Inadvertent Porn

No, you filthy-minded pervert! Those are Christmas lights she's holding in her hands. Click on the picture for a higher-definition version of the photo. Seen tonight at Michael's while The Wife was trying to find presents for her workmates.

Religous Outrages For Your Holiday Reading Pleasure

Outrage #1: Saudi court tells Muslim girl, aged 8, that she has no right to divorce the 58-year old guy who her father married her off to in exchange for about $9,000. Well, actually, the court told the mother that she had no standing to nullify the marriage, because no one has told this girl that she's married yet. And it's supposed to be okay because the husband promised that he wouldn't consummate the marriage until she turns 18.

I'm well aware that arranged marriages are an accepted part of a lot of cultures and some arranged marriages work out just fine. I think that if the parties consent to the arrangement, that's okay although not the way I would prefer to see things. I also think that the parents of the children involved owe it to their kids to do some research and spend some time with the families in question to see if the match will be good for their children -- and my hope is that this gets done in most arranged situations.

But this is basically one guy selling his daughter to another guy like he would livestock. A girl that young obviously cannot consent to a marriage. She has little concept of what that even means. Marrying her without her understanding or consent to the act is selling her. It's slavery and it's an act of astonishing evil on the part of both the father and the "husband." I can think of no moral justificaion for this state of affairs, no matter how desparate the family's financial circumstances are.

The moral outrage here is powerful enough to transcend culture. There are limits to what a culturally-tolerant person needs to put up with before getting pissed off. I don't pretend to know precisely where the line is between stepping back from something about another culture that offends you and issuing a moral condemnation from beyond the seas. But riutalized gang-rape, female clitoral mutilation, and selling your own children (or buying them) are all beyond that line.

At this point, the girl's only real hope is for the King to step in to the process and annul the marriage, and presumably pay off the lech who tried to buy himself a little girl in the souk. Fat chance of that happening.

Outrage #2: Christian church in Jacksonville, Florida blackmails a woman who is no longer in the church's congregation because she refuses to stop sleeping with her boyfriend. The letter containing the blackmail is laced with citations to Biblical authority to support the proposition that Jesus wanted churches to blackmail their former parishioners. So, if this woman does not break off her "sexually immoral relationship" with the boyfriend, the church elders will condemn the relationship in front of the entire congregation.

I can see the church saying to her, "Look, you either start living your life morally or you stop being a member of the church." It's the church's right to exclude anyone for any reason, particularly one that is related to their behavior. And it appears that she's made that choice for them already, so that ought to be the end of the story.

Now, it seems to me that substantial components of Christian teachings deal with the recognition that all humans are sinners and that God will forgive sins. But I'm not a Christian, so it's possible that there's something about this state of affairs that I don't understand. I can only take the church elders at their word that they are indeed fulfilling the mandates of their religion by blackmailing their former parishioner like this.

As far as I am concerned, she has no reason to be ashamed of sleeping with her boyfriend. She's divorced and therefore single and an adult; she can sleep with whomever she chooses (and who consents to sleep with her which I'm assuming her boyfriend has). Better yet, she beat the church elders to the punch by sending out press releases and getting the story picked up by the national media. Good for her. Now the inevitable condemnation from the church will do nothing because she's already let the cat out of the bag herself; she's now immune from blackmail. In fact, if I were her, I'd take it a step further. I'd mail the church elders an open letter that says:

Greetings. As if it were any of your business, I am f***ing my boyfriend on a regular basis. I don't intend to change this behavior at any point in the foreseeable future, because I enjoy f***ing my boyfriend. Now, you may not approve of this and that's certainly your perogative. But if you gossip about me, from the pulpit or elsewhere, bear in mind that in addition to a boyfriend with whom I'm regularly enjoying pleasures of the flesh, I've also got a lawyer with whom I'm regularly consulting. Her kids need orthodontia. In closing, I suggest that you re-read Matthew 7:1-6. Please do not contact me again, for any reason, ever.

Actually, no I wouldn't mail a letter like that if I were in her shoes. I wouldn't have joined the church in the first place. And given that she admits she's sleeping with the guy, the accusation of adultery is probably true and therefore not actionable. But you get the point -- the right response is to tell the church elders that they can kiss your ass.

Outrage #1 is obviously a graver moral transgression than Outrage #2. But frankly, it's sort of expected. And because it's a graver moral transgression, I find it less interesting, because there is less room for debate or disagreement. But both of them are out of line, crazy applications of religion that accomplish little other than hurting innocent people.

Social Grace

Last week I took a client out to lunch and he said grace before eating his meal. This was not a big deal because he did not ask me to participate in the prayer with him. I did not think that waiting to eat for a few seconds while he quietly prayed was a significant imposition on my meal time and he appreciated that I was respectful of his tradition (we had previously discussed that our traditions are different).

And sometimes The Wife and I are guests in someone else's home, and they say grace before their meals. In that case, we respect their traditions -- we are the guests and they get to call the shots for how things happen in their own home, end of story. If the hosts ask us to join them in the prayer, then we go through the motions and offer no signs of insincerity or distaste.

In the converse situation -- religious people coming to a secular house for a social event and wishing to pray before a meal there -- my general opinion is that "[w]aiting a few seconds while the [religious guests] pray is a reasonable accommodation for hosts to make to their guests. Not using their prayer to evangelize is a reasonable accommodation for guests to make to their hosts."

But that line gets a little fuzzy if one of two things happens, which really are the same thing. First, if the prayer is long, loud, or if its content is intended to evangelize. The social awkwardness of such a situation is obvious and I would hope that no religious person with good manners would behave in such a way while a guest in someone else's house.

The second issue, I think, is more subtle -- at least for those religious out there who habitually invoke their deity before eating. It has to do with the way in which the prayer takes place.

Plenty of times, a religious family will begin a prayer before a meal by having everyone at the table hold hands and form a circle while someone prays out loud. Other times, there will be a chanting of a common prayer. Sometimes both will happen. The manner of prayer demands that the atheists participate. I fully recognize that this style of invocation is intended to create an atmosphere of family and love and community by the people initiating the prayer. The request to join in the prayer was likely well-intentioned, but the same time, it really puts a non-believer on the spot.

Here's why I say the evangelizing and the hand-holding are really the same thing: by inviting the atheists to participate in the prayer, the prayer becomes an evangelical device. The atheist must either refuse to participate, which is socially awkward, or participate in an insincere act of worship. Or, given that this is taking place in the atheist's house, the atheist can refuse to allow the prayer to proceed, which is even more socially awkward because it starts a confrontation between host and guest.

If our guests want to fold their hands or clasp them together and offer a few words of praise and thanks before eating a meal in our house, I for one have no problem with that. But I do find it something of an imposition if I am asked to participate in the ritual myself, in my own home.

It's like wearing shoes indoors. Some families have a deal in which you leave your shoes at the doorstep when you come in the house. This may be a cultural tradition, it may be to avoid tracking mud and dirt on the carpet, whatever. It's not for a guest to question that tradition; the guest should, without argument, remove their shoes upon entry and leave them at the doorstep until it's time to leave. But in our house, we often walk around with shoes on and you're welcome to do that, too. You can take your shoes off if you wish and we don't mind that.

But you wouldn't walk into my house and ask me to take my shoes off. Same thing with the prayer. You're welcome to (politely) pray if you wish. But asking me to be part of that prayer crosses the line.

Here's something else to think about. What's the deal with the circle formation around the food anyway? It strikes me as having its roots in pagan magic. The circle magically traps the food and makes it available for consumption by the trappers. The circle of held hands forms a bond in which the spiritual energy of the participants can flow freely and creates a magical force field to improve the food in the middle. I doubt that, if phrased that way, most modern-day religious people would be comfortable with such a suggestion.

Here is our way: we give toasts to convey wishes of good cheer and friendship. Then we clink our wine glasses together (if you don't drink alcohol, no biggie, we've got plenty of soft stuff) and share freely of our home, our food and drink, and our friendship. If you're down with that, you'll be welcome guests indeed at our house.

Movie Review: Transporter 3

The "Transporter" franchise is deeply silly and a fair amount of fun. These are not intended to be serious, contemplative movies full of statements about the human condition. Pop your brain out of your head, you're not going to need it for the next hour and a half -- and indeed, using too much brainpower would kind of spoil things anyway.

Effects:* Transporter 3 knows what you want, baby. You came for FX. Action. Stunts. Car chases, fistfights, and explosions. Transporter 3 has what you need. Transporter 3 won't hold back on you, sugar. You want six-on-one martial arts fighting? Yeah, baby, we got that. Shee-it, we got a ten-on-one martial arts fight, complete with a boss battle at the end. You want car chases? Oh. Yes. Fast, sexy black cars shooting at obviously unsafe speeds down highways somewhere purportedly near the Mediterranean sea. Gunplay? Damn right we got gunplay in this movie. You want stuff blowing up? Transporter 3 blows up lots of stuff. Yeah. You know you love it. All the explosions look the same, but that's okay. Some of the bigger set-piece stunts -- especially in the later sequences of the movie -- are quite silly. But you didn't come here for the verisimlitude of a Jason Bourne movie.

Story: Negligible. The Transporter gets pulled into a job, against his will, when his buddy (a transporter-in-training) gets bumped off by some bad guys. They're looking to find a final resting home for a ship full of containers of Trichloro-Ethyldeadlystuff and to do that, they need the Transporter to get a package from Marseilles to various locations moving further east across Europe with a befreckled Ukrainian hottie. Now here's the twist -- The Transporter and the hottie are both wearing bracelets with high explosives, and if they ever go more than 75 feet from the car, they explode in a ludicrously perfect and deadly fireball. So based on that, the only real challenge is finding creative ways for The Transporter to break all of his own rules (1. no names; 2. never open the package; 3. never change the deal).

Script: Well, the dialogue is better than the opening sequence of your typical episode of CSI: Miami, so it's got that going for it. The storyline is easy and predictable, intended only to provide pretexts for the various action and stunt sequences. Character development is minimal despite some love-interest padding, and despite the best efforts of the scriptwriter and editor to use cuts and narrative breaks in the beginning to keep the audience confused, there really isn't a whole lot of art there -- a "journeyman effort" is about where this one lands.

Cast: Jason Statham is the franchise, of course -- he brings good looks, rough physicality, and a sarcastic coolness to the character. He does bring it alive; he didn't just mail in this sequel-to-a-sequel. Two characters who are supposed to be related do not look even remotely alike. A few minor characters in the movie are repeat appearances from Transporter and Transporter 2. Everyone else, including the characters who are supposed to be Americans, look like Eurotrash.

Cinematography: Workable but again not a joy to behold. The point of the movie is to enjoy the action sequences and mostly these are filmed with a technically accurate if somewhat emotionally distant hand. By which I mean, yeah, it looks cool and you can easily tell what's going on, but you don't get a deep feeling of the danger, pain, or effort the characters should be going through in these extreme situations.

Costumes: The Transporter wears his characteristic suit with a skinny tie. The befreckled Ukrainian hottie is appropriately hot in her skimpy cocktail dress. The government officials all look a little bit too frumpy; in some cases that is forgivable and in others it is not. Everyone else, again, looks like Eurotrash.

Music: About what you'd expect. Action sequences are backed up by fast-paced quasi-disco vaguely reminiscent of cop movies from the 1970's but updated so that's cool. Incidental music is contemporary and forgettable.

Comments: Transporter 3 suffers from no illusions about its identity and role in the world. A disposable action flick, it provides enough exposition to keep the effects sequences making enough logical sense that you don't feel like you're watching an extended channel-flip between European Car Chases and Moldovan Mixed Martial Arts Semifinals. Many of the plot elements, fights, and effects seriously strain creduluity. But if that doesn't bother you all that much, then you'll have fun with it. Certainly worth a rental or a matinee.


* This category is temporarily promoted to the top of the rubric because, let's not fool anyone, there's no other reason to see this movie other than the action and effects.

One Game More

All that stands between the Detroit Lions' relentless pursuit of perfection this season is the Green Bay Packers. I know it will be difficult, but next Sunday the Lions have to find a way to be defeated by the lowly Packers.

I believe in them. I know they can do it.

Dynastic Heritage Should Be Considered A Disadvantage

Caroline Kennedy wants to replace Hillary Clinton as one of New York's U.S. Senators. As near as I can tell, her qualifications for the office are:

• She is a United States citizen and over the age of 30 years
• She is an attorney (Columbia Law 1988), admitted to practice in New York and Washington D.C.
• Her father was President John F. Kennedy
• She is the inspiration for Neil Diamond's popular song "Sweet Caroline"

Aside from that, I don't know why she, in particular, is qualified to be in the Senate as opposed to any other New Yorker over the age of 30 years. Or why New York's Governor, David Paterson (who stepped into his office in the wake of Elliot Spitzer's call-girl induced fall from grace) should be "forced" to nominate her over anyone who has, for instance, actually held some kind of elective office at any point in her life. The political back story is that she endorsed Barack Obama and thus started splinter in the New York Democratic Party instead of uniting behind Clinton in the Presidential primary. And the big argument now is that she is the most likely candidate to win election in the 2010 race for the seat, offering a fairly middle-of-the-road Democratic platform excepting her endorsement of same-sex marraiges.

Now, Geraldine Ferraro says that Ms. Kennedy is not ready or qualified, so that in itself suggests that perhaps Paterson ought to take a closer look. It also appears that Ms. Kennedy's record of actually voting in elections is not strong -- which wouldn't slow down a candidate with strong charisma or some other strong case to make for an office.

But the biggest argument against Ms. Kennedy is, in my mind, her last name -- the big reason people seem excited about her is her provenance. But I'm of a mind that we are a republic and not a society where one's parentage ought to be the determining factor of one's eligibility for leadership positions and political office. Now, I know better than that as a matter of fact. Of course we have a class system in this country. Of course money matters. Of course contacts and being a member of the elite matters. But it ought not to, or at least that sort of thing ought not to make itself ostentatiously visible. The Kennedys have become too visibly an elite family when a (quite possibly very bright) Kennedy is considered a leading candidate for high office for no reason other than the fact that she is a Kennedy.

I was opposed to Hillary Clinton for the Presidency and not particularly enthusiastic about more Bushes for the Presidency precisely because we've already had some of those Clintons and Bushes. We Americans rejected the machinations of Lancastrians, Stuarts, and Tudors from our mother country and re-naming that sort of thing Kennedys, Bushes, and Clintons does not make them any less dynastic.

Yes, it sometimes works out. Franklin Roosevelt did a good job as President and he had a Presidential precdecessor in his family. But mainly, we should be distrustful of dynastic thinking.

And it's ironic that after Caroline Kennedy, the next-leading candidate for the appointment is Andrew Cuomo.

Just Pass Me Already

A lot of Californians drive at only one of two speeds. One is with the right foot pressing the accelerator all the way to the floor. The other is with the right foot pressing the brake all the way to the floor. But life and experience serving as a traffic judge has made me very conscious of my speed and of speed limits, too. So I’m typically going the speed limit or at most five miles over. On a day like today, when I’m wary of icy patches on the road, I’m making sure to drive the speed limit.

If someone wants to pass me, that’s cool. I’ve given up investing any ego in that issue. On longer stretches of one-lane roads, I’ll frequently use turnouts and pull over to the side to let people who want to drive faster than me do so. If they want to wipe themselves out, that’s their business. On I-5 and Highway 99, the right lane is pretty much reserved for big trucks hauling cargo. They’re going slower than me because the automobile speed limit is higher than the big-rig speed limit. So I take the next lane and set my cruise control at the limit. The #1 lane, and in places the #2 lane, are to my left so if someone wants to drive faster than me, they can pass me on the left in the fast lane, and get on with whatever they’re in such a hurry to do.

But what confuses me is why it consistently happens that when I get into a wide-open stretch of straight highway with light traffic, and do my speed-limit-in-the-middle lane thing, and some yahoo shoots up right behind me at an incredible velocity and tailgates me in the middle lane for about seven miles. The entire time, he could pass me on the left but for some reason he prefers to hang out about ten feet behind my rear bumper at sixty-five miles an hour for more than five minutes at a time, with a face growing visibly more frustrated with me every mile. It’s not until someone faster comes along on his left that it occurs to him that he, too, can change lanes and pass me. And most of the time, he passes me on the right, in the truck lane.

Do these guys simply forget that they can pass slower traffic on the left?

The Color Of The Acqeduct

I had to travel to Stinking Bakersfield again yesterday for work. This caused me a few moments of apprehension because much of the snow and ice in the Antelope Valley has not yet been cleared. Again, for those of you who live in snowy climates, you likely assume that part of what local government does is maintain a fleet of snowplows and other vehicles designed for road maintenance in the event of inclement weather. Well, there aren’t that many locations in Southern California that get significant inclement weather more than three or four days a year, and when that happens it tends to be in the springtime when it is too warm for snow anyway. So no, there aren’t any snowplows at all. There aren’t trucks that spread potash around the streets. The grocery stores and drug stores do not stock a lot of rock salt; rock salt is used out here for home ice cream makers and not much else. Way up in the mountains, that’s one thing. But not here.

I figured, though, that the major roads and freeways would have been cleared first and most frequently, and I was right. Highway 138 runs from the 14 to the 5, and that’s how I got from my pleasant, warm, still-surrounded-by-snow home to the main freeway, which was perfectly fine and had no icy patches left anywhere that I could see.

Now, here’s the thing. I crossed the California Aqueduct twice to get here, once in the A.V. and once just north of the Grapevine. In the A.V., I noticed that the water in the channel appeared to be a dark gray color. In the San Joaquin Valley, it was its usual greenish-blue. It was a bright, clear day in both locations, although it is much colder out in the A.V. But the color difference in the two locations of the aqueduct was remarkable. Why did this happen? Maybe different kinds of sediment got in the lower segment of the channel, or maybe the cooler air temperature makes the water look darker. I can’t intuit why it should be the case that cold air makes water look darker, though.

Free Trade At Christmastime

Via Trade Diversion, we can see that the twelve days of Christmas, which will be upon us in less than a week, are going to cost more this year than they really should, thanks to protectionist trade practices on the part of this great nation of ours. Therefore, as applicable to the equipment and other gifts necessary for fulfilling the lyrics of that most annoying of all Christmas carols, we see that the Harmonized Tariff Schedule would apply as follows:

Drums: 4.8%
Pipes (no tariff)
Milking machines (no tariff)
Swans: 1.8%
Geese: $.02/kg
Golden rings: 5.5%
Calling birds: 1.8%
French hens: $.02/kg
Turtle doves: 1.8%
Partridge: 1.8%
Pear tree (no tariff)

As for the maids, ladies, lords, pipers, and drummers, they would likely need to qualify for H1-B visas and demonstrate that their skills of milking, dancing, acrobatics, and musicianship were not readily available at similar qualities to the satisfaction of the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Department.

My guess is that the performers -- the nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers druming -- would have an easier time of it because the ICE does not make qualitative judgments about artistic and cultural events, so long as the tours of the artists are reasonably short in duration and verifiable dates of return to the country of origin are specified in the visa application. The eight maids a-milkin', however, seem to have only a generic sort of purpose for their proposed work in the U.S., which is at best semiskilled labor, and there would appear to be a substantial population already present in the U.S. who can perform the task. Therefore, the eight maids a-milkin' will have to be hired domestically.

Now you all know how a free-trade loving atheist lawyer looks at Christmas. Happy holidays!

Bridge Loan To Nowhere To Proceed

It's official: $17.4 billion of TARP money will be "loaned" to General Motors and Chrysler over the next three months, with the hope that these troubled corporations will restructure their debts and pull Nosferatu off their necks negotiate new deals with the UAW. If the companies cannot pull this off, the government will call its loans and effectively force the companies into bankrupty.

Somehow, this manages to capture the very worst of both options. It provides 1) insufficient time for the money to actually do any good, 2) more taxpayer money than was requested, 3) diversion of funds away from their Congressionally-mandated purpose, 4) prolonged deflation of stockholder value, and 5) merely delays the inevitable bankruptcies while 6) adding additional debt to be managed in them.

Brilliant.

Prepare To Be Disturbed

Nothing, and I mean nothing, about this is right.

• Burger King should not be in the business of selling men's cologne.
• The seventies music is priceless.
• Cologne ought not to smell like meat. I don't think. I mean, true, I'm not an expert on these things. But, really.
• My eyes! The bleach, it does no good.

Somehow Not Surprising

Another contender for Outrage Of The Week is Barack Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. For a sample of this, check out Andrew Sullivan -- who was about as infatuated wtih Obama as anyone during the campaign, but now seems to look at his darling in the cold light of day and finds all the faults and ugliness that booze, desire and dark lights of the night before had apparently obscured. But Sully is far from the only one upset at this choice. Most self-styled progressives and gay activists are up in arms.

Why? Warren is no liberal. He was instrumental in organizing church support for Prop. 8, for instance. He has said that he could not vote for an atheist for any significant political office.* He is outspoken in his opposition to abortion rights. He hosted the "forum on faith" in which Obama and McCain paid obesiance to social conservatives. And as the head pastor of one of California's largest evangelical mega-churches, Warren has a large platform upon which to expound his socially conservative views.

Well, count my voice as among those being raised in a great sigh of disregard. It is no surprise at all. Obama has never tried to hide his Christian faith and there is every indication that it is genuine and deeply-felt. As for the signal that this indicates that Obama is opposed to gay rights or same-sex marriage, well, the first fear is ill-founded (he has a homosexual woman in his cabinet, after all) and the second is well-documented (he never made a secret of his opposition to gay marriage in the campaign). In other words, his selection of Warren to deliver an invocation at his inauguration tells us absolutely nothing new about himself or how he will govern.

What, did you pepole want Jeremiah Wright to deliver the inaugural invocation?


* Some atheists are asking why there is an inaugural invocation in the first place, which is a good question, but there is one and at least until an atheist is elected President there probably will always be one. The inauguration is all about ceremony anyway; this is just another ceremony and one that the Supreme Court would interpret as part of the "civic deism" that we are supposed to tolerate notwithstanding the First Amendment.

Follow Up On Swoopo: Potlach

In a previous post, I referenced a particular auction on questionably-legal but unquestionably-clever auction site Swoopo.com. The particular auction was for $1,000 cash. Well, it's still running. Here's what the auction looks like now:This is absolutely astonishing to me. The bidders are now actually paying for the right to pay more money than they are going to get back if they win. At this point, if you win the auction, you will have to pay nearly $1,200 in order to get $1,000 back.

I've got to call bullshit at this point. This doesn't even make sense.

I remember that I read once in a book that an anthropologist described a Caribbean society which used tobacco leaves as money. Periodically, one or another household would throw a party and gather as many tobacco leaves as they could spare in a big pile and, at the climax of the feast, light it on fire. The ritual was called "potlach" or something like that, and the point was to show your neighbors how wealthy you were by demonstrating how much money you could destroy simply for the sake of destroying it. The character in the book wanted to demonstrate to someone else in the book that "conspicuous consumption" was not a phenomenon limited to Western European societies. But this sort of thing is the only way I can understand the behavior of people who continue to bid on this auction -- one that they cannot possibly benefit from winning and which they must pay in order to win.

Another theory would be that these people are suffering from an extreme form of the Gambler's Fallacy -- they put in bids earlier in the auction and now feel like they need to win in order to recoup some of their losses.

Still another theory, and one that I am warming to more and more as I consider this, is that the bidders do not understand what they are doing. They must think they are bidding $.75 in order to win $1,000. That's a sort-of reasonable, or at least justifiable, kind of gamble -- provided you ignore that by winning, you are promising to pay the purchase price, an exchange of seventy-five cents for a chance at a thousand dollars makes a kind of sense.

So what seems like the most probable explanation for the bidders' behavior is that they simply do not understand what they are doing. Why else would you pay money for the right to pay more money -- and nothing more?

UPDATE: The auction finally ended, at a total bid price of $1,846.05. The "winner" placed a total of 667 bids, paying $500.25 to win. Now, I think I understand what was going on and my judgment is a little less harsh -- Swoopo apparently did not charge him the $1,846.05, which is apparently what the "100% off" means. So the only thing the winner paid was $500.25 and he reaps a net profit of $499.75. In a gambler's assessment, that's a good return on investment. It also explains why people would bid to pay more than the value of the prize -- they aren't really going to pay that money; the only cost to them is the cost to bid. In terms of Swoopo's involvement, though, this was still a hugely profitable activity -- they took in a total of $9,320.25, and had to give away $1,000, producing a net profit margin of 823%.

Snow Day

Historically, we get snow here in the desert about every three years. It snowed in the hills yesterday and the day before, but today it has penetrated to the floor of the valley and we're in about three inches right now as I'm waiting to go to lunch. Here's what it looks like outside the office:

For those of you who live in snowy climates (like, say, Tennessee or Wisconsin) this looks like nothing. But bear in mind that this is the desert. Those are Joshua Trees you see in the background with snow on them. This sort of thing is cause for panic. Roads are already shut down and we may have schools closed because of this, too.

LATER: At about 1:00, we realized that a lot of our employees live in outlying areas and needed to get home before chains would be necessary. They beat us to it -- when we got back to the office, it was deserted. The Wife's car wouldn't start, so I went to her work, and we're home now. I got out and shoveled the sidewalk and driveway, but by the time it was done, it didn't seem like I'd done a lot of good. Felt like Tennessee that way. We need to get some rock salt.

Adolf Hitler Cake

As I first saw yesterday on The Wife's favorite site, the usually-amusing cakewrecks.com, the Outrage Of The Week comes from Greenwich, New Jersey, where Heath and Deborah Campbell have had to fight to get a birthday cake made for their tow-headed three-year old son. They just want a cake with his name on it that wishes him a happy birthday. What's the problem?

The problem is that they named their son "Adolph Hitler Campbell." Some people are just a little bit offended. Which, of course, was the Campbells' desire all along -- they chose to pick fights with vendors and to attention-whore when they named their son that. (Bad enough that they've got the kid sporting a mullet at age three.)

And their perversity didn't stop there. Adolph's younger sister, Aryan Nation Campbell, will probably have similar problems when she gets old enough to have to tell people her name. The newest member of this charming family, Honszlynn Hinler Campbell, is named after Heinrich Himmler (for those a little short on their WWII history, Heinrich Himmler ran the SS and was chosen to succeed Hitler as the leader of Nazi Germany after der Fuhrer's suicide).

Giving your kids Nazi names is child abuse.

How can these kids possibly grow up to be well-adjusted members of society with names like "Adolph Hitler" and "Aryan Nation"? The Campbells have doomed their children to a lifetime of being pariahs and outcasts. It's not far to the kids at all.

Look, you can name your kids what you like. That's your right as a parent. But just because you have the right does not relieve you of some responsibility. There are some names you just plain shouldn't give them. "Adolph Hitler" is pretty much right at the very top of that list of names you should not give your children. Seriously, naming your child "Satan" is probably better than naming your child "Adolph Hitler." Satan, after all, is a fictional figure. Hitler was real. There are still people alive who watched their whole families get murdered because of Hitler. And if you name your kid "Satan" the kid can pronounce it like the hockey player's last name -- "suh-tahn." There's pretty much no escape from being cursed with a name like "Adolph Hitler."

I hope that as soon as they are eighteen (or otherwise able to do so) these kids petition the courts to get their names changed and bail out on their loser attention-whore neo-Nazi parents so they can put together the pieces of their lives and try to become somewhat normal. Sadly, they probably will not.

They are being raised by these freaks because our Constitution vests in the natural parents of children the right to raise them as they see fit absent overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and also the right of people to express highly antisocial views in pretty much whatever manner they choose. I don't know for sure if naming your child is something that is protected under the First Amendment but I'm reasonably confident that it is.

Consequently, we can expect the Campbells to raise their children to be malignant little white supremacists, and to interpret the social condemnation that their parents saddled them with from birth as an affirmation of those bigoted world views. Unfortunately, I don't think these kids have much of a chance at all -- they've started out blameless, but they can't help being influenced as they're raised by an environment so twisted that their parents thought it was a good idea to name their children "Adolph Hitler," "Aryan Nation," and "Honszlynn Hinler."

The Constitution's protection of fundamental rights, as you can see, does not always foster uniformly good social policy. Some people will absolutely insist on doing boneheaded things with their rights -- and the rest of us have no choice to stand back and shake our heads in bafflement. If we didn't have to respect their constitutional rights, I would suggest that Heath and Deborah Campbell be surgically sterilized to prevent them from having more children to do this to, and their existing children taken away from them and renamed by a court. But, they are within their rights and society can't do those things to this family despite the galactically obvious fact that these people ought not to be trusted with the task of raising alfala sprouts, much less children.

Still, no one says that the rest of us have to make birthday cakes that say "Happy Birthday Adolph Hitler." We have our rights, too, and the Campbells ought not to be surprised when they encounter resistance to their colossal and quite intentional offensiveness. Their kids will pay at least a part of the price for their parents' antisocial decision, but that decision was made not by the rest of us, but rather by their awful, awful parents.

UPDATE: A Reader tipped me off to the fact that in addition to Wal-Mart agreeing to make young Adolph's cake in this instance, that company has a history of publicly running afoul of inadvertently associating itself with Nazis. It sold T-shirts with designs favored by the Nazis and ran advertisements comparing restrictive local zoning ordinances in Arizona to Nazi book-burnings. That's not to say that Wal-Mart is evil or pro-Nazi; it is to say that it is a big company that sometimes employs people who are careless and therefore don't think about what they're making themselves look like. Particularly in the case of Wal-Mart, don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Tea Time

On this day in 1773, patriots protested the Tea Act by dressing up as Mohawk and Narragansett Indians, boarding ships in the Harbor, and dumping over 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. The water of Boston Harbor has been a murky, tannic brown color ever since, unsafe for all but the hardiest of fish and other ocean life.

The protest was in direct response to the Tea Act, which effectively allowed the British East India Company to import tea to the colonies without paying the high duty. This was objectionable to the colonists because their own commercial ventures had to pay the duty, making their tea uncompetitive with the market-priced, untaxed East India Tea.

Guys like John Hancock got really rich smuggling tea into the colonies, and when Hancock's vessel Liberty was seized, he hired John Adams to defend him. Adams threatened to challenge the Tea Act's enforceability in the colonies because no representatives of the colonies were elected to Parliament when the Tea Act was passed. Charges against Hancock were dropped and the Liberty released from seizure, but the Act continued to be enforced.

So, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty found themselves with allies like the very wealthy John Hancock. They organized a boycott of East India Tea which turned into a boycott of tea generally. If you asked for a cup of tea in a Boston public house, you'd have been chased out of the building and been lucky not to have taken some punches. Drink your Madeira like a patriot instead! (If it weren't for bootleg rum and sweet Portuguese wine being smuggled into Boston on a more or less continuous basis, chances are good we'd all still be singing God Save The Queen as our national anthem, because the Sons of Liberty were all half in the bag whenever they pulled any of their stunts. Drunk History, indeed.)

The boycott expanded in late 1773 when an East India Company ship, the Dartmouth, landed in Boston and attempted to unload its cargo, that included tea. Boston's longshoreman refused to unload the tea. The Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, the notorious Thomas Hutchinson, was himself an investor in the East India Company and more to the point, he knew that King George III was personally an investor in the Dartmouth. The profits available for the sale of the tea in Boston were significantly greater than they would be in England, so he ordered that neither the Dartmouth nor any other ship was to leave harbor without unloading the tea for sale. This created a standoff that lasted several weeks, during which two more East India Company ships, the Beaver and the Eleanor, both made landfall in the harbor and found that no longshoreman would unload the tea and when the ships' crews attempted to, they were threatened with violence.

The captain of the Dartmouth, not having any loyalty one way or another, at this point realized that he could not profitably unload the tea in Boston anyway. He resolved to find somewhere else to sell it, in London if necessary. And other kinds of cargo were not affected by the Sons of Liberty's embargo, so he had managed to unload and upload other cargo that he also needed to get moving. Time is money in the transoceanic shipping business, which was as true in the late eighteenth century as it is today. So he was actually siding with the Sons of Liberty when he implored Governor Hutchinson, at dinner on December 16, 1773, to let him take his tea elsewhere. Hutchinson refused his request, and the Sons of Liberty soon found out about it. That's when they decided to honor the Governor's request, just not the way he had intended.

So, they dressed as Indians and raided the three ships. I've two points to make about the raid itself. First, it was no accident that they dressed as Indians. No one could have confused these pasty-white Englishmen for real Mohawks, nor were they intended to. They did so to indicate that they were acting not as subjects of the King but rather as Americans. Had they dressed as the longshoremen that they were -- for they were obviously skilled and efficient at their task -- they would not have had the same impact that they did. By proclaiming themselves as distinctly American and specifically beyond the authority of the King, they were in effect making the first real declaration of independence for the colonies.

Second, they destroyed a lot of tea. If you've ever bought a quantity of loose tea, you know that tea is extremely light. I once got a half-pound of loose tea at a coffee shop and they put so much of it in the plastic bag I was afraid I'd get arrested for being a drug dealer. 90,000 pounds (by weight) of tea had a market value in Boston of about £10,000. Adjusted for inflation as best economists can figure over so vast a period of time, that translates to just shy of two million of today's dollars. The amount is perhaps more comprehensible when you consider that 90,000 pounds is 45 tons of tea. I wasn't entirely joking when I said before that they stained Boston Harbor brown. Tea was washing up on shore a month later; and in furtherance of the boycott, the Sons of Liberty organized shore patrols and rowboats to destroy any packets of tea that colonists tried to scavenge from the sea after the event.

Now, the Boston Tea Party today could be described as "terrorism." It deliberately targeted private property for destruction in protest of a governmental policy. Granted that the governmental policy was wrong-headed and the basis of the objection to the Tea Act was quite legitimate. But today we would no more sanction the smashing of the windshields of new GM cars to protest the government's bailout of General Motors than law-and-order types in 1773 sanctioned the Boston Tea Party.

The effects of the Boston Tea Party were varied and long-reaching. Most immediately, they produced a vigorous response from London. Parliament passed what came to be called the Intolerable Acts, effectively shutting down Boston as a commercial center. John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and several other leaders of the Sons of Liberty were charged with High Treason, and they went to ground to evade prosecution.

Patriots debated about what to do next, and the point was never really fully settled in anyone's mind. Benjamin Franklin was a strong advocate of the idea that the East India Company should be reimbursed for the losses it suffered. Others, like the firebrand Samuel Adams, said that the King's personal involvement in the company and the tea venture rendered the tea forfeit and the colonists owed nothing. It was pretty clear that there was going to be no public money to pay off the owners for a while anyway. A New York merchant offered to pay the money back, but Lord North, the King's hand-picked leader of Parliament, rebuked the proposal on grounds that would translate into today's language roughly as "We do not accept money from terrorists."

On the other hand, Hutchinson came into rebuke; the Boston Tea Party saw his political star begin to fade. His refusal to allow the ships to sail away had cost everyone a lot of money, and he was rebuked by the Crown for his inept handling of the affair. The Tea Act was repealed and tea duties were lifted for any colony that pledged to support the garrisons of the army through their own taxes.

And to this day, tea has never quite recovered from the effects of being identified as a Tory treat, as somehow culturally un-American. Not drinking tea and pointedly consuming other kinds of beverages became a way for any colonist to quietly express solidarity with the independence movement. And the experience of those colonists in having to find other things to drink as a mild morning pick-me-up has endured. Colonists drank concoctions of raspberries and balsamic vinegar, herbal infusions, and most of all, coffee.

Invoke Rule Eleven On The Thomas More Law Center

The closest thing that exists in the world of litigation to a rule or statute banning the filing of frivolous lawsuits is Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11.

The reason that "frivolous lawsuits" are not banned is because that concept is, faced with critical analysis, quite difficult to define and chilling to the Constitutional right of citizens and companies to use the courts to redress their grievances. Many people think, for instance, that the "McDonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit" is a frivolous lawsuit -- but they haven't bothered to check out what the plaintiff had to say for herself before pronouncing that judgment. You might still side with McDonald's after reading those facts, but any reasonable person hearing the other side of the story would agree that there was something to the claim even if it should have been a loser.

But a lawsuit must still have some merit, as set forth in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b):

By presenting to the court a pleading, written motion, or other paper — whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating it — an attorney or unrepresented party certifies that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances:

(1) it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation;
(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;
(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and
(4) the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on belief or a lack of information.

If you violate this rule, you get one shot to explain yourself to an angry, impatient, and skeptical Federal judge who already thinks you broke the rule about why you didn't. If you fail in this endeavor, you will have to pay a substantial monetary sanction to the court and to the other side in your case. One joke I make to my attorney friends when we discuss how we occasionally have to make arguments that are out of the box is, "Hey, I've been practicing fifteen years and I still haven't had to pay any Rule 11 sanctions!"

I do not believe that attorneys associated with the Thomas More Law Center will be able to make similar jokes in the near future.

The reason I say that is the newly-filed lawsuit of Murray v. Paulson, filed by the Thomas More Law Center, a non-profit law firm and bastion of conservative culture warriors. Although TMLC bills itself as "The Sword and Shield for People of Faith," I would note that it should more properly adopt the motto "The Sword and Shield for People of Christian Faith,"* as this bigoted, misguided, ill-informed, and ultimately sanctionable lawsuit amply demonstrates.

Murray v. Paulson concerns itself with part of the $40 billion that Congress and the President so unwisely have issued in devalued currency to prop up American Insurance Group (AIG). So far, so good. But the objection is not that this is an ill-considered, counter-effective, damage-prolonging, deficit-busting, corporate-welfare boondoggle. Doing so would obviously run afoul of the ban on taxpayer lawsuits and the principles of comity and separation of powers that prevent courts from second-guessing Congress and the President in making budgetary decisions. Indeed, Murray hardly objects to the basic idea behind the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 at all.

Instead, here's what TMLC found to object to:

1. This civil rights action challenges that portion of the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” (or “Act”) (12 U.S.C. § 5201 et seq.) enacted by the United States Congress pursuant to Congress’ taxing and spending power that appropriated $40 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the United States government’s majority ownership interest in American International Group, Inc. (“AIG”), which engages in Shariah-based Islamic religious activities that are anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-American. The use of these taxpayer funds to approve, promote, endorse, support, and fund these Shariah-based Islamic religious activities violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

2.This action also challenges the United States government’s broad policy and practice of approving, endorsing, promoting, funding, and supporting Shariah-compliant financial products and business plans, such as Takaful Insurance. This governmental policy and practice conveys a message of endorsement and promotion of Shariah-based Islam and its religious beliefs and an accompanying message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christianity and Judaism and their religious beliefs in violation of the Establishment Clause.

3. As our history reveals, this Nation was founded upon values that acknowledge the importance of religion, respect for the right of conscience, and respect for the free exercise of religion. These values, which are Christian values, are enshrined in the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

4. The Shariah-based Islamic religious practices and activities that the government-owned AIG engages in—activities that are funded and financially supported by American taxpayers,including Plaintiff, who is forced to contribute to them—are antithetical to our Nation’s values, customs, and traditions with regard to religious liberty, religious tolerance, and the proscriptions of the First Amendment. These government-funded activities not only convey a message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christians, Jews, and those who do not follow or abide by Islamic law based on the Quran or the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, but they also embody actual commercial practices which are pervasively sectarian and which disfavor Christians, Jews, and other “infidels,” including Americans.

5. The Act and the policies, practices, and actions of Defendants with regard to Shariah-compliant finance as set forth in this Complaint send a message to those who are non-adherents to Shariah-based Islam that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to those who are adherents to Shariah-based Islam that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.

Oh, well, I take it back. I guess it is a taxpayer standing lawsuit.

Now, bear in mind that they lose for that reason alone. As taxpayers, we cannot object to the government spending our tax dollars. That's what we elect the government to do. The taxpayer's remedy is to vote for different public officials who will make different decisions in the future.

But more to the point is the overt anti-Islamicism readily apparent in the pleadings. Any mention of or accommodation to Islam is "anti-American" and therefore unconstitutional. Christianity, enjoying special status in the First Amendment, is different -- it is apparently entitled to special treatment from the government.

Are these guys reading the same First Amendment that I am? Because my copy of it reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I don't see any particular religion named or singled out for special treatment here -- either favorable or unfavorable.

The lawsuit does not challenge the AIG subsidy itself, but rather complains that by assuming operational control of AIG, and tolerating the Islamic-friendly investment and insurance products offered by one of the several hundred AIG companies, the government is endorsing, ratifying, and promoting Islam, and criticizing and attacking Christianity.

Does anyone really think that? Really? That doesn't even pass the giggle test.

And why, can you explain to me, does the logic of paragraph 5 not apply to displays of Christian religious symbology on governmental buildings -- like, for instance, a Nativity scene on the lawn of City Hall? Does that not "send a message to those who are non-adherents to [Christianity] that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community" and also send "an accompanying message to those who are adherents to [Christianity] that they are insiders, favored members of the political community"?

Now, I'll grant that the government owning and operating an insurance company is inherently problematic for a lot of reasons. But this is not one of them. Given that the government is going to be involved in this activity at all, the government has to do commercially reasonable things with the asset that it now controls. That means selling products that cater to specific niches in the market. Like Muslims. Or Jews. Or Christians.

But TMLC has no apparent objection to financial products and services like this, but they do have an objection to the functionally identical product being offered to Muslims. In fact, a Christian-friendly investment vehicle will buy and sell functionally the same sorts of stocks and other securities that a Muslim-friendly investment vehicle will -- it will refrain from investing in alcohol manufacturers, purveyors of sexually explicit magazines, maybe tobacco companies, and (hopefully) companies that capitalize on slave or child labor.

Well, what's wrong with that? Why would a good Christian object to those sorts of things?†

Well, for starters, it acknowledges the tolerated existence of Islam within America, as if Islam were inherently any worse than any other religion, and provides something to accommodate Muslim customers of the now government-run insurance and financial firm that faces such difficult monetary challenges in these troubled times who take the ethical and religious restrictions of their religion seriously -- in other words, it enables Muslims to practice Islam in a meaningful way.

Bear in mind, I think Islam is every bit as full of nonsense, contradictions, antiscience, and outright moral danger as Christianity. So my only problem with the government continuing to offer a product like this is that AIG was not doing such a great job on its own before the government took over, so for the government to simply continue AIG's former policies blindly may not be such a swift idea. I'd hope that the managers sent in by Secretary Paulson are trying to shake things up a little bit. Maybe this product doesn't attract enough investors or provide sufficient return on investment to generate profit. I don't know. But if it is a profitable product, then AIG should keep on selling it whether the government is on the Board of Directors or not.

Bear in mind, to call someone "Muslim" is to say virtually nothing about their moral worth. Sharia is not inherently evil; many Muslim legal and religious teachings are objectively quite praiseworthy. Evil is done in the name of Sharia, to be sure. But good is done in the name of Sharia at least as often. Other parts of Sharia are subject to reasonable debate between enlightened and well-meaning people about their moral worth. Still other parts of Sharia are indeed questionable, but every religion suffers from questionable passages in their holy works. Consider, for instance, Exodus 34:11-14, or Deuteronomy 7:2, or Joshua 10:40, all of which glorify and provide divine sanction for acts that can only be described as genocide. So if the argument is that "Islam is an immoral religion," the Judeo-Christians out there should not be throwing any stones.

Regardless, I can think of no credible argument that the First Amendment embodies "Christian" principles. The Bible teaches government by autocracy and theocracy; democracy is virtually unknown as a governmental device anywhere in the Bible. Jesus explicitly commands his followers to submit to military dictatorship in Mark 12:17.

Christianity, at least as manifested by TMLC's own pleadings, appears to be remarkably intolerant (again, see Exodus 34:11-14 for an expression of Judeo-Christian tolerance) and the First Amendment is among the most powerful injunctions to religious tolerance in Anglo-American law. Nor would I list "tolerance of other religions" as a Christian virtue.

(Religious tolerance is hardly an Islamic virtue, either. In many parts of the world, being anything but a Muslim is a good way to get yourself quite dead. I'm not arguing that Islam is, in practice, any better than Christianity when it comes to tolerance. But the U.S. Constitution is a religiously tolerant document and the government it creates is, in practice, generally pretty religiously tolerant, which is one reason why I'm such a fan of it. And I'm not talking about Muslim legal activists here, either.)

Now, I can think of no credible argument that the government lacks the power to take over a troubled insurance and financial services company. I can think of plenty of arguments for why it's a terrible idea to do it, but that doesn't mean the government lacks the power to make that decision in the first place.

And given that the government has taken over AIG, the government therefore also has the power to sell the same sorts of products that AIG was selling prior to the takeover. That includes investment vehicles that are tailored to be compliant with the demands of particular categories of investors, and to engage in marketing activities intended to attract investors to those products. Why? Because that's what a financial services company does.

If a bankruptcy court took over a kosher meat packer, it would find itself continuing to run and administer the day-to-day business of the meat packer, which would include observing Kosher rules about how to slaughter and bleed the animals, and hiring a rabbi to bless the meat products and certify that they were kosher. Otherwise, the products produced by the meat-packer would not be kosher and the market for those products would not buy them. This does not violate the Establishment Clause because no one could possibly confuse a receivership for permanent operation; the Court is not becoming identified with the Jewish faith by imposing the receivership. In theory, the takeover of AIG is to be an impermanent state of affairs (we'll see about that); certainly the public as a whole does not think of AIG and the U.S. Government as the same thing and the idea that the U.S. Government, which is still under the direction of President Bush, would use AIG to try to encourage people to become Muslims is to have drunk very deeply of a strong batch of Kool-Aid.

No safe harbor here. This lawsuit is bad on so many levels, it bothers me that allegedly competent attorneys put their names on it. It is bigoted against Muslims and seeks to paint all Muslims as the equivalent of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. It presupposes the truth of the blatantly incorrect "Christian Nation" theory of American history.‡ It blatantly asks for sympathy for the plaintiff because he is a combat veteran. And because it is so obviously wrong and incorrect, it is clearly cannon fodder in the cultural war, intended to become another brick in the wall of "the courts are anti-Christian" that the religious right seeks to build around itself as if Christians are somehow an oppressed minority in the United States.

It is in that light that I understand Murray v. Paulson -- this is grist for the mill intended to make Christians distrust the courts. Of course the courts are going to rule against these kinds of "Christian legal theories," because the theories are so very, very silly that a first-year law student wouldn't offer them without experiencing some level of humiliation.

The lawsuit fails every prong of the Rule 11(b) test:

(1) it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation;

This lawsuit is presented for an improper purpose. It is presented to 1) effect an Establishment of religion, enshrining Christianity as the officially-favored religion of the United States and Islam as an officially-disfavored religion of the United States, and 2) to cast the judicial system of the United States into disrepute with a particular segment of the population. For that reason alone, it violates Rule 11(b).

(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;

No nonfrivolous legal or factual theory enshrining a special place for Christianity in the government's treatment of religion can be advanced in the face of the First Amendment. No nonfrivolous legal theory exists that Congress exceeded its authority in passing the law that led tot he takeover of AIG. Debatably, Secretary Paulson exceeded his authority in what amounts to a stock purchase of AIG rather than purchasing troubled assets out of AIG's stable, but this lawsuit does not make that contention. Because the lawsuit instead makes an incredible claim flatly contradicted by the plain language of the First Amendment, the complaint violates Rule 11(b).

(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery.

No substantial evidentiary support exists for the risible proposition that America is a "Christian Nation" in any sense other than irrelevant demographics.‡ The Constitution is a secular document, it mentions no religion and explicitly disclaims an Establishment of an official religion. Further, no substantial evidentiary support exists or can exist for the proposition that by taking over AIG, the government is endorsing Islam. The government is trying, with debatable wisdom, to stabilize a deteriorating economy -- not to encourage people to convert to Islam. These claims are so far beyond the realm of common sense and the limits of admissible evidence that they, too, constitute a violation of Rule 11(b).

The TMLC should be ashamed of itself and should withdraw the lawsuit immediately. Failing that, the United States Attorney's office should file a Rule 12(b)(6) motion in this case and bitch-slap the TMLC into a Rule 11 hearing for tens of thousands of dollars' worth of monetary sanctions and a review of the TMLC's 501(c)(3) status.

See also more condemnations of this misuse of the civil justice system from the rightward but nonreligious side of the blogosphere at Secular Right and Volokh Conspiracy.


* In so doing, I would draw scarce objection from TMLC itself, which describes itself as "...dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life."

† Maybe the problem is that these otherwise morally-defensible decisions about how to invest money come with an Arabic-sounding name attached to them. Perhaps all the government needs to do is have AIG rename it the "St. Thomas More Fund."

‡ Now, that's not to say that Christianity has not been of powerful cultural significance in our history. Of course it has, and many (although not all) of its influences have been positive and morally praiseworthy. It's one thing to say that historically, most Americans have been Christians. It's something else to say that the Constitution of the United States creates a Christian form of government, and it is only to that last proposition that I object.

Swoopo: It's Brilliant And Evil And Gives Incredible Margins

From the Freakonomics blog at the Gray Lady, I learned about Swoopo.com. This is evil. Click on the link and see what the opening page looks like.

It appears that things are for auction for ridiculously cheap prices. There's two wrinkles, though. First, every bid you make costs you seventy-five cents. Second, every time someone makes a bid, it adds fifteen seconds to the auction clock. Put them together, and the result is a perfect psychological storm of sustained frenzy. The "price" stays very low until just a few seconds before the auction closes. Then there are a long series of bids from various people. By the end of it, Swoopo has made immensely more money from the bidding than they have from the actual sale.

They offer fun, high-demand merchandise. Flat-screen TV's, laptop computers, all new and right out of the box. An Apple MacBook that allegedly retails for $1,299 was offered in what they called a "penny auction." This means that each bid costs the bidder $.75 to make and raises the price by one cent. By the end, the actual sales price of the product was $40.82. So let's assume that Swoopo really paid that $1,299 for the product, which of course it didn't; it bought a bunch wholesale at a discount price for volume. But even assuming that they did pay this full retail price, Swoopo made $1,803.32 on the deal -- the selling price plus $.75 for each one-penny bid less the cost of goods sold. Even though the sales price for the MacBook was an apparently ludicrously-low price of less than forty-one dollars, the total income was more than $3,100. (If they got the computer for about half of its retail cost, their margin was about 475% on this sale.)

Another example -- Swoopo auctioned off $80 in cash. No product at all, Swoopo was simply offering to credit the winner's account for $80.00, as in four Andrew Jacksons. Each bid cost a dollar and jacked the price up by a nickel. The end price was $22.55. That means that there were 450 bids made before the auction actually closed. $450.00 (bidding fees) + $22.50 (price) - $80.00 (COGS) - $.05 (the starting price) = $392.50 in pure, sweet profit. Astonishing. $392.50 conjured up from the greed of Swoopo's customers. Again, that's just shy of a 500% margin.

They don't profit on every deal. I found an auction for $1,000 cash, at $.75 per fifteen-cent bid, but the winning price was $143.70. Each bid generated $.90 in income to Swoopo, so a final "price" of $143.70 really means income of $862.20. So they lost $137.80 on that auction. It looks to me like they need 1,112 bids, producing a total sale price of $166.80, to make a profit on "selling" $1,000.

But on another $1,000 cash auction, I saw two "bots" battling it out from somewhere around $54.00 to $158.55. That was about 600 bids in just under a minute -- and it cut Swoopo's risk on the auction to just under $50. The bidding had driven the clock back to nearly three hours, so I figured that would seal the profit for Swoopo -- the temptation here for some third party to come in at the last minute and start bidding up again would be great -- and sure enough, less than three minutes after it stalled out just shy of the break-even point, another bidder stepped in. Soon enough, it had been bidded up to over $200, meaning Swoopo would have a profit of at least $220 on the auction.**

Perhaps this is not so handsome a margin as the merchandise sales, but a profit nevertheless -- and it more than made up for the first auction that they lost money on. And the cash auctions are probably pretty good for generating traffic and interest in the site. Swoopo could make decent money, I concluded, auctioning nothing but the cash that its own customers put into the auctions. That would eliminate all product, all overhead, and all transaction costs, leaving nothing behind but pure profit.

And that's all assuming something like rational behavior on the part of the auction participants.

Here's a case of someone who bought a Wii console system for a bid price of $183.60, but along the way had to place 427 bids, thus paying $320.25 for the privilege of then spending an additional $183.60 to actually buy the product. Even at the top-dollar resale value listed for the product of $249.99, that's a net overspend. And you can find a new Wii system for a lot less than $249.99 with minimal searching.

Then, check out this auction on a souped-up XBox 360. The alleged retail price of the thing is $349.99. As of the time I prepared this post, it had just been bid up to $320.10, with a $12.90 shipping and handling surcharge, and there was about three hours built up on the auction's time. That means that even if you can't find it at Wal-Mart for less than $350, you're only saving seventeen dollars. And Wal-Mart sells this thing online for $299.92, with two games that may or may not suck. So now, the bidders have bumped the raw price on this thing up above the actual retail price. And Swoopo will be taking in not less than $1,933.50, from which it has to deduct the bulk wholesale cost of the thing (about $150) and the actual cost of shipping. That's almost a 1,300% margin.*

1,300% margins are well beyond the range of "obscene profit." Which is why it feels like they're taking advantage of their customers. But the real problem is that it seems a lot like gambling. In the U.S., most forms of internet gambling are illegal. (I don't think it should be, but that's how it is.)

I can't quite put my finger on why this ought to be illegal -- it is, after all, an auction, and that's a perfectly legal way of selling stuff, and there's no law against making an obscene product. You do get something in exchange for your $.75 bid -- the chance to buy something for a deep discount. But the chances are much greater that you'll spend a whole lot of money to buy something and then get nothing.

That's a risk that this shopper is unwilling to take. I'd prefer to actually get something in return for my money -- but it seems that a lot of people prefer to take a risk of getting nothing in exchange for the small chance of getting something at a deep discount. That's the essence of what makes Swoopo work. My question is whether it's so unfair a practice as to potentially violate the law.

Assuming not, then it's about the cleverest thing I've ever seen on the Intertubes. Once they've paid back their setup costs (creating and maintaining the algorithm for the automated auction, getting enough bandwidth and stable servers, and a little bit of advertising, which I may be giving them for free here) the only appreciable operating costs are the COGS and fulfillment, which pay for themselves with the cash flow and the S&H charges. And they have Google ads for other stuff on their site, so they're getting money there, too -- which may be enough to cover their operating expenses. They began operations in Germany and have expanded here into the U.S. and the UK and as far as I can tell, there's nothing to stop them from taking money from anywhere else in the world. I'd love to be involved in their Asian sites.

It's an engine for pure profit. Brilliant.

SEE ALSO FOLLOW-UP POST.

* UPDATE: The auction ended. The winning bidder agreed to pay $320.40 for the XBox, and along the way he submitted a total of 559 bids, for a transaction cost of $419.25. His $299.92 XBox therefore cost him a total of $739.65 plus shipping and handling. I'm beginning to think that this is a deceptive marketing practice and that this fellow has experienced actual harm because of it. There may be a claim under California Business & Professions Code § 17200 here.

** UPDATE: This auction was still going strong eight hours later the next day. It had been bid up to $417 $750.60 $854.25. By my calculations, that makes Swoopo's profit $1,502.00 $3,503.60 $4,125.50.

In Which I Mock The Entire Shoe Throwing Incident With A Single Unannotated Photoshop

Doctor Helen Won't Let Her Students Turn In To A Bunch Of Little Marxists

Helen Smith, from back in good ol' Knoxville, gets it exactly right in giving advice to a teacher:

...what a teacher chooses to teach can have a hand in how that student thinks about the world. That said, Scott, in my opinion, it is not your job to decide the politics of the students in your class, it is your job to expose them to the critical thinking skills that will help them make informed decisions and back them up in a reasoned way.

Why is this such a revelation to so many teachers? I continue to fear that the reason is that so many of them lack critical thinking skills themselves. Sadly, this is a datum that defies quantification so my theory really cannot be proven or disproven except by inference from other data.