December 9, 2004 by s.z.

Blogs: Web Logs of Treachery & Deceit Kids, today let's welcome special guest David Paul Kuhn, chief political writer for CBSNews.com, which is a professional media outlet and not a blog.  He is here to tell us about how bloggers regularly engage in ethical lapses without any repercussions, since they use something called "the Internets" (which was purportedly invented in 1962 by Al Gore as a medium for social anarchy) instead of working for a media conglomorate, like God intended.  [Note: in the interest of ethics and stuff, I guess I should confess that only part of this piece was written by Mr. Kuhn.  I added some unattributed lines that I thought made it more newsworthy.  I can do that; I am a blogger, and so am not bound by any moral code. If you click the link, you will be able to read Kuhn's unsullied words.] ***** Internet blogs are providing a new and unregulated medium for politically motivated attacks -- and also lots of personal ones.  For instance, there's that saucy Wonkette, with all her talk about politicians and butt sex.  And then there's Sadly, No!, which always seems to be picking on someone.  And does the editor/reporter ever get sued for libel?  I think you know the answer to that. With the same First Amendment protections as newspapers, blogs are increasingly gaining influence -- which isn't fair, since only real journalists should get First Amendment protection.  In fact, bloggers shouldn't get any protection of any kinds, since there no mention of "blogging" in Bill of Rights. Where journalists' careers may be broken on ethics violations, nothing happens to bloggers who aren't ethical, except that their reputations suffer and nobody reads them anymore -- which is like breaking their career, I guess, except that journalists can also get fired and then they are forced to get big advances from publishers to write books about their sad situtions -- and I've never heard of that happening to a blogger. In the "blogosphere," there are no standards except community standards, and that gives bloggers an unfair advantage over real journalists, since we real journalists would like to write about butt sex, but nobody will pay us to do it (as a general rule). The bloggers' lack of ethics is a real problem, because they often presume to fact-check actual journalists, their moral superiors.  Can you believe the nerve of them!  We go to journalism school and learn how to journalize, and yet they think they can correct us on factual matters when they don't even have a code of ethics except their own personal ones, which can't be very good, or they would be on TV. And while bloggers also fact-check each other, there isn't anybody in charge of actually enforcing standards, or shooting evil-doers, in this Wild West of the world wide web.  So, it's obvious that the government should appoint some kind of blogging police to keep the peace in BlogTown -- maybe something like that Net Force Tom ClancyCo wrote about. But what do the courts say about all this? Generally, the Supreme Court has stated that a restriction on political advocacy by corporations and unions does not apply to media or individuals. The reasoning has been that media competition insures legitimacy. This has historically been the argument against monopolies in media ownership. Hypothetically, if The Washington Post discovered that The New York Times had a reporter being paid by the Bush campaign it would report it. If proven, the suspect reporter would be fired and likely never work in mainstream journalism again.  And hypothetically, if a media critic for The Washington Post wrote favorable articles about the campaign of an Austrian actor who was running for governor of California, and it was revealed that said critic's wife was working as the actor/politican's press secretary, nothing would happen.  That's how the reasoning goes. Hence, the courts have been satisfied with the industry's ability to regulate itself.  But apparently the court was wrong when it thought that individuals could regulate themselves. In the case of Glenn Reynolds, this is what happened. The author of the oddly popular blog "GlennReynolds", Reynolds wrote under a pseudonym, Instapundit. And all the while, he was a professor at the University of Tennessee!  A law professor!  And he claimed to be politically neutral, but he advanced pro-war, pro-Republican, pro-Bush positions. “People are pretty smart in assuming that if a blog is making a case on one side that its partisan,” said some expert on something or other. “The problem is when a blog pretends to hold neutrality but is actually partisan.” That is not a legal problem, however, but an ethical one. Reynolds eventually acknowledged his true name, and his connection with the University of Tennessee was revealed.  But he is still blogging. “He is perfectly free to write the blog. You can criticize him for it but he had a perfect Constitutional right to do what he did,” said Eugene Volokh, who teaches free speech law at UCLA Law School and authors his own blog, the Volokh Conspiracy. “People are free to say whatever they want to say and not reveal any financial inducements and not reveal in whose pay they are,” Volokh added. “Sure, the University might want to investigate just what he is doing for them in exchange for those financial inducements, since Reynolds spends so much time online that it makes one wonder how much care he devotes to his professional duties -- but that would be considered a matter of employment law, or contract law, or something like that, and my specialty is free speech law, so I can't give you any more quotes unless you pay me that $20 you promised me." Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech. What are those new rules?  How do they relate to political speech?  How do they relate to blogs?  How the hell should we know?  Sure, we could go to the F. E. C. and maybe ask some questions, or do some research or something, but we are journalists and that's not our job, so screw you! 5:52:27 AM

Law Thoughts, by Ben Shapiro To prove that his three months of law school have not been in vain (he's attending Harvard Law, you know), this week Ben gives us the legal perspective on Hardee's enormous new hamburger. A rogue court could theoretically call the Hardee's Thickburger "design defective" and hold Hardee's liable for damages incurred by the moron who voluntarily swallows 100 of them over the course of a month. Theoretically, a rogue court could do a lot of stuff.  In my fantasy, it outlaws stupidity, and holds the Townhall folks liable for the damage their writing causes to the country's collective IQ. In the next two decades, expect a rash of lawsuits by children with genetic defects against their parents. If the parents were informed during pregnancy that the child would suffer physical or mental difficulties as a result of genetic defect, should the child be able to sue the parent for failing to abort? If a person can consciously make the decision to smoke, and then sue the cigarette manufacturer for damages, why can't a completely innocent child with no freedom of choice about prenatal life or death be able to sue a parent who forces the child into a life of misery? And if the future, expect a company (maybe General Foods/Procter & Gamble/Halliburton) to invent a new product called, say, Soylent Crack, an instantly addictive drug for use against our enemies, the Islamifascist Space Spiders from Tetracycline 5.  And then expect that some of our soldiers innocently (but without authorization) eat some Soylent Crack that they find while rooting around in an old supply building for scrap metal to fix their battle scooters.  And then the soldiers are hooked for life on Soylent Crack, and they eat so much of it that that they grow two heads, and then die -- which is what the product is intended to do, even though the soldiers didn't know this.  So, should their genetically-modified, intelligence-enhanced monkey companions be allowed to sue GF/PG&E/H for damages?  I think this is the kind of issue that we will be asking lawyers like Ben Shapiro, Esq, to decide for us ... in the FUTURE! Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well, yes, it does sound kind of silly, but no more so than many bad sci-fi novels of the '60s, or most of Ben's columns. It isn't. Well, then I stand corrected.  If Ben, who has had three months of law school, says that kids will be suing their parents for not aborting them, then I guess the idea isn't ridiculous at all. Yes, this make courts the final arbiters of morality. But the past decades have seen an increasing effort by courts to grab power from the people and to legislate morality from the bench. Whether it's claiming a fundamental right to sodomy or shirking personal responsibility in favor of corporate liability, courts have exceeded their limits by leaps and bounds. Because if a court says that consenting adults have the right to engage in noncoital sex, then anything goes in this brave new world of rogue law! So before the courts shut down the Thickburger, let's raise a non-diet cola to the brave entrepreneurs willing to risk legal battle to put out their product. And if you want a Thickburger, get one now -- they might only be available for a limited time. In Ben's honor, here is a Simpsons moment: Homer:Three Ribwiches, please. And instead of a shake, I'd like a blended Ribwich. Squeaky-Voiced Teen: Sorry sir. The Ribwich was for a limited time only. Homer: Not again! First you take away my Philly Fudge Steak, then my Bacon Balls, then my WhatchamaChicken. :cries: You monster! :composes himself: I'd like a large fries, please, and a collectors cup. 3:58:44 AM

Deep Thoughts, by Peggy Noonan [As usual, Peggy is in maroon, Jack Handey is in blue, and I am in black.] This week Peggy recalls that she once wrote a book about Hillary Clinton (I belive it was called Hillary Clinton Bad, Ronald Reagan Good).  So, she pretends that the voices in her head are interviewing her and demanding to know more about what she thinks of Senator Clinton.  She gets a whole column out of it.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's pay some attention to Hillary Clinton, just for fun. I hope that some animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs in my brain, because later you might think you're having a good idea, but it's just eggs hatching. Anyway, Peggy wrote that book about Hillary (she recalls that some imaginary friend begged her to do it, and she thought, "Yes, that could make a difference" -- in that she needed some booze but didn't have have any money, and the publisher's advance could change that).  So now she is the nation's foremost expert on Hillary.  Here's the thesis of her book: What I concluded was that Mrs. Clinton was an unusually cynical leftist political operative who had no great respect for the citizens of the United States or for America itself, but who saw our country as a platform for her core ambitions: to rise and achieve historic personal and political power both with her husband and without him. Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition. And since Peggy has all this great insight into Hillary left over from the book, and Hillary is still alive and doing stuff, Peggy decides to predict Hillary's future.  The gist of her all her prognostication is: over the next couple of years, Hillary will pretend to be hard working, sensible, moderate, and smarter than George Bush, so that she can be nominated for President -- and only then will our beloved candidate be unmasked as nothing but a hideous space reptile.  You make it sound like a Hillary candidacy is inevitable. She is inevitable as a candidate, but not as a president. There will be serious drawbacks and problems with her candidacy. When she speaks in a large hall she shouts and it is shrill; she sounds like some boomer wife from hell who's unpacking the grocery bags and telling you that you forgot not just the mayo but the mustard. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes, that way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. Peggy gives us many more important revelations equal to the one about how Hillary sounds like a boomer wife from hell yelling at you for forgetting the condiments, and concludes by saying that what America really wants is a genuine conservative, not a reptilian space alien.  Does that stuff really matter? Sure. It's at the heart of things. Americans want to know the deepest beliefs of their president. I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad. And really, there's nothing more that you need to know about this Peggy Noonan column.  But here's one last Jack Handey "Deep Thought" to finish up with:  Normally I don't believe in miracles, but something happened when I was about seven years old I still can't explain.  I was on the front porch with Grandpa, about to eat my Twinkies, when Grandpa started grabbing his chest and saying he was having a heart attack.  I ran to get Mom, but when I got back, Grandpa was okay.  "An angel helped me," he said.  "Also, he ate your Twinkies." 2:45:30 AM