Personal Musings category archive

The Federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals declined to consider free speech issues, but still ruled that a prosecutor could not charge a teen-aged girl with child porn because a revealing picture of her was on (several) someone else’s cell phone(s).

The prosecutor wanted to turn childhood dumbness into a felony because the girl refused to attend an “education program” of the his choosing (several other girls were involved, but only one took the prosecutor to court).

The court avoided ruling that the case involved a Constitutional issue (judges usually try to avoid ruling on Constitutional issues unless they can find no other way out). Instead, they ruled that the prosecutor acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner:

The court did rule that the district attorney had been wrong to threaten to charge the teen merely for refusing to attend the program.

The court said the girl, then 16 and identified as the daughter of “Jane Doe,” had “a likelihood of success” on the claim that the threatened prosecution was based not on probable cause of a crime but “instead in retaliation for Doe’s exercise of her constitutional rights not to attend the education program.”

Clearly, the girls were silly, stupid, and thoughtless. Teenagers are often silly, stupid, and thoughtless (as I recall, “thoughtless” was one of my mother’s favorite adjectives).

Threatening a felony charge was using a sledge hammer to clean a kitchen counter. (I suspect that any the pornographic content was not in the picture, but in the prosecutor’s head.)

On the block for scrap:

On its maiden voyage in 1952, the SS United States set a transatlantic speed record – New York to Bishop Rock, England, in three days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes – eclipsing by 10 hours the mark set by the Queen Mary in 1938.

But for the last 14 years, the pride of a nation has gone nowhere, rusting away at a pier in South Philadelphia, a fading landmark seemingly destined for one last journey: to the scrapyard.

Its owner, Norwegian Cruise Line, which spends about $700,000 a year to moor and maintain the ship, appears ready to pull the plug

When any falling down junker of a building can attract hordes of “historic preservationists” to protect its existence, even though it has no claim to being “historical” other than being old, unpainted, and unmaintained, to allow this ship, holds stuffed with history, to be sold and dismembered, is a damned shame.

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My father loved Fred Allen’s humor.

Now I can listen to it also.

Philadelphia School DIstrict considers banning “hoodies”:

Hooded sweats are now so linked to all things nefarious that last week, retired federal judge James T. Giles recommended banning them from South Philadelphia High School in response to the racial violence that occurred there in December between Asian and African American students.

The word hoodie was used five times in his 31-page report, which suggested outlawing the apparel because it hides kids’ faces, making it hard to identify them. Philadelphia School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman later said she agreed with the suggestion, and would consider banning the hooded sweatshirts districtwide.

The article goes on to describe students puling up their hoods to escape surveillance cameras, even when the students aren’t doing anything questionable.

When I was a young ‘un, there were no surveillance cameras (or metal detectors or web spycams) in schools and we had hooded sweatshirts, not “hoodies.” The hoods on hooded sweatshirts fit the head; they didn’t cascade loosely over the face.

Supporters of surveillance cameras claim that they deter misbehavior; the evidence of that is inconclusive, at best. Others argue that they lead to faster capture of malefactors; that also appears questionable, despite what you might see on shows such as NCIS.

I suspect it’s another case of treating a symptom rather than fixing the cause.

I’d like to have the post-halftime Bengay concession for the band.

Afterthought:

It’s a blinking CSI commercial!

The rumors of lawlessness in New Orleans following Katrina were lies (and, yes, I fell for them, too).

Just sayin’.

Remember that Martin Luther King, Jr., was hated, reviled, investigated by the guvmint, called “Communist” (and worse), and murdered because he spoke against the established way of doing things.

The earthquake in Haiti has caused persons to open their hearts (except for Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh) and wallets to help, much as they did after the Pacifid sunami several years ago.

Before you give, you might want to check out the charities at Charity Watch dot org. You might be surprised at who gets rated highly and at who doesn’t.

Via TOTN.

There’s almost nothing worth watching on television anyway. Why watch it in 3-D?

Turn on the dishwasher and drown them out.

To read not one “year in review” article.

I expect kids to do stupid stuff to show off–showing off is inherently stupid and so are kids.

But when I see 40-year-old men wearing shorts in under-40-Fahrenheit weather, I despair of the older generation.

You snow it’s snowing hard when this happens.

In other news, I called my brother in Delaware on the telly phone to tell him about hard it’s been raining in Virginia Beach.

And I’m not sure Afghanistan does, at least not any more; it was quite one thing to look for a bad guy, quite another to occupy a country.

Shaun Mullen summarizes just war doctrine.

Anyone who thought that Obama was going to attempt to govern as a doctrinaire anything was not paying attention during the campaign.

Seems to me that a lot of frustrated (like myself) lefties have projected their own policy preferences onto Obama (unlike myself).

I heard Hamsher on the radio recently (I think on the Diane Rehm Show, but I can’t find the link). She seemed bitter that Obama has not accomplished everything he promised on the campaign single-handedly in ten months.

(With apologies to Leslie Gore, who’s still cute as a button.)

It’s my comment to the Booman’s post. Please read that first.

Now you may continue

To go looking for a fight in a spirit of love and brotherhood.

I have figured it out.

In fact, I figured it out long ago, but only just connected it to the wingnut fantasies of a War on Christmas. (Hell, if there’s a War on Christmas in these parts, Christmas won long ago.)

Some folks just ain’t happy unless they’re hatin’ on something or someone. Nothing to hate, they make something up.

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In Philadelphia, there has recent been a rash (that is, two) accidents in which bicyclers ran into pedestrians and the pedestrians died. At least one was a hit-and-run–the bicyclist is still unidentified.

Philadelphia City Council, which Mayor Green once called the “worst legislative body in the Free World” (it’s not; the Pennsylvania state legislature takes that honor), is considering requiring bikes to be registered, I guess so there will be little tiny license plates that no one can see the next time a biker is involved in a hit-and-run with a pedestrian.

Brendan finds this outrageous.

I find it silly.

Police are overwhelmed trying to keep track of dangerous, inconsiderate, selfish, and just plain stupid drivers of motor vehicles. Dangerous, inconsiderate, selfish, and just plain stupid bicyclists get scant enforcement attention. Registering bikes will not change that.

What will change it is ticketing bicyclists for traffic violations and putting points on their motor vehicle operators licenses for moving violations, such as running red lights and going the wrong way on one-way streets.

It is true that pedestrians often put themselves in harm’s way. It is also true that rude, inconsiderate, and stupid behavior by adult cyclists in their funny clothes seems to be the norm.

I can count on my right big toe the number of cyclists I have seen actually stop at a stop sign or a red light in the past month. There is a reservoir of ill will towards bicyclists amongst motorists (including amongst me), nurtured by cyclists who act as if they are exempt from the rules of the road.

If this very bad bill passes, cyclists can blame themselves.

Full disclosure: I have two bicycles on the back porch. (I haven’t been riding them often. The little hills in upper Delaware look a lot bigger from two wheels than from four.) I look forward to riding them in the flatter terrain of Virginia Beach.

But I always stop for stop signs and red lights, ride on the correct side of the road, and obey one-way street signs.

For 18 years I attended Catholic churches. (My ex was of Catholic upbringing and could not bring herself to abandon that aspect of her heritage, though she had no great brief for Catholic theology per se).

The Catholic Church hierarchy cannot be considered as a source of moral tutelage in any area and its attempts to lecture anyone on morality must be viewed as the most extreme hubris.

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From tearing my hair out every time a media outlet glibly refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving as “the biggest shopping day of the year,” as if that were revealed truth.

It’s not and never has been. Big, yes. Never the “biggest.”

If they can’t get that right from readily available statistics, why do we expect them to get complicated stuff, like noticing when a politician is out-and-out lying, right?

Aside: I did not hear the Friday after Thanksgiving called “Black Friday” until I moved to the Philadelphia area in 1983. Even 135 miles away in Washington, D. C., where I had lived for nine years, the term was unknown in that contest. Even in Philly, it had little to do directly with shopping.

It had to do with traffic. The Wikipedia article is pretty accurate.

And remember the story of the first American Thanksgiving.

No, not in Plymouth Colony. It didn’t exist yet. It just has a better PR department.

The first Thanksgiving occurred when Captain John Woodlief led the newly-arrived English colonists to a grassy slope along the James River and instructed them to drop to their knees and pray in thanks for a safe arrival to the New World. It was December 4, 1619, and 38 men from Berkeley Parish in England vowed:

“Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.”