Category Archives: Social Commentary

Everything That Can Be Customized

must be.

This is where I differ with Lileks (and Virginia Postrel). I have no desire to customize anything. To me it’s pointless work. Perhaps because I have absolutely no artistic talent (at least visually) or even that much aesthetic sensibility. My computer screen has the same background that was installed with the OS. I did put an effect on my phone when I first got it, because I was playing around with it to see how it all worked, but I’ve never downloaded, let alone paid for, a ring tone. Or a fancy case. I really just don’t care.

A Federally Required Presumption Of Guilt

The latest anti-rights insanity coming from the Obama administration. It’s becoming child abuse to send a kid to public schools, or a son to college.

[Update a couple minutes later]

“If your boyfriend likes the First Amendment, be careful!”

This is how fascists think.

[Update a minute or so later]

“Law enforcement must take the lead in campus sexual assault cases.”

What a concept.

[Update another minute or so later]

“Illegals [immigrants] at the border have more rights than college students accused of rape.”

[Late-morning update]

No, one in five women on campus have not been raped.

Mann Suit Update

I didn’t mention it last week, because I’ve been busy dealing with life, but both we and National Review submitted our brief in the case to the DC Court of Appeals last Monday. I’m not sure if the CEI brief has been discussed anywhere, but here’s a discussion of National Review’s. We requested that the lower-court ruling to refuse dismissal be overturned and the case dismissed (implicitly) with prejudice. That means that if the appeals court agrees, we can go after Mann for legal costs.

Anyway, the reason I mention it now is that Alliance Defending Freedom has filed an amicus brief today on our behalf. I’ve got the filing, but haven’t seen any links to it yet. We also have one from Reason, Cato, Goldwater Institute, and the Individual Rights Foundation.

[Late evening update]

OK, we’ve got a couple more. One is from Newsmax Media, Inc., Free Beacon,LLC, The Foundation for Cultural Review, The Daily Caller, LLC, PJ Media, LLC, and The Electronic Frontier Foundation. The other is from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and twenty six other media organization, which I won’t list here.

Also, as with the last time, the District of Columbia has filed an amicus on our behalf to defend its anti-SLAPP law.

I’m guessing that a lot more media organizations are filing this time because they they were shocked at the ruling the last time, and wanted to make their views clear to the appellate court.

[Wednesday-morning update]

CEI has links to all the legal filings in the case to date, including Monday’s amici.

Eating Out Alone

Are you ashamed to do it?

It seems like a strange question to me. I don’t like eating out alone, but not because I think there’s any shame in it. I don’t like eating out, period. It’s expensive, it’s hard to eat healthy, and I don’t like people serving me. The only time I eat out alone is when I’m traveling alone. Eating out is something that I tolerate at best, not enjoy, unless I’m with good company, and then I’d still prefer to be eating a meal at home with them.

“Indiscipline”

The strange behavior of an ebola victim:

Looking to get to the bottom of Sawyer’s strange ailment on the Asky Airline flight, which Sawyer transferred on in Togo, hospital officials say, he was tested for both malaria and HIV AIDS. However, when both tests came back negative, he was then asked whether he had made contact with any person with the Ebola Virus, to which Sawyer denied. Sawyer’s sister, Princess had died of the deadly virus on Monday, July 7, 2014 at theCatholic Hospital in Monrovia. On Friday, July 25, 2014, 18 days later, Sawyer died in Lagos.

“Upon being told he had Ebola, Mr. Sawyer went into a rage, denying and objecting to the opinion of the medical experts “He was so adamant and difficult that he took the tubes from his body and took off his pants and urinated on the health workers, forcing them to flee.”

The hospital would later report that it resisted immense pressure to let out Sawyer from its hospital against the insistence from some higher-ups and conference organizers that he had a key role to play at the ECOWAS convention in Calabar, the Cross River State capital.

So here’s my question. Was this merely an individual irresponsible in the first place, whose “undisciplined” behavior resulted in his contracting the disease, after which he simply lashed out in anger, wanting to take others with him? Or does the disease have a rabies-like component that in addition to its other horrific physical symptoms, drives the victim literally insane?