Another War of Jenkins' Ear

I had hoped we were past such headlines:

Is there controversy over this anymore?

We’ve even integrated submarines with women and men. There are still some glass ceilings, and I think they should be shattered, but this strikes me as incredibly obvious, not “let’s make this a top headline” sort of thing.

Correct me if my intuition is mistaken.

Count the stories on the sidebar that are actual news, and the stories that are silly entertainment

By my count, it’s a robust 50%. CNN, where literal mediocrity is good enough.

This man has an opinion, so let’s get a picture of him in fron of his house … with a giant assault rifle.  Because all Marines walk around with giant guns at all times, right?

Perhaps you are wondering if there was a better picture available.   Yes, the picture on the actual story page is much more appropriate.

ABA Journal

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was the exception, supporting the law with a hypothetical about human sacrifice, SCOTUSblog reports.

Lawyer Patricia Millett told the justices she saw a First Amendment violation in the law, which bars depictions of animal cruelty if the conduct is illegal where the video is sold. Congress could bar the illegal acts rather than their depiction, she argued.

Alito wanted to know whether Congress could write a law that would ban a TV channel devoted to “human sacrifice” in a line of questioning that Millett had “difficulty fending off,” the SCOTUSblog story says.

Allow me to step in for Ms. Millet here. This isn’t -that- complicated: we do bar human sacrifice and ethnic cleansing in the United States, but also, ethnic cleansing at least is certainly barred by international law (take my word for it for now, I don’t want to do any research).

I don’t see what could possibly distinguish human sacrifice from child pornography, which is also barred (justly, to protect the child).

Now, maybe there would be some place on earth where human sacrifice is legal, but I can’t imagine where that would be, or how it would be legal under international law (on some John Galt-esque ship? Doubtful. Even crazy libertarians recognize a basic right to life).

Look, dog fighting is abhorrent, and I wish we could stop it before it ever gets put on tape. But I’m not sure giving government the power to regulate anything we can possibly see, even if it was legal where it was made, is a good idea.

But really, though, if someone brought up Alito’s example in a law school classroom, I’m not sure that many people would take it seriously.

Let’s see what Scalia thinks about this:

Justice Scalia Gives This the Full WTF

Here’s a list of sponsors, along with contact information (coming soon) from August 12, 2009: Read the rest of this entry »

The dead are not gone if we remember them … or if they never leave your television set:

After a meeting between his widow, his son, friend Anthony Sullivan, and marketers, they have decided to resume running all of Mays’ ads next week. I’m sure that’s going to seem weird to some viewers.

I guess it’s not completely odd, because we still watch a TV show that a celebrity has starred in after they die. But commercials are more recent, more “alive,” more “of the moment” than some TV show that we all know is a repeat from one, ten, thirty years ago. And that’s what’s going to be odd about seeing these ads.

This is just weird. It’s one thing to see an actor appear posthumously in a different role. It’s another to see someone appear as themselves telling to buy something … after they died. This may work wonders for a couple days, but it is increasingly going to be disconcerting to viewers that know he died.

I’ve been traveling since yesterday afternoon and I’ll be on the road through Monday morning. I hope nothing big has happened in the news while I’m out of touch.