Channel Five is reporting that the man who shot Darren Evanovich after he pistol-whipped a 53 year old woman last week won’t be charged:

That word today from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.

But the sister of the dead robber faces two counts of Aggravated First Degree Robbery.

Authorities say they believe 20-year-old Octavia Marberry of Minneapolis has possibly been involved as an accomplice in this and two other store parking lot robberies.

Frankly, I’m just a tad stunned.

Even though the case was apparenlty a good enough example of self-defense to keep even the Henco Attorney’s office off the “good samaritan”‘s case.

The reporter for The Five did a signal job of actually getting the facts straight:

According to the criminal complaint, on Thursday, October 20th, a 53-year-old woman was robbed just before 10:00 p.m. outside the Cub Foods on 26th Avenue and struck in the head by a gun held by the robber, 23-year-old Darren Evanovich.

Minneapolis Police say their investigation showed that at least two other people were with him and one of them was Marberry.

After Evanovich took the woman’s purse, all three ran off in a northwest direction, police say.

That’s when a man who witnessed the robbery chased Evanovich.

According to witnesses, the man drove up to the spot where he saw Evanovich going through the victim’s purse and asked him if he wanted to give the purse back.

Witnesses say that’s when it started to turn ugly–Evanovich pointed his gun at the “Good Samaritan,” and moved towards him.

The man in the vehicle pulled out his handgun and shot Evanovich.

Authorities say after they reviewed the circumstances, they determined that the man “acted in self-defense.”

To be honest, I expected Henco Attorney Mike Freeman to try to find some pretext for throwing the book at the shooter.

I’m pleasantly surprised:

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said today in a press release, “While this man is to be commended for helping his fellow citizen in need, a note of caution is appropriate.  We prefer that armed citizens do not chase after criminals.  Too much can go wrong with deadly consequences.”

Nobody who took concealed carry class needs to be told twice.

As my carry teacher, the late Joel Rosenberg, told us over and over again, shooting in self-defense is the second-worst possible outcome.  Your kids growing up without a parent, when you yourself did nothing wrong, is worse.

A neighbor emailed me:

How to solve illegal immigration with the least amount of government intrusion.

From Conor Friedersdorf, an idea that will never be implemented:  grant amnesty to any illegal immigrant who came forward to show that he’d been hired sans documents, fine his employer, and give him a green card.

It’d spark compliance – and build a whole new reality TV genre, with thousands of new jobs!

Yesterday, I asked a question about the various “bullying” laws the left is proposing.

I asked – would it be considered bullying if I were to steal a young lesbian’s “Lady Gaga” CD – music that she found important in helping her discover her own identity – and to threaten to destroy it in an elaborate “ceremony” designed entirely to mock stereotypes of lesbianism.

I took a poll – and most agreed with me that that action would be bullying.

Of course, I’d never do such a thing.

But the real reason for the question was to ask liberals; if my hypothetical example was “bullying”, what would this be?

Because to me, the only difference between PZ Myers’ stunt from few years back – giggling about descrating a host from a Catholic service – and the sort of bullying that’s got lefties all exercised is the lack of a gay victim.

The following is hypothetical.

Let’s say that a young lady in my neighborhood “came out” as a lesbian.

And that a key part of her “coming out” as a lesbian was, what the heck, the music of Lady Gaga.  Her Lady Gaga CD (I know, kids don’t buy CDs – let’s say it was a gift from her parents) was a key part of her figuring out her identity, and thus very important to her, personally.

Not judging [1].  Just positing.

Then – utterly hypothetically [2] – let’s say that I stole that CD from her.  Because I – again, very very hypothetically – want to mock and taunt gay people [3].  And I very explicitly carried out that mocking and taunting to shame, harass and ridicule her for being gay,because I just don’t like gay people, and want to make her life miserable.

Let’s say that the young lady went to the media – or bloggers, anyway – to try to get the CD back.  And I responded by arranging an elaborate ceremony to not only destroy the CD, but do so in a way that mocked the girl’s anguish and lampooned the stereotypes of gay, lesbian, and Gaga culture.

Under the various “bullying” laws being proposed in Minnesota and the federal level, would this be bullying?  And I mean the incident as a whole, without parsing out its individual components.

Would I be “bullying” the girl?

Please vote.

UPDATE:  And if you support the various bits of bullying legislation, please support the case that this is bullying in the comment section.

By the way, I voted “yes”.

Yes, there’s a follow-up.  Tomorrow.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes that the group “occupying” the square at Henco Gov’t Center tomorrow will be running rampant:

Well, not rampant. The County will provide portable toilets and bike racks. Alcohol is banned, smoking is allowed on sidewalks only, tents are still being negotiated.

These people fancy themselves the heirs to Kent State or Tiananmen Square – rebels, risking all sticking it to The Man. They might as well be Kiwanis.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Or, y’know, Republicans.

.One of the reasons that the left’s various attempts to counter the Tea Party have all failed, and will continue to fail, is that when you look at these hamsters, they just don’t look like America.  They look like superannnuated hippies and adenoidal poli-sci students and Macalester professors and the like.

And now, they’re bringing the magic to the Twin Cities:

Minneapolis, MN. – After this Saturday’s open forum in Stevens Square Park, through a group consensus, we now stand firm in our plans to unite at the Hennepin County

Government Plaza. This plaza is the new focal point for the OccupyMN movement.

Previously our plans were to stand in solidarity with those that occupy Wall Street by rallying at the steps of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

“Stand Firm?”  “Stand in Solidarity?”

Hey, “protesters”; Jane Fonda called; she wants her 40-year-old florid rhetoric back.

The plan has changed to reclaim the Government Plaza as the “People’s Plaza”.

It is time to establish a new system that values people over profits. We are the 99% and we are moving to reclaim our mortgaged future.

They’re going to “reclaim” big government property…for big government?

The Minnesota Occupation Begins:

October 7th, 2011 at 9:00am

The People’s Plaza (Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! – Ed)

300 South 6th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55487-0999

(Hennepin County Government Center Plaza)

I was briefly tempted to go there and videotape the Cantina Band scene that must certainly ensue.

Then I remembered – I have a family to spend time with, and an actual life.

A group of “protesters” – the left’s latest attempt to launch a counter-tea-party, largely people who are upset that Obama’s campaign promises have joint-and-severally squibbed out, and therefore insist on his re-election – are supposed to be occupying Hennepin County Government Center today.

Question:  How is that different from last week?

First things first:  Pardon the fact that I’m linking to Infowars.

But this was just too good to miss:  the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are truly, truly stupid people:

The zeal for totalitarian government amongst some of the “protesters” is shocking. One sign being carried around read, “A government is an entity which holds the monopolistic right to initiate force,” which seems a little ironic when protesters complain about being physically assaulted by police in the same breath.

One woman interviewed by Kokesh also announces her intention to help Obama to capture a second term. How can a self-proclaimed Occupy Wall Street protester simultaneously support the man whose 2008 campaign was bankrolled by Wall Street, whose 2012 campaign is reliant on Wall Street to an even greater extent, and whose cabinet was filled with Wall Street operatives?

My favorite moment – where by “favorite” I mean “scares the crap out of me” – is the nebbishy little product of, no doubt, an exquisitely expensive post-secondary education at 1:45:   “There are certain things called civil liberties which are limitations on democracy”.

So in my series on Defamation law so far, I’ve focused on the elements of the defamation case.

But what if you’re accused of defamation?  How do you defend yourself against a defamation suit?

As you may have figured out from an earlier installment, the best way is to prove that what you said is true…

II. Defenses to Defamation

A. Truth

Truth is a complete defense to a defamation claim. This is simply the flip side of the requirement that plaintiff prove the falsity of the alleged defamatory statement.

…or at least not completely false.

And when there’s some public interest to the subject – say, the target/plaintiff is some sort of public figure, or the story relates to some important public issue?   Then it gets a little more complicated.

The Supremes have spoken on this issue directly, although if you’re not a lawyer, not especially clearly.

B. The First Amendment

1. Public Officials/Public Figures: Actual Malice must be proven.

The First Amendment requires that a defamation plaintiff prove actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth when the plaintiff is a public official or public figure. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). This is a much higher burden of proof for a public figure plaintiff. Instead of showing objectively that a “reasonable person” knew or should have known the defamatory statement was false, a public figure plaintiff must prove the intent of the defendant was malicious, or that they acted with reckless disregard for the truth. This allows the defendant to prove its good faith intent and efforts as a defense.

This is a tricky bit – the kind of thing that keeps lawyers in Lexuses.

Here’s how it works:  If I claimed that Brad Carlson (of the Brad Carlson blog – a public figure, to be sure,and the Northern Alliance’s “The Closer” show), was”convicted of drunk driving” [*], and Brad shows it was false, he’d also have to prove that I was being malicious, or acting in reckless disregard of the truth.

How would that happen?

Would it be considered “malicious” if I had spent months tweeting about my anger toward and hatred of Brad [**}?

Or, perhaps, if it were pointed out to me that the “source” I’d used was bogus – like in the example we showed yesterday – and I not only refused to apologize and retract, but indeed doubled own on my story?

Well, again, that’s the kind of thing that makes some lawyers happy, wealthy people.

Therre is more to it, of course.  It’s the law; there’s always more to it:

2. Matter of Public Concern: Actual Malice must be proven.

In cases where the media defendant is treating an issue of public concern, the First Amendment also requires proof of actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth, even if the plaintiff is not a public figure. Gertz v. Robert Welch, 418 U.S. 323, 349-50 (1974). See also Hepps, 475 U.S. at 775 (In non-public concern, non-public plaintiff defamation case, First Amendment does not bar application of mere negligence standard for defamation); Dun & Bradstreet v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U.S. 749, 761 (1985) (Powell, J., concurring).

In other words, if my quip about Brad’s (hypothetical) DUI were part of a larger story – say, Brad had uncovered a massive corruption scam at the Ramsey City Hall, and the defamation was part of the larger discussion?   Well, then Brad would have to prove that I acted maliciously, and the courts might well err on the side of protecting my right to free speech.

Maybe.  Probably.

But for purposes of this discussion, let’s just say there’s no larger issue; I just wanted to bag on Brad.  Then – if you read this the quote above at face value – the fact that I’d not gotten my facts straight would be considered, on its own, as malicious.

3. Matter of Public Concern: Plaintiff Must Prove Statement is False.

Proof of falsity required when media defendant addresses topic of public concern; regardless of public/private status of plaintiff. Hepps, 475 U.S. at 775-76.

4. Actual Malice must be Shown by “Convincing Clarity.”

Where the plaintiff is a public official, he must prove actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth with “clear and convincing proof”. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 286 (1964); Gertz, 418 U.S. at 342; Hepps, 475 U.S. at 773.

That means the burden of proof would be on Brad.  And he’d pass that burden with panache, since the only place where Brad shows up as a drunk driver is here.

5. Falsity May Have to Shown by “Convincing Clarity.”

Public figure plaintiffs may have to prove falsity by “clear and convincing evidence” as protected under New York Times v. Sullivan. Sharon v. Time, Inc., 599 F. Supp. 538, 558 (S.D.N.Y. 1984); Firestone v. Time Inc., 460 F.2d 712, 722 (5th Cir. 1972), cert. den., 409 U.S. 875 (Bell, J., specially concurring).

In other words, gray areas are bad.

But there is no gray area there.  Brad never had a DUI, and there is no larger, compelling public interest in the story.

Smells like malice to me.

So go back to the first episode of this piece.  If I were to write – in earnest – that Brad “The Closer” Carlson had been convicted of drunk driving, and…:

1. …it’s clearly false (which it objective is, with no gray areas) and…
2. lt’s defamatory (and accusations of infamous crimes, including those involving potential jail time or moral turpitude are considered defamation per se under Minnesota law), and…
3. One or more third parties heard or read the accusation, and…
4. it can be shown that I made the accusation out of malice or reckless disregard for the facts at hand, and…
5. There is no larger public interest served by invoking the First Amendment to defend my right to accuse Brad of drunk driving…

…well, we have not a few lawyers tuned in here.  Do you think Brad’d have a case?

I’m just curious.

More in two weeks or so.

[*] Which he was not.  I mean, seriously.  Not at all. This is just an example.

[**] Which, to be sure, I have not.  I have nothing  but respect for my broadcast colleague.  Indeed, he’s one of the godfathers of conservative political satire in this state, via his tenure as as Protest Warrior.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Twin Cities Slut-Walk scheduled for October 1st at 2:00 p.m. at Saint Anthony Main to prove that women can walk around in skimpy clothes without being sexually assaulted.

Girls, you’re missing the point. A woman couldn’t get sexually assaulted at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon on Saint Anthony Main if she were stark naked carrying a sign begging for it. At worse, some tourists from St. Paul might take your picture to show the folks back home.

It’s not risky behavior if there’s no risk. Reschedule the event for 2:00 on a Saturday morning on the U of M campus.

I’m not sure if any of these “slut-walkers” have turned up on First Avenue North on any given Friday night in the summer.  It’s kinda passé, I’d think.  But what do I know.

For the past week that I’ve been writing this series on defamation law in Minnesota, I’ve been focusing on the letter and spirit (as captured in case law) of the law.

Today, I’m going to go down a tangent, and talk about the mechanics of the law – specifically, how legal records work.

Or, rather, how they don’t work.

When you to google and search, for example, for “DUI Records Minnesota“, you get quite a few sites; once you get out of the ad hits with the pink backgrounds, you are helpfullly presented with  quite a few options purporting to allow you to “search Minnesota DUI records online!”.

Sounds promising!  And after all, isn’t that the wonder of the Internet? That all information is instantly available online?

I tried the first one after the ad links; “duirecords.org“, which promises that you can “Search MN DUI Public Arrest Records Online”.  And just to be curious, I typed in my own name.

And I got back something that made my heart sink into my stomach:

…that’s me!

But then I thought about it for a moment.  I’ve never had a DUI.  I’ve never had any form of impaired driving contact with the police – I’ve never been pulled over on suspicion of any sort of drunk driving.  Nothing,  Zero.  Zip.  Never.

There’s a reason for that.  I don’t drive drunk.  Indeed, I rarely have more than two drinks at a sitting.

And yet this site – this site that purports to “Search Public Records” to return DUI convictions – was saying that I’d had a DUI!

So I wondered – given that nearly 10% of Minnesotans do have a drunk driving record, what other Minnesotans have been convicted of driving under the influence?

I picked a few names, completely at random:  I started with Brian “Saint Paul” Ward, of Fraters Libertas, a bunch of known drinkers:

Wow.

Next,  I tried my friend and radio cohort, Ed Morrissey, who has publicly disclosed he lives in Eagan.

And I was shocked:

Holy crap.  You think you know a guy!

Next – since our last gubernatorial race was settled by a bogus “DUI” charge against Tom Emmer, I thought I’d see if what was fair for the goose were fair for the gander.  Does Mark Dayton have a “drunk driving record?”

Wow!  Someone tell the media!

But I’m starting to smell a rat.  It almost looks as if this site will turn up a record on almost anyone.

I tried Archbishop John C. Nienstedt, the supreme poobah (I’m a little fuzzy on the terms of the Catholic hierarchy) of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and Saint Paul:

And, finally, just out of a fit of untrammelled serendipity, I entered the name of my favorite Twin Cities’ blogger, a person whose keen insights, nimble wit and sparkling writing have enlivened many an idle morning, Professor William Gleason, a chemistry professor at the U of M:

Note:  Someone pointed out that I got Gleason’s middle initial wrong.  No, I did not!  Go search the “database”; there are a plethora of William Gleasons out there!  Dozens!  Including the one with Professor and Blogger Gleason’s middle initial!

It  seems everyone has a DUI!

So I clicked on the “results” link:

What? I’ve gotta pay for public records?

Well,no.  The site above is an advertising site.  Indeed, it’s a form of spam.

Indeed, if you google virtually any form of legal activity – divorce, criminal records, bankruptcy – you will find pages and pages of these spam and scam sites, all designed to get you to pay money for what are, at most, slightly repackaged Google searches.

What “duirecords.org” does is take virtually any input you give it, run a search on, say, Google, spits back the results to make it look like it has something, sucks you in to a link to make you pay for…

…well, that’s as far as I pushed it.  I’m not going to pay to find out.

Now, you can get public records – or at least, names and charges and dates – from the official Minnesota court records (you have to click “Begin Search”, and accept the disclaimer).  Wherein you’ll find that in the past 15 years, there has been no “Mitchell P. Berg” convicted of DUI anywhere in Minnesota – and that I’ve been pulled over for expired tabs and forgetting my insurance card.

Expensive? Dumb?  Sure – but not DUI.

———-

The takeaway is this:  Say I were to write “John Doe, Age 46, of Mazeppa, was convicted of DUI” based on the output of the “DuiRecords.org” website…:

I specifically disclaim any insinuation that any Mr. Doe of Mazeppa has ever committed any crime, by the way. This is just an example.

… believing it to be a genuine public records website, rather than, as we’ve shown, an advertising site that turns up “records” on anyone.  

And ten, say, someone wrote to tell me, specifically, that “your “source” on Mr. Doe is an ad site, not a source of actual public records?”

And yet, I doubled down on my story – redoubling my assertion that Mr. Doe had been convicted of DUI?  Rather than retracting it and apologizing to Mr. Doe?

Well, that could fairly be seen as “failing to take reasonable care” to ensure that a defamatory statement (remember, accusations of infamous crimes are defamation per se under Minnesota law) is accurate”.

OK.  There is no serendipity at all in this series.  There’s a point.

We’re getting to it.

Since I started this series a couple of weeks back, we’ve enjoyed a fascinating journey of learning – in this case, about what “defamation” – libel and slander – really really mean.

Here’s an interesting bit; as we noted yesterday, “false” can mean either “what the defendant said is false”, or “the defendant, with reasonable care, should have known it was false”.  Indeed, the case law makes it pretty clear:

D. Negligence Is Standard Of Liability

In Minnesota, the defendant is liable if it “knew or should have known in the exercise of reasonable care” that the defamatory statement was false. Jadwin, supra. This is the standard formulation for liability based on negligence, that is, liability arising from failure to take due care.

This is a low standard of liability.

In other words, if you accuse someone of having committed an infamous crime because you didn’t take the reasonable care to know that it was not factual, you are liable.

But what about free speech?

However, First Amendment considerations substantially limit the application of this standard.

So the courts will err on the side of free speech if there is any way to do so.

Still – if I were to write “Wang Fui Schlabotnik of Eden Prairie has a child porn conviction”, and Mr. Schlabotnik does not, Mr. Schlabotnik’s attorney might well argue that the First Amendment, free speech, and the rights of an open, unfettered press (in all its forms) aren’t served by my lying about his client’s criminal record – and defamation needs to be false, and false claims of infamous crimes are “defamation per se” under Minnesota Law (as we discussed last week).

And I suspect he’d have a point.

OK.  I’ll cop to it. This series on the legalities behind defamation is not entirely an academic exercise, and it’s really not completely a flight of blitheful serendipity.

But there’s plenty of time to talk about that.

99 weeks, to be exact.

More later.

In the first couple parts of this series – admittedly something I’m writing out of pure unvarnished serendipity – I noted that Minnesota recognizes “defemation” when someone says something false and defamatory about someone, to someone else.

Today, we move on to the definition of “false”.  From this very useful site, which has been my source for much of this series, we will look – in effect, and with a nod to Bill Clinton – into what the meaning of the term “isn’t” is.

C. The defendant knew or should have known that the communication was false

Defamation allows recovery for unfair damage to reputation. As a consequence, if true statements are made about a person which damage their reputation, they cannot maintain a lawsuit.

That’s the first thing they teach you when you start learning how to be a reporter; make sure you’re writing the truth (or at least writing from verifiable fact).  And be ready to support the veracity of what you write; take good notes, and don’t toss them when the story’s done.  Have good solid cites for anything in contention.  Uses sources that you’re sure won’t burn you, and verify even the trustworthy ones. Don’t be a dummy.

Because the surest defense in a defamation suit is the truth.

It hasn’t always been this way:

This is a relatively recent development. One origin of libel and slander laws was a criminal cause of action by the English Crown used to silence its critics; hence, it was the truth of the alleged libel which provoked the lawsuit.

And this – the tradition of suiing over embarassing but true information – is one of the things that makes media work in the UK such a nasty, brutish business; it’s very easy to prove defamation.  And the absolutism with which our system approaches free speech (except when liberals are talking about talk radio) is at least in part a direct result of that tradition.

It’s part of Minnesota’s judicial canon.  I’m going to add just a little bit of emphasis to the following:

For example, the Minnesota Supreme Court has held:

We hold that a private individual may recover actual damages for a defamatory publication upon proof that the defendant knew or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known that the defamatory statement was false.

Remember those two bolded bits.  They may become important later.

Wait – I said this whole series was unvarnished serendipity, didn’t I?

Well, remember them anyway.

The conduct of defamation defendants will be judged on whether the conduct was that of a reasonable person under the circumstances.

Jadwin v. Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co., 367 N.W.2d 476, 491 (Minn. 1985). Other cases follow this reasoning. See LeDoux v. Northwest Publications, Inc., 521 N.W.2d 59, 67 (Minn. App. 1994) (“In order for a statement to be defamatory . . . it must be false.”); Janklow v. Newsweek, Inc., 759 F.2d 644, 648 (8th Cir. 1985), cert. den., 479 U.S. 883 (1987) (“Libel, by definition, consists of publication of a false and unprivileged fact.”).

The article takes great pains to estabish that falsity is a big-kahuna element of defamation..  It’s important.

This part is also pretty vital: the whole statement needs to be false.

Minor inaccuracies are not subject to defamation claims if the overall substance of the statement is true. “The plaintiff cannot succeed in meeting the burden of proving falsity by showing that only that the statement is not literally true in every detail. If the statement is true in substance, inaccuracies of expression or detail are immaterial.” Jadwin, supra, 390 N.W.2d at 441.

In other words, if I wrote “Todd Yamamoto, a Vikings fan from Edina, crashed into a tree”, and Mr. Yamamoto did crash into a tree, but was a Packers fan who is mortified to be associated with the purple and gold?  The suit is likely doomed!

But if I wrote “Bucky Yamamoto, Vikings Fan from Edina, crashed into a tree because he was free-basing with a drunk 16 year old girl”, and there was no freebase and the girl was 35 and his wife?  That’d be a problem.

(Dear Bucky Yamamoto – I don’t know that you exist. If you do, my apologies).

No Defamation by Implication. Failure to report all the facts may lead to a defamatory conclusion by the reader. But unless the overall substance of the statement can be proven false, no defamation claim will arise. “[T]he cause of action known as defamation by implication . . . is not recognized in Minnesota.” Kortz v. Midwest Communications, Inc., 20 Media Law Rep. (BNA) 1860, 1865 (Ramsey County Dist. Ct. 1992). A public official may not maintain a defamation by implication claim. Diesen v. Hessberg, 455 N.W.2d 446, 451 (Minn. 1990).

This was one that surprised, and sometimes infuriates me.  I thought the Strib’s Rochelle Olson defamed Alan Fine back in 2006, when it reported all the “facts” about his ancient domestic abuse arrest except the ones that could have exculpated him in the public eye, just in time for the election.  Not so; Ms. Olson and the Strib got the basic facts right; they just selected or omitted true facts in such a way as to ensure and maximize political damage to Fine and his campaign.

Slimy?  Sure – but not actionable.

Oh, the bit says that the defendant “knows or should have known” that their allegedly defamatory communication was false.

That means if they knew it was false, or they should have after taking reasonable care.

For example, say that I said that “Carrie Ann Trzeszelewska, age 22, of Forest Lake got a DUI”, and someone wrote me to say that there were two Carrie Trzeszelewskas – one age 22, that I wrote about and another woman, Carrie Raye Trzeszelewska, age 44 of Hugo, that actually had the DUI?  And that there was a state website where I could have checked that fact, either before writing the statement (as I should have) or as part of an immediate and humble retraction (as would have been the proper Plan B), but that I disregarded because I either didn’t care or was positive I had the right Carrie Trzeszelewska?

That might cause me a legal problem.

As I said, this entire series is borne of unvarnished serendipity.

OK.  Not entirely.

More tomorrow..

…is pretty perfectly defined by the flap over North Carolina Bev Perdue’s comment about “suspending elections” for two years.

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them – whatever decisions they make – to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that,” Perdue said.

“You want people who don’t worry about the next election,” she continued.

Of course it was hyperbole.

The dumb part?  That a bunch of politicians, relieved of the pressure of having to justify their political existences to voters, would “solve” anything.

Reading Derek Thompson’s piece on  “Millennals” in the Atlantic, it was easy to feel depressed about the future of “Generation Y”.  I had to keep remind myself “watch the selection bias – watch the selection bias…”

And eventually my patience was rewarded; I’ knew we’d eventually find a kid who didn’t make me want to slap them:

“You just have to buckle down and stop whining.”

I’m a Gen Y’er and feel pretty content with American society. I went to a run-of-the-mill liberal arts college (without a prestigious scholarship), majored in the humanities, and set off to work. Before I started graduate school, I had several jobs, some good, some not so good. But I reminded myself that my sole goal in life at this point should be to make as much money as I can and pay off loans.

And, y’know, learn to be marketable – but why quibble?

This piece makes it seem as though Gen Y’ers are all altruistic academic/athletic super workers, and they simpler aren’t. Many Gen Y’ers complain about the lack of jobs, but refuse jobs they don’t want to do. It’s equally dumb to apply to jobs you’re not qualified for (just because you have a college degree doesn’t automatically qualify you to run a retail store, for instance. Granted, it’s not rocket science, but it’s understandable why store managers would want to hire professional and mature workers with experience).

After reading some of the other Gen-Y’ers, I’m amazed that one of them recognized this.

I understand that many regions are more depressed than others, but I still feel there are plenty of jobs out there to keep one busy. I washed dishes, I cleaned cars, I dug ditches, waited tables, and was even lucky enough to score a couple of high(er) paying internships at respectable firms. You just have to buckle down and stop whining.

Words to remember at every stage of your life, whatever your generation.

More later…

The part about the GOP victory in NY09 on Tuesday that the mainstream media are carefully skirting – many  more socially-conservative Jews oppose gay marriage:.

Voters interviewed Wednesday pointed to their opposition to same-sex marriage and Turner’s pro-Israel politics as factors that swayed them to pick a Republican. It was the first time in nearly a century that the GOP has won the Ninth Congressional District, which includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

Research and polling on gay marriage at the polls varies widely – some say voters oppose it, others differ – everyplace but one; the actual polls.

So far, anyway.

Senator Roger Chamberlain writes:

I assume all you have heard Jimmy Hoffa’s comments regarding 90% of Americans who are not in the union.

My humble observation:

1. Hoffas comments, included – “War on working people”, “We’re your soldiers”, “Fight” and of course referred to Americans who don’t share his opinions as “Son’s of a bitches”

2. The President said nothing

3. The press has said little to nothing

And pick your lefty pundit – they’re either strenuously avoiding the subject, or telling themselves it’s the GOP’s problem (if I could have a nickel for every lefty tweet I read that was some variation of “ReTHUGlicons are weting teh pants over Hoffa! LOLZ”, I could retire early).

4. Our opponents agenda should be clear

5. Our opponents tactics, what they intend to do, should be crystal clear. It should no longer be a mystery to anyone.

6. We should make sure others have no illusions about the challenges we face

The biggest challenge we face?  We – the thinking, responsible Americans who make this country actually work – have to share a country with a movement whose intellectual and moral leaders are Jimmy Hoffa and Robert Espinosa.

Mexican cops cross border, shoot and pilf American hunters:

An ABC-7 viewer contacted the station early Thursday, saying her son, husband and friends were hunting on the Rio Grande levy on the U.S. side when men on the Mexico side fired shots, narrowly missing them. She said more men on the Mexico side drove up with automatic weapons and into to U.S. side. She said the armed men fired weapons and stole hunters’ chairs and drove back into Mexico.

Mosier said Border Patrol agents and Texas Parks and Wildlife officers were sent to the area immediately.

“Upon approach, our agents observed those subjects (Mexican officers) who committed the incursion return back to Mexico,” Mosier said.

Forget “high tech fences”;  We need to close our border with minefields, F16s flying with bombs, and machine guns.

We are no longer served as a nation by our open – no, porous – border policy.

An actor friend of mine tells me that the hardest roles to play are “dumb” people.  It’s easy to play the less-intelligent too broadly, like a bunch of “dumb people” cliches.  Making them sympathetic, nuanced and interesting?  That’s hard.

Parody is kinda the same.

The Twin Cities conservative blogosphere has more than its fair share of brilliant satirists and parodists – people who attack with humor, and by getting inside their targets’ styles, peccadillos…heads for comedic yet pointed effect.

The roll call is long and distinguished; “Sisyphus”, “Nihilist in Golf Pants”, “Wintryminx”, Brian “Saint Paul” Ward, Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci and Ryan “Dirty Shroom” Rhodes are all known quantities who dominate in print (and conservatives going by the names “Spotty”, “MNob” and “Phoenix Woman”, their true identities unknown, do spot-on sendups of smug, overpraised, overwrought “progressive” bloggers); Tom “Swiftee” Swift is by far the most talented, iconoclastic visual satirist in the Twin Cities; and of course, James Lileks is the Segovia of multimedia satire.

Doing good adversarial satire is like playing a dumb person; it’s easy to do badly, and very hard to do well.

So I’m puzzled as to who wrote this Strib parody masquerading as “op-ed”, entitled “The subtle racism around us (even in a cup of coffee)”.  With a stable of satirists like we have in the Twin Cities, we could certainly come up with something less over-broad and hamfisted.

For starters, the “writer” is “named” “Hinda Mandell”, and is purportedly an “assistant professor of Communications at Rochester Institute of Technology”, who graduated from Edina High in 1998.  Why not name “her” “Golda Schimmelfarb-Williams, adjunct visiting scholar in Victimization Studies at Radcliffe”, while you’re at it?  Have her come from North Oaks? Maybe have her complain about her asthma and constantly ask if it’s too cold in the room and start sentences with “oy vey” before nattering about white privilege?   If you’re going to run with the cliché, why not go all-in?

Cliché is not satire, and stereotype is not parody.

Anyway – with that out of the way, the piece is about that ultimate “progressive” cliché, hYpStR coffee!

What do you do when a favorite coffee shop features various coffee blends with racially tinged names?

Just a tangent here; twenty years ago, when gourmet coffee shops were a new thing, and I would order a cup at the Dunn Brothers by Macalester College.  And I’d occasionally ask – “are all you liberals aware that the coffee you’re ordering, from Ethiopia and Java and the Celebes and Peru and Venezuela, supports a lot of ugly, authoritarian regimes?”

They’d stare blankly.

Just a tangent.  Apropos nothing.

Emphasis is added below as “Ms. Mandell” continues:

I was sitting in this beloved joint in New York recently, with its hipster-hippie ambiance, when I overheard a conversation. I’m convinced that the barista and customer, both white, were oblivious to the racially charged nature of their utterances.

Asked the customer: “What type of roast is the Jungle Roast?”

The barista, who looked on the younger side of 20, answered: “It’s a darker roast.”

I sat there flabbergasted. These two women were engaging in a practical conversation — is the coffee a light or dark brew?

But because of the name of the roast — and its richer flavor — they were in fact reinforcing the notion of the jungle and its people as “dark.”

Now, this is funny – but pretty rote.  An overweening liberal petty academic,finding racism in coffee?  It’s freshman level stuff.

Perhaps you think I’m making too much of a simple exchange.

Oy.  To the serious parodist, saying “maybe you think I’m making too much of this” is like waving a sign saying “I’M PRETENDING TO HAVE THE VAPORS FOR COMEDIC EFFECT.  PLEASE LAUGH NOW”.

And, unfortunately, it’s a rookie flub that telegraphs a descent into hamfisted absurdity rather than good parody:

But consider, too, that while eavesdropping I was sipping on a luscious coffee blend that the shop calls Jamaica Me Crazy. It’s seasoned with fresh cinnamon. Maybe that’s what they drink in Jamaica? I don’t know, since I’ve never been there.

But I do know that if the coffee was labeled Protestants A Plenty, Catholics Be Crazy, Jews be Jivin’ or Blacks Be Boppin’, there would be an uproar. Of course, Protestants and Catholics, as part of the religious mainstream, do not typically face the brunt of prejudice in the United States.

As I drank my French Roast this morning, trying to recover from last night’s Irish coffee and Swedish meatballs, I shook my head.  Too obvious.

And most know that intolerance against Jews and blacks is not publicly accepted. Blatant bigotry is easy to spot, while covert bigotry — where an entire group is used to sell coffee — can be easier to stomach and therefore ignore.

Right there – that’s the bit that threw it over the top.

The key to great parody is painting a picture of your target that is just sympathetic enough to be plausible.  It’s the touch that separates a good parody – Dwight Schrute, for example – from a bad one, like Stephen Colbert.  Is Hinda Mandell sympathetic?  About as sympathetic as a turd on your kitchen floor – a turd that nags and hectors you about the racial overtones of the dark stain you used on your bedroom floor!

It’s been nearly a decade since I learned one of my biggest life lessons. Difference is all about perception.

For instance, perceiving that coffee that is roasted to a darker hue is “dark”?

Seirously – calling this “satire” is like calling someone who walks onstage and bellows “Durrrr! I am teh DUMMY!” “acting”.  Whoever is writing this “Mandell” character just swerved past parody into group defamation.

I mean, how is this – “Durr, I am a spoiled, cossetted pseudo-academic who draws lessons that impugn others from my own provincialism!” – any different?

Do I embarrass the cafe manager by saying something? Do I become complicit by ordering a medium Jamaica Me Crazy with steamed milk, please?

Yes, unknown parodist – we got it.  “Hinda Mandell” is tortured by the racism in the mundane.  Let it go.  I’ve given up on finding a reason to like “her”; I’d settle for believing “she” was plausible.

Deciphering these messages might be the easier part. Figuring out what to do with them afterward is a lot harder.

The scary part is, someone apparently wants us to believe we have an entire academic discipline to help people “figure out” “hidden racist messages” in everyday objects – if you believe that “Hinda Mandell” is real.

But I think we all know better.

The Star/Tribune Editorial Board puts the happiest, rah-rah-local-team-iest face they can on the aftermath of “Operation Fast And Furious”, the “Justice” Department’s infamous “gun-running sting” that morphed into an organized attempt to slander America’s gun owners and gun dealers to undercut the Second Amendment movement – and tried to play the issue against the GOP.

They start out with the facts, more or less…:

The agency’s “Operation Fast and Furious” was supposed to monitor illegal gun sales from small-time gun buyers to large weapons traffickers, but after the sting operation failed an ATF analyst concluded that about 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons linked to the operation have not been recovered.

That’s one way of looking at it.

The other way – and the one that I’m pretty well convinced history will find accurate – was that the program was supposed to create a trail of guns from small American gun dealers to the narcotraficantes, that would allow the Administration to step in in 2012 and declare they were shocked, shocked to see a trail of firearms from Texas to the carterls.  This, of course, would allow them to frame the “bitter gun-clingers” of the Second Amendment movement, in classic Alinsky style, as aiders, abetters and profiteers from Mexico’s anarchy.

The Strib starts with some bipartisan gurglings…

It’s been reassuring to see dogged Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley take a lead role in the congressional investigation. While Jones, who will continue to serve as U.S. attorney in Minnesota, works to straighten out the agency’s internal operations, the American people deserve a thorough review of what went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious.

…which lead to the paper’s real goal; finding some way of tying this fiasco to the GOP and the Right (emphasis added):

[It’s] already clear that the ATF has suffered from being without a permanent director since 2006, when Congress began requiring Senate confirmation of the position.

President Obama nominated Andrew Traver, special agent in charge of ATF’s Chicago field division, in November 2010, but like other candidates he’s been opposed by the too-powerful gun lobby.

And there you have it.  For the “crime” of demanding better accountability in the leadership of the BATFE – a government agency with a decades-long history of colossal, epic, face-palming incompetence and politicization aimed at law-abiding gun owners – the Strib editorial board wants it to share in the responsibility for a bureaucratic cluster-hug designed entirely to slander that same movement.

The BATF doesn’t need Minnesota’s US Attorney to fix it. It needs to be shut down, its staff scattered to the four corners of the country, and have its offices demolished and the land beneath it salted.

The Strib editorial board has less interest in “fixing the BATF” than it has in cutting down Barack Obama’s opponents – or at least limiting damate to their President.

Remember last spring, when the Dems lept up and down like organ-grinder monkeys on espresso, claiming that Supreme Court of Wisconsin (SCOW) Justice David Prosser had “choked” fellow SCOW justice Ann Walsh Bradley?

Leftybloggers will no doubt hope you don’t.  I’ll refresh everyone’s memory here and here.

Was it 1000% bullcrap?  Hey, it was a liberal meme; I’d only be amazed if it wasn’t.

Because it was.

Neither Supreme Court Justice David Prosser nor fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will face criminal charges for a June altercation that broke out as the judges were considering Gov. Scott Walker’s union bargaining law, a special prosecutor has determined.

In an interview, Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett steered resolutely clear of specifics about the reasons for her decision.

“The totality of the facts and the circumstances and all of the evidence that I reviewed did not support my filing criminal charges,” Barrett said Thursday.

Which is, I suspect, lawyer-talk for “there was no there, there, but I’ll be damned if I”m going to piss off a SCOW justice”.

So there you go, lefties.  On to your next facile group slander!

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes…:

Somali immigrants not doing the jobs Americans won’t do, shutting down the assembly line in the refrigerator factory for prayer during work hours.

What we have here is a failure to assimilate.

From the PiPress piece:

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday that more than a dozen employees of the appliance manufacturer Electrolux in St. Cloud are again being denied proper prayer breaks during the Ramadan fast.

The employees are participating in the latest claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to the Associated Press…This year, the company reduced the length of the meal break. Muslim employees say they no longer have enough time to break their fast and complete prayers after sunset.

Discrimination?  Well…:

Electrolux responded Monday by saying that, in advance of Ramadan this year, the company proposed three possible revised meal and break schedules and put in place the schedule preferred by the majority of the employees.

“Electrolux seeks to accommodate the religious needs of all of its employees,” the company said in a statement.

I’m seeing a real opportunity here for a Muslim parts subcontractor…

And seriously – I am amazed that refrigerators are still built in the US.

Poor “Progressives”.

They can’t win elections.  Their politicians can’t do budgets (or, if they do, can never, ever make them work.  Even with years of unfettered control (from 2008 through 2010),  they can’t do anything useful with the economy.

And now even their protests suck:.

“We’re trying to find a caddy,” said a protester posing as Boehner. The Boehner impersonator stood beside impersonators of Minnesota Reps. Michele Bachmann, Erik Paulsen, Chip Cravaack and John Kline.

The “impersonators” were actually people wearing large cardboard cutouts of unflattering photos of the various politicians’ heads, looking like they were cut out from “Dump Bachmann” and blown up.  After eight years of constant caterwauling, they can’t even muster the energy to do those annoying papier-mache puppets anymore.

Cravaack wryly noted…:

“The people that we were speaking with were the job creators. They’re the people who employ Minnesotans,” Cravaack said of the attendees. “So we’re asking the question to them, ‘What is it going to take for you to invest in yourselves and create jobs?'”

He added that businesses are skittish about making that investment with the threat of new taxes and regulations from the Obama administration.

“Taxing companies right now in a recession is not going to create jobs,” Cravaack said. “It’s going to take jobs away.”

But to the progressive worldview, it’s government’s job to create jobs.

How?

By hiring lots of people who’ve never used shovels for a living for “shovel-ready” jobs? (What the hell is a “shovel-ready” job?  Outside of patching streets, what job in the world today actually uses shovels?)

By waving the magic government wand, perhaps?

They can’t even think of original chanting points:

Protesters accused the Minnesota congressmen of meeting with wealthy donors while proposing cuts to the middle class and not creating jobs. One sign read “People before profits,” and the crowd chanted “Hey-hey-ho-ho, corporate greed has got to go.”

Criminy – even Saul Alinsky is rolling in his grave.

Let’s ask some rhetorical questions.

1. If Code Pink got as exercised over torturing context as they did over torturing terrorists, would they protest against leftybloggers?
2. If liberal bloggers and media couldn’t express themselves in terms of framing the opposition, would they all go mute?
3. If liberal bloggers couldn’t argue from false premises – indeed, strawmen full of words and ideas that they jam forcibly (rhetorically) down their opponents’ throats, could they argue at all?
4. If the “loaded question without any evidence to lead one to the question” were a death-penalty offense, would the morgues overflow quickly with leftybloggers, or would they overflow very very quickly?

Apropos nothing [*], Eric Austen from “Outstate Report” writes in re a piece by Walter Scott Hudson that appeared in True North and, in so doing, hits all four of the above in a piece called “What Is This True North Contributor Suggesting? Denying Treatment To Those Unable To Pay?“.

For entertainment purposes, I’ll note (in red!) which of the four austen-tatious bits of rhetorical excess Austen is indulging in as we go through the article.  Keep score at home!

(Yep – the title itself counts as [1, 2, 3 and 4], a rare quad-fecta!)

All in all this post from contributor, Walter Scott Hudson, is standard conservative rhetoric about how bad Obamacare is and how awesome it is that one Appeals Court in the United States [3 – of course there’s “one” court; they dont’ travel or rule in packs!] struck down its individual mandate. Yet there is an instructive piece that everyone ought to read and digest because it speaks to the extremism that has become mainstream conservative thought:

If a conservative orders a pizza in the woods, and Eric Austen isn’t there to hear it, is the conservative still “extreme?”

Sure – but only when you accept Austen’s loaded, strawman-via-framing premises.

He quotes Hudson:

In other words, citizens must be forced to purchase health insurance to pay for services which hospitals are forced to provide. Force begets force.

Solving every problem – from developing a Java widget to repairing society – requires thought on two levels; “Policy” – the theories, principles and goals you set to solve the problem, and “mechanism”, the mechanics and blocking-and-tackling that actually implement the Policy.

As a matter of libertarian-conservative policy, forcing people and institutions to do things is bad.  The individual healthcare mandate has been spawning arguments for decades, long preceding Obama.

I know Walter Hudson. He’s a pretty libertarian guy, and it shows, as the quote continues:

This brings into question the whole notion of economic mandates. Clearly, despite the political class’s reverence for “compromise,” this is an either-or proposition. Either you believe people ought to be forced into economic transactions, or you don’t. The moment we accepted the premise that the needs of the sick and injured place some claim upon the property and labor of health care providers, we created the problem which the individual mandate is intended to solve.

Which refers to an iron-clad law of conservative policy; any government attempt to make something worth other than what people will naturally pay for it (in this case, free) has unintended (?) consequences.

Austen:

Is Hudson suggesting that we shouldn’t force hospitals to treat the sick and injured if they are unable to afford treatment? That’s certainly how it reads to me [1, 3, 4].

And it’s expecting a bit much to ask Austen to read anything a conservative writes in the spirit in which it’s intended.

He’s suggesting stating that the government’s attempt to force the availability of health care has the “unintended” consequence of making health care less affordable, and in turn “forcing” the government to coerce people into paying something other than they naturally would for health care -which, predictably, in turn, will cause other “unintended” consequences.

I’d also suspect Hudson knows there are better ways to treat the uninsured than compelling health care providers – some of them, anyway – to work for free.  And there, you’re getting into “mechanism”, which is another entire discussion.

Modern conservatives, mostly in an attempt to oppose anything this President does  [1, 2,3]…

Let’s stop to demand a little honesty from Austen, here; it’s not this President.  It’d be any President that sought to nationalize a sixth of the economy, whether it was John Kerry or Ralph Nader or Algore or Hillary Clinton.

I’m going to add a little emphasis to this next bit:

…have taken their economic “freedom” message to an extreme as evidenced by this post. They know[3] that without the individual mandate, bringing down health costs simply will not work in the free market UNLESS we make that market even more free and allow the denial of services to those who cannot afford them.

Rule of thumb: if you read any sentence that starts with an accusatory “they know that…”, demand to see evidence of clairvoyance.

Austen certainly can’t provide any.  Conservatives know that health care can be made affordable; it won’t be easy, and it’ll upset the applecarts of a few entitled classes along the way, but it can be done.  Aggressive use of self-managed care, health savings accounts, retail medicine, and de-emphasis on third-party money will bring down the cost; so will ditching some of the other – ta daaaa! – mandates that government has forced on providers (mandatory mental health coverage,

While it is certainly true that allowing the health industry to deny care to those unable to pay will bring down costs, I doubt very much that Americans would agree to such a society no matter how much “freedom” it brings[1].

No kidding!

But that’s not the society that Hudson – or any conservative – is asking people to agree to.

As a matter of principle – “policy” – we oppose mandates.  We do favor – indeed, require – some creative thinking on how to solve the health insurance problem.

And if the best the left can do is concoct sinister motivations from context-mangled hijackings of high-level policy statements, then perhaps it’s time we got our shot; we can’t do any worse than the crowd in Washington, Saint Paul and everywhere else.

(more…)

..that the government and left (pardon the redundancy) consider me, Mitch Berg, mild-mannered midwestern schlump and father of two, a “terrorist” these days.

• I am a bitter, gun-clinging Jebus freak: Janet Napolitano has already told the police to be looking out for us.
• I’m a Second Amendment activist: Because Goddess knows the nation’s law-abiding gun owners are getting ready to start mowing down the innocent.
• Pro-life!: Fear me, oh innocent!
• Pro-limited government: I’m a Tenther!  I could start blowing things up to educate people about the reality of enumerated powers!

That’s “terrorist” – as in “one who uses terror to cow people into accepting his agenda”.

Who knew?

When government makes its’ mission to be more onerous to the law-abiding than to the enemy, we are all the enemy.