The jury awarded $2.9M, purportedly finding liability on all four counts. (Remember, they were defamation [which did not stem from the funeral protests them­selves], invasion of privacy: intrusion on seclusion, invasion of privacy: public disclosure of private facts, and inten­tional infliction of emotional distress.) I still think the invasion of privacy suits should have failed because if we’re going to have public property, the Constitution controls the contra­diction. I do not think the behavior of the WBC protesters was suffi­ciently extreme or outra­geous to warrant a finding of liability for inten­tional infliction of emotional distress. And I find the defamation claim unin­ter­esting, meaning that [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

News reporter gets the wrong problem when reporting on the firing of a teacher for showing a bootleg copy of The Simpsons Movie to young students. The complaint is that showing a PG-​​​​13 film to 3d-​​​​5th graders is inap­pro­priate. Nothing is said about how showing a bootleg of such a film is inap­pro­priate. In my not so humble opinion, the latter is the worse offense. The rating system is private, voluntary, and pretty arbitrary. The film might well be just fine for children in a super­vised classroom setting. Copyrights, however, are the law. Teachers should be fired for infringing copy­rights in the classroom before we even [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

Our Glorious American System of Welfare and Entitlement has been, in no small part and despite Bill Clinton’s inef­fectual efforts to the contrary, instru­mental in increasing the size of the Welfare-​​​​dependent popu­lation of this country. If you’re poor, one of the fastest ways to get money without having to do any [Ed: well, much] work is to have a baby. Having more kids means you get more money from TANF, more food stamps from WIC, more tax credits, more free services. Now, Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary R. Clinton wants to give every baby born in America an automatic five grand. The [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

I’m waiting for the video to turn up on the YouTube. In the meanwhile, here are some choice quotes: We don’t have homo­sexuals. I don’t know who told you we had it. I would have laughed long and heartily on reading that one, but for the fact that it’s true. Iran doesn’t have any homo­sexuals. They only have dead teenagers. [NB: Graphic link.] We oppose the way the U.S. government tries to manage the world. . . . We propose more humane methods of estab­lishing peace. Indeed? You know, the Nazis were well on their way to estab­lishing “peace” by “humane” methods. [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...