Me Email Pretty Someday

A friend of mine just sent me the subject line of an email she received promoting continuing online education (name X'd out):

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edulocate News <newsletter@edulocate-news.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 7:10 AM
Subject: XXXXX, are online classes are right for you
To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

FAIL.

Race and Drugs in NYC

It's stuff like this that should continually remind you that the 'post-racial society' rhetoric is a cruel joke.

Mood Music Monday

I really detest pop sensations. Not out of some hipsterish I'm-too-cool-for-anything-anyone's-ever-heard-of sort of reason, but rather that I have come to terms with the fact that I am, indeed, getting too old for this shit. (This may also be reflected in my general resentment towards hipsterism while I simultaneously maintain good friendships with a few hipsters. Everyone has their irrational prejudices, I suppose.)

But my good friend Libby has become enamored with the music and image of one "Lady Gaga." When I first came across the sensation in question, I sorta rolled my eyes and was thankful for no longer owning a radio on which to hear said contrived music and blatant image shaping.

But, alas, I read Libby's blog and caught the new song (I had, to this point, ignored the link on her gchat status) out of idle curiosity.

Damn it, it's catchy.

She says:

Lady Gaga with her extreme appearance and over-the-top fashion, seems to be the female answer to Marilyn Manson. Her music is much more accessible and mainstream than MM’s ever was, so I’ll say she’s like a love-child between MM and Madonna.

Personally, I thought it more resembled Annie Lennox's Eurythmics years with an updated beat, but essentially provocative, intelligent, and alluring to a unorthodox and semi-prurient interest. (It does not escape my attention that Mr. Manson covered the Eurythmics' version of Sweet Dreams linked above.)

Anyway. Here it is, my reluctant surrender to the pop sensation Lady Gaga.

Quote of the Day

The Obama Administration continues to leverage heavily on the growing cult of personality surrounding Obama — much like the one surrounding Bush in his first term. For many, Obama’s popularity is unaffected by the fact that he is pursuing the very same hostile policies as Bush on civil liberties, privacy, and open government. More importantly, there appears no reaction to the disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions. Once again, liberals are committing the same mistake that conservatives committed with Bush. Many continue to display blind loyalty and offer little criticism of the President while core values are continue to be challenged by his Administration.

-GW Law Professor Jonathan Turley on Obama's grandstanding hypocrisy viz. "government transparency" on human rights violations.

Please Give

I never really said anything about the ads and donate button I put on my blog because, well, I hate asking for money. I figure: it's there, you know what it's there for, if you want to give, you will. (If, like me, you're reading this and almost all blogs in an rss feed: fyi--there's a donate button and Amazon.com ads on my blog. You know what it's there for.)

Anyway, I'm writing this not to ask you to give money to me...well, directly* anyway. I want you to give to my former colleagues over at reason some cash. They are great people and great writers. Surviving in today's media market is hard enough, let alone as a non-profit outfit.

Their pitch is hilarious, by the way. I invite you to read it here. And, as Radley points out, you can be funny as you want to be when you give.

*Not only will you be supporting reason staffers, but writers like me unable crank out pieces for a living who can find a libertarian outlet to publish in when the conservatives and liberals pass on our work. And you can give money to them as a way to incentivize me to write more for them and rationalize to yourself why you're not giving money to me directly.

Just for Fun Friday: Veterans' Edition

In recognition of the sacrifices our veterans have made--and the fact that i didn't put up a jfff last week, here are two vids that show the funnier side of our soldiers in uniform:

Strictly Speaking

Strict liability is bullshit.

An ex-soldier handing in a found sawed-off shotgun faces five years in an English prison for illegal possession of a firearm. Of course, he only possessed it in order to get it off the streets and turn it into police:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty".

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: "I didn't think for one moment I would be arrested.

"I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets."

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

"I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

"At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall."

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

The story goes on to say that Mr. Clarke's intent is irrelevant because gun possession is a "strict liability" offense, meaning that no matter how one comes into possession of a banned item or substance, or whether or not one had mens rea--criminal intent--he is technically guilty.

This is doubly frustrating because he faces "at least" five years in prison. Like some gun and other criminal offenses in the United States, Mr. Clarke is poised to lose five years of his liberty for doing the right thing because of mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

One-size-fits-all laws are pernicious. While most of these laws were crafted to bring uniformity and fairness to criminal sentencing--consistency , generally speaking, is a good thing--they become inflexible barriers to true justice in many cases. As I have said before, judges should be allowed to assess the facts of any given case to bring about a just conclusion to a criminal matter. Statutory constraints like "strict liability"--particularly when coupled with mandatory minimum sentences--cross the line from proper legislative decisionmaking into what should be exclusively judicial purview. Stripping judges of their ability to judge mitigating factors--or, in this case, undisputed facts that should have led to immediate dismissal--can result in the state committing crimes against its citizenry.

While I'm not familiar with the English criminal justice system, given that America's common law is a direct descendant of English common law, there has to be some executive or other official that can issue a pardon for this man. They should issue that pardon immediately, in addition to an apology.

Last year, I wrote a piece for reason on mandatory minimum sentences as they applied to ex-(and hopefully future) NFL star Plaxico Burress, that can be found here. Also, in today's WSJ, the feds are rethinking mandatory minimum policy. Let's hope (against hope, probably) that they get this right, at least on a federal level.