Moe Lane

Thank you.

…I’m not sure why people were so down on the second episode; I mean, Doyle had Exotic Foreign Assassins in the Sherlock stories all the time, from blowpipe cannibals to Mormons.

No, seriously.  Go read A Study in Scarlet again.

Anyway: rationing out the third one so as to make ‘em last longer. Good stuff, good stuff.

…for French officials? From this story about a guy abruptly quitting over sexual harassment charges:

A statement by the prime minister said Civil Service Minister Georges Tron had acted “in the general interest”, and noted he denied the allegations.

His resignation comes in the wake of the US arrest of ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn earlier this month.

He is charged with sexually assaulting a chamber maid in a New York hotel.

(more…)

Yeah, sure, from their plumage they’re apparently Code Pinkers, which is a group that I avoid comparing to pond scum mostly because pond scum doesn’t deserve the comparison, but since when do cops get to put hands on the throats of people who aren’t, you know, attacking them or anything?

I mean, seriously. You take a swing at a cop, the cop smacks you to the ground, that’s how it works. No beef there. But was this really proper procedure? – I ask mostly because I might feel like dancing at the Jefferson Memorial some day, and the last time I checked there are supposed to be some pretty hefty Constitutional protections in place to allow me to do it.

I think that the US Park Police needs to review/update its training procedures.

Moe Lane

PS: To reiterate… to hell with Code Pink. I hope that they win their court case, get a buck in damages, and have to pay their own court costs.

And how I love them for it (NSFW).

Well, for given values of ‘love.’

Video that provoked the reaction:

…and may it tick them off more and more as the 2012 election looms.

Moe Lane

PS: no applause, just throw money.

This one will be for Seven-Sky v. Holder, which is scheduled for oral argument in September.  The amicus brief will be on the individual mandate; more specifically, that the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

I mostly draw this to people’s attention because of the following list:

Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Maine*, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Bolded states had elections for Attorney General in 2010: underlined states are where the job flipped from from Democratic to Republican.

Elections matter.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Elected by legislature.

OK, I admit it: when I heard this morning that Rep. Weiner had supposedly sent a coed a picture of his (encased) genitalia via Twitter, I assumed that somebody was just having his or her little joke by hacking into the man’s account and indicating that Weiner is, as I put it, one of the bigger d*cks in Congress.  But that was before Ace of Spades demolished this argument utterly (H/T: Neil Stevens) (remember, folks [and bad Moe!]: identity theft is a crime), so now I am taking this seriously as a possible scandal, and I found something interesting going on.  Somebody’s scrubbing the recipient’s Internet presence, even as we speak.

(more…)

Somebody forgot that it’s harder than it looks to scrub Google.

The Who? in the title reflects the fact that Elizabeth Warren is more or less unknown outside of Activist Left circles, where she is generally considered to be a secular saint*. Warren would also be the first head of the “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” (CFPB) mandated by Dodd-Frank, except for the minor detail that the last thing we need right now is yet another regulatory agency seemingly designed to put the brakes on economic development.   Anyway, the short version of the current brouhaha: Senate Republicans won’t let Warren’s nomination come to a vote; House Republicans have no qualms whatsoever about denying the President the ability to make recess appointments for the rest of the 112th Congress; and Democrats, having conveniently forgotten that they did the exact same thing to President George Bush, are upset and wounded over the entire thing. And, oh yes, progressives are particularly upset and wounded that a Republican** called her a liar to her face when she tried to play I’m-too-important-for-this-hearing:

What makes this particularly entertaining is that the Left really, really wants this specific woman in this specific position, which suggests that the CFPB is going to be more or less a meaningless shell without her.  Those remembering the history of the FBI may want to contemplate the perils of giving an unelected bureaucrat too much power – oh, who am I kidding?  The Right doesn’t need me to tell them that and the Left is going to scratch their heads over the very question.  At any rate, expect this one-sided showdown to contribute to what promises to be a very long, slow burn this summer by Democrats as they increasingly wonder why things aren’t breaking their way…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I’m not exactly sure why she’s in such high regard – which doesn’t mean that it’s not real, for given values of ‘real.’  To the point where the Left was certain that she could have saved the Democratic majority in the House in 2010.  No, really.

**Rep. Patrick McHenry, NC-10 (until they finish fixing the CDs in North Carolina, at least).  Hey, why doesn’t the Online Left go and raise a lot of money for his opponent? – seeing as McHenry’s in a R+17 district, which makes him almost as vulnerable as Rep. Elijah Cummings (the other Congressman in that clip) is.  Which is to say… not.  We’re all still having a chuckle over here at the way that one simple “You lie!” removed $1.69 million Democratic dollars from the 2010 election as thoroughly as if the money had been taken out to a field and burned.  We’d love to see it happen again, and again, and again.

Watching the first episode now, and I’m pleasantly surprised on how well it works.  Then again, I did like the Downey/Law Sherlock Holmes, so obviously I’m not entirely a purist on these issues*.

Moe Lane

*Doyle would have liked that movie, I think.

[UPDATE]  Ah, so there are only three episodes’ worth so far.  Which means that I should probably ration them a little.  I have to say, they took full advantage of my preconceived expectations from reading the original Conan Doyle.

You know, it’s amazing how even a brief acquaintance with Apple’s customer service* can make the schadenfreude all the tastier:

One of the most pervasive and costly types of infection is now hitting Mac computers, signalling the end of an age of innocence for Apple customers, who until now have been spared many common cybersecurity problems.

Apple didn’t really handle the problem well, either: they apparently seem to be thinking that this was an one-time thing, instead of being the harbinger of The Time Of The Suck that Microsoft has already had to deal with.  Well, they’ll learn – and in the meantime, I’m going to make sure that all of my account information with this company uses a debit card; which will be annoying, but not as much as somebody hacking Apple and running up ten grand on my household’s credit card.

I suggest that the rest of you do the same.

Moe Lane

*It took me an hour and three different people to find out that Apple does not have a clue about what is the iPad equivalent to Powergramo (allowing me to record Skype calls and turn them into mp3s).  I don’t mind – too much – that something like that is only available on real computers; I do mind that Apple doesn’t seem to take demands on my time as seriously as I do, considering that they want to sell me stuff.

[UPDATE]: The person who emailed me this has passed along where he got it from.

Tells you something about my choices in entertainment that I didn’t really react to that until I realized that he was Security Chief Zack Allan in Babylon 5.  He had his problems, poor man; sorry to hear that he couldn’t overcome them.