Patterico's Pontifications

4/30/2011

Some Quick Takes

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 9:06 pm



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

Just short commentary on a bunch of random stories.

First, we see that we have killed one of Qdaffy’s* sons.  Good, may he roast in flames, but um, then I guess we have to kill Qdaffy, too, right?  Otherwise there will be a terrorist reprisal, right?

Boy it’s a good thing that Obama went into this war with the consent of the American people and of Congress as he himself said was constitutionally required.  Oh that’s right, he didn’t. Sigh.

Also allegedly we hit a school for disabled children and an orphanage.  Um, color me skeptical.  To hear these dictators talk all we hit is their orphanages, baby milk factories and so on.  It’s terrible if it happened and we should regret our mistake, but I won’t buy it until it’s confirmed after the dictator is gone.

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Fox News calls in an expert who says, yeah, the layering in the birth certificate is not a sign of forgery.  I’m not an expert, but it sounds pretty plausible.  (And to put in the usual disclaimer, I am not a birther.  I believe Obama is constitutionally eligible to be president and woefully over his head.)

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I agree with pretty much everything Eugene Volokh writes, here.  He is talking about a case in Pennsylvania where a Muslim man dies and his will demands the division of some of his assets according to Sharia law.  I don’t mean he divided it up himself according to his religious principles.  I mean his will said the assets in question “should be divided according to Islamic Laws and Sharia.”  So the court does it and gives twice as much to his sons as his daughters.

Volokh argues that if the man wanted to divide it that way himself that would have been okay.  Its sexist and wrong, but it’s his property and it’s his right.  But on the other hand our courts should not be in the business of interpreting the “correct” meaning of a holy book, or the contents of a faith.  And yeah, I pretty much agree with all of that. Still you should read the whole thing.

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Meanwhile you might have heard that King and Spaulding, a law firm hired to represent the House of Representatives, withdrew from representation of the House in the DOMA litigation.  Well, first Ed Whelan does a good job pointing out that this action was unethical under the Rules of Professional Conduct.  Meaning they could actually get in ethical trouble over this.

But for much more fun, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has decided to fire King and Spaulding over this.  And actually his argument for doing so goes beyond tit-for-tat:

[I]t is crucial for us to be able to trust and rely on the fact that our outside counsel will not desert Virginia due to pressure by an outside group or groups.

Virginia seeks firms of commitment, courage, strength and toughness, and unfortunately, what the world has learned of King & Spalding, is that your firm utterly lacks those qualities.

Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark.  You can read the whole letter here, which is continually harsh.  Cuccinelli points out, for instance, that the firm has no trouble representing terrorists, but apparently not supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act.  Hey, King and Spaulding, did you know that the terrorists would like to see every gay person murdered?  So if you drop everyone who is not perfectly politically correct on gay rights…

And of course Professor Jacobson has more thoughts.

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*Qdaffy is how I have chosen to spell the name of the dictator running Libya right now, because 1) it is mocking him and 2) it seems to be about as good a spelling as any.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

How Awesome is This Laura Ingraham Clip?

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 2:09 pm



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

Seriously, sound off on how awesome this clip is.  The National Black Chamber of Commerce President, Harry Alford, goes on Laura’s show and tells her things like that Obama is a Marxist, that voting for him was the worst mistake of his life…  Yeah, it’s that good.

But by far my favorite part? When Laura asks him why he voted for Obama and he admits it was because he was black. Which kind of confirms what I have been saying for years: at least part of the vote in his favor was race-based.

And on some level I don’t completely blame him. Considering 400 years of bad history, considering all that went on, if you were black and for the first time in your life you had the chance to vote for a black guy to be president who might actually win, wouldn’t that be a very hard temptation to resist? Wouldn’t it be very easy to ignore some of the criticisms?

Hell, I have said before that prior to 2008, if all things were equal, I would vote for the black guy for president. The problem was as little as I liked McCain (especially for McCain-Feingold), Obama was nowhere even close to being equal to that man.

So I won’t blame, but I think it was a mistake, as Harry himself admits.

By the way if this guy seems familiar at all, he was also the guy who shot down Sen. Boxer for hour racially condescending display:

I remember thinking at the time that it was a little weird for the head of the National Black Chamber of Commerce to complain he was being pigeonholed by race, but actually in the Ingraham clip he explains why it was necessary for such an organization to exist—because just about every other ethnicity has one.  There’s nothing wrong with them saying, “we’ll disband when the other groups disband.”

Big hat tip to Hot Air.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

Anti-Terry Jones Riot in Dearborn; MSM Bias on Display (Update: Instalink!)

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 11:59 am



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

Update: Instalink! Thanks. Also via Gateway Pundit, we get this video of the scene.

It doesn’t show you what Jones as saying or doing, though.

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So yesterday Terry Jones held his protest, but at City Hall.  And well… let’s read how the New York Times covers it:

Michigan: Koran-Burning Pastor Draws a Boisterous Crowd

Tensions flared Friday as Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of a Koran sparked violence in Afghanistan, demonstrated Friday on the steps of City Hall in Dearborn, home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the nation. In rambling remarks over three hours, he mostly spoke against what he called “extremist Muslim influences” in the United States. Dearborn police made three arrests for misdemeanors. The department estimated the crowd at 700 people. Mr. Jones’s comments were often drowned out by the horns of passing cars and the boos and chants of protesters, some of whom carried signs saying, “Terrorist Go Home” and “Leave Us Alone.”

You got that?  They were boisterous.  And only three arrested.  Move along, nothing to see here…

Except it wasn’t really that.  It was a riot of about fifty people.  Of course the local papers, such as the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press couldn’t very well ignore it.  So in their news pages they editorialize that all of this is his fault.

So this is how the Detroit News covers it:

Florida pastor’s rally ends after brief fracas

Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones had his say in Dearborn. Few appeared to hear him.

Thunderous boos from a crowd of about 700 protesters drowned out much of his speech Friday afternoon at Dearborn City Hall. The 90-minute event momentarily erupted into chaos when Jones and several dozen of his supporters approached a metal barricade around City Hall and engaged his opponents.

A crowd of at least 50 people surged across Michigan Avenue, breaking a barricade, throwing water bottles and shoes. Riot police restored order within minutes and took at least two people into custody.

Dearborn Mayor John B. O’Reilly Jr. said Jones is partly to blame. “Even though we said, ‘Please don’t go to the barricades,’ he just ignored it,” O’Reilly said. “My assessment is this is a man without character.”

Funny, I feel the same way about you, Mayor.

(more…)

The Most Transparent Administration …

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:23 am



ever.


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