Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka

Check this out, seems a father beat the living daylights out of teenage snowboarder who crashed into daughter.

I'm not advocating violence on the slopes, but I can't say I can't somewhat sympathize with the father. On more than one occasion I've wanted to shoot a snowboarder.

In fact I propose that at this years Winter Olympics, the Biatholon competition should use snowboarders as targets, instead of the regular black circles that turn white when hit.

David Bernstein, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, has an excellent post on why Hamas’s victory isn’t as bad as it initially appears.

Check out this hysterical and over the top editorial from the wonderful editors of the NY Times.

Fear-mongering at its finest.

DovBear constantly hammers away at Evangelical Christians for their "support" of Israel, mostly because their support allegedly stems from their desire to speed up the Rapture where all of us Jews will be killed.

I, on the other hand, dispute this. I think that their support is driven mostly out of a love for the country (and not the state) and, to quote Dennis Prager "they believe the Bible when it says, in Genesis, that God will bless those who bless the Jews and curse those who curse the Jews." And even if they wish to see the Rapture come, I don't particularly care, as it's something I don't believe in.

But what does this have to do with Jews? DovBear can't stand Jews who work Christians, he calls them Uncle Jakes and such. I find that slur horribly offensive.

But then what is the proper term for someone like Mendel Zilberberg? He thinks that Israel over reacted to Pat Robertson's idiotic comment about Sharon's stroke being divine justice. He believes Robertson was wrong for saying it, but then basically absolves him of any wrongdoing.

Nevertheless, there was something over the top about the official Israeli response to Robertson. From the heated responses one would never have guessed that Robertson is one of the most influential defenders of Israel in the United States. His 700 Club broadcast reaches millions of viewers daily, and he has been consistently defending Israel against attacks for 20 years.

THE 70 million US Evangelical Christians are Israel's largest, most vocal base of support. Every poll shows that Israel's security is a critical factor in determining how they vote.

The same cannot be said for American Jews. Israel ranks further down the list of issues of major concern to them - somewhere after "women's reproductive rights."

Insensitive as Robertson's statement might have been - he has since sent Omri Sharon a written apology - it was that of a friend, who sees in disengagement a real threat to Israel's security. Israelis may disagree with the theological principles underlying Robertson's fears (so would leading Torah scholars), but that should not prevent us from recognizing his concerns as the product of his empathy for Israel and the Jewish people.

That's what makes the official response to Robertson's comment altogether too fast and too furious. Tourism Minister Avraham Hirschson immediately declared Robertson persona non grata and excluded him from participation in a $50-million Christian tourist park in Galilee. That exclusion is now being reconsidered. Israel's UN ambassador, Danny Ayalon, termed Robertson's remarks "outrageous."

That is not the way Israel should talk to a friend, especially given our short supply of such friends in the world.

Sorry, but with friends like that...

You Lose! The instant you use a Nazi analogy, it's over. You've lost. Nothing you say matters.

Here's what this fool said.

"We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended...You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel.."

If all the Gestapo did was suspend some rights then I'd have a much larger extended family.

(Yeah, I know that I shouldn't be wasting anytime talking about Harry Belafonte; he's a crazy old kook and can only get mentioned in the media by saying something outrageous. But Nazi analogies really piss me off).

We'll find out once the Senate votes on Alito. The Democrats have a vested interest in the Alito vote being at least 60-40, otherwise all the liberal special interest groups will kill them for not filibustering. Problem is, an Alito filibuster would be political suicide for the Democrats.

So will the Dems be able to get enough of their Senators to "take one for the team" and run up the vote to 60? Or will they not realize the importance of reaching that magical number. Stay tuned.

If it's perfectly ok for the voters of Oregon to decide that they want to allow doctor-assisted suicide, then why isn't it ok for the voters of Oregon to decide that they want to limit doctor-assisted abortion?

Required reading for today.

In environmental politics, the short-term interests of the eco-establishment count for more than the long-term health and welfare of ordinary Australians, or New Zealanders, or indeed Indians and Nigerians. They count for more than the long-term reputation of scientific institutions. Hence, the famous "hockey stick" graph purporting to show climate over the last thousand years, as a continuous flat millennium-long bungalow with a skyscraper tacked on for the 20th century. This graph was almost laughably fraudulent, not least in the sense that it used a formula which would result in a "hockey stick" shape no matter what data you input - even completely random trendless arbitrary computer-generated data. Yet such is the power of the eco-lobby that this fraud became the centerpiece of UN reports on global warming. If it's happening, why is it necessary to lie about it?

It seems that for the last month and a half, I've had comment moderation enabled, meaning that I must approve a comment before it shows up. Problem is, I don't know how this happened, and since I never gave Blogger my email address, all of your comments were just piling up, unbenownced to me. (how do you spell that word?).

All this time I was wondering if everyone was just ignoring me.

So I'll spend the next couple of days reviewing all of your unread comments and my apologies if you thought I was ignoring you.

Hat tip to Nephtuli for telling me there was something wrong with my blog.

Thanks to James Taranto for linking to the Canonical List of Lawyer Jokes, some of them are really funny, and a litte R- rated. (Note to self, don't read them during class, you get funny looks when you start giggling in middle of Trust and Estates).

Some of my favorites:

3.   Q:   What's the difference between a dead skunk in the road
        and a dead lawyer in the road?
   A:   There are skid marks in front of the skunk.

17.  Q.   Why is it that many lawyers have broken noses?
   A.   From chasing parked ambulances.

23.  Q.   If you see a lawyer on a bicycle, why don't you swerve
        to hit him?
   A.   It might be your bicycle.

27.  Q.   What's the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?
   A.   One's a slimy scum-sucking scavenger, the other is just
        a fish.

40.  A man walked into a bar with his alligator and asked the
   bartender, "Do you serve lawyers here?". "Sure do," replied
   the bartender.  "Good," said the man.  "Give me a beer, and
   I'll have a lawyer for my 'gator."

First day of the new semester, I go to my locker, and have the first real senior moment of my life. I couldn't remember my locker's lock combination number. I fiddled with it for 20 minutes before finally giving up. Security came down and cut the lock in seconds. I have got to get a bolt-cutter like that, it was at least 2 feet long.

I've got nothing to say today.

So does that mean that we're all inbred hicks?

From MSNBC:

NEW YORK - About 3.5 million of today'’s Ashkenazi Jews - 40 percent of the total Ashkenazi population - are descended from just four women, a genetic study indicates.

Those women apparently lived somewhere in Europe within the last 2,000 years, but not necessarily in the same place or even the same century, said lead author Dr. Doron Behar of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel.

Take it with a grain of salt the next time someone goes to the chair still claiming his innocence.

From CNN:

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- New DNA tests confirmed the guilt of a man who went to his death in Virginia's electric chair in 1992 proclaiming his innocence, the governor said Thursday.

The case had been closely watched by both sides in the death penalty debate because no executed convict in the United States has ever been exonerated by scientific testing.

The tests, ordered by the governor last month, prove Roger Keith Coleman was guilty of the 1981 murder of his sister-in-law, Gov. Mark R. Warner said.

Coleman was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for the murder of 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, who was found raped, stabbed and nearly beheaded in her home in the coal mining town of Grundy.

A finding of innocence would have been explosive news and could have had a powerful effect on the public's attitude toward capital punishment. Death penalty opponents have been warning for years that the risk of a grave and irreversible mistake by the criminal justice system is too great to allow capital punishment.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of executing the innocent. But when there is a mountain of evidence supporting the conviction, my apologizes if I'm not just a little bit skeptical if the murderer is still claiming he's innocent. Tookie Williams immediately comes to mind.

Funniest moment of the hearings so far.

There's an excellent discussion going on right now over at Volokh Conspiracy about Judaism and intermarriage. Feel free to join in with your comments.

I watched a bit of the confirmation hearings today, mostly Kennedy's attempt to portray Alito as a racist, bigot, and sexist. It didn't work. But here's the stupidest thing said so far, and it comes from the senior Senator from my hometown.

SCHUMER: Does the Constitution protect the right to free speech?

ALITO: Certainly it does. That's in the First Amendment.

SCHUMER: So why can't you answer the question of: Does the Constitution protect the right to an abortion the same way without talking about stare decisis, without talking about cases, et cetera?

ALITO: Because answering the question of whether the Constitution provides a right to free speech is simply responding to whether there is language in the First Amendment that says that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press can't be abridged. Asking about the issue of abortion has to do with the interpretation of certain provisions of the Constitution.

Now Schumer can't really be that dumb. Or maybe he's illiterate. It is possible that he has never actually read the Constitution, and therefore just assumed that the right to an abortion was really written somewhere in the Bill of Rights. The way some people talk about the "right to an abortion", I could understand how someone would believe that it's an express right and not something discovered inside some penumbra of the Constitution.

Hat tip: Ezzie

This is funny and sad at the same time.

From CourtTv.com

Five Democratic activists accused of slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans on Election Day 2004 are now alleging that the Democratic Party set them up to take the fall.

Defense lawyers told jurors Tuesday that the five campaign workers were innocent and that their party's "professional political operatives" actually damaged the tires and then pointed police in the direction of the defendants.

"Like troop movements in a war, these people came to Wisconsin as it became apparent that Wisconsin was in play," attorney Robin Shellow said. "These are people who stepped over the line and now, because of what they do for a living, they blame our clients."

I wonder why the MSM hasn't picked up on this story.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on right now: Sharon, Alito, Abramoff, NFL playoffs, etc. I just can't bring myself to write about anything right now. I think I need a blogging break.

Pat Robertson says that God gave Sharon a stroke as punishment for the Gaza disengagement. But stupidity crosses all religions; my sister comes home from school and says that a couple of girls in her class were making the same claim.

This all begs the question. Why do people only see God's hand when there is "action": a flood, a hurricane, a stroke, a disease. Why do we claim that something proves God's anger, dissatisfaction or approval only when there is an event that our feeble brains can create a connection?

God sent Katrina to punish the heathens of New Orleans. God sent AIDS to punish homosexuals and drug users. There are millions of examples. But they are all stupid. Of course no one knows why God does something.

People just like to conform events to their own word view. Robertson believes that Sharon angered God by withdrawing from Gaza, so in his brain, the stroke was divine punishment.

But why don't people see God's hand when there is no "action". Why don't they see the absence of an event as God's approval? God must have approved of the Gaza withdrawal because he allowed to happen. God must have approved of Joseph Stalin- he lived until 73 and murdered millions of people by then.

The bottom line is that we simply don't know, and we shouldn't be wasting our time trying to figure out why. For every reason, there's a perfectly valid opposite reason.

Or as I heard over the weekend: Maybe Sharon was supposed to die years ago, but God extended his life so he could complete the Gaza withdrawal. Now that it's been done, it's time for Sharon to leave this world.

Makes about as much sense as Robertson's reason for Sharon's stroke.

Joe Klien has an excellent column on why the NSA kerfuffle is a losing issue for the Dems.

BOTW links to a horrible story today-

Thirty-four-year-old Mark Hulett of Williston, Vt., has been convicted on charges that he "raped a little girl many, many times over a four-year span starting when she was seven," reports Burlington's WCAX-TV. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of eight to 20 years, but the judge gave him . . . 60 days:

Judge Edward Cashman disagreed explaining that he no longer believes that punishment works.

"The one message I want to get through is that anger doesn't solve anything. It just corrodes your soul," said Judge Edward Cashman speaking to a packed Burlington courtroom. Most of the on-lookers were related to a young girl who was repeatedly raped by Mark Hulett who was in court to be sentenced. . . .

"I discovered it accomplishes nothing of value; it doesn't make anything better; it costs us a lot of money; we create a lot of expectation, and we feed on anger,"Cashman explained to the people in the court.

So I've got a great idea. If he doesn't believe in punishment then he should retire from the bench. He serves no purpose if he's willing to let a monster walk free after 60 days.

Well I survived two days of skiing at Stratton, though every muscle in my body is crying out in pain, especially my calve muscles - it's difficult to walk up stairs right now.

But of course it was worth it. The conditions were great- Monday was nice and warm (at least for Vermont, and the snow softened up nicely. It snowed about 4 inces on Monday night which made for some great skiing on Tuesday, even with all the fog- at some points during the day I couldn't see 20 feet in front of me.

I carried my camera with me on the slopes both days, though the best pictures were taken on Monday, as there was plenty of sunshine. Tuesday was tough, it's hard to get good scenic shots with all the clouds and fog.

It's nice and cold up here in Stratton, VT- looks like I've got a couple of great days of skiing up ahead.

Here's a couple of photos of our menorahs. So far I'm really impressed with my camera.