Tom Shales goes all Dexter Filkin on us

Tom Shales writes about last night's Oscar awards show:

His [Robin William's] comedy routine included some of the material that had been in the song -- jokes about comic-book and fairy-tale characters having scandalous private lives -- but the song itself was gone, revealing ABC censors to be chickenhearted in the way that almost all censors are, and handing a victory to the pressure groups, one of which recently charged that the popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants was sending out secret pro-homosexual messages in his animated adventures.

Holy lack of nuance, batman. Talk about cementing a myth through either intentional malice or intellectual laziness. Which are you, Mr. Shales, contemptuous of people who identify themselves as being family advocates, or simply a useful idiot for parroting (and in this case expanding) harmful myths?

Everything in the quote above is false. First, it is not a "victory" for anyone for Robin Williams to speak his idiotic bit instead of sing it. Second, there is no pressure group which recently charged that Spongebob (Is it really SongeBob instead of Spongebob?) was sending out secret pro-homosexual messages in his animated adventures. Name that group, Dex, I mean Tom. Show me that quote. Show me that press release. Show me that interview.

Instead, The American Family Association pointed out that there is an interest group the We Are Family Foundation. It is a pro-homosexual advocacy group, by Dobson's account. So far, who cares. The foundation had produced a little music video that starred basically every puppet and cartoon character in the world in it, among them Big Bird, Barney, and Bob the Builder. And the other Bob, Spongebob, that is. So the AFA, essentially, "hey this group is using kid-friendly characters to open the door to discuss the goals and values of the producers of the video."

Maybe, maybe not. That might concern you, it might not. Odds are, it wouldn't concern you, as there is no greater taboo in America today than to fail to just adore all things gay, especially in pre-schoolers. Unless the gay thing is Jeff Gannon. Then you must shun and abhor the gayness and not allow it to ask questions in a press conference. Or something. It's confusing, really.

In any event, Shales takes the occassion of reporting a movie awards show (in which religious people had to watch themselves be made fun of in various ways) to, well, further demonize religious people through the clever journalistic technique of lying.

There's nothing new there. Hollywood, if it met me in person, would hate me with a burning hate that could barely be described.

morose moments

I'd hoped to write a bunch this weekend for Free Market News. I didn't. I'll get around to it on Monday. I'm bummed that all of a sudden a google search of courtzero.org turns up this ridiculous blog before it turns up the actual courtzero.org. What is that about? Yahoo and Dogpile don't have that problem. I suppose it could be because google owns blogspot, or blogger, or whatever it is really called.

Coming soon: my exclusive interview with the attorney who recently argued for land owner rights before the Supreme Court, my follow up to the Texas infant euthenasia case in which I'm the first to disclose that there is a facility willing to take the baby, Sun Hudson, and a longer story on how the Terri Schiavo case is and has destroyed my professional life.

Until, and if, I write those things, goodnight.

You do not even exist until government acknowledges you

An interesting article in WorldNetDaily raises questions as to whether or not United Nations officials are even remotely aware of what some of the things they say sound like.

Given that there are many who are, shall we say, skeptical about the UN, its intentions, and its competency, and given that there are those who are wary of a global government, why would the United Nations actually name a program "Write Me Down -- Make Me Real"?

That isn't an ill-advised unscripted statement; that's the planned name of a program to register ever child born in the world. Why? To make those children real. Holy cow. What does that do to the notion that one is endowed by his or her Creator with certain rights...including the right to be alive? It's pretty much a blatant statement on the part of the UN that nothing granted by the Creator shall be acknowledged until they say so. Even for the Creatorphobes out there, surely you would want to have some say in whether or not you are even "real" without having to sign up with the UN for "real" status.

Wow. Here are some heartwarming comments from Global Arbiter of Your Realness, Desmond Tutu:

"It is, in a very real sense, a matter of life and death,'' [Tutu] said at a New York news conference.

I don't like that. Just in case you missed it in the title of the program, you're being told that the balance between life and death, or perhaps the value of life in the first place, depends on UN recognition. We already know that that is true. In the eyes of the UN, just as an example, those slaughtered in the south of Sudan do not exist, or warrant acknowledgement.

''The unregistered child is a nonentity. The unregistered child does not exist. How can we live with the knowledge that we could have made a difference?"

Does that make it clear to you? Unregistered = Not Existing. I'm sorry, and I'm not one who lives in fear of the UN or runs around screaming about One World Government and 666 and such, but it's not me saying these words. It's the UN, and would could they possibly mean by that, other than to mean "You do not exist until we say so." And I don't even know what the last sentence means. What "difference" is it that you think you need to make in the life of every single living human on the planet? And by the way, I don't care if you can't live without the knowledge that you could have "made a difference". That's really your hangup, Mr. Global Verifier of Realness.

That's a whole lot of authority to be grabbing for an outfit that does almost nothing correctly, don't you think?

Terri gets two more days

If you're reading this, you probably already know it, but Judge Greer extended his stay on the order allowing removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube by 48 hours, until 1700 Friday.

That gives two more days to write to Florida's leaders calling for them to convene a special legislative session and reform the guardianship laws in a manner that would save Terri.

Here is the email page for the sponsor of HB701 (designed to stop euthenasia by starvation)
www.myfloridahouse.gov/email_representative_form.aspx?id=4200

Here are the members of the appropriate committee. You can follow their names to email links.
www.myfloridahouse.gov/committees_detail.aspx?id=2262&sessionID=38

The speaker of the Florida House is Allan Bense
speaker@myfloridahouse.gov

The president of the Florida Senate is Tom Lee
lee.tom.web@flsenate.gov

The governor of Florida is Jeb Bush
jeb.bush@myflorida.com

Be nice. Be respectful. Be specific. You want a special session and you want the law changed. No tricks with police or DCF. Just change the law straight-up.

It's a rubber band, man

Dispatch from The Town of Overreaction, County of Zero Tolerance:

I mean, you tell me, if you were about to follow Sarge over the top of the trench and head for hill 435 or whatever and eternal glory, or if you just heard weird noises in the house in the middle of the night, what weapon would you want to be toting? What would you reach for?

You say that "rubber band" isn't your first answer? You have chosen too quickly.

Let me ask you another question. If you had to be punished for some misdeed, if you knew you were goin' down, bucko, what would you want your crime to be? I mean, if you are riding off into the sunset in cuffs, you want to go out with flair, don't you?

You say that you would not choose to be arrested for the crime of tossing a rubber band? You have no sense of super-destructive style, my friend.

Don't you know that someone could lose an eye that way?

Quote:

---

"They said if he would have aimed it a little more and he would have gotten it closer to her face he would have hit her in the eye," mother Jenette Rojas said.

---

Thirteen-year-old (local to me) kid picks up a rubber band, puts it on his wrist. This cannot stand. Teacher asks for it, child says he "tossed it on the teacher's desk". Whatever. I can buy that he was being disrespectful, but when grown people, with a straight face, call it "assault with a weapon", well, why the hell are the kids supposed to take anything teacher say seriously.

Quote:

---

Rojas said she was shocked to learn that her son was being punished for a Level 4 offense -- the highest Level at the school. Other violations that also receive level 4 punishment include arson, assault and battery, bomb threats and explosives, according to the Code of Student Conduct.

---

Schools have lost all sense of proportion and justice, in my opinion, and those lessons have to have some importance.

I know, some will disagree with me. But. I still just keep thinking it's a rubber band

Schools are entirely too wussified.

www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050223/BREAKINGNEWS/50223002

Sun Hudson and Terri Schiavo

It is interesting that at these two cases come up at the same time. I understand that if Sun Hudson, a genetically disabled child in Texas, (see the last entry below) is removed from life support (oxygen), it will be the first time in the United States that a judge has allowed the cessation of life support for a newborn when a parent objects.

That's a big deal. It's history making. One would think that in that context, the court would be meticulous about the procedure it follows. As you know if you've read the earlier post, Judge McColloch has been anything but meticulous. In fact, he has not allowed the child's mother to present evidence and went so far as to declare that he was making findings of fact based upon what he'd read in the newspaper.

Not ironically, I've also found a newspaper article that describes a child with Sun's malady as follows: "It was obvious that Emma was not suffering. She was very peaceful." If you click on that link and read the article you will learn that there is an experimental treatment available for children with the disease who reach 6 months of age. Sun is at 4 months. His doctors want him killed now. Why? I don't know. You can answer that question for yourselves.

So much for relying on something in a newspaper to decide that Sun must be in great pain, right judge? Not to mention, of course, that the next question after deciding that someone is in pain ought to be, "is the pain controllable?" This judge didn't bother with that line of inquiry.

This comes at the same time that Terri Schiavo, an adult woman in Florida, is likely to have her feeding tube removed in what might be the worst example of judicial disinterest in fact-finding that I can think of in my lifetime. Two very important landmark euthenasia cases are coming down to the wire in the same week.

Here's what the world doesn't know about the 4-month-old Sun Hudson. First, as I wrote in my earlier post, the mother was not allowed to present evidence or examine witnesses. Second, and perhaps more importantly under Texas law, the judge did not inquire as to the quality and scope of the hospital's attempts to find an alternative treatment facility for Sun Hudson.

PiratePundit has learned through Texas sources that there is, indeed, a Texas facility specializing in treating children on ventilators that may be willing to take Sun. That facility was not included on the list of facilities contacted by Sun's hospital. So we know that, out of the enormous resources of the health care system in the United States of America, there is at least one facility interested in finding out if it can care for Sun Hudson.

This has not been reported, and it was not considered by the judge. Spread the word. When I have the permission of sources, I'll be more specific.

Sentenced to die without a trial

This is an original PiratePundit bit of reporting, based on my interview of Texas attorney M. Caballero. Please credit accordingly.
----------------
In Texas, a baby has been in effect sentenced to die. He is hospitalized with a disease called thanatophoric dysplasia. A website devoted to genetic disorders says that “Infants with this condition are usually stillborn or die shortly after birth from respiratory failure; however, some children have survived into childhood with a lot of medical help.” The child in question, Sun Hudson, is four months old and has obviously survived the danger of stillbirth and has not died shortly after birth. Sun’s mother wants him to live. Doctors at the hospital where Sun was born no longer want to supply him with the “lot of medical help” he needs, and plan to shut off his oxygen supply.

Powerless against the wishes of her son’s doctor, Sun’s mother Wanda found an attorney and went to court to save her son’s life. Without a single evidentiary hearing, Judge William C. McColloch has decided that the hospital has the right to take measures to end the baby’s life, if the hospital happens to want to do so. I have interviewed the attorney for the child’s mother, Mario Caballero, and reports the facts that have been excluded from every other news account of this story.

This is not about money. Sun Hudson is covered by Texas Medicaid (his mother is penniless) and the hospital is no danger of suffering financially by continuing to treat him. Under Texas law this would not be an issue in any event, as hospitals are prohibited from failing to treat a patient for lack of ability to pay or if there is an emergency condition.

This is not about a condition so rare or horrible that treatment would be inconceivable. Ironically, the website for Texas Children’s Hospital, where Sun is a patient, includes this statement about dysplasia: “This genetics clinic provides diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care for patients from birth to adulthood with abnormalities of skeletal growth and strength. A staff of geneticists with consulting orthopedists, endocrinologists, neurologists and ophthalmologists evaluate patients during their visits for routine, chronic or acute care.”

This is not about right-wing pro-life politics, either. Ms. Hudson’s attorney is a self-described twenty-year legal aid attorney who only opened his solo practice with one staff member in the last year. Attorney Caballero went so far as to state that “I’m not part of the right to life movement; in fact, personally, I’m not quite in that political camp. But in this case it is about someone who is already alive.”

This is about one judge who has by any objective standard allowed no due process to the child who may soon be killed or to the child’s mother. Attorney Caballero subpoenaed hospital records of Medicaid payments for the child’s treatment. The judge quashed the subpoena (meaning that he voided it) and refused to allow the mother to view those hospital records. Caballero subpoenaed the person in charge of records who could testify about the medical bills and payment. Judge McColloch quashed that subpoena. Instead, the judge ruled that the mother, in seeking to save her child’s life from a deliberate cessation of medical treatment, had “no cause of action”. The judge made that ruling based only on the petitions filed, not allowing the mother’s attorney to conduct any discovery under the normal rules of court procedure.

Before the court was involved, the hospital first gave the mother notice that they intended to evict the child from the hospital. Under Texas law, a hospital must give ten days notice of intent to make Sun leave the hospital despite his medical needs. In this case, they gave Ms. Hudson notice just before the weekend prior to Thanksgiving week. When she found an attorney the next day, he was left with only three working days in which to get into court. During weeks of legal wrangling under a supposed agreement by the hospital that it would not remove the child from child support before a court hearing, the hospital changed its mind and informed Caballero that they intended to go ahead and remove child support. Only a temporary injunction delayed the hospital’s action.

Finally before the probate court, the mother was not given the opportunity to call any witnesses or present any evidence in an evidentiary hearing. Instead, the judge ruled that the hospital may discontinue treatment of the child, based on facts not even alleged by the hospital, specifically that the judge believed the child was suffering “significant pain.” According to Caballero, when he asked how the judge had reached that finding of fact without ever having heard any testimony or conducting a hearing on the merits of the case, the judge replied, on the record, that he “probably got it from the newspaper.” Having visited the baby in the hospital, Caballero flatly denies that the child is in pain. After reflection, Caballero asked Judge McColloch to recuse himself from the case. McColloch refused.

This left the mother with only one issue to present to the court, whether or not any other hospital would be willing to admit the child as a patient. It is not clear what the scope of that question is legally. In other words, if the court should consider whether another hospital within city limits has a bed for the child before removing child support, or whether there is another hospital reasonably available in the State of Texas or the rest of the country.

After the judge’s ruling to allow the removal of the four-month-old’s life support, Caballero raced to file an appeal. Currently, Judge McColloch’s decision has been stayed pending appeal.

Philadelphia 5 are free!

In other news, a judge somewhere has taken a bold stand and unpheld the constitutionality of the 1st Amendment. Prosecutors have "not yet decided if they will appeal". No, that is not sarcasm.

If you haven't ever heard of the Philly 5, they are 5 Christian evangelists (out of an original group of 11) who were arrested and charged with serious felonies for preaching during a gay rally.

Today (actually just an hour ago) the judge decided to come down on the side of the Bill of Rights instead of modern fads like making it a crime to fail to embrace America's preferred uber-citizens, the gay community.

Your very own PiratePundit actually managed a global scoop on this, having reported at FMNN last night that dismissals were expected in at least one of the cases. I have a long list accidentally doing things I never expected nor tried to do, and now I can add "get global scoop" to it. It's a very Gump-like feeling.

Do they make pirate prozac?

Well, yeah, but they called it rum. For the four of you who visit here, I apologize for the lack of posting. PiratePundit has been in a serious piratical funk. At first I thought it was a minor annoyance, that it would pass, or that I could discern some unexpected opportunity in it. That was at first. But it's persisted, and has become almost physically painful to think about.

What is it that I'm talking about? What's got me so down? Buy this book, and find out. Mark Levin has written a book, Men in Black, that does a superb job of explaining what I believe to be the most pressing and important domestic issue in America today: judicial activism.

There's where the problem is for yours truly. The book is written so well, that I realize that I have completely thrown away the half-year it took me to write this book, also meant to explain the dangers of judicial activism in simple yet compelling terms.

Oh well. Envy is sinful. I recommend his book. But if you buy it, visit CourtZero just to make me feel better.

New Yorkers Don Rose-Colored Glasses

The non-partisan, fair and balanced folks at Newsday hung around outside New York Communist Party Headquarters until they discovered eight disenfranchised slackers willing to opine that Madam Hillary Clinton was doing a wonderful job.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-hill0210,0,219633.story?coll=ny-top-span-headlines

A wonderful job as what, we’re not quite certain. Apparently, the handful of Bolshevik wannabes were awash in a dewy glow of remembrence, fondly recalling one of the New York senator’s speeches in San Francisco, where she told an eagerly applauding crowd: "We’re going to take things away from you for the common good."

That’s the sort of thing any budding socialist loves to hear. They know the "you" Madam will be taking things away from does not mean them. It means the rest of us who actually have jobs.

"We have to reach out to these insane right-wing lunatics who oppose abortion, er, I mean, the evil hard-core Bush supporters, I mean, uhm, oh, forget it! I’m a conservative now!" the ambitious carpetbagger was heard to say, on multiple occasions.

When not pretending to be a praying conservative, Madam Hillary is not above hawking her political agenda at her husband’s hospital bedside, or fainting in order to knock the successful Iraqi elections out of the headlines.

The latte-slurping Marxists in the survey believed Madam is "trustworthy," too.

I have a bridge I’d love to sell them---if they had any money.

US Soldiers rescue hostages

Have you seen this story anywhere? I first read, via the Mudville Gazette, that Egyptian hostages had been rescued by alert American soldiers, who then went on to capture the bad guys and obtain intelligence on other kidnappings in Iraq.

There is a story reported by Reuters about the hostage rescue, but that story is mostly wrong, factually. They didn't tell the story in a manner giving proper credit to the American soldiers, but at least they bothered to report it. Oddly, the Reuters story included this sentence: "Earlier, Sawiris told U.S. CNN television that the kidnappers had demanded half a million dollars in ransom and that the demand was not met." Yet, a search of the CNN website yields no results for "Egyptian hostages". I guess they had a source on the ground and just didn't report it.

Searching google news, no US news source seems to have reported the good news. All I could find was a minor TV affiliate that mentioned that US forces had "rescued Egyptian hostages being held by insurgents in Baghdad.", and then right away followed with this truly weird sentence: "At least that's one version of events making the rounds in the world press."

What a helpful news source. If you can find a decent version of the rescue story on American Big Media, let me know.

Comeuppance, I think, is the word

I think the Blogosphere age of innocence has passed. Some odd little corner has just been turned. I'll let this site tell the story, because it does it well, but the synopsis is that a blogger (blogger #1) who got a lot of traffic for posting tsunami videos (that happened to have been produced and owned by other people). Then a thirteen-year old boy (a local boy too, at least to PiratePundit), who has an healthy interest in politics, is a fan of Sean Hannity -- which takes some courage, I think, since that's not what all the cool kids are doing at thirteen -- Well, the lad posts one of those photos someone assembeled (from other photos produced and owned by others) that showed that the "captured American" (action figure) was, well, an action figure.

And then blogger #1 goes ballistic, angry that the kid got some traffic from interest in a photo from elsewhere (I know, irony is the central theme of the universe), e-mails, calls the young fellow a bastard, deflates the kid's political balloon, and so on.

But that's not the real news, to PiratePundit's legal eye. No, this is: (from email from kid's mother to another, friendlier, blogger) "...our server contacted me that Jordan Golson was representing Matt Margolis (Blogs for Bush) for copyright infringement."

Oops. Jordan, according to his bio, is an undergrad student. Oops. Dear Mr. Golson, while copyright infringement can carry civil penalties, the Unlicensed Practice of Law is a criminal offense.

Let that sink in.

I am humbled by this dude

Damnit, I've found a writer who is saying everything I'm saying, only better.

Watch this movie

Terri Schiavo's life depends on you giving a damn.

Reporting on 1st Amendment Poll is a huge distortion

No doubt you have read about the recent poll released by the "First Amendment Center". You have no doubt read, as CNN told us, "The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing".

The flavor of all of the stories suggests a sort of war-time acceptance of evil Big Brother trampling of our freedoms, in my opinion, with CBS News, for example, giving us sentences like "Support for the First Amendment has eroded significantly since Sept. 11 and nearly half of Americans now think the constitutional amendment on free speech goes too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a new poll. The sentiment that the First Amendment goes too far was already on the rise before the terrorist attacks a year ago, doubling to four in 10 between 2000 and 2001."

All of the stories have that tone, linking a lack of respect for the First Amendment to the War on Terror. But that's not the real story when one actually reads the raw data of the poll.

It is, I promise you, worth your while to click on this link and read more.