view the law as a bunch of if statements. Judges should come to the same decision assuming the same evidence.

That they don’t makes me wonder if we have rule of law or rule of whim.  I don’t want a my freedom or my pocketbook affected because I drew a black, white or Latina judge. It just shouldn’t matter.

The last guy was a crack user, I must be better – right?

In the “What the hell are they thinking” category comes news that Washington D.C. is suing AT&T claiming any unused minutes on AT&T calling cards are unclaimed property and belong to the D.C. government:

Next up, D.C. sues Burger King for stray fries that go uneaten after falling to the bottom of the drive-thru bag.

Liberal, corrupt, politicians see everything you own or earn this way. They constantly look for ways to take it from you.

From the new 1900 page House Health Bill:

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

Remember… crap like this is done in the name of our “COMMON GOOD”.

Via BigGovernment.com

Good while it lasted

222 years ago, today, an amazing set of men signed the United States Constitution. 

The Constitution defined the parts and duties of our Federal government and had a set of 10 amendments explicitly restricting the power of the government.   It was, and remains, an amazing document well worth celebrating.

I, however, propose a new day… of memorial. I propose we identify 3 Feb 1913 as the  day the Constitution was struck down with a terminal disease. Why? That was the day the 16th amendment was ratified.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration

Unlike other amendments that codified individual rights, or which clarified government operating procedures, the 16th amendment granted expansive new Federal powers to to tax and even included a specific exclusion from the requirement to have equal protection under the law.  Its 30 words represent an unfortunate break with the spirit and intent of the Constitution – a break it may not survive.

Funded by the 16th amendment, government grew and grew, and with it a permanent political class that would use unlimited taxing power to punish what they don’t like and reward what the do.

Can the Constitution (and our Republic) be saved?  Perhaps. We would have to eliminate or severely alter the 16th amendment. I don’t see how that is possible now because so many people depend on it to extract money from others.

Alas, I suspect our nation just marks time now.  We wait for the impact at the bottom and wonder how hard it will be.