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2015.82: More Gaslamp Legal Follies
Email to me from Gaslamp's lawyer Tim Sutherland, subject "post comments":
Mark,I called your office to discuss the post on your website. If you would, please provide me with a time that you are free.Thanks,Tim
My response:
Sure, Tim. As soon as you release the full door video.
I have not yet received a response. I'm not holding my breath because my bet is, as I've said before, that the full door video will show that Sutherland and his client Gaslamp are lying about what happened on the night of September 11th, 2015.
Meanwhile, the Houston Press reports that Gaslamp owner Ayman Jarrah "wants out, says allegations of racism have ‘hurt me more than anybody else.'" ((Boo fucking hoo.))
In Sutherland's original video he referred to extortion and criminal charges filed against a former employee. The Houston Press article elucidates:
2015.81: Campaign to Eliminate Air Hand Dryers
Hot air dryers have the potential for depositing pathogenic bacteria onto the hands and body of users. Bacteria can also be inhaled and distributed into the general environment whenever dryers are running. It is recommended therefore that the use of hot air dryers should be carefully considered on health grounds, especially in sensitive locations such as hospitals, catering establishments and food preparation areas.
Hot air hand dryers do not dry as well as paper towels (leaving hands damp and welcoming to pathogens). When a toilet flushes it sprays a mist of shit-laden water droplets into the air. An air dryer sucks in this air, warms it up (bacteria love that), and blows it out again onto your damp hands. Several studies have found that paper towels do a better job of reducing bacteria on hands than do hot air driers; some find that air dryers increase bacteria on hands. "From a hygiene standpoint, paper towels are superior to air dryers; therefore, paper towels should be recommended for use in locations in which hygiene is paramount, such as hospitals and clinics." (Interestingly, it appears that rubbing your hands together under the dryer, per instructions, makes things worse.)
2015.80: #MasculinitySoFragile? Man Up.
Those of you who have not yet been sucked into using Twitter may not be familiar with hashtag activism. ((Do they do that on Facebook too?)) Someone has some point he wants to make, so he says something and attaches a hooky hashtag-a string of letters following a pound sign: #NotAllMen, for example, to either a) make the point that generalizations of the evils of manhood do not apply to all of us; or b) mock "not all men" as a deflection of discussion of the evils of manhood.
As you can see, the point of the hashtag is not always explicit; sometimes it's ironic.
There are three types of user of activist hashtags.
People who agree with the point that the hashtag explicitly makes. I'll call these (arbitrarily) the "Earnest Pros."
People who disagree with the point that the hashtag explicitly makes (but who might agree with the intended ironic point). I'll call these (conformingly) the "Earnest Cons."
2015.79: Cook / Lawyer Tim Sutherland's Attempts to Cover Up Gaslamp Racism
Ayman Jarrah runs into the kitchen of his Gaslamp gastropub, waving a Houston Press. "Oh, shit. They're saying we're racist. I need a lawyer on the fly."
Tim, working the fry station, finishes a batch of onion rings, plates them next to a cheeseburger, wipes a spot of grease from the plate with a terrycloth, and puts the plate in the passthrough. He wipes the sweat from his face with the same terrycloth, unties his apron, lets it drop to the kitchen floor. Beneath it he wears a red-and-green plaid shirt and a black tie.
"I'm a lawyer, boss. Got a video camera?"
An hour later, this is on Youtube:
When I saw the video, first I thought, "that's pretty clever PR at the end, suggesting that if people don't like Gaslamp's discrimination they ought to get a law passed to forbid it" But then I took a look at the Civil Rights Act, and discovered that-contrary to Sutherland's bald-faced assertion-federal antidiscrimination law covers nightclubs. It doesn't cover "private clubs," but there really isn't an argument that Gaslamp is a private club. It doesn't cover bars, but Gaslamp serves food, and serving food makes it a "public accommodation" that can't discriminate on the basis of race.
2015.78: A Taxonomy of Bad Writing
Writing is thinking. People who know you only by your writing will judge you by your writing. If you write sloppily, people will judge you a sloppy thinker. If shallowly, shallow. If boringly, boring.
You can write better. If you want to write up to your potential, read on. I'll introduce four levels of bad writing and discuss how to diagnose them.
Bad writing on the word level is characterized by misspellings, incorrect punctuation, and incorrect hyphenation. Word-level bad writing may, to the reader, be indistinguishable from typing error. The difference between word-level bad writing and typos is that the latter are accidental.
Much word-level error can be caught by your word processor's spell-check function. Much of it will slip through. Diagnose word-level bad writing by reading your sentences carefully and looking up in the dictionary any words that you are unsure about. Read and absorb Strunk & White or a more comprehensive modern usage guide such as Garner's Modern American Usage.
2015.77: Texas's Hoax-Bomb Law
Free your mind from the false notion that the Texas Legislature knows what it is doing.
(13) "Hoax bomb" means a device that:...(B) by its design causes... reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency....
Yes, reaction of any type. So this device, which might by its design causes a reaction by a police officer (it's intended to do so, in fact), could be a hoax bomb. (Image from goodmenproject.com.)
A Hoax Bomb
As could this:
Another Hoax Bomb
And this:
Yet Another Hoax Bomb
And even this:
Still Another Hoax Bomb
Whether something is a hoax bomb depends on whether it "by design causes... reaction of any type by an official of a public safety agency." So you don't know what a hoax bomb is until a cop or firefighter sees it. If the wrong cop sees it, anything could be a hoax bomb. There might be a cop who loves cars; to that cop, a car is a hoax bomb because it causes a reaction.
2015.76: Citron's Baby is Unconstitutionally Ugly, Says Koppelman
In Revenge Pornography and First Amendment Exceptions, to be published in the Emory Law Journal, Northwestern law prof Andrew M. Koppelman says (PDF) what I've been saying all along: revenge-porn statutes
restrict speech on the basis of its content. Content-based restrictions (unless they fall within one of the categories of unprotected speech) are invalid unless necessary to a compelling state interest. The state's interest in prohibiting revenge pornography, so far from being compelling, may not even be one that the state is permitted to pursue.
While praising Danielle Citron's model revenge-porn statute and negging Mary Anne Franks's ("I worry," Koppelman writes, "that Franks's statute may be overbroad"; ((By "overbroad" Koppelman presumably means "even broader than I would allow," rather than "overbroad under current First Amendment law, which he concedes both Citron's and Franks's model statutes to be.)) this will be the harshest criticism Franks has received from within academic circles), and noting that revenge porn does not fit into any recognized category of unprotected speech, Koppelman writes that "There is, and should be, a presumption that such a statute is unconstitutional" ((None of Koppelman's legal conclusions will surprise readers of this blog, and this is how things should end in every court but the highest.)) before launching himself from scholarship to editorial:
2015.75: Phil Grant's Ethics, or Lack Thereof
Montgomery County First Assistant DA Phil Grant is running for judge. Which means that he has to follow the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, which says:
A judge shall abstain from public comment about a pending or impending proceeding which may come before the judge's court in a manner which suggests to a reasonable person the judge's probable decision on any particular case. This prohibition applies to any candidate for judicial office, with respect to judicial proceedings pending or impending in the court on which the candidate would serve if elected.
Which means that Phil Grant cannot ethically say the things that he says here. ((Yes, that's my case. It's a First Amendment case in Texas; the odds of my having a hand in it are good. Steve Jackson had the good sense to bring me aboard as his Law Lawyer for this issue. Unlike Phil, Steve has a handle on the First Amendment issue: it's not about what that defendant did. As he says, "The statue does snare the guilty. But it also snares the innocent."))
2015.74: Kim Davis is a Greedy Bureaucrat
Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen.
That's Martin Luther, who'd had it up to here with the Church, defaced its doors, and been declared a heretic, excommunicated, and declared an outlaw.
Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.
Martin Luther had a choice, with two options:
Act in accordance with his principles.
Remain a member of church and under the protection of the state.
Kim Davis, the Rowan County Clerk jailed for contempt of court in Kentucky, also has a choice, but she has three options:
Act in accordance with her principles.
Keep getting paid at her government job.
Stay out of jail.
Davis cannot do all three. There is nothing in the Bible, the Constitution, or the Uniform Commercial Code ((PBUI.)) that says she gets to have it all. But she does get to pick any two.
If Davis keeps her government job and continues refusing to issue marriage licenses ((Davis is refusing to issue any marriage licenses; she argued that her refusal to issue licenses caused only an incidental burden on the (gay and straight) plaintiffs' right to marry because they could go to one of the surrounding counties for a license)) - the job that she is getting paid for and that a U.S. District Judge has ordered her to do - she stays in jail.
2015.73: Opportunist Dan Patrick and the Goforth Murder
Yesterday, as those of you who follow me on The Twitter Machine know, I had jury duty. I didn't get picked, of course-in fact, didn't even make it to the courtroom. But I did learn some things, about which I will blog later, and I ran into an old friend, whom I'll call "Frank."
I met Frank in martial arts class. Frank, who lives in Cypress, Texas, is a a Harris County Deputy. Many times he has filled his patrol car with gas, while in uniform, at West Road and Telge in Cypress. I know Frank's oldest kid. Good kid. Frank is five years from retirement, and has a couple of businesses he's building in anticipation. We're not close, but we like each other and we always take a few minutes to catch up when we run into each other at the courthouse.
It appears that the murder of Deputy Darren Goforth was not motivated by any relationship between him and his killer. If that is true, then it's just dumb luck that Goforth got killed, and not Frank. It's just luck that I didn't lose a friend. Some guy who knew Darren Goforth like I know Frank - not well, but well enough to take personally the wound of his passing - is grieving today instead of me. Frank's kids aren't fatherless, his wife isn't husbandless. Just dumb luck. And if Fortune had frowned on Frank instead of Darren Goforth, Frank's wife and kids and friends wouldn't be grieving because Frank was a cop, but because Frank was their own. Just as Darren Goforth's wife and kids and friends (including Frank) are grieving because Darren Goforth was their own.
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