Since when does a school district have a right to determine behavior while a student is off-campus or away from school functions? At any rate they’re being sued. I can only hope that said Assistant Principal can be proven to have seen some of his female students in various states of undress so that when he goes to prison he can be labeled as a pedophile. I hear they’re really popular. And seriously, the very least that should happen is that this guy should go to prison. He’s lucky I’m not in charge because the motherfucker would be standing in front of a ditch trying his damnedest to stare down a firing squad right now if I was King.

Maybe, just maybe, schools should spend a little more time educating and a little less time worrying about any “improper behavior” that’s going on outside of their jurisdiction.

[Gizmodo] & [CNN]

AWESOME UPDATE: According to the Washington Post an FBI investigation has begun to determine if federal wiretapping or computer intrusion laws were violated. Have fun in prison, scumbag. Because you know the school district is going to roll all over you to get out of the way of this shitstorm.

Part of the ill-considered decision rests on the feeling that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals. The problem is that corporations are not individuals and money is not speech. But I’ll tell you what… as an individual I pay taxes on my gross income not on what’s left over after I pay all my bills. If corporations are now regular individuals, let’s level the playing field regarding taxes and let them support the government that is so clearly concerned about their speech rights in the same way you and I do-by paying taxes on their gross sales.

The other problem is that over the decades we (and by “we” I mean the government) has consistently loosened restrictions on the way corporations can behave.  As originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers, corporations were tightly controlled entities limited to certain specific time frames and activities. Now they are not and have become huge juggernauts. And we’ve seen what awesome stewards of the economy they are.

The good news is that I believe this moves us one step closer to the revolution when we (and by  “we” I mean the people) will bring down the vengeance that is so richly deserved.

LA Times has an article about the decision.

At any rate, you can find Charlie’s excellent article over here. I suggest you give it a read.

[Hoehn's Musings via Life Hacker]

There’s a rumored deal for exclusive search between News Corp and Bing. Which is fine but also shows a lack of understanding about the way people use the net. People use a search engine because that’s the one they’re comfortable with or feel gives them the best results. Over the years for me it has been Lycos, followed by Altavista, followed by Google (since approximately when they went live). If News Corp’s content is filtered out of Google’s results I’ll read somebody else’s articles. I can think of very few situations in which I feel the need to read a specific journalist’s article particularly in the arena of hard news.

The cold, hard facts are that Murdoch’s only foray into the net is his purchase of MySpace which he paid too much for and bought at the worst possible time. Perhaps that explains his hatred of the net. Whatever. The landscape is littered with the desiccated  corpses of business men who didn’t understand the changing business climate.  There’s a good summary of the situation over at Mashable (which seems to be getting along fine with Google bringing them all that useless traffic).

[Photo by Dave Beckett via flikr]

At this point I’d like to point out that I just paid $6.07 for the above plus a cup of coffee so an extra 27 cents puts it within rounding distance of $6.50.  I have several Waffle Houses within 10 miles of me and they all have breakfast specials consisting of food cooked for you instead of food cooked sometime today and kept in a warmer for less than $6.50*. My point is that I spend a significant amount of money at this McDonald’s but won’t anymore because there are and almost limitless number of places to buy breakfast (including other McD’s that don’t charge for syrup) and they’ll be getting my money instead of this one.

I know it may seem petty but if we all voted with our dollars and made sure that the business in question knew why, we wouldn’t have to put up with surly service, bad food, or cheap products.

[image by M.F. Naaldenberg via Wikimedia Commons]

——————————-

*Disclaimer: I’m not 100% sure about this because I haven’t been to one lately and I’m too lazy to look it up but I have been to Huddle House where 2 eggs, 2 strips of bacon, hashbrowns and a waffle with all the syrup I cared to put on it plus coffee was $6.35.

I read an article today by Mandy Locke in the News and Observer about Johnny Gaskins, a Raleigh defense attorney, who was convicted October 9th of the crime of depositing and paying taxes on legally earned income but doing it in quantities that were too small. Bullshit, you say?  In our retarded effort to keep people from doing things that they want to do the federal government has passed a whole series of laws that are designed to combat a problem that exists only if you’re a government bureaucrat or peddler of ‘legal drugs’.

This is the case here. The government makes, let’s say, pot illegal. People still want to smoke pot. Some enterprising capitalist will provide them with pot. Now, said capitalist has cash income for which he has no legal source. In order to catch this “criminal” who’s providing the exact same service as the convenience store on the corner (except that the pot industry doesn’t have enough high paid lobbyists lining the pockets of Congress), a law must be passed to catch people depositing the “illegal” income. Which they did. It’s illegal to deposit sums under $10,000 for the purposes of causing the bank to evade reporting you for depositing $10,000. Got that? Read it again.

So that’s what happened to Johnny Gaskins. At this point, a paranoid person would point out that he has built his career on defending persons engaged in drug trafficking (of the “illegal” sort). Therefore, this could be the government’s attempt to rid itself of somebody trying to stop them from eliminating RJ Reynolds/GlaxoSmithKline/Guiness UDV North America’s competition. I’m not that person because I generally think government employees are too stupid and lazy to engage in that kind of behavior. What it most likely is, is a bureaucrat blinding adhering to the letter of the law. Again, Johnny Gaskin’s “crime” is depositing money that he legally earned and paid taxes on but did it in insufficiently large quantities. Are you frightened yet?

There are times that I despair for the Republic because something like this can happen and the people aren’t in the streets asking why the government has any right to tell this man how he can deposit his money. The article seems to question why he would break the law or indicate that he might be mentally unstable from dealing with criminal defendants all these years. What if he just doesn’t think it’s any of the government’s fucking business how much he’s depositing.

Photo by Trevor DeVincenzi.

1. Everybody’s definition of what is art is different. And their definition doesn’t affect me any more than whether or not they like the same kind of music as I do. What I carrying away from that is that all forms of creation are as personal as religion or politics and, while not as emotional, should probably not be discussed in polite company.
2. Things that you learned well when you were young come back to you pretty quickly. I hadn’t been climbing in probably 10 years; seriously & regularly for a lot longer than that. The first attempt I made some classic beginner mistakes and tried to arm my way through which didn’t work. After that, the climbing was pretty good. Overall, I think I did pretty well… not nearly as bad as I was afraid I was going to be but obviously not at the level I used to climb. I will be going again as often as possible and think I can get back to close to the ability of my youth.
3. My last climbing experience was at an indoor climbing wall and this weekend verified what I thought about it then… Indoor is probably fine for practicing and so forth but it’s a dry and antiseptic experience compared to climbing on living rock. There’s probably an analogy for modern American life and Wal-Mart there someplace but I’m too lazy to figure it out right now. Maybe later. Or You can think about it yourself.
4. There can be no understating that having good people around you is one of the most important things you can do for the quality of your life. The group I went camping with is strangely diverse but respectful of the diversity. IMO, that provides you with maximum exposure to ideas that you can examine and adopt if you like.

In closing, I had a great time. We created great shared stories. We got out and wallowed in nature for a weekend instead of sitting in front of a TV being told when and where to buy things while we were waiting for a place to permanently lay down. I highly recommend you do the same if you get the chance.

I know, it’s not a very anarcho-capitalist thing to say but even Murray Rothbard admitted that the American Revolution was justifiable.

“Revolutionary war is a war against the state apparatus, a war from below by the armed public. It doesn’t have to injure innocent civilians, and it usually doesn’t. It often does not involve taxes or conscription– if it does, it does so on a very small scale.” Murray Rothbard

Our country is run by corporate statists  and their lackeys. It’s time to take it back. I hope you’ll remember that come Election Day.

As far as he’s concerned rampaging teenagers are out there running around crashing into things and fucking up his bonuses. But they’re such great people that they’re willing to let the first one go. That’s how Nationwide is on your side.

I don’t think I’ll be giving them any of my money.