A walk with GPS reveals some of the problems with the system.:
In retrospect, what's really interesting is this: when the technology failed us, we didn't look around to see where we were and search for street signs. Of course, at that point we were standing in the middle of a barren junkyard wasteland.
Juan Cole has an anonymous guest commentator, described as “a canny Vietnam veteran” who has a grim prognosis for Iraq. Not pleasant reading. If even half of these thing are right…
Reading this LA Times story about how Law & Order reruns might have to be pulled if Fred Thompson runs for President made me wonder. If stations are so afraid of having to give equal time for other candidates that they'd rather pull the episodes, then surely it would be economically rational for the studios to put a routine “no running for office” clause in actors' contracts that would apply so long as the reruns are showing?
My question is whether that term would be enforceable: would it be against public policy? Or maybe fall to the same sort of doctrines that disfavor non-compete clauses that last more than a few months to (at most) a couple of years?
Employment law is not my thing, but I bet someone reading this could hazard an answer.
I somehow doubt that for all their public bluster we can expect the AACS folks to come up with 746,000 take down orders. Even so, I wonder if Siva is really taking this seriously enough when he writes, Hahahaha! I am breaking federal law! Hahahaha!.
Unfortunately, selective prosecution is not illegal….
[Update (5/5 19:00): Google's up to over 1.4 million now…]
As everyone knows, Deborah Jeane Palfrey is accused of running a Washington DC. escort service that fronted for a prostitution ring. Her defense strategy is to get ABC to help her to identify her clients (from her phone records), so that she can then call them and have them testify that that they did not have sex with that woman (or man?). Palfrey's version is that her perfectly legal sexual fantasy escort service sent folks who had a contract with her promising not to break the law, and she would be shocked to learn otherwise — and wants the big-name DC types to back her up.
The Miami angle in all this is her lawyer, who it seems came up with this weird but in some sense clever defense strategy, is one Montgomery Blair Sibley who, while admitted in Florida, is facing disbarment for being a being a “vexatious litigant” — in Miami!. His other claim to local fame is that he enjoyed 77 days in a Miami jail for refusing to pay child support.
And according to The Colorful Case of A Well-Named Lawyer, his father is “Harper Sibley Jr., one of the richer and more powerful developers in Florida.”
Somehow it seems right that there would be a Miami link to a good sex & politics scandal.
Jotwell Blenderlaw