[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.  Cross posted here and here.]

Update: Instalanche and Driscollanche!  So, um, bear with us, I suspect things might go slooooow…

“Blazing Catfur” is a blogger I have known since the Everyone Draw Mohammed controversy.  He says he is being sued by Richard Warman.  Followers of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant’s fight with the Canadian Human Rights Commission will recognize the name.  One example of Steyn’s many columns on the man can be found here.

So Catfur says he is being sued in part…  for linking to a Steyn article.

Does that make any fraking sense to you?

Anyway, we all know that defending yourself, even from a bogus suit, costs money.  So if you are inclined to help out a guy out in need, he really could use a few bucks to help him defend himself and he tells you how, here.

Oh, and this cartoon from the Everyone Draw Mohammed day seems appropriate:

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.  No I did not draw this cartoon.  It was given to me during the Everyone Draw Mohammed Day event, and I thought it was really appropriate.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.]

The Onion goofs on the Johnson/Feingold matchup.  It’s really too silly to be really scathing as an attack, but it is funny.

And no, Johnson didn’t actually write it.

I would be a very happy man if Feingold, of the infamous McCain-Feingold free-expression-strangling legislation lost his job.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

For outsiders, “metro” is our word for “subway” (except sometimes it is above ground).  Anyway, the Washington Post has the details.

It was some right wing nut behind this, right?

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.]

Marco Rubio makes a brilliant ad explaining why he should win.  His arguments are applicable to every single race.  It is really excellent and worth a view.

And there are real signs of hope.  First, a new PPP poll says that Boxer is up nine points over Fiorina.  Why is that good news?  Because it is so blatantly skewed it’s not funny.  As revealed by Katrina Trinko at Battle ’10, the poll depends on six percent more democrats voting this time than in 2006, a very good year for Democrats.  So most likely Fiorina is ahead.

You can say the same thing about an LA Times Poll  that Tony Quinn ably tears apart for us:

While the party registration of likely voters is 44 percent Democratic and 36 percent Republican (about right), the likely voter self identification is 43 percent Democratic, 28 percent Republican and 28 percent independent.  That is a heavier Democratic bias than 2008 – does anyone expect the Democratic turnout in 2010 to EXCEED 2008?  Hardly likely, given the mood of the electorate.

In other news, Fiorina has gone to the hospital.  That seems like poor timing.  But publicity is a funny thing.  A few years back Appalachian School of Law had a student go nuts and start shooting up the place during finals.  The next year applications soared.  Why?  Because potential applicants saw this professor or that on air, and it is revealed that they went to Harvard or some other prestigious school, making the school more attractive in their eyes.

So Fiorina might be out of commission for a few days, and that is not good.  But at the same time, this story is highlighting the fact she had the very sympathetic disease of breast cancer, and perversely, that might help her.

Meanwhile, The Campaign Spot’s anonymous source of wisdom, Obi Wan Kenobi, offers two discussions on the possibility of a superwave, here and here.  Read it, enjoy it, but for the love of God, don’t get cocky.  But a little cautious optimism is just fine.

But for God’s sake, vote.  Don’t go thinking that we have it in the bag, so you can sit this out.  Remember this cautionary tale.

As for Rubio, some have called this the first ad of the 2012 presidential campaign.  Honestly, I like what I see, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?  I don’t want to see him running for president in 2012.  The last thing we need is two presidents in a row who were not ready for the job.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: Althouse has seven good points about the silliness of trying to turn this into proof that the Tea Party is a violent movement. Read the whole thing.

Update: Thanks to “Longwalker” in the comments who directed us toward Red State, where they have new video shot just before the incident, showing Valle’s aggressive behavior beforehand.  It doesn’t justify stepping on her, but it does justify taking her down and restraining her.

————-

Terrible violence visited the debate between Rand Paul and Jack Conway.  The Kentucky Post has the details:

The [incident] occurred after a Conway supporter stepped on the foot of a female Rand supporter, who recently had foot surgery, according to police.

The woman was wearing a surgical boot, but after the injury, her incision was cut open. Police say she refused medical treatment and also filed an assault report.

No arrests were made at the debate broadcast on Kentucky Education Television. No other information is available at this time.

Oh, wait, that’s not the assault everyone has been hearing about.  Nope, the assault everyone has been hearing about is the so-called curbstomper, who by the way didn’t actually stomp on her.  To quote Ann Althouse, “look closely. There is no head stomp. The head is on the curb, but the foot presses down on the shoulder. That ends pretty quickly.”  She later calls it a “restraint.”

Of course nothing could bring more joy to the hearts of the left than to see a woman assaulted on TV, given that they figured they could use it to their advantage.  How else do you explain the complete lack of interest in the other woman attacked?  And bear in mind, the moveon.org woman (who has a history of violence) had been charging toward Paul at that moment.  That is why most people don’t bother to criticize the decision to pull her down, because there was an understandable security concern.  Stepping on her, of course, was unjustified and indeed was condemned by an apparent Paul supporter at the scene, but gee could we turn down the drama queen routine a bit?  By comparison, read that quoted passage again about the other assault no one cares about.  The woman was wearing a surgical boot, so I doubt she presented much of a danger to anyone.  But where is the blogswarm to identify the assailant?  Where are the claims that the people who did this are brownshirts?  Where is Chris Matthews violating Godwin’s law?

But I can already hear the counter: but you see this was on video, so there are less facts in doubt, and let’s face it, it’s better fodder for TV.  Well, the funny thing is, so was the assault on Kenneth Gladney, and guess what?  If you look real close on the video you can see this black man getting stomped on by a white man, too. I mean I hate to focus on his race, but seriously could you imagine if Gladney had been a member of moron.org moveon.org, and his assailant was a member of the Tea Party?

But for some mysterious reason the left didn’t care very much about that.

The fact is the left is neck deep in hypocrisy on this.  Besides Gladney and the other woman attacked at the Paul-Conway debate, every time the G8 meets anywhere, there are violent protests to say the least, and just the other day the GOP HQ in Denver was vandalized.  Every time unions go on strike, especially the Teamsters, you can expect violence.  And do I have to remind you of the very credible allegation that Charlie Wilson beat his wife?  And police recently linked together the shootings at the Pentagon and the National Museum of the Marine Corps, and there is a third shooting at the Marine recruiting station in Chantilly, Virginia (that is fairly close to the other two).  I bet that is some right-wing extremist doing that, right?  So let’s not pretend that one side is Bull Connor and the other side is Martin Luther King, okay?

And don’t even get me started about how the left will also selectively ask “why they hate us?” and seek to blame the victim for the crime committed against him or her.  When terrorists murder Americans, the left cites that as an indictment on us for whatever we supposedly did to motivate that murder and generally claim that the violence will only stop if we adopt their progressive agenda.  But when Tim McVeigh murders Americans, the left suddenly is not interested in why he did it.  And mind you, they shouldn’t be interested in his motives.  I mean Tim McVeigh set off that bomb because he hoped it would spark a rebellion of white “Christians” to take over the government, kill all non-whites and non-“Christians” and then nuke Isreal.  And to explain why it was okay to murder many white Christian babies to accomplish his goal, he cited the precedent of blowing up the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi.  In other words, McVeigh was a racist idiot, whose views should be disregarded.  But you can say the same thing about al Qaeda; they are a bunch of religiously-bigoted idiots, and their motives should be equally ignored except for the limited purpose of trying to predict what they will do next.

And the claim that injustice motivates violence would work particularly well for the Tea Party, if the left was willing to be consistent about it.  Massive unemployment, massive debt, government takeover and the attendant corruption that goes with it, they have a lot of just reasons to complain, and maybe even be angry.  But no one would claim that violent acts like stepping on this woman was justified by the terrible policies of the last two years, as well they shouldn’t.

Both men who assaulted women at the Paul-Conway debate should be prosecuted and no excuses should be made.  But the fact is that the selective condemnation and hysteria coming from the left demonstrates that this really isn’t about human compassion toward Lauren Valle.  It’s about politics and nothing more.  Americans can and should see through this for what it is.

Oh, and an exit question.  If someone goes on The View and says that a Rand Paul supporter attacked Ms. Valle, will Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walk off the set?  Yeah, I didn’t think so, either.

———

Sidebar: Why is moveon.org called this?  Because they were originally founded to tell republicans to “move on” past the Lewinsky scandal.  Moveon.org, it’s been over a decade and you are still using that name.  Isn’t it time to, you know, move on?

———-

I have talked about the use of random violence to score political points before, here.

Updated: Dang AutoCorrect turned Corps to Corporations and I failed to notice.  Thanks to AD.  And a capitalization fixed.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.]

First Cracked tells us about The Creepy Scientific Explanation Behind Ghost Sightings.  Then we find out the less creepy truth behind the Chupacabra story.

Oh, and science proves that good luck charms work.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for someone to prove that if you have an umbrella it is less likely to rain.

Update: In other vaguely Halloween-themed news, the State Bar of Az. is seeking to disbar a lawyer who… uh… how about I let Law.com explain it to you:

The report says that [Attorney Charna] Johnson began representing the client involved with the most recent disciplinary action in 2000 in divorce proceedings after meeting him in a ballroom dancing class. The client’s wife committed suicide several months later, and Johnson handled the probate matters.

Within days of the death, Johnson began telling her client that “his deceased wife Jan had ‘come’ to her and that Jan’s ‘spirit’ was ‘inside’ her and that she could communicate Jan’s thoughts,” according to the report. The client testified that Johnson pressured him to have a sexual relationship with her, although she told the investigator that the references to sex were coming from the deceased wife, not herself.

The Disciplinary Commission Report (DCR) states that they did in fact have a sexual relationship.  One interesting thing is that both the DCR and the Hearing Officer Report dance around the question of whether she was actually channeling the dead wife, or at least sincerely believing that she was, and focused instead on other aspects of her misconduct, such as lying about it, and having a relationship that impaired her ability to represent her client (because she was allegedly channeling his wife).  I think they were reticent to allege fraud on a topic of religious import.  It’s sort of like how Jim Baker wasn’t accused of fraud based on him being a sleazy televangelist, but instead based on him overselling rooms.  As long as you keep your fraud to the ethereal, you are not likely to go to jail.

Hat tip to Overlawyered for that one.

And this doesn’t qualify as news because it is too old, but it all reminds me of a classic case Stambovsky v. Ackley (1991), which is more commonly known as the Amityville Horror case.  Yes, there was an actual legal case arising out of it. Basically the owners of the infamous house sold the property to outsiders who had no idea what they were buying for a price that really didn’t reflect the devaluation caused by it being a famously haunted house.  This resulted in a famous line in the pun-filled ruling:

Not being a “local”, plaintiff could not readily learn that the home he had contracted to purchase is haunted. Whether the source of the spectral apparitions seen by defendant seller are parapsychic or psychogenic, having reported their presence in both a national publication (Readers’ Digest) and the local press (in 1977 and 1982, respectively), defendant is estopped to deny their existence and, as a matter of law, the house is haunted.

(emphasis added).  In other words, what the judge was saying was, since the defendant had spent so much time telling the whole world their house was haunted, the defendants were stopped from denying it.  That is, they were not allowed to talk out of both sides of their mouth.  Which allows the court to treat the house as haunted without having to find as a fact that ghosts exist.  So chalk that up as another example of courts wanting to avoid making findings of facts on, well, the paranormal.  Which is understandable, but interesting.

And as you can also see, the court had waaaaay too much fun with it.

Of course, given the first item, the current owners might be able to fix the place to it is no longer “haunted.”

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.]

Katie Couric, she is just a regular person, and she likes regular people.  Don’t trust me?  Well, read on:

That’s why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls “this great unwashed middle of the country” in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.

(emphasis added)  Isn’t that sweet the way she looks at us so condescendingly?

Also for bonus points, um, in what sense is Boston, New Jersey and Philadelphia the “middle” of America?  I guess Chicago counts, but that is about it.

Update: Jim Treacher has the best snark: “Katie Couric, the Great Unwatched.”

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]