Category Archives: Law

Update II: The Gall Of The Media Ghouls (Arrested Development?)

Affirmative Action, Celebrity, Criminal Injustice, Healthcare, Intelligence, Justice, Law, Media, Music

Following the death notice are a few apropos excerpts from my “Mad Dog Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” one of the few trenchant defenses of Michael Jackson, written at the time of his trial. Michael J. was accused of molesting a big hairy “child,” three times the size of the frail singer.*

“Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.”

Now Keith Olbermann eulogizes Jackson, but back in 2005, “Olbermann, expecting a prosecutorial touchdown, aired a rather cruel segment on his consistently cruel ‘Countdown With Keith O.’ The segment was called ‘Prepping for the Pokey.’ In that bit of “comedy,” the awful Olbermann “pondered how Jackson would fit his prosthetic proboscis in jail.”

“The only man (Jon Stewart disappointed),” other than yours truly, “to have distinguished himself from the pack was Geraldo Rivera. The Fox News reporter conceded Jackson’s conduct was creepy and said as much (as did I). But he understood that creepy is not necessarily criminal.”

* “Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” was rejected for publication by a leading libertarian website. Much to the proprietor’s disgrace, the rejection was based on a dislike for the column’s author.
Speaking of whom, if you appreciate her work, please support it. And do visit WND on Fridays for the weekly column. If not for those courageous evangelicals, the cultists in mainstream media and among my own ideological faction would have seen me banished from larger audiences for good.

Update I: “Thriller” was undoubtedly a musical triumph, Jackson’s only one, perhaps. The Jackson of that era had achieved a good look in his life-long plastic-surgery odyssey. The songs were very tight, accompanied by enormous talent: Eddie Van Halen played guitar on the song “Beat It,” and Steve Lukather, studio musician from Toto, did guitars on the remainder. It was an exciting, polished effort, with a hard-core manly sound, attributable to the guitar greats cited. (Here is another one worth a listen.)

Update II (June 27): ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. At the time a 911 call was placed from the Jackson home, Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s cardiologist, had been performing CPR on the already dead MJ for the better part of an hour. If that doesn’t strike the medical profession (the media is even less inclined to think critically) as odd, perhaps the position chosen to administer the life-saving procedure will: the singer was splayed on a bed.

Now, a CPR recipient has to be lain on a hard surface — “because it is difficult to compress the chest on a soft surface.” How can you deliver an awakening thump to the heart on a surface that gives?

Yet it was the 911 operator that had to tell “the staffer to ‘get him on the floor,'” a message the latter presumably conveyed to the inept doctor.

What is it about these celebrities that makes them seek out such incompetence in their care-givers? If you recall, Anna Nicole Smith too was surrounded by an incompetent team of husband and wife nurses at the time she died.

Kanye West’s mother died under the knife of a trendy plastic surgeon. West was celebrated as a woman of some intelligence, yet she appeared to have chosen a surgeon based on his celebrity. “Dr. Jan Adams, who is being investigated by the state medical board, has been the target of malpractice lawsuits and has paid out nearly $500,000 in civil settlements.”

The fact that Adams happened to also be an Oprah-endorsed Brother might have contributed to his appeal to the late Mrs. West.

Dare I suggest the following? The common thread in the specter of wealthy celebrities choosing manifestly incompetent care givers is their own patently low intelligence.

Robert Bork: Sotomayor Pick ‘A Bad Mistake’

Constitution, Law, Political Philosophy, The Courts

Robert Bork: Sotomayor Pick ‘A Bad Mistake’
By Barbara Grant

What does it mean, “to bork”? Readers too young to recall the 1987 Senate confirmation hearings on Robert Bork’s nomination as Supreme Court Justice might refer to this piece in which Judge Robert Bork discusses Sonia Sotomayor and calls her nomination a “bad mistake.”

To “bork” a nominee means to block him (or her) from appointment to public office. Bork avers that President Barack Obama’s standard of “empathy” in judge selection bodes ill for the selection of a justice who supports constitutional principles. He notes that “wise Latina” Sotomayor has less than a stellar record in her judicial opinions, and is in fact noted for bullying from the bench. However, he also offers that she will likely not be “any worse than some recent white male appointees.”

Bork calls himself an originalist, which means that he tries to interpret the Constitution in the manner it was drafted, at all times seeking first principles. This is different from the “judicial activism” principle currently held by many, in which justices twist the document to conform to preconceived political stances.

Robert Bork is adamantly opposed to twisting the Constitution; he also believes his opposition to Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds was pivotal to his nomination’s rejection.

Where does the current trend toward “empathy” leave a highly principled man like Robert Bork? Still interested in the Constitution, but also wary of our justices’ decisions. “If you want to know what the constitution means, you will not learn it from the court,” he said.

BAB Contributor Barbara Grant is a consultant in electro-optical engineering and co-author of “The Art of Radiometry,” a forthcoming book on the measurement of light, to be published by SPIE PressB.

Robert Bork: Sotomayor Pick 'A Bad Mistake'

Constitution, Law, Political Philosophy, The Courts

Robert Bork: Sotomayor Pick ‘A Bad Mistake’
By Barbara Grant

What does it mean, “to bork”? Readers too young to recall the 1987 Senate confirmation hearings on Robert Bork’s nomination as Supreme Court Justice might refer to this piece in which Judge Robert Bork discusses Sonia Sotomayor and calls her nomination a “bad mistake.”

To “bork” a nominee means to block him (or her) from appointment to public office. Bork avers that President Barack Obama’s standard of “empathy” in judge selection bodes ill for the selection of a justice who supports constitutional principles. He notes that “wise Latina” Sotomayor has less than a stellar record in her judicial opinions, and is in fact noted for bullying from the bench. However, he also offers that she will likely not be “any worse than some recent white male appointees.”

Bork calls himself an originalist, which means that he tries to interpret the Constitution in the manner it was drafted, at all times seeking first principles. This is different from the “judicial activism” principle currently held by many, in which justices twist the document to conform to preconceived political stances.

Robert Bork is adamantly opposed to twisting the Constitution; he also believes his opposition to Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds was pivotal to his nomination’s rejection.

Where does the current trend toward “empathy” leave a highly principled man like Robert Bork? Still interested in the Constitution, but also wary of our justices’ decisions. “If you want to know what the constitution means, you will not learn it from the court,” he said.

BAB Contributor Barbara Grant is a consultant in electro-optical engineering and co-author of “The Art of Radiometry,” a forthcoming book on the measurement of light, to be published by SPIE PressB.

Updated: SotoSetAsides: ‘I Am A Product Of Affirmative Action’

Affirmative Action, Intellectualism, Law, Multiculturalism, Race, Racism, The Courts

I’m shocked. Sonia SotoSetAsides once admitted that her test scores “were not comparable to her colleagues at Princeton and Yale” (with the exception of the scores of Mighty Michelle O). Nor were her scores on par with the scores of the forgotten students the system had helped her usurp.
I’m so disillusioned (irony alert to the prosaic among you). Weren’t we promised by the POTUS, another recipient of racial preferential treatment, that Sotomayor had a first-rate legal mind? Don’t tell me that this society has been hollowed out like a husk at every level—private and public; local, state and federal—by statist social engineering? And so, once again, we were right to call Soto so-and-so a mediocrity, a product of racial set-asides. It’s all so very shocking. You want to add Larry Auster’s analysis to the specter of Soto admitting that her test scores left much to be desired. (On the bright side, perhaps a dim liberal bulb will do less damage as one of America’s new black-robed deities):

Update: “Her academic career appears to have been a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.”

“Two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton, Sotomayor was advised to read children’s classics and study basic grammar
books during her summers. How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of ‘Chicken Little’ and ‘The Troll Under the Bridge’?” …

“Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review – all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.”

“… were it not for Ivy League dishonesty, Sotomayor would not have gotten into Princeton, would never have been ranked first in her class, would not have gotten into Yale Law, nor been named editor of Yale Law Review, and thus would not be a U.S. appellate court judge today or a nominee to the Supreme Court.”

Who else but Pat Buchanan could deliver such masterstrokes? (Okay… I do quite well). The only facet Pat forgets to speak to: the loss of the importance of object, intellectual standards.