Many are calling the email evidence “Climate-gate,” but I think people who affix “-gate” to every scandal are part of a scandalous confederacy of dunces that I like to call Watergate-was-not-a-scandal-involving-water-you-idiots!-gate.
The now-notorious emails don’t prove that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is a hoax, as some have asserted; but they are extremely bad publicity for the climate-change lobby on the eve of an epic summit in Copenhagen.
With the global economy in shambles, the appetite for a tax on carbon (don’t give me this “cap and trade is a free market” nonsense) has waned in the United States; meanwhile, rising powers like China and India are loath to arrest their growing fossil fuel consumption.
But one country stands to benefit not only from maintaining the global energy status quo, but potentially from global warming itself: Russia, a major purveyor of fossil fuels that would be able to unlock vast fuel deposits in the Arctic Circle if ice melting trends continue apace.
Rumors on the Internets is an equal-opportunity critic and pest: we make an effort to out and shame anyone who acts a fool, regardless of whether we agree with them or not.
That’s why we can’t resist flaming the people who got all worked up about the death of census worker Bill Sparkman this past September.
Sparkman was a teacher, Scout leader and family man who was well regarded for his hard work, punctuality and other virtues. He was a cancer survivor as well. He’d been warned that census work in the hills of Kentucky could be dangerous, due to the presence of anti-government types as well as criminals who don’t want anyone inquiring into their doings.
Is Bill Sparkman — the 51-year old US Census fieldworker found hanged in rural southeastern Kentucky with the word “Fed” scrawled across his chest — a victim of hate crime directed at Uncle Sam? Or the casualty of drug-related violence in a struggling pocket of America?
To date, nobody knows for certain. The FBI is intensely investigating whether Sparkman was murdered; if so, by whom (acquaintance? stranger?); and whether his death is an act of violence against the federal government.
A more heated missive from Allison Kilkenny at HuffPo noted that the death had not been officially classed a homicide, but nonetheless unleashed a rant about right-wing hysteria and the Right’s obvious complicity in the death of Bill Sparkman:
“Federal” means “Big Government,” and the word has taken on a derogatory meaning in right-wing circles where fear and paranoia reign supreme. I agree with Johnson that this seems like an apparent homicide, but it’s not “nothing else.” By utilizing the branding “Fed,” the killers were clearly trying to make a political statement, namely “Obama: Stay Out.”
The word definitely packs an ideological punch, but not only is it anti-government, it’s anti-Obama. Let’s remember that most of the fringe now screaming about the dangers of Big Brother never made a peep during eight years of Bush’s ballooning executive branch. Suddenly, big government is a big problem, and the “Feds” are to blame…Such paranoia and anger isn’t contained in the woods of Kentucky. The problem is systematic.
Rather than immediately condemn the killing, some right-wing commenters are now using the occasion of Sparkman’s death to chat about their various conspiracy theories all involving the “feds.”
A “lynching” meme began to spread throughout the mindbrain of the left, epitomized by this tweet from “Proudlib”:
As Allison Kilkenny concluded, there was clearly a causal link between the death of Bill Sparkman and the unhinged rhetoric of Fox News:
These kinds of transparent lies would be hilarious to dissect if so many people didn’t really believe them. Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh not only stoke the fear and anger in the hearts and minds of their listeners, but then they also suggest their audience should then direct that anger at the flavor of the months (gays, feminists, poor people, abortion providers, or the “Feds”). And then they act surprised when a sick person acts on their fear by lashing out violently.
The surprise and indignation from the right-wing is insincere. Violent rhetoric begets violence, and no one should act surprised when a Sparkman-like killing happens again.
And so it was decided…
Bill Sparkman’s death was clearly the fault of Glenn Beck. (Or at least, as Gawker allowed, either Beck or a bunch of hillbilly meth runners.)
Unfortunately for the triumphant shriekers of the left wing, eager to brandish this heinous crime in the face of their ideological adversaries, Bill Sparkman was not lynched.
A Kentucky census worker found naked, bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree with “fed” scrawled on his chest killed himself but staged his death to make it look like a homicide, authorities said Tuesday.
Bill Sparkman, 51, was found Sept. 12 near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Kentucky. A man who found the body in the Daniel Boone National Forest has said Sparkman also was gagged and had an identification badge taped to his neck.
Authorities said Sparkman alone manipulated the scene to conceal a suicide. Police said he had talked with others about ending his life, though authorities did not say specifically who in a news release.
Sparkman had recently taken out two life insurance policies that would not pay out for suicide, authorities said. If Sparkman had been killed on the job, his family also would have been be eligible for up to $10,000 in death gratuity payments from the government.
He was not eligible for a separate life insurance policy through the government because his census work was intermittent, Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner has previously said.
It’s tragic that this man decided he had no other choice but to end his life in this way, but it was wrong for him to try and frame phantom Census-hating hillbillies for the deed, and to have his family have to suffer through the trauma of the circumstances in which his body was found.
Ultimately, the knit-hatted Sparkman is the bad guy here, not Lou Dobbs et al.
The furor over the case is understandable, because as Simon Rosenthal writes (HuffPo again, they went nuts over this story), the 2010 Census is shaping up to be a highly controversial and dramatic process.
The right-wing revulsion to the Census has to do with the fact that it does not distinguish between illegal and legal residents, and the fact that it’s set to count noncitizens in its 2010 count:
Because the census (since at least 1980) has not distinguished citizens and permanent, legal residents from individuals here illegally, the basis for apportionment of House seats has been skewed. According to the Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey data (2007), states with a significant net gain in population by inclusion of noncitizens include Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and Texas. (There are tiny net gains for Hawaii and Massachusetts.)
This makes a real difference. Here’s why:
According to the latest American Community Survey, California has 5,622,422 noncitizens in its population of 36,264,467. Based on our round-number projection of a decade-end population in that state of 37,000,000 (including 5,750,000 noncitizens), California would have 57 members in the newly reapportioned U.S. House of Representatives.
However, with noncitizens not included for purposes of reapportionment, California would have 48 House seats (based on an estimated 308 million total population in 2010 with 283 million citizens, or 650,000 citizens per House seat). Using a similar projection, Texas would have 38 House members with noncitizens included. With only citizens counted, it would be entitled to 34 members.
In my opinion, the whole legal/illegal brouhaha is merely symbolic of the larger issue that drives outrage at the potential 2010 Census results: the coming Whiteocalypse, when whites become a minority in America (some say as soon as 2042).
Meanwhile, immigrants’ groups are no happier about the coming census than nativists are; some are advocating a boycott of the census, arguing “Legalize us before you count us.”
Indeed, both sides have a point when it comes to the Census’ decision to punt on the legal/illegal issue and decline to inquire about the citizenship status of a person being surveyed: why should significant changes in Congressional apportionment be driven without regard to the legal status of those granted “representation”? What is the point of giving additional representation to people who cannot exercise the rights of citizenship in America?
Ultimately, the issue is whether the United States is going to grant citizenship under certain conditions to the tens of millions of people living here illegally: “amnesty” or “justice” depending on your point of view.
These are all fascinating issues that were crystallized by the death of Bill Sparkman…
Unfortunately, in the grip of the 24-hour news cycle, too much emphasis was placed on a “murder” that never took place, and a cavalcade of finger-pointing obscured the real issues that we ought to be wrestling with as a nation.
Elections were held in New York City and Boston yesterday, and both cities re-elected their mayors to new terms.
Yet the true results of these elections were as different as the cities themselves.
In Boston, Mayor Tom Menino won a record-setting fifth consecutive term in office, defeating challenger City Councilor Michael Flaherty by 57% to 42%.
In NYC, Mayor Michael Bloomberg won a third term, but by a narrow margin, defeating insurgent William C. Thompson by 51% to 47%.
Boston’s Menino is being called “Mayor for life” this morning, while observers are reacting with shock that New York’s Bloomberg barely got himself back into office, despite high approval ratings and a staggering advantage in campaign cash.
Both men have come a long way from their childhoods in Boston — Bloomberg left town to become one of the richest men in New York City and the successor to Rudy Giuliani, while Menino has never strayed from his enclave of Hyde Park, and slowly, gradually amassed a iron grip over the city of his birth.
Menino cruised where B-berg struggled yesterday because he knew something that the Wall Street billionaire didn’t – In politics, dogged incumbancy is an unstoppable strategy for maintaining a hold on power.
As I noted in an earlier post, the race for Ted Kennedy’s open Senate seat is the most compelling political drama in Massachusetts for many years.
For political junkies intent on following the campaign, there’s no better source for info than the exceptional Kennedyseat.com, where “The Senator” keeps his readers abreast of all the developments, and has even snagged hard-hitting interviews with the candidates.
Today, the site has a great post about an oft-overlooked Republican contender for the seat, who barely got his signatures in before the deadline. He only had to spend $100,000 to pull it off, but this guy has proven indefatigable in the past, hanging in there in even the most quixotic of political campaigns.
In the early months of 2000, with Senator Ted Kennedy looking forward to his first unopposed campaign for re-election in his nearly forty years in the Senate, a new Republican face emerged that, on paper, looked as if it could present a real threat.
The Republican Party was excited, the Kennedy campaign was irritated, and the public was intrigued.
That was the high point of the campaign – and it was only the beginning of March.
Despite this auspicious beginning, Robinson’s 2000 campaign soon collapsed as myriad charges of legal and ethical wrongdoing in his past quickly surfaced.
Robinson attempted to rebut the charges against him…by releasing an all-encompassing document of every bit of wrongdoing he’d committed throughout his life.
It was called the Robinson Report, and the New York Times described it as an attempt to squelch a tidal wave of criticism that was overwhelming Robinson’s fledgling campaign:
PUT yourself in the shoes of Jack E. Robinson III.
Faster than you can say your own name, your fledgling campaign for Edward M. Kennedy’s United States Senate seat has been clobbered by embarrassing accusations that you are sure came from the senator’s camp: a rush of stories about your driving record, your legal history and, most mortifying of all, your love life.
At the news conference to announce your candidacy, you find yourself forced to declare: ”I am not a womanizer. I am not a groper.”
[...]
Mr. Robinson, a 39-year-old businessman, sixth-generation Republican and first-time candidate, has already posted ”The Robinson Report” on his campaign Web site. Perhaps the most notable effort at a pre-emptive political strike of the Internet era, it lists and explains every incident in his life that he thought might be fodder for attacks.
[...]
But the reasons for Mr. Robinson’s frustration and anger just keep growing. Amid the rush of accusations, he was unceremoniously disowned this week by the Republican governor of Massachusetts, Paul Cellucci, and the State Republican Party, a rejection that Mr. Robinson called ”unheralded in American history” and a ”typical Beacon Hill back room double-cross.”
And almost every day, local papers have carried a new source of embarrassment, leading some to comment that Senator Kennedy may finally have a rival with a past as problematic as his own.
On Tuesday, it was an unidentified woman’s account in The Boston Globe that Mr. Robinson had subjected her to unwanted advances after a heavy-drinking dinner date, including French kisses that led her and her friends to refer to him as ”Jack the Tongue.” Mr. Robinson denies the accusation.
Now, while there are many web pages making reference to the Robinson Report, the site that originally hosted it has long since gone defunct.
The esteemed author of The Kennedy Seat lamented that it wasn’t available and said he would love to get his hands on it.
Well, political junkies and schadenfreude aficionados, ROTI has good news for you:
Nothing is ever truly deleted from the Internet; with some devoted searching and the help of the Wayback Machine at archive.org, I tracked this sucker down.
It’s a truly amazing document that purports to explain how Robinson (among other things):
got popped for drunk driving near Fenway Park;
was found guilty in federal court for plagiarizing a book about Pan-Am Airlines;
had a restraining order taken out against him by an ex jump off;
got arrested for failing to pay a speeding ticket;
bombed out of THREE attempts at the bar exam;
and, best of all, got busted with a deadly weapon in his pocket…
A ninja’s throwing star!
I was taken to the Boston Police station. I remember telling the officer in charge that I didn’t believe I was under the influence. He asked me to take a Breathalyzer test and I consented.
However, as the officer was checking my clothing, he found in my coat pocket what turned out to be some kind of martial arts implement. Neither he nor I knew what it was and hadn’t seen it before. We actually got a slight chuckle out of it, at least until he checked around and found out that it is against the law to have such a thing. He was then required to charge me with possession of a dangerous weapon, even though it was clear that I had no idea what it was. [I can only surmise that it must have been placed in my jacket pocket, perhaps not even on purpose, while it was hanging in the restaurant where I was having dinner – probably by its original owner].
Yeah, right Robinson. That’s exactly what a ninja would expect us to believe!
Back in 2000, the website Online Opinion deftly summed up the impact of this one-of-a-kind confession:
What has made Robinson put forward such unusual document? According to his own publicity machine this openness is part of “a John McCain-style campaign”.
Unfortunately for Robinson the similarity to McCain will likely be that he will attract a great deal of attention but ultimately be unsuccessful. It is true that in the presidential primaries a greater degree of openness was seen with the candidates by talking about personal experiences or disclosing health records. But the Robinson Report is in a league of its own. In most of the examples he claims he did no wrong, so is it supposed to be an exhaustive list of every potential scandal that he could face?
Furthermore as the above examples show, his accounts do not give him an air of integrity, but rather make him look foolish. Now that he has opened up his personal life as an issue, how far should this line of inquiry go? To put it bluntly Robinson’s move has merely led to his portrayal as someone who seriously lacks judgment.
The 2000 campaign against Kennedy went so dreadfully, it became a total farce.
From the time he began is campaign in March through the end of August, Robinson had raised just $154K, far short of his $5-8 million goal. He moved his campaign headquarters to “cyberspace,” in an effort to “rewrite the rules for campaigning in a new-age economy.” Said Robinson, “we are running a guerilla campaign, kind of like the colonial militia against the Redcoats.” Yes, kind of like that.
In the end, Robinson turned in an election day performance so dismal, Frank Phillips dubbed it “the lowest ebb of US Senate races in Massachusetts since voters began directly electing lawmakers in 1918.”
Robinson polled just 13% of the vote, getting fewer votes than there were registered Republicans in Massachusetts.
You’d think a defeat like that would crush a person’s political dreams, but you would be underestimating the legendary Jack E. Robinson!
He mounted another campaign in 2006, this time trying to take down 6th District incumbent Stephen Lynch.
His political attacks on Lynch included the pressing campaign issue of the incumbent’s use of naughty swear words!
Scandal-magnet Republican Jack E. Robinson is making a last-minute bid for the U.S. Senate, filing 10,900 signatures with the Duxbury town clerk just before the Tuesday deadline, according to a source close to the campaign.
Robinson, who coughed up $100,000 to collect the signatures, will challenge Wrentham state Sen. Scott Brown in the Dec. 8 GOP primary.
The winner will move on to the special election in January.
“He’s been trying to stay under the radar,” said the campaign source who asked to remain anonymous because Robinson hasn’t officially announced he is running.
The state’s Republican party shunned Robinson after a series of controversies, including failure to pay $70,000 taxes and penalties on his 49-foot yacht, Excalibur.
To win the GOP nomination, Robinson will have to beat this guy:
No easy task, to be sure. If there’s one thing the Massachusetts GOP loves, it’s a fit specimen with a good head of hair…
Well, at least Robinson’s website is a cutting-edge, politically savvy masterpiece.
Some people out there are saying that Fox News host Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990!
Not us, of course. We’re just reporting on the rumor.
But it is pretty weird how Glenn Beck hasn’t definitively denied this story. I mean…what does he have to hide, anyway? Why doesn’t he just prove these allegations false once and for all? Why hasn’t Glenn Beck issued an official response to the rumors that he’s a bloodthirsty rapacious killer?
Obviously they COULD be true…
I’m not saying they are — I’m just saying, he should prove these allegations false, is all.
And it’s just a little suspicious that he hasn’t done so.
* * *
Glenn Beck has been on our radar screen for a while.
He claims that a Marxist conspiracy to take over the USA must be stopped by any means necessary – by the way, this conspiracy includes the dastardly plan of net neutrality, according to Beck.
He weeps on the air as he freaks out in hysterics over the horrible state our once-great Christian nation finds itself in.
Dude’s a nutcase, and possibly a performance artist. He’s even referred to himself as a “rodeo clown.”
However, there are a lot of political commentators that fit this description; Beck is merely the most outrageous at the moment, which makes me think it’s best just to ignore him.
A legal skirmish has erupted that has now made that stance impossible.
Time for us to dive into the case of Glenn Beck vs. GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com!
Let’s begin by discussing one of the most obnoxious things about Glenn Beck: his tendency to make outrageous accusations and then act as though the target of his allegations is guilty until proven innocent.
A classic example of this is the “If Obama was born in Hawaii, why doesn’t he prove it?!” demand. The more proof that is provided, the greater the conspiracy allegations and bar of “proof” that Beck and the birthers constantly raise. There’s no way for these people to ever be satisfied, and they relentlessly imply that Obama is an interloper without ever proving that he is one.
Another example of this technique can be seen in Beck’s interview with our only Muslim congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, in which he couches a ridiculous accusation in classic “concern troll” style:
“No offense and I know Muslims, I like Muslims, I’ve been to mosques, I really don’t think Islam is a religion of evil. I think it’s being hijacked, quite frankly. With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying let’s cut and run. And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy. But that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.”
So — that’s Glenn Beck’s steez. It’s dishonest and rubbish, but it’s working for him.
This website (http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com) drew the attention of Glenn Beck and his lawyers, and they promptly descended with lawsuits aplenty.
Now, Issac Eiland-Hall is just a guy like you or me. He doesn’t have Glenn Beck money, or Mercury Radio Arts-funded corporate lawyers. He’s just a dude who wanted to start a website parodying Glenn Beck’s nonsense.
To be fair, there is a case to be made that the domain name that Eiland-Hall registered is defamatory of Glenn Beck.
Paul Levy of Public Citizen routinely stands up for Web users who complain about (or otherwise antagonize) deep-pocketed corporate interests, but when we asked him about the site and the defamation complaints, he was happy to stay seated in his chair.
[...]
[T]he possibility of a US defamation/libel suit against the anonymous site operator is a real one. Certainly, domain names alone “can be defamatory,” Levy says, pointing out that the first iteration of the site posed the “rape and murder” claim as a statement—not as a question.
Levy says that such a statement is only actionable if 1) it’s false (and we’re quite sure it is) and 2) it was stated with actual malice. That last bit could be tricky to prove, especially in a case involving an anonymous speaker, but Levy makes clear that the site might well be on the wrong side of a very fine line.
“I don’t think ‘Ha ha it’s a joke’ at the end gets you off,” he says; if the parodic information is defamatory, it’s risky for the defendant in such cases. That’s complicated by the fact that the original domain name made the allegedly defamatory claim against Beck—and of course no one stumbling across the site in a search engine or elsewhere would see any disclaimer. In such cases, the domain name itself is a standalone piece of content; the disclaimer may help regarding the website content, but it won’t necessarily transfer a cone of protection to the domain name as well.
Beck and his legal team would have had a fighting chance if they took on Eiland-Hall in a defamation case in a US court of law.
But that’s not what they did. Instead – they appealed to an international tribunal!
They essentially accused Eiland-Hall of cybersquatting and called on the Euros to sort it out!
Are you freaking kidding me?
Glenn Beck is calling on the international community to arbitrate a First Amendment issue between American citizens?
This is the kind of thing he routinely slams the left for on the air!
I’m not saying Marc Randazza is a particularly skilled legal mind, or has gathered any legal prestige; I’ll leave those kind of judgments to our wise legal readers. All I know is, this dude is hilarious.
As you may be aware, from reading our Response in this case, there is a split of authority in the WIPO decisions as to how criticism sites should be examined…
View 1 states: “The right to criticize does not extend to registering a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to the owner’s registered trademark or conveys an association with the mark.”
View 2 states: “Irrespective of whether the domain name as such connotes criticism, the respondent has a legitimate interest in using the trademark as part of the domain name of a criticism site if the use is fair and non-commercial.”
Naturally, View 2 is the prevailing view of American panelists and panels that apply American law to UDRP proceedings. View 1 seems to be more popular with international panelists and panels that apply European law.
Unfortunately, given that UDRP decisions regularly incorporate international legal principles, this case could be assigned to a foreign panelist or to an American panelist who applies transnational principles. I personally would find it distressing if the panel were to make a decision that completely disregards the U.S. Constitution in favor of a foreign perspective that adopts View 1.
To be candid, we found the fact that Mr. Beck filed this action at all to be most puzzling. Although, it was obvious why he did not file in a U.S. court given the law surrounding nominative fair use of trademarks as fully explained in our Brief. Naturally, a defamation claim as alluded to in Mr. Beck’s complaint would be humiliatingly doomed as well in a U.S. court.
On March 30, 2009, he said on his show:
Let me tell you something. When you can’t win with the people, you bump it up to the courts. When you can’t win with the courts, you bump it up to the international level.
Of course, we levy no critique at Mr. Beck for seeking to vindicate his perceived rights in this forum. We do not share his opinion as articulated on March 30, and we respect his creativity in seeking an alternate avenue where his claims might have a chance of success.
Unfortunately, despite the general wisdom among UDRP panelists, we find that occasionally they render decisions that make First Amendment champions cringe. We are certain that despite our disagreement with Mr. Beck’s legal position, that all parties involved hold equal reverence for the First Amendment. Therefore, I have prepared a proposed stipulation that will ensure that no matter which panelist is assigned to this case, the First Amendment will illuminate these proceedings like rays of light from the Torch of Liberty.
I hate to presume anything about anyone, but I presume that Mr. Beck will agree to this stipulation. It would be an interesting day indeed if Mr. Beck preferred to risk that a panelist would apply French law to a case between two Americans over a matter of public discourse.
In reviewing the filings thus far in the case, Rob Heverly at the blog Faculty Lounge noted that when it comes to trademark infringement, Beck really doesn’t have much of a case:
Beck (through his lawyers) argues that the domain name uses his trademark, and as such, should be canceled. Some of the filing’s arguments are logically questionable.
[...]
I cannot fathom how…the domain name www.glennbeckmurderedandrapedayounggirlin1990.com [infringes upon] Beck’s trademark, “Glenn Beck.”
Yes, the disputed domain name incorporates Beck’s mark, but it does more than that. And no one, and I think it’s probably true to the absolute here, no one would think they are going to a Glenn Beck owned/operated/approved site when they click on that link or type in that URL…So when looking at the filing, I wasn’t sure exactly where the complainant was going.
In contrast, the response does a wonderful job of making the case for a critical attack on someone who is quite capable of launching his own attacks (and of using the power of technology to do it).
Paul Beck and another lawyer Ars Technica discussed this case with described Beck’s WIPO claims as “preposterous.”
Hey, it would be interesting to see the plaintiff and defendant battle this case out on First Amendment grounds. I’d be curious to hear what our legal-minded readers have to say on the subject (hint hint, comment box awaits you).
Can a domain name be defamatory?
We might never know, because Glenn Beck doesn’t have the stones to file an actual defamation case in an American court.
Instead, he went for the international runaround with a cybersquatting claim that’s simply bogus.
Glenn Beck is the butt of a viral joke. He may not get the joke, but this does not make the joke likely to confuse or subject the domain name to transfer under the UDRP. Glenn Beck’s failure to understand these basic principles of law does not make the joke any less humorous, and does not make him any less of the butt. The First Amendment protects Respondent’s right to make Glenn Beck the butt, and his hypocritical attempts to squelch legitimate free speech criticism do nothing to portray himself in a more flattering light.
Because his arguments do not satisfy Section 4(a) of the Policy, his request should be denied.
Because he has attempted to silence a critic by circumventing (and thereby devaluing) the First Amendment — which he publicly (and in this proceeding) claims to love — he should be deeply ashamed.
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