Today, you could go to someone under the age of 30 and tell them that yogurt is made from bovine salivary glands and beet sugar, or that Louis XVIII was once the Chairman of the Democratic party, and they'd have no idea whether you were right or wrong.
Doug Mataconis did a nice writeup with both sides of the issue fairly represented. It leaves me thinking that yes, something more needs to be done -- but not SOPA, not PIPA.
The Batman works outside the rules of society, but with the intent to preserve and protect it.
In Batman Begins, Gotham is a place where the state has lost its claim to legitimacy and therefore its use of violence is really no better than that of the criminals the Batman neutralizes, and it has lost the strength to fight them anyway. The Batman fills the void of strength, and in the absence of true legitimacy, good intentions will do.
In The Dark Knight, the state has begun to reclaim its legitimacy, but is weak. The Joker demonstrates its impotency, and once again the Batma must intervene because he is the only source of strength. But his claim to legitimacy must be sacrificed in the end if the state's claim to legitimacy is to survive.
The logical progression here is that in the third movie, we will see a state which has gained its strength by sacrificing its claim to legitimacy; the series would resolve, one would hope, with Gotham both a strong and legitimate state, one capable of dispensing justice on its own without the intervention of a vigilante.
The Declaration of Independence isn’t the law. It was a rehash of Rousseau, a very wicked man who for all his fine talk about Equality was little more than a two-bit rabble rouser for the Jacobin contingent, banging his spoon against the bottom of his empty saucepan.
No, it isn't law, but it is a supremely important political act. And Rousseau was indeed in his personal and political life a class-A sonofabitch. Nevertheless despite his personal failings he did articulate the best theory of political legitimacy yet devised. In that sense there are more than a few similarities with Thomas Jefferson.
We need not endorse Rousseau the man to treasure the articulations of his best work by Jefferson (and others) in the organic document of our nation.
I think we are all overlooking the very realoverwhelmingly likely possibility that we are in fact the Nerd Table, and the kids in the other cliques aren’t really chomping at the bit to eat with us.
We need not dwell upon the myth of the genteel and comfortable life of the House Negro, nor need we recoil in horror from the sugar and cotton plantation workers in Angola, Louisiana, to understand that one human being claiming to own another in the same manner he claims to own a shirt or a loaf of bread is a deep moral failing.
This does not excuse the awful physical treatment slaves actually endured. It is to say that the awful physical treatments to which you refer is a separate and distinct moral wrong.
We'll be at the LVH Hotel -- formerly the Las Vegas Hilton. I had Vegas.com cards to burn, so I used them and have reservations there already. It's off the Strip, but not much, and has its own faintly-desparate faded glamour. If you must stay somewhere else, I say go ahead, but Jaybird is right that it's likely to work out best if we're all at the same place. The monorail is one way you might explore getting there with minimal expense, although cabs were not particularly expensive the last time I was there.
So that brings up Phase II -- where to meet for dinner and drinks?
There are several more than suitable venues for cocktails, most of which are themed in the cheesy way that only Vegas can deliver with a straight face, like the space bar built from sets left over from the sadly-defunct Star Trek Experience (really, this is so cheesy, how can we pass it up?), the bars attached to the various nicer restaraunts, as well as the obligatory sports bar and the also-obligatory poolside cabana bar. We can gather at one or the other of these places over the course of Saturday afternoon.
But I figure we'll set the formal meetup for dinner Saturday evening. The LVH has four dining venues:
Japanese (sushi, hibachi grill made with the show), entrees at $21-$49.
Chinese (most popular Chinese styles), entrees at $17-32.
Italian (allegedly mainly Tuscan), entrees at $25-$45.
Steakhouse (big-ass steaks and the like), entrees at $30-$70.
So what do people prefer? I suspect either the Italian or the steakhouse will be the choice, but I'm good with any of the four choices.
I've an abundance of good Scotch after the holidays so I haven't had moment to step back into the Bourbon. Maker's is my go-to choice when I do, it has such a nice apple-pie flavor to it.
The ICE story has some odiferousness too. But the story that outraged me so late last night doesn't fit nicely with the excerpts of the girl's Facebook messages, which according to people who have read the whole page are pretty representative.
I'm reminded now of when I used to be the Bar Fight Lawyer -- depose six witnesses about the same bar fight, and by the end of it you've got ten mutually inconsistent stories.
An ICE official told ABC News that people who do enter the US illegally often have no documentation whatsoever to identify them or a country of origin. So, they took Turner at her word when she insisted she was a 21-year-old Colombian citizen.
"[Turner] maintained this false identity throughout her local criminal proceedings in Texas where she was represented by a defense attorney and ultimately convicted," an ICE statement said. "At no time during these criminal proceedings was her identity determined to be false."
Once she was convicted, she was handed over to ICE, where she still said she was a Colombian citizen, even while being interview by a representative from the Colombian consulate. Eventually, the Colombian authorities agreed she was a Colombian citizen, and authorized her deportation, providing her with full Colombian citizenship upon arrival in the country.
During her time in Colombia, Turner posted often on Facebook, under the name TiKa SoloToolonq, occasionally referencing her life in Houston and Dallas, and speaking of efforts to learn Spanish. She never indicated any attempts to move back to the United States, and while she often complained of boredom and unhappiness in Colombia, she appeared to be making a life there.
This is really weird. ICE seems to be running with the story that she engaged in a prolonged campaign to to get herself deported to Colombia, going so far as to successfully deceive her own lawyers and Colombian officials to get there -- despite not speaking Spanish, which I realize isn't the universal language of Colombia but it's still really weird. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm buying a lot of this, but this does look like their side of the story.
This sounds like you're that yes, there is really a possibility that someone could get arrested and deported without a hearing -- because the hearing would have been held already, and the burden is on a purportedly recaptured detainee to file particular motions before they get put on the plane.
If that is what you're saying, then my argument that this is a due process problem here shouldn't need much more explication.
No, I think Will has raised a valid point to which I've no substantial rejoinder. Checking for outstanding warrants on a suspect, even warrants from other jurisdictions, seems like something the cops ought to do.
Yes, it could have dispelled faith in pretty much any religion if pushed hard enough, which no doubt played a part of why Parliament had some issues with it.
Of course, the larger reason Parliament had trouble with it was not hints of unpopular theology that were explicitly disclaimed elsewhere in the book, it was that it was unabashedly monarchial in its politics, during a time that Parliament (by which I mean Oliver Cromwell) figured England pretty much didn't need a King at all.
If those things are true, (and under U.S. law, she's entitled a presumption of innocence, at least from the legal system, until she is convicted of a crime) then she belongs in a U.S. jail, awaiting prosecution in a U.S. court, receiving U.S. due process before she is convicted, and to be sentenced in a U.S. prison thereafter.
I'm not suggesting that Colombia is an anarchic legal wasteland with no courts, no legal system, no constitution, and no due process of its own. My point is, she's one of ours. We have an obligation to take care of our own, and we dropped the ball here. Maybe she's a "problem child," but we don't dump our "problem children" on other countries -- or at least, we ought not to do so.
On “Why All Those Sites Are Dark Today”
[Atlas shrugs.]
On “Rep. Jared Polis on his opposition to SOPA”
Today, you could go to someone under the age of 30 and tell them that yogurt is made from bovine salivary glands and beet sugar, or that Louis XVIII was once the Chairman of the Democratic party, and they'd have no idea whether you were right or wrong.
On “Why All Those Sites Are Dark Today”
Doug Mataconis did a nice writeup with both sides of the issue fairly represented. It leaves me thinking that yes, something more needs to be done -- but not SOPA, not PIPA.
On “Batman and Civil Society”
The Batman works outside the rules of society, but with the intent to preserve and protect it.
In Batman Begins, Gotham is a place where the state has lost its claim to legitimacy and therefore its use of violence is really no better than that of the criminals the Batman neutralizes, and it has lost the strength to fight them anyway. The Batman fills the void of strength, and in the absence of true legitimacy, good intentions will do.
In The Dark Knight, the state has begun to reclaim its legitimacy, but is weak. The Joker demonstrates its impotency, and once again the Batma must intervene because he is the only source of strength. But his claim to legitimacy must be sacrificed in the end if the state's claim to legitimacy is to survive.
The logical progression here is that in the third movie, we will see a state which has gained its strength by sacrificing its claim to legitimacy; the series would resolve, one would hope, with Gotham both a strong and legitimate state, one capable of dispensing justice on its own without the intervention of a vigilante.
On “Grimly Dark Humor Places”
This is funny in the way only an obliviously non-ironic headline can be funny.
The other way to go is New York Post style: "Headless Body Found In Topless Bar".
On “Crocodile Tears for Gay Conservatives”
No, it isn't law, but it is a supremely important political act. And Rousseau was indeed in his personal and political life a class-A sonofabitch. Nevertheless despite his personal failings he did articulate the best theory of political legitimacy yet devised. In that sense there are more than a few similarities with Thomas Jefferson.
We need not endorse Rousseau the man to treasure the articulations of his best work by Jefferson (and others) in the organic document of our nation.
On “Mindless Blegery”
Yes. Frontpagers have their privileges.
On “Diversity & The League of Ordinary Gentlemen”
FIFY.
On “Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Civil War”
My point is that slavery is an inherent evil.
We need not dwell upon the myth of the genteel and comfortable life of the House Negro, nor need we recoil in horror from the sugar and cotton plantation workers in Angola, Louisiana, to understand that one human being claiming to own another in the same manner he claims to own a shirt or a loaf of bread is a deep moral failing.
This does not excuse the awful physical treatment slaves actually endured. It is to say that the awful physical treatments to which you refer is a separate and distinct moral wrong.
"
Dude. [Points at self.] Lawyer. What did you expect?
On “Leaguefest 2012 Update”
We'll be at the LVH Hotel -- formerly the Las Vegas Hilton. I had Vegas.com cards to burn, so I used them and have reservations there already. It's off the Strip, but not much, and has its own faintly-desparate faded glamour. If you must stay somewhere else, I say go ahead, but Jaybird is right that it's likely to work out best if we're all at the same place. The monorail is one way you might explore getting there with minimal expense, although cabs were not particularly expensive the last time I was there.
So that brings up Phase II -- where to meet for dinner and drinks?
There are several more than suitable venues for cocktails, most of which are themed in the cheesy way that only Vegas can deliver with a straight face, like the space bar built from sets left over from the sadly-defunct Star Trek Experience (really, this is so cheesy, how can we pass it up?), the bars attached to the various nicer restaraunts, as well as the obligatory sports bar and the also-obligatory poolside cabana bar. We can gather at one or the other of these places over the course of Saturday afternoon.
But I figure we'll set the formal meetup for dinner Saturday evening. The LVH has four dining venues:
So what do people prefer? I suspect either the Italian or the steakhouse will be the choice, but I'm good with any of the four choices.
On “Hey Tod”
Then meet me at the Las Vegas Hilton, May 25-28, 2012.
"
I've an abundance of good Scotch after the holidays so I haven't had moment to step back into the Bourbon. Maker's is my go-to choice when I do, it has such a nice apple-pie flavor to it.
"
Grappa, ugh. *shudders*
Bad experience.
On “Oklahoma Anti-Sharia Law Struck Down”
There's already some good comments going on at the sub-blog. You may want to check those out.
On “The 10 Commandments of Tod”
Egads, with the vodka-gin schism abrew below, we're in for a veritable Reformation of denomination generation.
On “She Was An American Girl Raised On Promises (Of Due Process)”
Oh, and ICE should not be deporting citizens. Ever.
"
The ICE story has some odiferousness too. But the story that outraged me so late last night doesn't fit nicely with the excerpts of the girl's Facebook messages, which according to people who have read the whole page are pretty representative.
I'm reminded now of when I used to be the Bar Fight Lawyer -- depose six witnesses about the same bar fight, and by the end of it you've got ten mutually inconsistent stories.
"
Here's a bit of follow-up from ABC News:
This is really weird. ICE seems to be running with the story that she engaged in a prolonged campaign to to get herself deported to Colombia, going so far as to successfully deceive her own lawyers and Colombian officials to get there -- despite not speaking Spanish, which I realize isn't the universal language of Colombia but it's still really weird. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm buying a lot of this, but this does look like their side of the story.
She doesn't look 21 years old to me.
"
FIFY.
"
This sounds like you're that yes, there is really a possibility that someone could get arrested and deported without a hearing -- because the hearing would have been held already, and the burden is on a purportedly recaptured detainee to file particular motions before they get put on the plane.
If that is what you're saying, then my argument that this is a due process problem here shouldn't need much more explication.
"
No, I think Will has raised a valid point to which I've no substantial rejoinder. Checking for outstanding warrants on a suspect, even warrants from other jurisdictions, seems like something the cops ought to do.
"
This is Texas. Plenty of the people wearing ICE uniforms would be brown themselves and I'll bet nearly all of them speak at least some Spanish.
On “Hobbes: A First Note on Faith and Skepticism”
Yes, it could have dispelled faith in pretty much any religion if pushed hard enough, which no doubt played a part of why Parliament had some issues with it.
Of course, the larger reason Parliament had trouble with it was not hints of unpopular theology that were explicitly disclaimed elsewhere in the book, it was that it was unabashedly monarchial in its politics, during a time that Parliament (by which I mean Oliver Cromwell) figured England pretty much didn't need a King at all.
On “She Was An American Girl Raised On Promises (Of Due Process)”
If those things are true, (and under U.S. law, she's entitled a presumption of innocence, at least from the legal system, until she is convicted of a crime) then she belongs in a U.S. jail, awaiting prosecution in a U.S. court, receiving U.S. due process before she is convicted, and to be sentenced in a U.S. prison thereafter.
I'm not suggesting that Colombia is an anarchic legal wasteland with no courts, no legal system, no constitution, and no due process of its own. My point is, she's one of ours. We have an obligation to take care of our own, and we dropped the ball here. Maybe she's a "problem child," but we don't dump our "problem children" on other countries -- or at least, we ought not to do so.