Tiffanie Lucas, 33, had been preparing to try an insanity defense in her upcoming December murder trial stemming from her Novenber 8, 2023, shooting of her sons Maurice “Peanut” Baker Jr. and Jayden Howard, 6 and 9. Now she says she will plead guilty and rely on the judge to decide her fate.
It looks like the political correctness Furies who have been swarming around Jack Phillips, the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner whose refusal to bake, decorate and sell same-sex wedding cakes had him targeted for destruction have finally been foiled.The Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed the latest lawsuit against him, though not on the merits. Legal Insurrection has detailed coverage and a retrospective on this almost decade-long drama here.
Remember the old Mad Magazine series called “Spy vs. Spy”? This has been “Jerk vs. Jerk.” I sided with the baker in the original lawsuit over the same-sex wedding cake, though holding even then that the adversaries were being unreasonable. Ethics Alarms advised one, “Oh, bake the damn cake!” and the other, “So find another bakery!” That battle got all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the baker won on what non-lawyers call “a technicality.” Then Phillips was targeted again, as LGTBQ activists apparently considered it a matter of honor to bend him to their will.
Why did it take four years for someone’s head to explode over this? Well, as they say, if it’s new to you, it’s news, and this is new to me.
Campus Reform reveals an earlier report by The Chicago Thinker showed that student-run debate organizations at Northeastern University and Boston College co-hosted the American Parliamentary Debate Association’s “inaugural BIPOC tournament” and explicitly prohibited white students from competing. Huh. Why would this make sense? Whites are too articulate? Too quick on their feet and skilled in rhetorical flair, are they? This is the equivalent of prohibiting black basketball players from competing in an all-white tournament; after all, as the movie says, “White Guys Can’t Jump.” The existence of such a discriminatory tournament is an insult to non-whites.
Oh yeah, I can see where this is going…
Vanity Fair reports that in 2022, Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound hired a Ukrainian startup called Respeech to recreate Darth Vader’s voice for its upcoming mini-series “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” The recently departed James Earl Jones was then alive but 91 and his voice was waeker and not as resonant as in his “THIS is CNN!” days. Using AI, Respeech used archived “Star Wars” sound tracks footage to recreate Jones’ iconic Darth Vader’s tones from the original 1980s trilogy. Jones was satsified with the fake version of him, and signed off on using his archival voice recordings for future (lousy) “Star Wars” spin-offs. When “Obi-Wan Kenobi” premiered, nobody guessed that Darth Vader’s voice was AI generated.
Does this bother you? It should: It bothers me. And Walz has been saying the same illiterate crap about free speech for years. I don’t want Presidents who don’t understand the First Amendment. It means they are incompetent at least, and dangerous at worst. If I don’t want a President with these deficits, I don’t want a Vice President with them either.
I was late to this particular party because I can only find one transcript of the debate online, CBS’s, and the site demands that I dump my ad-blocker to read it. Bite me. This is public information, and CBS shouldn’t have a monopoly on it: that’s unethical. Journalism has no public interest at heart at all, at least not the outlets I usually deal with.
When J.D. Vance pointed out that Walz had said there is no First Amendment right to misinformation,” Walz interjected “or threatening, or hate speech.” Why do woke fools like Walz keep saying this? While “True threats”—meaning threats that are accompanied by the means and circumstances to carry them out—aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Misinformation that falls short of fraud or defamation definitely is, indeed outright lies are protected.
“Hate speech” also has full First Amendment protection. Walz, a high ranking member of the Democratic Party, the pro-censorship party, naturally is in favor of gutting free speech, or he doesn’t know what it is. I’m guessing both.
That’s particularly troubling in someone who taught school.
Who would have expected the AI metaphorical tidal wave to have an influence on the Presidential election? Memes are a breeze to make using artificial intelligence, and while I got heartily sick of my Facebook friends bombarding me with political ones, I have to admit that the technology has the silver lining of taking blunt and biased punditry out of the political cartoonist monopoly and letting some very witty people make satirical political statements.
So far, at least, it appears that conservatives have mastered meming before the Left has, and in this race for President, that is having impact, though how much and how significant is impossible to tell. However, it is clear that the Kamala-Harris-as-a-Communist memes are getting under the skin of some Democrats—one of my Trump-Deranged relatives was complaining about those just yesterday—and so now there are calls for “something to be done” about anti-Harris memes. On MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” NPR’s Maria Hinojosa was very upset about AI images of Harris presented in Maoist uniforms:
Early favorites for “Parents of the Year”!
Darien Urban, 21, and Shalene Ehlers, 20, decided to sell their baby to a stranger while they were at a camp ground. (No, they weren’t married: why would you even ask?) As Mom explained later, having to deal with a baby while taking care of three dogs was just too much. All they asked for was a six-pack of beer and a thousand bucks. What a deal!
“I, Darien Urban and Shalene Ehlers, are signing our rights over to [Cody Martin] of our baby for $1,000 on 9/21/24,” their contract read. Good: these things should be legal. “After signing this there will be no changing y’all two’s minds and to never contact again,” it concluded.
Problem: Judges getting adverse public scrutiny for not reporting potential conflicts of interest and avoiding the appearance of impropriety.
Solution: Lower the standards for conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety.
Problem solved!
Yecchh.
In “The Firm,” the corrupt lawyer played by Gene Hackman tells new associate Tim Cruise that he is supposed to bill for every second he is thinking about a client’s work, in the shower, on the toilet, at the movies. Inflating fees is one of the most flagrant and common of all lawyer misconduct, and it is almost impossible to prove unless a lawyer does something stupid like billing more than 24 hours a day (and an amazing number of lawyers have tried that). In the film version of “The Firm,” in fact (though not in the novel) Cruise’s character uses proof that the mobbed-up firm he worked for was over-billing clients to wiggle out of his own legal and ethical dilemma.
As a general rule, I think it’s generally dishonest to bill clients for every thought.
I am preparing an ethics report, and doing so with a famous, legendary, super-credentialed lawyer who charges four times what I do as my ethical adversary. His experience and credentials make me look like comparative piker, but 1) I’m on the right side of this issue 2) his ethics report was pathetic and 3) this case is in my wheelhouse, not his.
However, I did summon George Costanza…
CTV News in Calvary, Canada blithely reported this as if it made perfect sense…
“Calgary police have released a photo of a suspect wanted in connection with a fire in the community of Riverbend that damaged multiple homes. Emergency crews were called to a home in the 100 block of Riverglen Crescent S.E. at 12:40 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 22 for reports of a blaze. The fire gutted a garage and caused damage to two homes. No injuries were reported.”
And here’s the photo police posted:
Yup, it was that infamous Dick Tracy villain, Blur-Face! “Because police think the suspect is a teen, they blurred the face in the photo that was released,” the CTV says. Oh. Makes perfect sense—in Canada, maybe. “The identity of young offenders is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act,” we are told.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if young offenders’ identities are protected, why are police asking people to identify this one? Officers are hoping someone may recognize the teen’s clothing, you see. My brain hurts: so they can publicize aspects of a “young offender’s identity” as long as it’s…what, not sufficient to be likely to identify him?
How does it advance respect for law enforcement to have police do something this pointless without out their appearing to acknowledge it’s probably futile? How does news media justify reporting the senseless as if it makes perfect sense?
Ethics Alarms 