Category: News

Hard to think how this could be taken pejoratively:

“This is a bunch of good kids from Fulton,” said Weiser’s lawyer, Carter Collins Law. “As far as I can tell, they’re a bunch of little country mice. And I don’t mean that in a … pejorative way at all,” she said.

From what children’s story book did this condescending attorney pluck did this particular bunch? The Little Country Mice Who Chewed Through MoneyGram International’s Wires Accidentally And Got a Lot of Cheese Nationwide?

I don’t know if I ever want an attorney defending me to try the Forrest Gump defense. I mean, who does this attorney think is more naive, her clients or anyone listening?

Federal appeals court rules against workplace PC privacy:

If you think the Web sites you access on your workplace computer are nobody else’s business, think again.

That was the message today from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which upheld a Montana man’s conviction for receiving obscene material that his employer found on his computer during a late-night raid.

“Social norms suggest that employees are not entitled to privacy in the use of workplace computers, which belong to their employers and pose significant dangers in terms of diminished productivity and even employer liability,” said Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain in the 3-0 ruling.

He said other courts have consistently ruled that employers are entitled to monitor their workers’ use of computers as long as they had disclosed that policy to their workforce.

Unlike some respected legal minds, I don’t think this is a defeat for privacy rights; instead, it’s a victory for property rights. Because even though some people would phrase it this way:

If you think the Web sites you access on your workplace computer are nobody else’s business, think again.

Because let’s not forget, it’s not your computer, it’s your employer’s. It’s not your Internet connection at work, it’s your employers. And anyone who would give you rights over that property which you don’t own takes rights away from the actual owner.

Apparently, this runs counter to established case law regarding searches and seizures and where arbitrary edges of the invented right to privacy lies. Friends, this strikes me, like much law does, as to arguing what sort of pin angels can dance upon. From the distant, forest sort of view, it doesn’t matter whether the gumdrop trees are green or blue because it’s still a candy forest in a child’s imagination. But I haven’t finished law school.

I suspect that throwing computers into the story has triggered automatic responses from the digitally-inclined libertarians amongst us. After all, information wants to be free, unless it wants to hide in the shadows of privacy’s billowing petticoats. Because it’s computers, it’s different and twenty-first century.

But it looks to me, simply, that once you’ve established that the employee has certain rights to use the employer’s facilities and materiel as the employee wants, we cannot stop easily at the compter namespace. No, the employee then should have certain privacy rights to be free from monitoring, from both the employer and the government, in other facilities or with other employer-provided mechanisms for communicating and productivity.

Conference rooms become cones of silence, in which you can conduct personal business without fear of eviction for actual meetings. Why not plan your family reunion? Letterhead and printed envelopes become diplomatic pouches, wherein you should expect everything you write, type, or print upon them to be private, for the addressee only. Don’t forget the 900 numbers on your phone system. The Man blocking them surely infringes upon your privacy and its emanated right to a psychic reading.

No, the 9th District here accidentally protected the rights of property holders from those who would virtually squat upon those items. Regardless of search, seizure, or illegal activity, the computers belong to the employers, and the employees have no right to their network connections, memory, or hard disk space for personal use.

Sherman Parker or someone at his campaign has sent me the complete statement he issued after his recent arrest:

Below is the fulll text of a statement I sent to the Post Dispatch regarding the story that is in today’s (Saturday) paper about my unfortunate incident this week:

On Monday, July 31, 2006, after erecting campaign signs in St. Charles County, I was pulled over on Highway 40 and detained by a Missouri State Highway trooper. I was not initially stopped for a traffic violation or any violation of the law. I did not receive a ticket for this stop. After checking my driving record, the trooper later determined that a bench warrant had been issued for my arrest for missing a court date for a speeding violation in Chesterfield.

I had previously written the court a letter requesting to reschedule my court date since this date was during the legislative session. In the course of the ensuing weeks, with the session winding down and attempting to get my congressional campaign into full gear, I neglected to follow up with the court, and thus a bench warrant was issued without my knowledge. Prior to this incident, I had never been arrested by any law enforcement officer anywhere.

At the present time, all my fines have been paid, and I now want to put this embarrassing matter behind me. I apologize and I understand, that as an elected official, no one person is above the law. I must strive everyday to set a higher example. I very much regret that this incident may detract, in these last few days, from the issues I have been stressing in this campaign such as: improving healthcare, economic development, and the rising cost of energy.

As I’d hoped, it’s straightforward and doesn’t avoid blame for a procedural error leading to his bench warrant and doesn’t go off on the cop who arrested him. No indignation, no racial overtones, just a statement about what happened.

On a side note, aren’t bench warrants neat things? Personally, I wonder sometimes if there’s a bench warrant out for me. I mean, a speed zone or red light camera ticket mailed to the wrong address, and suddenly I could be calling my wife to bail me out of jail. One wonders if this is a good mechanism for minor law enforcement, but then again, if one is like this one (me), one knows that it’s not about law enforcement as getting revenue and asserting authority.

Akin rival arrested on traffic warrants:

On Monday night, Parker had just finished staking campaign signs on private property near Highway 40 in St. Charles County when he was pulled over by a state trooper who questioned what Parker was doing near the road.

When the officer later did a check on the candidate’s drivers license, he discovered that Parker had two arrest warrants for unresolved traffic violations in St. Louis County. Parker was briefly taken into police custody and released after paying a pair of $100 bonds, according to court documents.

So this has all the trappings of a racial profiling sort of stop, and the Post-Dispatch‘s activism is muted. Because the target is a Republican, or because the target himself is avoiding the obvious?

Parker, already considered a long shot to unseat Akin, issued an apologetic statement after being asked about the arrest on Friday.

“I very much regret that this incident may detract, in these last few days, from the issues I have been stressing in this campaign,” Parker said in a statement.

And:

“I understand, that as an elected official, no one person is above the law,” Parker said.

Sounds like the reasoned response of someone we’d want to elect. I haven’t seen the full statement (it’s not on his Web site), but I hope it’s as apologetic and appropriate as the paper makes it sound. Not accusatory, not avoiding responsibility, just explanatory and humble.

UPDATE: Representative Parker has sent me his complete statement, posted here.

Parents of woman killed in sky-diver plane crash file suit:

The parents of a would-be skydiver who died along with five others in a plane crash Saturday [July 29] filed a lawsuit today [August 2] claiming negligence caused the aircraft’s engine to fail.

Vivian and Susan Delacroix of Kent, England, brought suit against the engine manufacturer, skydiving club and others claiming they are responsible for the death of their daughter, Victoria Delacroix, 22.

“Our initial investigation points to a right engine failure just after takeoff,” said Gary C. Robb, a Kansas City attorney representing the family.

Congratulations to the proud attorney who pursued the pursuit of justice to England and probably got the lawsuit file before the body was buried. Not only is he quick, but he’s aggressive with the defendants:

The maker of the PT6A turbo prop engine in the DeHavilland DHC-6 airplane that crashed after taking off from the Sullivan Regional Airport. The manufacturer was Pratt & Whitney, which is owned by United Technologies.

Annick Laberge, a spokesman for Pratt & Whitney Canada division, declined comment today.

“It is our corporate policy not to discuss incidents under investigation,” she said.

The suit also names the Quantum Leap Skydiving Center, which operated the skydiving club; the airport, which serviced and maintained the plane; Adventure Aviation, which owned the plane; and pilot Scott Cowan, who also perished in the crash.

Suing the estate of another victim of the crash. That, my friends, is pluck with a capital F.

Although we at MfBJN wonder how they couldn’t work Thomas Miskel, Bourbeuse River Hauling, and Six Flags into the suit somehow. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time.

(I post this with the plantiffs’ attorney’s name in here understanding that this attorney will find this post–hi there!– next time he or a member of his staff uses Google to find his ‘fan base,’ but the last I heard, calling someone plucky is not actually libelous.)

Woman sues over son’s drowning death during church outing:

The mother of one of the five children who drowned last month during a church outing to an eastern Missouri state park has sued the church and Joyce Meyer Ministries, claiming negligence and inadequate supervision.

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed Tuesday in St. Louis Circuit Court, also said the ministries and its St. Louis Dream Center church did not have parents’ permission to take 50 children to Castlewood State Park in St. Louis County on July 9.

Litigation compounds a tragedy by ensuring that other depressed youth won’t get the opportunity to go to church picnics in the future.

The old man and the six-toed cats: Hemingway home in dispute:

The caretakers of Ernest Hemingway’s Key West home want a federal judge to intervene in their dispute with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the six-toed cats that roam the property.

More than 50 descendants of a multi-toed cat the novelist received as a gift in 1935 wander the grounds of the home, where Hemingway lived for more than 10 years and wrote “A Farewell to Arms” and “To Have and Have Not.”

The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum disputes the USDA’s claim that it is an “exhibitor” of cats and needs to have a USDA Animal Welfare License, according to a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Miami.

“What they’re comparing the Hemingway house to is a circus or a zoo because there are cats on the premises,” Cara Higgins, the home’s attorney, said Friday. “This is not a traveling circus. These cats have been on the premises forever.”

He would have broken a walking stick over his head is what he would have done. Or shot himself, perhaps; our world does not accommodate men of Papa’s stature and temperment any more. Instead, it allows attorneys and government functionaries to live the lives to which they’ve become accustomed, at our expense and at the expense of our mythology.

If my current gig goes south and I ever get tired of not having a real winter in St. Louis and confuse North Carolina for a real northern state, I could get a job proofreading street signs:

Pity the English teacher out for a drive, passing Raleigh street signs.

Russling Leaf Lane? That’s Rustling.

Sherrif Place? That’s Sheriff.

Chinquoteague Court? Misty lived in Chincoteague!

You can’t even scribble corrections in red spray-paint. The city would just scrub them off.

About a dozen Raleigh street signs display words that are flat-out misspelled.

Who am I kidding? There’s obviously no official sign proofreader position in Raleigh.

(Link seen on Triticale.)

Two stories out of O’Fallon, Missouri, today allude to the failures of top-down community planning and optimistically endorse more top-down community planning.

First, we have the story of how small businesses beamed down into New Urbantopias sometimes fail:

Some businesses are doing well. The customers are flocking to the Listons’ neighborhood-style tavern, patterned after the one they used to run in St. Louis’ Dogtown area.

Nearby residents drop in Curbside Cleaners with not only piles of dry-cleaning but also newsy updates about their families and kids for co-owner Donna Stuart. And at the Churchill Coffee Express inside the local branch of the St. Charles City-County Library, owner Robert Tock says he has a loyal group of sippers lining up at his door at 6:30 a.m.

But for other merchants who rely on foot and car traffic and a bit of impulse buying, it’s been a rocky few years.

Late last year, the Boardwalk suffered a major blow when Dave and Kathy Grabis closed their corner grocery market, to the dismay of many loyal customers who considered the couple the mom and dad of the fledgling neighborhood.

“Dave leaving was definitely a downfall for this area,” said resident Gisell Sterner, as she dropped off clothes at the dry cleaners.

It was the second failed retail endeavor along the one-block strip, following the closure of a Roly Poly lunch shop.

Two other small-town mainstays – the ice cream parlor and the pizza shop – both hit hard times early on, and their original owners sold the business to new entrepreneurs who both have watched the car and foot traffic to their shops dwindle in the aftermath of the grocery’s failure.

In January, things didn’t get easier when WingHaven’s free trolley stopped service because of a lack of ridership.

Never fear, though; the central planners are still at it:

Business owners and residents are now optimistic about negotiations under way between an area convenience store owner and WingHaven’s developer – McEagle Properties – to open a market in the same location as the former grocery.

Because the New Urbanists believe the corner market will trump super Schnucks, Dierbergs, and food-slinging Wal-Marts. Because they say so, they continue to push for it. Because if they will it, the citizens will shop there.

In other news, O’Fallon is going to apply for state money to revitalize its downtown:

If all goes as well, it could be O’Fallon’s dream come true.

The City Council gave staff the OK to apply for Missouri’s DREAM initiative program.

Known as the Downtown Revitalization Economic Assistance for Missouri, the DREAM initiative is a new program created through a partnership between the Missouri’s department of economic development, development finance board and the housing development commission.

The goal of the program is to offer technical and financial assistance for communities to more efficiently and effectively start the downtown revitalization process.

Additionally, the program is supported by professionals who are dedicated to help cities rebuild central business districts and shortens the redevelopment timeline, according to DREAM officials.

“What it does it combine existing incentive packages and brings it all under one umbrella,” said Jim Curran, O’Fallon’s director of economic development. “More cities are taking a look at the program that may not have qualified in the past due to medium income or population.”

Leaving aside that the revitalized downtown will probably cause more of the New Urbantopia businesses in WingHaven to collapse, we’re struck again with an instance of the government or other planners trying to induce demand for a service by providing supply of the service. In the case of both the development and the downtown, there’s no one there who needs a small urban grocery or whatever, but the planners want their kitsch, so they’ll spend their own money or our tax dollars to resuscitate faux urban areas.

The original downtowns sprung up where people crowded together to live for commerce, trade, and security. Since we have better, cheaper mechanisms for travel to and from work and commerce, we don’t need the congested areas any more. Those downtowns and their businesses and their housing emerged because people needed it and demanded it. Not because someone decided that the land needed x density of population and y numbers of businesses within walking distance.

And trying to impose such won’t make it so. But it will waste a lot of money in the process.

Radioactive scorpion venom may help treat brain cancer:

The search for cancer cures can at times produce some curious treatments, but the latest study just might stun you.

Neurosurgeons at St. Louis University are among the doctors injecting radioactive scorpion toxin directly into the brains of patients with a deadly brain cancer.

When you think about this and the use of botox for cosmetic purposes, we might be now living in the golden age of intaking deadly substances for medical benefit.

Remember, citizen, your property rights are conferred upon you by your government. As this story illustrates, your government can arrest you and run you out of town at its displeasure at your standards of maintenance:

An inspection found the homeowner in violation of five housing laws. The roof was too worn; the driveway was cracked and shifted; the trim, siding, doors and windows had exposed surfaces from a lack of paint; there was open storage alongside the house and in the backyard; and the posts that once held up a fence needed to come down.

Despite the letter, the violations remained. Court dates came and went. Hordesky didn’t show. In March, the municipal judge issued warrants for his arrest. Ellisville police officers searched for him at his house. No one answered the door, but the back entrance was unlocked. They later went inside and snapped pictures.

The house was deemed a health hazard, and the electricity and gas were turned off. A condemnation notice was stapled to the front door. The city brought in St. Louis County’s Problem Properties Unit, which routinely handles similar cases. Jeff Young and Rehagen, the two inspectors who work the southern half of the county, have a caseload of roughly 135 properties. They encounter hoarders often, but seldom in upscale neighborhoods.

The day of his arrest, Hordesky posted a $500 bond. After discussions with the Problem Properties Unit, Hordesky eventually agreed to sell the house. He recently provided the city prosecutor with a sales contract, and the closing date is in mid-August.

Please, don’t offer defenses of the community here, for we cannot have a discussion. A priori we differ enough that I won’t want to hear exactly what arbitrary standard you feel justifies this government taking.

How can we feel national pride in our deadly heat waves?

At least six deaths have been blamed on the heat, and the weather was suspected in at least three others.

Compare to the more nuanced, reasonable, and thoroughly progressive, socialist-minded continent, as demonstrated by France:

The death toll in France from August’s [2003] blistering heat wave has reached nearly 15,000, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday, surpassing a prior tally by more than 3,000.

Scientists at INSERM, the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, deduced the toll by determining that France had experienced 14,802 more deaths than expected for the month of August.

Hopefully, government intervention, regulation, and meddling can solve the crisis we’re having in the lack of actual deaths in our deadly heat wave.

The words: the "market." The you: The Brookings Institution:

Low-income residents of 13 cities across the nation pay extra for many everyday services, sometimes thousands of dollars more over a whole year, a study to be released today shows.

By taking out higher-interest mortgages, shopping at rent-to-own furniture stores, using check-cashing businesses instead of banks and buying groceries at convenience stores, the nation’s working poor households pay much more than moderate- and high-income households for life’s essentials, says the Brookings Institution study, which analyzed services in San Francisco, Oakland and 11 other cities.

The report — “From Poverty, Opportunity: Putting the Market to Work for Lower-Income Families” — calls on government officials to create laws to curb services that gouge low-income consumers, and it proposes reproducing fledgling programs the authors found across the country.

No word on whether how the Brookings Institution wants businesses to recoup their losses on the higher default rates of those in poverty. Perhaps the government should just create laws to curb poverty, risk, and rain on days you wanted to go for a bike ride since it’s that easy.

As jets soar, so does temperature:

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for the Milwaukee area today, cautioning residents – who sweated through highs in the mid-90s on Saturday – to prepare for even higher temperatures and humidity.

The advisory, the first of its kind this year, is expected to be in effect until Monday morning.

Darrin Hansing, a meteorologist with the weather service in Sullivan, advised residents to stay indoors and drink plenty of fluids.

“Heat exhaustion and heatstroke are very possible in these types of situations if people don’t take the proper precautions,” he said.

Little relief is in sight until the end of the week.

The weather service predicts a hot and humid day today, with highs in the upper 90s. Residents can expect 90-degree days until Thursday afternoon, said Peter Speicher, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sullivan.

“There’s a front coming in from the northwest,” he said.

Milwaukee hit a high of 94 on Saturday.

Temperatures in Fond du Lac climbed to 95 and reached a high of 91 in Lone Rock. It was 97 in Sheboygan and 93 in Madison, Kenosha and Racine.

No, wait, somewhere around paragraph 24, after all the normal admonishments to turn on your air conditioners, you freaking northerners, and don’t put the pets in the sweat lodge, we get the tie to the weekend air show:

The Milwaukee Fire Department also set up three sprinkler tents around the Veterans Park area for the TCF Bank Air Expo on Saturday, Lt. Tim Halbur said.

We then get a couple short paragraphs about the air show and how people coped with the French-killing temperatures at the air show. I guess that’s where the Journal-Sentinel sent its photographers to cover the heat wave, or maybe it couldn’t afford to take pictures of and write stories about both the heat wave and the air show, so the paper did its part in conserving energy by combining the two stories in a surprising and haphazard way.

Inspiration here: Don’t gobble up slick tricks — get Fido a pro: It takes more than fake certifications to make a pet sitter:

So how can you find this trustworthy soul? It makes sense to start with a referral from someone you know and respect, like a friend or veterinarian, preferably someone who has actually used this sitter’s services.

You can also look in the phone book under “Pet Sitting Services” or check with an organization such as the Humane Society, or a local shelter or rescue group. I found a wonderful sitter for my greyhound, Elvis, through the referral program of Golden State Greyhound Adoption. My sole concern has been that sometimes I suspect he prefers her to me.

No doubt the government-solves-everything crowd and the organized pet sitters with organizations and whatnot know that their preferred solution is a license.

Author of the piece identifies some handy due dilligence for selecting a pet sitter in a free marketplace, but caveat emptor can always be solved when you knock out that damn laissez-faire. Both are foreign words anyway, too good for us Americans.

Somehow, I’m not sure whether the government should be in the business of determining whether cows are happy enough:

Fears that big operations will muscle out family farms have produced a backlash, including a boycott by the Organic Consumers Association against the country’s biggest organic milk brand, Horizon Organic.

Organic farmers and consumer groups hope the Agriculture Department will level the field. The agency is considering whether to mandate that milk bearing the “USDA Organic” seal come from cows that have significant access to pasture, a move smaller producers say would give them the protection they need.

The whole marketing story used to be that organic junk was better for the consumer, healthier and all that. One would think that corporate economies of scale applied to organics, yielding more healthy consumers, would be a good thing. But not if corporations are involved; then the marketing story switches to more green, cow happiness (which corporations cannot/do not provide):

Chris Hoffman drank Horizon milk until she learned about the dispute and switched brands.

The resident of Sherburne, N.Y., said she’d thought she was buying milk from “family farms with happy cows.” To her, feedlot milk does not follow the spirit of organic farming.

“I just think it’s patently dishonest. And it just really ticked me off,” she said.

The spirit of organic farming, apparently, is protectionism, anti-marketism and anti-consumerism, and creation of artificial price floors to support people who thought that working in a niche market with a pricing minimum would pay off and later discovered, to their own financial (greed!) horror, that when their niche became mainstream, it proved to be less lucrative.

It’s not about the cows, it’s about the cash cows.