Law, life and the local spectator sport called politics.
The Brett Kimberlin Saga:
Follow this link to my BLOCKBUSTER STORY of how Brett Kimberlin, a convicted terrorist and perjurer, attempted to frame me for a crime, and then got me arrested for blogging when I exposed that misconduct to the world. That sounds like an incredible claim, but I provide primary documents and video evidence proving that he did this. And if you are moved by this story to provide a little help to myself and other victims of Mr. Kimberlin’s intimidation, such as Robert Stacy McCain, you can donate at the PayPal buttons on the right. And I thank everyone who has done so, and will do so.
So, right now many people are in a meltdown over the abortion law passed in Texas and the recent Supreme Court decision refusing to block it from going into enforcement. You can read the text of the bill here, but I thought I would bring some rationality to this discussion.
First, let me tell you where I come from the issue so you can be aware of any biases. I think Roe v. Wade is a terrible decision. Whatever you think of abortion, the notion that the founders were attempting to say anything about abortion is simply false. That means that it should have been treated as part of the ordinary political process and, frankly, left to states to figure out. Seriously, read the opinion. It is unpersuasive claptrap. It admits that through American history legislatures have regulated abortion, and concludes from it that it is not up to the legislatures, which makes almost no sense. So my preferred outcome is to see this case and its progeny thrown into the dustbin of history.
Several times on Twitter I have seen the notion that in emergency medicine people who have not received one of the Wuhan Flu* vaccines either should not receive treatment, or should be demoted in triage. For instance, Allapundit once reacted to a story that this was happening in North Texas--before they declared it would not occur--by writing: "why shouldn’t a grandma who got her shots lose a bed to someone who convinced themselves that the vaccine has a microchip in it[?]" But he is hardly the only one, and I thought it was important to explain why this is a monumentally bad idea.
About a month ago on Twitter, I
started a thread that I called in a tongue-in-cheek manner #Bidementia.Here’s the tweet that started it:
Okay, guys, I’m going to start a NEW FEATURE in my feed, which I am going to call #Bidementia
It is going to be a thread I’m going to try to keep going until the election showing moments where @JoeBiden appears to not know where he is and what he is doing.
Then in turn, I pointed out that
there was a serious downside to it.I won’t
quote myself in the name of keeping this blog reasonably family friendly, but
the gist of what I said was as follows: “Right now, if an employer says to a
woman ‘sleep with me or you’re fired,’ it’s illegal and sexual harassment. You
make prostitution legal, you make that demand legal.”
(And if you really want to know
what I originally said, you can follow this
link.)
After Shaw called my comment “stupid,”
all hell broke in my mentions.Well,
respectfully, people are not thinking it through.
So, Lee Stranahan—my friend and
occasional client—has declared today to be a second Everybody Blog About Brett
Kimberlin Day.
The first time seemed to be about
protecting me and others, and protecting free speech in general.The whole idea was this: if Brett Kimberlin
would do anything he could to silence anyone who talked about him—including suing
people, getting bogus gag orders from courts, and even in my case attempting to
frame me for a crime—then maybe one way to defeat it is to have so many people
talking about him that he couldn’t retaliate against all of us.Thus, because it
was in part about protecting me, I said privately and publicly that I didn’t
have the heart to ask anyone to do that.I mean, how do you ask someone else to take a metaphorical bullet for
you?
So, there is a movie coming up
called The Hunt. The basic plot synopsis is liberal elites hunting
people they hate that they see as "deplorables." And in the wake of recent mass shootings, ads
for the movie are being pulled sporadically, and the Hollywood
Reporter is saying that behind the scenes they are talking about rethinking how they are going to
market it and so on. This is probably the
first news that the movie existed for many people, so I am seeing a lot of
conservative anger directed at it. For
instance, Twitchy has an article
typical of this where conservatives are quoted as saying how terrible this
movie is as an idea. You can read for
yourself, but the basic gist is “oh my God, they’re making a movie that revels
in murdering conservatives.”
And I am here to persuade you
that maybe that interpretation is wrong.
So interesting to see “Progressive”
Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments
are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept
anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now
loudly......
....and
viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most
powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go
back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they
came. Then come back and show us how....
....it
is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m
sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel
arrangements!
…and within minutes everyone was
sure 1) who he was talking about and 2) it is racist.
For instance, Chris Cillizza of
CNN wrote an entire piece at CNN making both claims on both points.At the website,
it gives the following headline “Donald Trump’s racist tweets show he doesn’t
understand America,” while the preview on this tweet
says “Donald Trump’s Vision of America isn’t American.”Cillizza states that the tweets were
definitely “directed at freshman Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.)”
and then, says:
Today and yesterday, a number of newspapers are putting
forth editorials purporting to defend freedom of the press, using the hashtag
#FreePress.It all seemed to be kicked
off by the Boston
Globe, which made these kinds of statements.
Journalists are not the enemy
August 15, 2018
A central pillar of President Trump’s
politics is a sustained assault on the free press. Journalists are not
classified as fellow Americans, but rather “the enemy of the people.” This
relentless assault on the free press has dangerous consequences. We asked
editorial boards from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and
small – to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words.
Let me start with something basic.Of course, I support freedom of the press, as
well as all forms of peaceful expression and not just in words.My readers know that I have literally gone to
jail for this and am fighting in several courts to protect that right, both as
lawyer and citizen.They know I have
defended the right to speak of people who cheered when my freedom of expression
was suppressed.That’s not my problem
with this #FreePress protest.My problem
is the incredible hypocrisy involved and general stupidity about what freedom
of the press and freedom of expression means.
For starters, complaining that Trump is assaulting freedom
of the press is so ignorant it makes my head hurt.Does anyone in the press understand that freedom
of expression includes the right to criticize what others say?In other words, the First Amendment protects
the right of CNN to say X and it also includes the right of someone else to say
“CNN should not have said X.”
So, previously I wrote a piece
explaining how the Foreign
Agents Registration Act is Unconstitutional, as part of a promised series
on the Mueller indictment of thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian
companies. Once again, you can read the
indictment, here,
and you can search through its text, here, and, bluntly,
you might want to read that prior piece on the Foreign Registration Act,
because this piece is going to build off of that analysis. In other words, you really might not get what
I am trying to tell you unless you read that other piece.
So last night I took a break from
work and writing my next post dealing with the Mueller indictment and saw Black Panther. And I want to talk about it. As per usual, I’ll keep things spoiler-free
above the fold and warn you before I get spoilerific. Without spoilers, I remember getting a very
“Wonder Woman” vibe when reading the reviews.
Now, I liked Wonder Woman. I own
a copy of it and have watched and enjoyed it several times. It is a legitimately good movie. But it was much better reviewed than it
deserved to be. And you got the
suspicion that people were worried about being called sexist if they dare to be
insufficiently exuberant in their praise.
It took me a while to think of
what this reminded me of, and then I remembered this video. Watch it to the end. It’s pretty amazing/horrifying:
Now, in this video, I am not sure
there was any genuine enthusiasm for Stalin.
I mean, if they are that scared of him, how much can they really like
him? On the other hand, I absolutely
believe that there is a lot that is genuinely good about Wonder Woman, so I
presume that a large part of the praise it got was entirely genuine. But there was also an element where I
wondered if they were going massively over the top just because they were
afraid of being “the first one to stop clapping.” And I began to get the sense that the same
thing was happening with Black Panther.
And I was right. It was good.
I recommend it. But the praise is
waaaaaay over the top. For instance, I
saw reviews comparing Michael B. Jordan’s turn as Killmonger as being like
Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.
If they mean he is as scary as that iconic character, no, he’s not even
close and he’s not meant to be. If they
mean well-acted, yeah, Jordan did a pretty damn good job, but in a contest I
think I’d still give the win to Ledger.
Although to be fair to Jordan, it’s a bit of comparing apples to
oranges. A good scary performance is
much different than what Jordan was giving us.
Jordan’s Killmonger actually more resembles Michael Shannon’s depiction
of Zod, in Man of Steel, in that he
is shown to be a determined and ruthless follower of comprehensible ideology. I’m not saying you necessarily agree with
their ideology, but it was an ideology that seemed pretty logically consistent
and worked out.
(Well, Zod’s ideology was
consistent at least until Superman screwed up his plans so thoroughly that Zod
completely flipped his sh*t and decided to go on a killing spree, but in that
movie’s context it made sense that events would completely break his mind and
drive him insane.)
That being said, Killmonger,
despite having a silly name (that was surprisingly well-justified in the movie)
was really one of the best villains in the Marvel Universe. And Andy Sirkis is actually pretty awesome as
secondary returning villain Klaw.
Also, toward the end, there is a
character death that was surprisingly moving—really probably the most moving
moment since the funeral at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy 2.
And finally, before we get really
spoilerish, let me point out that you don’t need to stay for the final after
credits scene. As we all know, Marvel
really loves to put in those mid- and post-credits scenes, sometimes setting up
sequels, sometimes tying up a loose end, sometimes schmucking around (I’m
looking at you, Guardians of the Galaxy 2,
but with affection). So there is a
mid-credits scene that I won’t reveal, but I will say I think it should have
just been part of the movie. And then
when all the credits are done, they have an after credits scene that you
frankly didn’t need to see (although there are some kids who are pretty funny,
so maybe it is worth seeing it for that).
Why you don’t need to see it is...
