News & Politics

One of my former co-workers just became a legally ordained atheist minister.

Literally anyone can become a legally ordained minister by filling out a web form from themonastery.org.

I considered doing the same thing myself, but I am not, at present, sufficiently intoxicated.

Tags: atheism, minister, wtf

Categories

News & Politics , Miscellaneous

Last week, I almost had my first trial. And it was going to be one of the most complicated cases to appear in Maryland District Court (which covers non-jury misdemeanor cases): a challenge to so-called Drug Recognition Experts.

Take this hypothetical scenario: a woman is pulled over for driving over a dividing line (“erratic driving”). The cop talks to her, asks if she’s been drinking. She denies it, but seems a little out of it. He asks if she’ll take a preliminary breath test, ...

Updated 03-18-2013 at 05:18 AM by Raistlin

Tags: law, science

Categories

News & Politics

Yesterday, a federal Court of Appeals decided the fate of a trademark on “cock suckers,” which are rooster-shaped lollipops produced by a woman named Marsha Fox in support of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. The trademark examiner denied her trademark on the grounds that it was “scandalous,” and the federal court affirmed.

In support of this ruling, the court cited a law originally passed in 1905 that prohibited the issuance of trademarks if it “consists of or compromises ...

Tags: profanity

Categories

News & Politics

I made this a blog post because it's kinda long and I didn't think a lot of people in EoEO would care. I just wanted to rant about an issue that often bugs me.

It’s easy to get caught up in sports team politics, where you root for your side because of certain labels, not for any ideological reasons. This is apparent with the lack of liberal protest for many of Obama’s policies, despite him being by many measures even worse than Bush on civil liberties and other “liberal” issues. ...

Tags: citizen's united, free speech

Categories

News & Politics

I learned so many new things today.

Did you know that the battle of the sexes is intensifying? To women, settling down and getting married is of utmost importance, but men don't want any of that anymore. Men don't want to deal with modern women. And do you know why?

smurfing feminists.

That's right, feminists have ruined everything. They've caused women to stop being women (assuming "woman" is defined as "subservient cook and baby-maker"). ...

Tags: sexism

Categories

News & Politics

Sex makes people happiest, per new study

In other news: rain is wet, Iceglow doesn't understand paragraphs, and Tifa's Boobs has boobs. Shocking, I know.

Tags: sex

Categories

News & Politics , Internet

Well no trout, Sherlock.

The fact that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater is a point brought up in almost every debate about free speech in the US. And it has annoyed the hell out of me for years. It's always used as a justification for free speech being absolute, which is a position no one ever argues to begin with, during debates over whether a certain form of censorship is good or not. But unless the censorship at issue involves yelling fire in theaters, the point makes ...

Tags: free speech, law

Categories

News & Politics

Everyone knows what slander is, right? A defamatory statement that is spoken. Well generally to recover any damages for a slander lawsuit, a plaintiff has to show actual (or special) damages, meaning a measurable economic harm, such as being fired from a job. General, presumed damages for loss of reputation are not available except for the very worst kind of slander, that does the very most kind of harm. This is called slander per se.

What are the types of slander per se, you may ...

Tags: sexism

Categories

News & Politics

I made this a blog post instead of an EoEO thread because I doubt many of you care that much about the details.

Today, the Supreme Court issued a massive opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare” (CNN’s hilarious screw up notwithstanding). I disagree with the decision, but in a somewhat surprising way. On a strictly constitutional level, I think Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion (which while not technically the Court’s opinion in all respects, ends up controlling all ...

Tags: healthcare

Categories

News & Politics

This is an introductory post on the Streisand effect. The Streisand effect occurs when an attempt to censor or otherwise hide information leads only to that information being spread more effectively. This is otherwise known as “the internet.”

Once upon a time, many moons ago, the website comic The Oatmeal noted that another website, FunnyJunk, was hosting a crapload of its content. The Oatmeal then asked FunnyJunk to delete that content, and FJ responded by deleting a small percentage ...

Updated 06-23-2012 at 10:26 PM by Raistlin

Tags: free speech

Categories

News & Politics , Internet