America's Wiener Strikes Again

This one hits a little too close to home.

The reason Flagler Palm Coast [Fl] High School students won't be performing "To Kill A Mockingbird" boils down to one ugly word.

"I think it's the 'n-word,' " said Ed Koczergo, the school's theater director. "It's in there 23 times and it scares people."

He said the word can't be removed from the script because of copyright laws.

A school committee recommended canceling the production because members didn't want students to be in the middle of a controversy, according to Jacob Oliva, the high school's principal. He said he started hearing concerns from parents, students and other community members about the offensive language in the play when the students were in the third week of rehearsals.

"Nigger" is a despicable word. Its infusion of condescension, dehumanization, and provocation is intentional and malicious. It is a word used exclusively (contemporarily) by bigots and ignorami. And no one in the history of American art has depicted that as clearly as Harper Lee, the greatest author ever to publish only one book.

Atticus Finch is a hero whose time has come again. These Florida hand-wringers do a great disservice to their children and to the cause of liberty by muzzling him.

Doctors in the Senate = Better Soundbites

After last night's election, I am adding a shiny new quote to the "Freedom Quotes" section (right sidebar) of this blog:

America is exceptional, but it is not inherently so.

That subtle, insightful, and powerfully-true observation comes courtesy of Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-Ky).

No mountains, no plains, no hymn, no eagle, no star-spangled banner makes us great.  Only the carefully-crafted protections of the Constitution and the perpetual fight to maintain freedom as our highest ideal keeps us the most prosperous nation in history.  Here's hoping Paul & Co. have the necessary verve to escalate that fight in Congress.

I've Got Google™, a Cell Phone, and Confirmation Bias. What More Does a Journalist Need?

[UPDATE added below]

I have potentially devastating -- for Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway -- information in my possession, and I did everything possible to corroborate it. But I failed, and instead what I have is a rumor. So, sadly, rather than this post being about the facts of a major national development, it is a journal of my unsuccessful attempt to fit together pieces of gossip into a certifiable account of events. Once again, I must be clear that none of this information has been confirmed by a second source or by documentation. I encourage skepticism.

Last week, a trusted source intimated to me that Ky Attorney General Jack Conway had deliberately impeded a police investigation into Conway's own brother by exposing an undercover police informant. My source's details were thus:

Louisville (Ky) Metro Police were using an informant to gather information on Conway's brother, who is suspected to be involved in illegal narcotics. In June or July of 2010, LMPD Detective Roy Irons* placed an unsanctioned call to Attorney General Conway's office to alert Conway to the investigation, and Irons specifically communicated that one of Conway's brother's associates was a police informant. Conway then called and warned his brother. The informant later complained to LMPD that someone had tipped Conway off, and an internal investigation was opened. Detective Irons was moved to the LMPD Property Room pending the investigation, but the investigation itself was to be shelved until after the November 2010 US Senate election.

The first phonecall of my own investigation was to the LMPD Property Room. I called on a Saturday and when a woman answered "Hello, Property Room" I replied, "I am trying to reach Detective Roy Irons. Do I have the right number?" The woman answered, "Yes, but he's not in today. He should be here Monday." With that, I thought I was actually on to something, since under normal circumstances, a detective would not be assigned to work the Property Room.

But shortly thereafter, my Woodward and Bernstein days were over. Calls to the LMPD Public and Media Relations Department and to Internal Affairs were met with a professional stonewall, and I discovered that LMPD is not under any public obligation to acknowledge an internal investigation even exists until that investigation is concluded, which in this case is part of the issue. An investigation that began in July should have been over long ago.

My next step was to try and co-opt an actual working journalist. I chose to contact a writer with the Louisville Courier-Journal who had an impressive history of investigative pieces on the LMPD. That writer indicated that not all of my information was entirely new, but without a primary source or physical evidence, the story was doomed to the "interesting rumor" file. He tried his best to arrange talks directly with my original source, but that individual declined to escalate his/her involvement for myriad reasons. I can only assume the Courier-Journal is also chasing the story on some level.

Two corroborating documents exist, but my efforts to access them were also dismal failures. One is an obligatory letter from a high-ranking LMPD officer -- most likely Chief Robert White -- informing Det. Irons that he is being investigated. This letter would not include any details of the investigation and would certainly not implicate the Attorney General's office, but it would lend credence. The second document would be an official transfer report showing that Det. Irons had been re-assigned to the Property Room. It also would not detail the investigation. If any part of this story is true, both of these documents would be carefully protected.

Ultimately, there are only three people who could truly confirm the juiciest bit of the allegations involving a justice-obstructing phonecall that put a police informant at risk: Attorney General Conway, his brother, or Det. Irons. An official internal investigation may eventually deduce the truth, but if such an investigation even exists, it is unlikely to be concluded before Election Day.  Motivations to procrastinate abound.


*Pending additional evidence, this name has been changed to protect the innocent.

UPDATE: Looks like the Courier-Journal was hot on the trail after all. The important part:

Jack Conway’s office said in an e-mail to the newspaper Thursday that his only involvement was to advise his brother to obtain legal counsel.

...

Although he was asked to discuss his knowledge of the investigation involving his brother and the meeting with Adams, Jack Conway’s statement did not address either issue.

When the newspaper renewed its request for elaboration, Allison Gardner Martin, communications director for the attorney general’s office, said Conway “does not deny” that Adams met with him and his brother. But she declined to address what Conway knew about the decision to have Adams visit White.

Going Bigtime

After an arduous legal battle with an Italian novelty oversized foam finger company also named Scotticus Finch, my team of lawyers has finally secured the rights to the Internet domain "scotticusfinch.com".

You have probably already been re-directed there from the old address without even noticing, but I promised the interns I would publicly laud their work. Nothing else is changing at this time, but feel free to bask in the Internet-age feeling of legitimacy by re-typing the new address in now.

www.scotticusfinch.com: The new and future home for all your freedom-fighting needs.

"Greener Pasture" Exposed After Three Years to be Just a Fenced-In Quarter-Acre of Cow Shit

As a retired superpowered crimefighter, the bulk of my income comes from appearance fees and action-figure royalties. For the last three years, however, I have allowed my vast fortune to marinate in myriad investment portfolios, and I have subsisted on the mortal salary from a desk job.

The work was high-level stuff – lots of widgets to be built, each requiring a minimum of four conference calls and a WebEx – but clearly beneath me. So on Wednesday I gave notice and set sights on the next opportunity. But instead of a clean break (the norm in this industry for proprietary reasons), the office lumberg convinced me to stick around for three days to pitch in on an ongoing project without telling anyone on the team that I have quit.

Under normal circumstances, I am a patient man. But the poor unaware souls around me continue trying to put long-term responsibilities under the substantial girth of my vocational umbrella, and my gag order prevents me from letting them know they will have to reassign these duties within a matter of days. It seems a poor way to manage transition, but as Grand Ole Opry diva Jan Howard said, “That’s not my problem anymore.”

Work without consequence is beyond boring. To quote noted philosopher Howard “Biff” Tannen (c. 1955), I’m ready to "make like a tree, and get outta here.”

Blogger Finds Himself in the 5000% Tax Bracket

Here is a quick list of activities in which you may have participated in 2009 that would have been more financially-successful "businesses" than the Scotticus Finch blog:

• Accepting gas money for a lift to the airport
• Returning a modest Christmas gift for a refund
• Checking vending machines for forgotten change
• Winning a bet that you couldn't eat a tablespoon of cinnamon

Certainly blogger Sean Barry of Philadelphia wishes he'd chosen one of those routes instead. Because of the $11 in Google AdSense revenue Barry earned over the course of two years, the City of Brotherly Love is hitting him up for a $300 business privilege license.

Marylin Bess received the same demand after claiming about $50 in revenue "over the last few years" from her green-living blog and other freelance writing online. And when Bess contacted the city: "I was told to hire an accountant," she says.

You can't blame the city for extorting every dime it can find, though. After all, Chinese hookers aren't just going to pay for their own responsible-drinking seminars.

Read the whole piece at the Philadelphia City Paper here.

Because You're Never Too Broke for Chinese Hookers

Last week, I bought generic Hamburger Helper to make dinner for baby Wyatt and me.

Hamburger Helper is a food-like product than normally costs around a dollar and a half, but I saved nearly fifty cents by denying the siren song of that creepy severed Mickey Mouse hand mascot. And while the generic version couldn't quite match the lofty prison-cafeteria standards of the real thing, tough economic times dictated I make the sacrifice.

Keep that sacrifice in mind as you watch this three-minute video from the Cato Institute blog:



Here's hoping that many more Congresscritters book trans-Alaskan flights, and soon.

You Think the House was "Disorderly" Before? Just Wait Until SWAT Gets Done with It

I'm already growing calloused to this never-ending parade of isolated incidences, so I'm going to start at the most important problem I found in this article, and that is:

What in the name of Poseidon's wet wedding tackle does the charge "disorderly house" mean?!?

CEDAR RAPIDS – Police in SWAT gear busted through a door and searched a Cedar Rapids home for drugs Thursday morning, but came up empty.

At least 12 officers surprised the tenants at 1135 33rdSt. NE when they arrived around 7 a.m. with a narcotics search warrant. Sgt. Cristy Hamblin, a police spokeswoman, later confirmed that nothing was seized from the house.

No one was taken to jail, but the tenants of the house, Justin Davis, 28, and his girlfriend, Erica Lewis, 26, were charged with disorderly house and signed a promise to appear in court, police said.[emphasis mine]

The end of the article goes on to explain that "'[d]isorderly house' is [a city ordinance] described as a building or room where someone 'resorted to for' illegal activity involving drugs, alcohol, gambling or prostitution..."

So, I ask again, what in the name of Pinocchio's splintered sphincter is "disorderly house", besides a consolation prize for homeowners who didn't satisfactorily play their role in the local police's action drama?

A New Game

First, thank you all for the concerned calls and emails. I know I disappeared as abruptly as I initially burst onto the scene. Unlike Scotticus, I was not kidnapped by nefarious ne’er-do-wells. I was in self-imposed exile and on a terribly painful hunger strike, in the vain hope that my deprivation might call attention to the injustices being perpetrated against one Milorad Blagojevic. (Just “Rod” or “Blago” to you racist Anglophiles out there.) Whatever your take on the strength of the Feds’ case, we can all at least agree that Blago personifies the American dream. “E Pluribus Unum” and “Don’t Tread on Me” be damned! Join with me now in solidarity as we cry out the new American slogan:

“"I’ve got this thing and it’s *%$&ing golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for *%$&in’ nothing!”

Whew, that feels better. Now while I slowly rebuild my strength with Red Bull, Doritos and Alpha King, I’d like to introduce a new game. It’s called:

Nobel Prize-Winning Economist or Dropout Populist Grocery Bagger?

It’s easy: I provide the quote, and you try to tease out which summary appears at the top of the speaker’s resume. Here’s today’s quote:

“When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.”

…OK, I know, that was too easy. The elementary understanding of productivity and wealth creation indicated by the “anyone getting paid for anything is a jerb, and that’s unambiguously GOOD” statement, on top of the economically illiterate idea that money invested in stocks, bonds, or bank accounts is “idle” makes clear that this could be none other than… a Nobel Prize-Winning economist.

Thanks, Paulie, and let me know how much you got for your soul.

Repealing the Syntax

I once stopped Red Leader from stealing the Eiffel Tower on the same day I freed hundreds of political prisoners from a North Korean gulag. US Attorney General Gonzalez used to call me "The Human Paddywagon". I convinced Tom Hanks to pass on Waterworld and to check out a little script called Forrest Gump instead.

In short, I've cleaned up more messes than Gallagher's road crew, but nothing I've ever undertaken has even approached the epic magnitude of these guys:

Incensed by a "no tresspassing" sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs.

He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes.

...

In 2 1/2 months, Herson and Deck traveled the perimeter of the country, exploring towns and cities in search of typos. They found 437 typos, and were able to correct more than half of them.

For anyone who ever tilted his head in disbelief at a sign advertising "Rice Krispie's Treat's" or warning that "Your Being Watched", Deck and Herson are doing gods' work.

Why is Wealth Always Wasted on the Driven and Motivated?

I dreamt I had money.

And not just money, but money. It was two hundred yards of immaculate bluegrass from the lakeshore to my whitewashed chair on a whitewashed deck between white oaks and an avalanche of kudzu, and a humid breeze evaporated the traces of grapefruit juice and Bookers on my top lip. There was nothing to pull me away – no meeting, no timeclock, no errand – and if the notion took me, I could have lethargessed in that chair for a month.

And that’s exactly why – outside of a dream – I will likely never find myself in that chair. An interviewer once reportedly asked Warren Buffett why he wasn’t content to stop at, say, a billion dollars and spend the rest of his life relaxing. Buffett tersely replied that anyone who aspired to stop working didn’t have it in them to ever become wealthy in the first place. I’m despondently certain he’s right.

Given the means and the time, I wouldn’t collect cars or finance films or tend topiaries, so there are no secret clues to what my destined vocation really is. Given the means and the time, I would sit in the sun and read for days on end. That’s it. And don’t tell me I’d get bored. Like the midlife salesman who swallows his fury every time someone tells him "Oh, I enjoy traveling! I think I’d like that!", equally complete is my dismissal of the limits of my languidness.

In a literal sense, of course money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy a functional copy of The Great Gatsby*, a whitewashed chair, and two hundred yards of immaculate lakefront bluegrass. Explain to me the difference.

*Yes, I get the irony.

Coeds with Cell-Phone Guns Overrun Several Arizona Farms, Take Our Jobs, Begin Chemtrailing

My injuries are severe, but not fatal. (It takes more than a blast from Red Leader's feral wave inducer to stop ol' Finchy!) While I'm on the mend, please accept this post reprinted in its entirety from Radley Balko's blog The Agitator.

Another arrest for shooting video of an on-duty cop, this time in Ohio.

When a deputy sheriff began questioning Melissa Greenfield’s boyfriend at a Delaware County truck stop, she began recording video with her cell phone.

She never thought that she, or her phone, could be viewed as a danger as she documented the activities of public employees in a public place.

"I’m a 115-pound, 20-year-old girl wearing a cervical collar with nothing but a cell phone. I was not going to harm any officer," Greenfield said yesterday.

However, a sheriff’s sergeant saw the situation differently after Greenfield announced that she was recording video "for legal purposes and our own safety."

Sgt. Jonathan Burke wrote that he repeatedly ordered Greenfield to place the "unknown" object in her pocket and keep her hands free. When Greenfield refused, she was arrested and charged with obstructing official business and resisting arrest.

Burke wrote in his report that he feared that Greenfield could have been holding a dangerous object such as a "cell-phone gun"...

"Not knowing what the item in her hand was and having prior knowledge of all types of hidden weapons, including a cell-phone gun, I asked her several times to place it in her pocket and to keep her hands free," Burke wrote.

Greenfield said that, while driving her to the jail, Burke said that it was "unacceptable for me to be filming his activities."

"I wish I could be surprised," she said, "but I’ve heard so many stories of incidents like this happening before. ... There’s no law against videotaping police encounters."

Emphasis mine, to draw attention to the utter inanity of Dep. Burke’s report.

Greenfield is right. There’s no law in Ohio against videotaping police encounters. Unfortunately, there’s also no punishment for cops who violate the rights of Ohioans who try to do it. Delaware County Sheriff Walter L. Davis III is defending Dep. Burke and his cell-phone gun fears.

Greenfield says when she got the phone back, the video had been erased. Davis denies any of his deputies erased the video. Must have been a glitch.

Greenfield spent three days in jail. She pled no contest to the obstructing official business charge and was fined $20.

Also, depending on how you like the site redesign, it was either all my own inspired work, or the unauthorized meddling of the interns while I was bedridden.

From Hell's Heart, I Blog at Thee

I don’t have much time.

For the last month I have been held captive in some sort of highly-secured windowless cell. I am perpetually blindfolded, but based on the sickening odors, I have deduced that I am either downwind of a dysenteric Tibetan yak farm or somewhere in Detroit.

I cajoled a guard into allowing me to use his iPhone by promising him I could copy over all the contacts stuck on his old phone, so I only have time for a quick post and maybe three hands of Party Poker.

Do not forsake me, my Scotticus Finch acolytes. Like the heroic Balloon Boy, I will inevitably pop up inexplicably close to where you last saw me, none the worse for wear, and just as misanthropic as you remembered.

Mostly, I can’t wait to escape so I can finally find out what ingenious plan British Petroleum and President Obama implemented to quickly and efficiently stop that silly little oil leak in the Gulf. Remember that? What a slightly inconvenient nuisance that must have been for a few fish in the immediate area and absolutely no one else on Earth. USA! USA! USA!

It'd Be a Real Shame if Something Were to Happen to One of Them...

So I've got a case coming up before the local judge. Everybody says I'm going to lose, and that I better prepare for the worst. But I'm not so sure. As I explained to a reporter yesterday about the judge in my case:

"He'll see - maybe he will see the light of day. Maybe he will have an incident and he'll change his mind over night - you know, going to and from work."

You know, an incident.

OK, so that wasn't me. Even if it was me, it wouldn't be credible, seeing as how the closest I get to the city's underbelly is that one bar where the bartenders are a little surly. But it's actually a little scary when it comes from the head of Chicago's Machine himself, Richard Daley, talking about the freaking U.S. Supreme Court.

Later in the press conference Daley got tired of insinuating, or at least hoping for, violence and "jokingly" threatened to shove a bayoneted rifle up a local reporter's butt and also to shoot him with it.

Cleaning House... Or at Least Cleaning a Spot On One Rug Near the Guest Bedroom

The angry electorate has roared! The nation is gripped by an anti-incumbent furor! It's open-season on the bums!

So whaddaya think - will 40% of incumbents go down in November? 50%? 75%? Hold onto your hats, folks - 2010 will be the biggest shakeup in Washington since the Reagan Revolution of 1980 if we replace... 26% of Senators and 13% of House members seeking reelection. And don't forget that only about a third of the Senate is up for reelection in any election year; we're really getting revolutionary if we toss 9 whole Senators this year (for hardcore math types, that's 100 Senators / 3 * 26%, rounded up to the next whole powerhungry slug).

Count me among libertarians strongly in favor of a Constitutional amendment implementing term limits on Congresscritters.* Because we collectively make terrible exterminators.


*For those interested, yes, this statement is consistent with libertarian views. Libertarian != anarchist. I believe there is a short list of proper functions of a government, most of which can be summed up by its role as enforcer of nonagression. If it must exist, it must have structure (to bind it); term limits give structure just like the seperation of powers and the bicameral Congress.

DHS Asks States to Help Justify Their Bloated Budget

Jim Harper, writing for the too-good-for-a-comments-section Cato@Liberty blog, remarks on a doozy of a memo from the Department of Homeland Security:

Here’s a window onto the upside-down way government spending works. The Department of Homeland Security has sent a letter to states begging them to spend federally provided money on implementing REAL ID, the national ID law.

"DHS is regularly asked by members of Congress, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, if these funds are needed by the states, and whether these funds should be reallocated to other efforts," writes Juliette Kayyam of [the DHS] Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. "As both the states and the Federal government face increasingly tough budgeting decisions, it is more important than ever that these available funds be utilized."

That’s right: Tough budget times make it imperative to spend more money.

Check out the memo here (.pdf), and keep in mind how quickly any branch office of a well-run business would be shuttered for engaging in this kind of accounting tomfoolery. DHS isn't asking states to "use it or lose it," which is defensible; it is imploring states to dig deep into their collective imaginations and come up with ways to spend this money.

As Harper's closing points out: "It's flabbergasting."

A Very Long Straw

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Some guys from BP walk into a bar. One of them orders a milkshake. The other pulls out a very long straw...

Freedom Loaf

Mrs Finch was out of town for a week and I was left to hunt and/or gather my own food. For six out of seven days, I subsisted mostly on packets of unsweetened Kool-Aid mix and potpourri, but on day seven -- glorious day seven! -- I reached deep into the pantry and created a meal. Gentle readers, I give you... The Freedom Loaf*:

1 lb ground beef
1 egg, beaten like Gordon Brown
1/2 cup O'Charley's honey mustard
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Frank's Red Hot sauce
1 tbsp Dale's Steak Seasoning
1 tsp chipotle chile powder
2 cups garlic and onion croutons, pummeled angrily to dust
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mush everything into a big pale greyish lump and plop into any pan with sides (1" or deeper). Cook uncovered for one hour. Remove from oven using clean(ish) bathmat since you can't find a potholder. Scrape the fat drippings from the edges to give to your dogs, then slice meatloaf and serve with Cool Ranch Doritos or Nutter Butters.

*That's right. Scotticus Finch's milestone 100th post is a meatloaf recipe. Deal.

Goofus and Gallant, Special Illinois Edition

Gallant says, even though he is a police officer, he should be treated like everyone else.

Goofus tries to prove it by getting drunk, firing a gun outside a bowling alley, and waiting to see if he gets convicted.

He did not.

Bonus seek-and-find for the kids: Try and spot the minor drug possession arrest!

One of These Days, I’ll Give to NPR

OK, not likely, but they certainly set the clock back a few more months this morning (and I admit, I do feel a twinge of guilt every pledge drive in the seconds it takes me to lunge toward the radio and change the channel). The peoples’ radio also provided evidence that the proliferation of new media sources, and the corresponding decline of the old, allows for a more informed demos (and certainly not a crisis requiring a bailout).

Here’s how it happened: I’m rockin’ along this morning to the sweet sounds of Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne, and find myself being informed about the trusting nature of today’s yoots toward the federal government. I’m hearing about a huge gap in trust between those under 30 and the rest of us toward Unca’ Sam. The evidently trusting Millennials are contrasted with the “never trust anyone over 30” Flower Children. For evidence we get saccharine quotes from Brittany (“I feel like they are trying to do what's best for us and their constituents.”) and Tucker ("It gives you hope, and that hope turns into trust in the government, because you believe that things can change — or like good things can happen.”) Like, indeed. Are we on the verge of a statist paradise, where Potemkin despots dance naked under rainbows with their perpetually naïve serfs?

Alas, that proud day isn’t as close as it sounded this morning. I’ve read the NPR transcript now and can see that I missed the one “it’s worth noting that” that would’ve somewhat clued me in, but it was only upon seeing the survey in question on Hit'n'Run that I discovered the results of the story’s foundational survey. In fact, NPR themselves had previously run the results under a headline of “Trust In Government Hits Near-Historic Low.” It turns out 20% of those over 30 agreed with the statement “Do you trust the federal government to do what is right?” And those youthful revolutionaries? 32% of them agreed.

I have seen our future, and it is cynical. And it is good.

(Also, if you only get your news from one source - start practicing your naked rainbow dance.)

Terrible Title, Depressing Themes, Susan Sarandon... HBO Must Hate Me

You Don’t Know Jack has been playing on a near-continuous loop on forty-two of the forty-six HBO stations lately. Starring Al Pacino as the infamous assisted-suicide advocate Dr Jack Kevorkian, Know Jack treats the viewer to an interminable* and macabre parade of heart-wrenchingly desperate invalids, each one begging Kevorkian for a means to end their suffering without leaving their loved ones to dig a bullet out of the headboard.

Liberty’s most basic premise is ownership of one’s body, so most of my gentle readers can likely extrapolate their own Finch-worthy argument in support of Kevorkian’s efforts. What struck me from the film, though, was the unexpected nausea induced by his methods. After losing access to the planned site for Kevorkian’s first assisted suicide at the last minute, the doctor carried out the procedure in the back of his VW van rather than pulling the plug* for the day and rescheduling. His apparatus for administering the lethal drug cocktail was jerry-rigged from secondhand bits of mismatched aluminum and binder clips, and –- in the most upsetting scene of the film -– when Kevorkian began trying to reduce how much gas it took to achieve termination, one elderly man was subjected to saying goodbye to his wife from inside a miserable-looking Scotch-tape and Saran Wrap gas-retention tent which bore striking resemblance to a grade-school astronaut costume.

Don’t misunderstand; the melodramatic pageantry of post-death rituals these days is atrocious and generally exploitative. But considering nearly every one of Kevorkian’s cases left behind the deceased’s loved ones who will forever struggle with their own decision to "let" the suicide happen, the doctor owed them a bit more effort in terms of professionalism. According to the film, Kevorkian himself reached this same epiphany from jail but was stymied by a government committed to suffocating* his plans to open an end-of-life clinic in the US.

A life so painful that death seems winsome is positively unimaginable, but an eternal solution that strips any dignity from one’s final moments manages to make it worse. Government needs to stand aside and let the market perfect this process.


*Get it?

Missouri Drug Raid Video

As promised, here is the video mentioned in (Redacted)'s post on the February Missouri SWAT raid. As the video plays out -- particularly as the man in custody realizes his family pet has been killed in his kitchen and his seven-year old son sits terrified on the floor -- ask yourself why on Earth he couldn't have just been arrested on his way to the mailbox.

Battlefield: Grover's Corners

Thanks, Scotticus, for making a little room for the O.G. freedom fighter. (Okay, okay, freedom grouser.) Let's just say I was grousing the good grouse back when Scotticus still thought GM and Goldman Sachs were run by Hank Reardon and not James Taggart. But enough with the intro and on with the show. I'll try to post something less painful in the near future to make up for this sucker punch.

First off, I strongly support the legalization of most, if not all, drugs that are currently illegal in the U.S. My fundamental reason for that position is that I believe we are not free while living under an authority that has control over our use of our own bodies in ways that do not violate the rights of others. To paraphrase Bosephus, if you get stoned and sing all night long, ain't none of my business. (Aside to make it painfully clear: I favor strict prosecution of any true crimes - those involving the violation of nonconsenting persons' rights - a person commits, regardless of their state of intoxication; that is, intoxication by any substance is no defense.) I also understand that reasonable people can disagree about drug legalization (though of course I'm right :-)

What I think is indefensible, and a point on which I do not believe reasonable people can disagree, are the tactics increasingly used in the prosecution of this "War on (Some) Drugs". Through the explosive use of SWAT teams over the past 30 years our police have become militarized and are being deployed in ways fit for a battlefield in Afghanistan, not against nonviolent citizens of Grover's Corners, USA (nor South-Central LA) who may posses intoxicating substances not granted the Big Brother Seal of Approval. Tactics include: predawn raids on family homes (yes, with small children present); teams of SWAT police armed with fully automatic rifles, tear gas, and flash-bang grenades (these ain't firecrackers - they are so bright they blind you for 5 seconds and explode with a blast louder than a 747 on takeoff, but in your living room); no-knock entry; and basing raids on the testimony of known liars who receive reduced sentences for providing information - true or not. These raids were conducted over 100 times a day as of 2006 and based on SWAT team funding have likely increased in frequency since then. They have resulted in the violent deaths of "criminals" guilty of nothing but possessing an intoxicant unapproved by our overlords, as well as people innocent of even that "crime" who were unlucky enough to live at an address raided incorrectly. Don't forget the many family pets killed, and even some of the raiding police officers. And it is entirely because the police themselves are taking a nonviolent situation and making it intensely violent.

Unfortunately, most of these incidents go unreported by the majority of our state-tonguebathing media. When they do make news, reporters almost never question the accounts provided by the police involved, regardless of those accounts' preposterousness. There are some true reporters who dig deeper (as Scotticus has mentioned, Radley Balko is exhibit A: www.theagitator.com; he also writes for Reason and for the Cato Institute), so thankfully there is some information available. But as much as all those stories can boil the blood, a video brings it home like nothing else. Presented now for your edification is a 5 minute video of a nighttime SWAT raid of a family home in Columbia, MO with the suspect - a nonviolent man suspected of possession of marijuana - and his wife and 7-year-old child at home. Please watch the video and ask yourself what crime would justify these police actions. I am going to assume possession of a small amount of an intoxicating substance far less dangerous than alcohol makes the list.

Here's the newspaper account.

Bottom line: Police are not soldiers, drug users are not an opposition force, U.S. neighborhoods are not battlegrounds. There is no war and dead citizens are not collateral damage.

"And Now I Know for Sure, I Just Added More Guys to My Wolf Pack"

The Scotticus Finch talent scouts and headhunters have been hard at work the last few weeks trying to lock down contracts on some new contributing columnists for the blog. After several false starts, the team has convinced me we cannot actually charge writers a fee to contribute here, and that somehow we should be focusing on enticing them instead.

Hrmph. You kids, with your Super Nintendos, your Huey Lewis rock and roll music, and your expectations of being compensated for work...

So keep an eye out for the "posted by" line after each post in the coming months. I am not yet at liberty to divulge the names of our most-promising targets, but let's just say that if you've spent much time loitering behind the downtown YMCA or standing in line for Rob Schneider films, you're already familiar with the type of folks we're after.

(And to Naomi Klein: Please stop sending muffin baskets to the office. It ain't happening.)

Title explained -- as if I needed to -- here.

Seattle Boy Makes a Wish, Superpowered Blogger Cries Like a Woman

I got a significant amount of flak for my rail against Cormac McCarthy's The Road last month. As an active misanthrope with pessimistic proclivities, the fledgling joy I find in life comes from those bright, unexpected moments -- your favorite song on the radio just as you start the car, clear sunny skies on your day off, a toddler cracking up at his own reflection. Those moments simply didn't exist in McCarthy's world.

Thankfully they do in ours:

Thursday was shaping up to be just another school day for 13-year-old Erik Martin, but then something extraordinary happened: Spider-Man called.

Spider-Man happens to be one of the few people who knows that Erik, too, has a secret identity — he's Electron Boy, a superhero who fights the powers of evil with light.

And Spider-Man needed Erik's help.

Erik, who is living with liver cancer, has always wanted to be a superhero. On Thursday, the regional chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted him that wish with an elaborate event that involved hundreds of volunteers in Bellevue and Seattle.[...]

Pulling off a wish like this one required a big story, and a lot of heart. And so, with a note of panic in his voice, Spider-Man explained the dilemma: "Dr. Dark" and "Blackout Boy" had imprisoned the Seattle Sounders [soccer team] in a locker room at Qwest Field. Only Electron Boy could free them.

Erik got into his red-and-blue superhero costume, and called on the powers of Moonshine Maid, who owns a DeLorean sports car. For good measure, more than 20 motorcycle officers from the Bellevue Police Department and King County and Snohomish sheriff's offices escorted Electron Boy to Seattle.

"They shut down 405 — they shut down I-90," marveled Moonshine Maid, aka Misty Peterson. "I thought it would just be me, in the car."

At Qwest Field, Electron Boy was directed by frantic fans to the Sounders locker room, where the entire team was shouting for help behind jammed doors. With a little help from Lightning Lad, the alter ego of local actor Rob Burgess, Erik opened the door with his lightning rod. The Sounders cheered.[...]

Electron Boy seemed a little dazed by his powers. Out on Qwest Field, the Sounders gave Erik a hero's congratulations, posed for pictures and gave him a jersey and autographed ball.

Everyone was startled when, overhead, the Jumbotron crackled to life.

"Electron Boy, I am Dr. Dark and this is Blackout Boy," sneered an evil voice, as the villain — Edgar Hansen, and his sidekick Jake Anderson, both of Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" — taunted the young superhero. "We are here to take over Seattle and make it dark!"

On the Jumbotron, a video showed a Puget Sound Electric employee Jim Hutchinson trapped in the top of his bucket truck in front of PSE's Bellevue headquarters. Only Electron Boy could save him.[...]

More than 250 PSE employees gathered outside the company's headquarters and cheered as Electron Boy freed the trapped worker. "It was so loud, people in office buildings were looking out the window," said Make-A-Wish communications director Jeannette Tarcha.

But Dr. Dark and Blackout Boy were still at large. Electron Boy got a tip that the evil duo were at the Space Needle, where they had disabled the elevator and trapped people on the observation deck. Racing back to Seattle, Electron Boy stepped out of the DeLorean to a cheering crowd of dozens of admirers, and confronted his nemesis.

"How did you find us, Electron Boy?" Dr. Dark demanded.

Erik wordlessly leapt at Dr. Dark with his lightning rod, freezing the villain. Then he unlocked the elevator and freed the people trapped upstairs.[...]

Seattle City Councilwoman Sally Bagshaw stepped forward with a key to the city and a proclamation that Thursday was Electron Boy Day. Afterward, Erik posed for the TV cameras, flexed his muscles and spent some time astride a Bellevue police motorcycle.[...]

Watching her son run across the plaza in front of the Space Needle, mom Judy Martin said Erik goes to school when he's able, but is often too tired. "He hasn't had this much energy in a long time," she said. "They called it the power of the wish, and they're right."

Like any good superhero, Electron Boy kept his innermost thoughts to himself. But he did have one important thing to say:

"This is the best day of my life."

From the Seattle Times here. Cormac McCarthy's powers are no match for Erik.

No Title, Just a Sigh

I give up.

Scenes From Fallujah Quincy

Sometimes images really can do more to drive a point home than all the words in the world. Just ask Janet Reno. Or Janet Reno. Or Janet Reno.

On Wednesday, Quincy (Ill.) Deputy Police Chief Ron Dreyer was called upon to bravely show his teeth in response to an imminent threat against President Obama. Jim Hoft of BigGovernment.com has the pictures:

Excuse me, officer? Yes, you -- the one dressed to combat Maximus Decimus Meridius or possibly a Rancor. You look ridiculous. You, your boss, your boss's boss, and especially your boss's boss's boss, are cowards. Please look deep within yourself (I'm sure you signed up with the best of intentions.) and beg the chief to reconsider next time he wants to send a squad in full riot gear to intimidate a peaceful assembly.

Jonathan Swift - Sarcasm = California

Ask any Tea Partier; there is plenty to dislike in the details of health care reform.

But we of the tinfoil hat brigade have long insisted that the principal problem with government-subsidized health insurance is broad: When government pays for health care, government will inevitably regulate anything and everything that can be even tenuously linked to health.

By ceding the responsibility for the cost of health care, we have sacrificed the freedom to make our own decisions about our health. A nauseating argument to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less true. We saw it happen with seat belts; we saw it happen with motorcycle helmets; we saw it happen with cigarettes. Now, just to prove that no caricature or paranoia could ever be as asinine as reality, we will witness within our lifetimes the end of Happy Meal toys.

...[C]ounty officials in Silicon Valley [Calif.] are poised to outlaw the little toys that often come with high-calorie offerings.
...
Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the proposal would forbid the inclusion of a toy in any restaurant meal that has more than 485 calories, more than 600 mg of salt or high amounts of sugar or fat. In the case of McDonald's, the limits would include all of the chain's Happy Meals — even those that include apple sticks instead of French fries.

Ken Yeager, president of the authoritarian nitwits Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, knows unequivocally that you are too stupid and/or incompetent -- all of you -- to spurn the siren song of a Shrek IV wind-up toy, so he is stepping in.

"People ask why I want to take toys out of the hands of children," said Yeager.... "But we now know that 70% of the kids that are overweight or obese will be overweight or obese as adults. Why would we want to burden anybody with a lifetime of chronic illness?"

Did you see that leap? Fast-food toys are responsible for a lifetime of chronic illness. Unless the McDonald's in Yeager's neighborhood has been offering polio pops or asbestos action figures, then he can take his hyperbole and insert it posteriorly.

Even then, whence does Yeager draw his justification for the crackdown? You guessed it:

"We're responsible for paying for healthcare in the whole county," Yeager said. "We pay close to $2 billion annually on healthcare, and the costs have done nothing but rise." A big part of the increase, he said, is costs related to obesity.

The slippery slope is not a logical fallacy; it is the undeniable nature of government power.

The Simpsons Proudly Declares Cowardice

The Simpsons has a running gag in the opening credits where Bart repeatedly writes something pithy on the blackboard at school.

Here was last night's:

If you are not familiar with the recent South Park controversy, get caught up here.

I don't know what to make of the Simpsons statement. My initial interpretation is that the writers -- and not necessarily the FOX network -- admire South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker's courage, but admit they have none of their own, which is a decidedly odd message to advertise.

So far FOX has not commented, and judging by the implied message I assume they never will. Were I Stone or Parker, my response would have to be "Thanks... for nothing."

Banks Collapse, Kleenex and Jergens See Record Profits

Most people wouldn't say they "enjoy" their jobs. That is to say, most people wouldn't continue filing TPS reports, fielding customer-complaint calls, inseminating mares, or whatever if there were no compensation involved. Add to that reality the fact that most people plug away at their jobs for at least forty hours every week, and it's no wonder folks occasionally find themselves seeking out cubicle-based diversions. A quick mission sweeping mines, pithy social-networking updates, riveting and hilarious cultural observations -- you get the picture.

But what kind of job must one have that enables him to -- ahem -- jerk around for eight hours a day? Why, a government job, of course!

A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. [emphasis added]

Eight hours a day?! I know pornographers who don't see eight hours of porn in a day. Fortunately for the hoarding horndog, there were plenty of other locked office doors in the building:

The SEC's inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press.

The memo says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.

One amorous accountant attempted (and failed) to access restricted sites more than 16,000 times in a single month, then -- displaying that never-say-die government moxie that won the War on Drugs in the '80s -- the accountant settled for changing his Google Images search settings and "managed to amass a collection of 'very graphic' material on his hard drive" that way instead.

The report surfaced on Thursday, but the story seemed to suffocate quickly, practically dismissed as novelty News of the Weird. But before the sordid tale of the Bishop-Bopping Beltway Boys dies off completely, keep a figure in mind:

$222,418

That is the salary of "senior level" SEC employees, seventeen of whom were implicated in the probe. That's $9.45 million you and I spent since mid-2007.

Talk about fiddling while Rome burned...

Rockets' Red Glare

Sunburn crept down my unprotected scalp, its progress imperceptible save for the stinging pain left behind every time I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Shaving my head was a dumb idea this time of year; forgetting the sunscreen was even dumber. Just ahead of me, a man in full woodland camouflage struggled to walk -- likely a symptom of the enormous cantaloupe-sized growth protruding from his ilium. A combat shotgun hung taut on a strap across the cripple's back, and I absently fingered the .38 special on my belt. It felt strange to be envious of him.

Sharp, overlapping machine-gun blasts vibrated in my foam earplugs with regularity, but no one in this area was paying any attention. They were here to buy. A hand-drawn tag Scotch-taped to the leviathan rifle in front of me read simply "$56,000" and was set directly behind an upturned Nazi SS helmet overflowing with brass knuckles: "$6 each". A rack of silk-screened t-shirts caught my eye -- the classic Che Guevara design re-imagined with President Obama in relief and letters added to spell "douCHEbag". Noticing my line of sight, the vendor piped up, grinning with half his mouth as he drew me in.

"A colored fella' looked at that one earlier. He said he loved it! Said he hated liberals!"

I've no reason to believe the t-shirt and brass-knuckle salesman was in any way representative of the hundreds of friendly, freakishly-knowledgeable vendors hawking their hawk-wares at the Knob Creek (KY) Machine Gun Shoot last Saturday. In fact, beyond the anachronistic (and innocuous) use of the term "colored", there was nothing terribly offensive about his observation or his shirts. And while crazies were out in force -- I can't shake the image of a man enthusiastically greeting an eight-year-old boy to his booth with a crisp Hitlergruß -- in aggregate the event was more Paula Dean than Anarchist Cookbook.

Firearms unquestionably outnumbered attendees by a factor of ten, both for sale and in personal possession, and I'm fairly certain I've never felt so safe in all my life. Vendors routinely turned their backs on unsecured items worth tens of thousands of dollars; after all, who would try to rob these people? Even US Senate candidate Rand Paul made an early appearance, pressing the flesh with hobbyists and kooks alike with no visible security entourage of any kind.

Had MSNBC been on the scene (like the New Zealand Herald?), it would have been easy to cherry-pick a ratings-grabbing hodgepodge of militants and racists, but the reality is that Knob Creek was ideal family fare. Between rich historical displays, a live band, "feel-free-to-touch!" meteorites, a light-and-sound show that puts fireworks to shame, and a swiftboatload of genuine experts teaching respect for and healthy caution toward weapons, the Machine Gun Shoot is exactly the kind of event Washington, Adams, and Jefferson would have enjoyed.

At eighty-seven degrees, less parking than your average Hawaiian Shave Ice hut, and no beer for sale, 8000 people certainly didn't come all this way just to whisper about "colored" people.

The Road I'd Rather Not Have Traveled

What are the most horrible things you can imagine? Loneliness? Helplessness? Unceasing mortal fear from morning to night?

What about specifics? A human newborn baby roasting on a spit at an abandoned campsite? A cellar full of naked human livestock, some with cauterized stumps where limbs have been removed as food for their captors? A solemn promise to murder your small child -- to smash his brain with a stone -- rather than let him be captured by sodomites and cannibals?

These are the essential elements of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road, without doubt the most terrible, beautiful, miserable, punishing book I have ever read.

Because I care for my readers, I beg you to skip this book. The Road, a Pulitzer winner, has been called the best book of the last twenty-five years and the best book of the decade, but I call the reading of it masochistic. There is no levity. The anemic tendrils of hope are short-lived and emphatically dashed. Even the vast sections of tedium are laced with shivering omen.

Whatever McCarthy's grand intended message, it vanished like so much sugar in a ladleful of ipecac. This is no Diary of a Young Girl; this is exploitative horror from whole cloth masquerading as social commentary -- a literary Marilyn Manson album.

An Amazon Kindle looms large on my Christmas list this year. I know now I'd pay a hefty premium for an "Un-Read This Book" feature.

Adjust Your Queues Accordingly

The Finch household has grown impressively adept at timing our Netflix DVD returns just right, queuing up new releases to ship on the first day they are available. Thanks to a new deal with Universal and 20th Century Fox, though, we can ease off the trigger.

The agreement -- like one they already have in place with Warner Bros. Studios -- institutes a twenty-eight day delay between a movie's DVD release and its availability on Netflix, and is meant to help the studios boost DVD sales. Netflix's booty in the bargain is an increase in studio content available for subscribers to stream for free from the website.

So, you'll have to wait an extra twenty-eight days to watch Avatar on your home theater system, but you can watch a medium-res, internet-streamed, season-two episode of Fox's Lie to Me on your 2002 laptop right now!

Interestingly, Blockbuster will still offer movies through its mail-order service on the normal release date thanks to the brick-and-mortar behemoth's promise to pay the studios first when it inevitably goes bankrupt.

You probably can't get any additional information by clicking on the Netflix ads that appear on this site from time to time, but it wouldn't hurt to try...

Obama's War on Terrycloth

Want to see what truly chickenshit trade policy looks like? Then hop on board this crazy train.

The US pays out an estimated $3 billion annually in subsidies to improve American cotton growers' ability to under-price foreign cotton producers, including Brazil. The World Trade Organization determined Brazil had a legitimate beef with this practice, and authorized sanctions against the US. So the US, rather than considering suspending or eliminating the subsidies, instead plans to pay out an additional $150 million annually, directly to Brazil, to help offset the unfair trade policy.

Not angry yet? Follow that money train again: US farmers can't compete with Brazilian farmers, so we give them tax money. This puts Brazilian farmers at a disadvantage, so we give them tax money, theoretically to get us back to where we were before we spent 3.15 billion dollars.

If you believe in protectionism, great; be a protectionist. If you believe in globalism, great; be a globalist. And if you're one of those wacky free-marketeers like me, double-great; we'll hang out, eat some foie gras, and shoot the poor with bullets made of compressed money. But throwing away billions of dollars pretending to be all three and achieving the goals of none is politics at its worst, and it is exceptionally cowardly.

Hat tip to "Ryan", who really should be working.

President Bush's Third Term Turning Out Worse than Feared

Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head concerning President (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Obama's chilling decision to authorize the assassination of an American citizen without due process of any kind. Greenwald's plenty good at what he does, so I'll just parse out the best bits:

Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill [American-born Islamic cleric Anwar] al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield.
...
No due process is accorded. No charges or trials are necessary. No evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations (which he has done vehemently through his family). None of that.

Instead, in Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America's newspapers -- cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they're granted -- to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist. It is simply asserted that Awlaki has converted from a cleric who expresses anti-American views and advocates attacks on American military targets (advocacy which happens to be Constitutionally protected) to Actual Terrorist "involved in plots." These newspapers then print this Executive Verdict with no questioning, no opposition, no investigation, no refutation as to its truth. And the punishment is thus decreed: this American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA because Barack Obama has ordered that it be done. What kind of person could possibly justify this or think that this is a legitimate government power?

As Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit would say: "Remember when they told us if we voted for John McCain, we'd get Orwellian tactics and an increased police state? Turns out they were right."

And just for the record, here's candidate Obama in 2007 proving once again that he has never even played a game of cards or shared a cab with President Obama:

[Boston Globe]: Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?

[Obama]: No. I reject the Bush Administration's claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

I suppose the quandary surrounding the detention of citizens is moot if you grant yourself the authority to simply assassinate them instead.

Legendary Beast Captured, Proves Ancient People Were 'Fraidy-Cats

Legitimate question to journalists: What exactly would you say you "do" here?

The headline of this UK Telegraph piece reads "'Oriental yeti' discovered in China". Now, ask anyone on the entire planet to describe a yeti, and I guarantee not a single one of them will describe this:

But the Telegraph is in the clear, because, you see, they used apostrophes. They were only reporting that this mangy civet had been "dubbed" an 'Oriental yeti'. "Dubbed by whom?" might be a logical question, though it's one the Telegraph didn't feel the need to answer.

So, now that the standard operating procedure has been established, I would like to announce that Scotticus Finch, 'the world's most-trusted blog', has discovered 'unequivocal proof' that the 'Queen of England' is 'actually a man'.

All claims have been thoroughly dubbed.

Maybe This is How Skynet Started

Nobody wanted it to be accurate. Contradictory to everything that bracketology represents -- speculation, scouting, team loyalty, soothsaying -- the Coin-Flip Algorithm also doubled-down on the suckage by predicting Duke would win it all. That's like picking Johnny to beat Daniel-san or rooting for Clue Heywood to go yard on Ricky Vaughn in the playoffs.

But there it is. After sixty-three brutal games (the play-in game wasn't included), the Coin-Flip bracket claimed a dominant second-place finish in the office pool amid thirty-six entrants. Earning 109 total points, the bracket was only three points shy of first place but a full twenty-six ahead of third place.

Highlights included the prediction of St Mary's over Villanova in the second round and early exists by Kansas, Syracuse, and Ohio State. Lowlights abounded -- Oklahoma State in the Final Four? Florida State in the Regional Final? -- but the math still wins. CBS evidently doesn't track how many entries they received overall (WTF?) but ESPN estimates a staggering 4.78 million brackets were submitted. The Coin-Flip bracket's ranking worldwide: 27,279^th (That's fifty-three points behind the overall winner, a grizzled old sports guru named "PrettyBritt3", who likely reasoned that actual devils could kill actual bulldogs. NTTAWWT.)

The only portion of the Coin-Flip method that relied on pure prognostication was the tie-breaking final-game, final-score total. I predicted 119 points; the score was 61-59.

Missed it by that much.

Also, "Scottéric Bastiat" Was Already Taken

Judging by the way several people -- upon making my personal acquaintance -- mispronounce the name of this blog, a bit of appellative exposition is in order.

The name "Scotticus Finch" is a barely-creative take on Atticus Finch, the protagonist in Harper Lee's 1960 masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Finch was peerlessly portrayed in the 1962 film version by Gregory Peck, a performance that netted Peck an Oscar and (forty years later) cemented Finch as the greatest hero in 100 years of American cinema (edging out such icons as Superman, Indiana Jones, and James Bond).

Today, writing a progressive character who fights against racist ignorami is just lazy. In 1962, it was contemporary. In Mockingbird, Finch, a southern lawyer, represents a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The book is written from the perspective of Finch's young daughter, so some of the lessons aren't exactly groundbreaking -- "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." -- but Finch was a practical idealist, a crack-shot pacifist, an eternally-patient single parent, and an anti-authoritarian agent of the state. We don't get heroes like that every day.

Finch on democracy: "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

Bastiat himself couldn't have said it better.

Incidentally, today would have been Peck's 94^th birthday.

Maybe One Day They Will Make a Book Version of the "Lord of the Rings" Movies

I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about exactly what I would wish for, given the opportunity. Much depends on the exact circumstances: Is it a standard three-wish genie situation? A four-wish monkey paw? Just one wish like Ray J? And what if it turns out I'm being taught an "important lesson", and everything I wish for turns out horribly wrong?

It's a lot to consider. A constant thread to the fantasy, though, is that one way or another, I would use my wish(es) to permanently remove a single phrase from the collective human lexicon:

"Yes, I saw the movie. The book was so much better."

That sentence has never been additive to any conversation in the history of human dialogue, and 9999 times out of 10,000 it could be replaced by saying "I'm fairly certain I'm intellectually superior to you" instead.

What exactly is the sentiment behind such a declaration? What was "better" about the book? Did our pretentious speaker deftly perceive that characters developed more over 400 pages of descriptive third-person narrative than in 100 pages (mostly white space and stage direction) of a script? Is it that sixteen paragraphs describing the feelings, thoughts, memories, smells, and history associated with a particular location provides a broader context than a five second establishing shot? What is the consistent set of measurable values through which this comparative assessment becomes valid?

Movies and books are such vastly different media that claiming Puzo's The Godfather is "better" than Coppola's The Godfather is as sensible as claiming Pope Benedict is better than eggs Benedict. (Never mind the fact that -- separately and independently -- Coppola's film is fantastic and Puzo's book is lousy.)

Most books cannot emotionally accomplish in two hours what movies can. And very few movies can envelop the consumer and create the kind of sensory investment that books can. Comparing them side-by-side demeans them both.

More unfortunate still, most people who make these claims don't even have a lukewarm basis for it in their own minds. Instead it serves as a way to boldly declare "I READ A BOOK!" in the middle of an entirely orthogonal conversation.

While we're all very proud of you for reading Marley and Me all the way through, your decision to hijack my conversation for the purposes of misplaced self-aggrandizement hath triggered my wrath.

Two wishes left. Maybe I'll wish for innocuous observations to stop making me so grumpy...

More than One in 3,921,568 Americans Visited this Blog in March

The obsequious team of semi-competent Scotticus Finch interns put together some information about the site's March 2010 traffic.  (That was the first full month during which we employed fancy-schmancy analytic software.)  The interns shall be rewarded with an extra ration of Bakon; the rest of you will be rewarded with the cold, hard numbers.

In March, the site delighted the senses of 102 unique visitors who generated 745 total page-views.

Twenty-four curious souls meandered over from a Facebook plug; nine drove by on their way to Hit & Run; two stumbled in from a comment on Consuming Louisville (Looks like a lovely little town!); and two sought refuge from the Über-Troll Urkobold (don't ask).

Of the sixty-eight Googlers who found us, twenty-seven used some combination of the following search terms: owl city, firefly, terrible. One visitor somehow came over by Googling the phrase "bubba the punch sponge", though independent experimentation has failed to recreate this anomaly.

Disappointingly, out of 745 page-views in thirty-one days, only twenty-four visitors clicked on any of the ads in the upper-left corner. We here at Scotticus Finch would never violate the Terms of Service by encouraging people to click the ads. We would also never remind you how much baby formula costs.

(Gross revenue for the month of March: $5.73. Booyah!)

Many sincere thanks to those of you who frequent the site, especially those who have been around since the austere (and a bit odd) beginning. Some exciting changes are in the works for the upcoming months, so stay tuned!

No Word Yet on Film Adaptations of "McDonald's" or "Uno"

Fingers... cramping. Eye... twitching. Teeth... grinding.

Must... Contain... Fury...

Apologies in advance for my lack of commentary on the following link. There simply isn't much to be said.

Obviously Hollywood has reached the point where the only question that matters in getting a movie made is: "Have people heard of this thing?" No layered characterization, no subtle symbolism, no triumphant story arc can trump the simple reality that people no longer want to go to the movies unless they know beforehand exactly what their $12 is buying.

So, rather than marvelous films (but potential risks) like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Memento, or Moulin Rouge, the future of American Cinema instead looks like this:

The Marmaduke Movie

It's the bed we've made, America.  Now go lay down!

The One Most of You Can Skip [Working Title]

The Internet's greatest asset as a social tool is its ability to simultaneously allow users to be anonymous, yet onymous. Pseudonymity, once the pretense of literary atychiphobics, is now the favored bloviation tool for everyone from Publius to Perez Hilton.

But did you know that you too can wax philosophic under a semi-clever name of your choice, be it "Muffintopless", "YouHadMeAtHalo", "BabysatByPolanski", or "Steve"?

By popular singular demand, here is a quick tutorial on navigating the Comments section of Scotticus Finch:

First, select the Name/URL option from the drop-down menu.

Next, enter the name of your choice. Ignore the URL section; that's far too advanced for you.

Finally, jabber away. This ain't Twitter, so there is no 140-character limit. (But for the record, anything more than about three sentences triggers my fight-or-flight. Sheesh, get your own blog!)

That's all there is to it. Now stand up and be heard with no possibility of accountability whatsoever! It's why Al Gore invented this crazy series of tubes!

Japan to New York Times: "All Your Job Are Belong to Us"

One of the long-standing excuses for journalistic bias is that reporters are "only human".

Well, problem solved:

Researchers at the Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a journalist robot that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds.

According to the article, the robot can "detect changes in its surroundings", determine their relevance, interview bystanders, take photos, use the Internet to "round out its understanding" of the story, and publish directly to the web.

Surprisingly, researchers have not named the bot. I humbly submit: w00dward.

This is fantastic progress. Most cable news networks have already abandoned the charade of objectivity, and focus instead on naked opinion-driven analysis, something that even Skynet can't synthesize. But fact-finding and reporting should be a rote process, and it is my (now-encouraged) hope that future societies will wax nostalgic about reporters the same way we do about chimney sweeps and elevator operators.

And just in case you were thinking: "Robot reporters? Bah. I was promised a future with jetpacks, dammit! Where are my jetpacks?!" Well, your time has come as well.

Reporter-bot link via Pro Libertate and the Über Troll Urkobold.

Snarky Before it Was Cool -- Scotticus Talks to God in 2004

In a stunning display of laziness and general contempt for my reader(s), I am going to reprint an op-ed that originally ran in my hometown newspaper in April 2004. The only part that feels especially dated is the John Cusack fawning, but remember that prior to 2004, one could still appreciate the High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, Pushing Tin, Say Anything Cusack without knowing that those of us in the distant future would have to endure the Must Love Dogs, Martian Child, War Inc, 2012 Cusack.

Speaking of Cusack, join me in our very own Hot Tub Time Machine:

Dear God: it’s me, Scotticus. First off, I want to thank you for so many things -– springtime, basketball, The Sopranos, John Cusack movies -– so as not to seem overly critical. As for Earth, I love what you’ve done with the place. Your sense for drama is absolutely Scorsese-esque, especially that bit with Saddam Hussein coming out of the spider-hole with his Lyle Lovett hair and Jim Belushi demeanor:

"I wish to negotiate." Classic.

Having said that, I’ve got some pretty serious clergy-stumpers that I’d feel much better having answers to. For instance, I saw Mel Gibson’s new movie about your kid, and it got me to thinking: that was your kid. Yeah, yeah, "part God" and all, but if I have my theology right, when Deus Jr. was on the cross –- bleeding, bruised, broken -– he was flesh, blood, scooped-him-up-when-he-fell-off-his-bike human. So from there I began to wonder, was that really justice?

The way I learned it in Vacation Bible School, Jesus had to die in my place because he was perfect. For me to die wouldn’t have paid even the interest on my debt, having once lied to my mom about drawing on the furniture with permanent markers, so you called in a Holy Ringer. That’s where the logic gets muddy to me. Why am I absolved through the breaking and destruction of the only perfect human you ever made? In which part of your wonderful universe is that just?

If I saw a man murder my family, I wouldn’t sigh the great sigh of closure by seeing his sweet, elderly, Wal-Mart-greeter aunt writhe in the electric chair in his place. People point to your fourth-quarter Messiah substitution as proof positive of just how much you love us, but that doesn’t feel like justice at all; in fact it kind of makes my stomach churn.

I want to be on your team. Believe me, I love Max Lucado books as much as the next guy, and Mike Breaux can flat-out preach. Your theme songs are always catchy, and your pleasant promises of paradise take the acid-reflux out of life, but I’m not the first who needed to put his finger in the wounds to believe -– and Thomas used to fish with the guy.

I see your chosen people getting sand kicked in their face by everyone from Pharaoh to Hitler to Arafat, and that leaves me almost as dumbfounded as the fact that you have a "chosen people" to begin with.

But all digression aside, my overall point is so disturbing that I cannot be content to fully claim it without begging, pleading, even praying to be shown the light which so many insist is there; so here goes:

I think maybe you’re wrong.

Now hear me out. I know the Bible says you are infallible, but to be fair it was your book. Richard Clarke practically claims he foresaw terrorist attacks in tea leaves in his book. If I wrote one, I’d be the coolest character in it too. I’d see the future, possess a perfect sense of justice, love everyone, and be able to pull off that trick where Superman could see Lois Lane’s undies through her nightgown.

It’s not that I don’t think you are who you say you are. Evidence and instinct screams that there is a creative, even artistic force behind the universe, and I believe that force is most certainly you. But I was created with a mind capable of astounding feats of reason (in fact it is my gift just as bears have claws and puppies have cuddliness) and there are moments among your record where you and I seem to simply disagree. Remember that time when you and Moses commanded the Israelites to pike the heads of the Midianites, scolded the army for leaving the women alive, then ordered them to take the virgins -– most likely preteens -– for themselves (Numbers 31:3-18)? I wasn’t on board for that. And earlier, when you put Pharaoh up as a patsy to show off your best tricks, one of which was killing firstborn children (Exodus 10:1-2), well you left me with a little head-scratching then too. But the real rub is the crucifixion. What parent expresses love to his naughty children by nailing the one who behaves to a tree?

In the end, it’s your world. Even if you are wrong, you wrote the rules and you pick the winners. But you created this brain in my head, and if the ultimate gesture of humanity as you created it is to deny the very rationality and morality that sets me apart from the gerbils in favor of blindly following you, then I’m afraid I cannot suit up this time. Give my regards to Walter Matthou, and if I’m wrong, then I truly pray you help me piece it together before the final horn blows.

PS – Thanks again for the springtime.