Bill Lueders of The Isthmus is getting rave reviews for his new book Cry Rape, and I have enjoyed the excerpts of it that I\’ve read. That being said, his piece in this week\’s paper that attempts to make apologies for local criminal Vairin Meesouk is simply preposterous.

The story goes like this: Meesouk, 21, was arrested at and charged with multiple felonies at age 15 for breaking into and robbing several gas stations and convenience stores and setting a fire at one. A protracted legal battle followed, with the understanding that if sentenced to a felony, Meesouk (here legally but not a legal resident) could be deported to Laos. Eventually, the charges were reduced to misdemeanors.

By the time his charges were reduced, howerver, Meesouk had committed another crime. He and a group of friends broke into an apartment where the 77 year old resident was beaten and smothered until he lost consciousness. Meesouk initially lied to police and denied involvement, but later plead guilty to three felonies. One of his accomplices said Meesouk had punched the old man in the testicles.

The prosecutor immediately asked for a 10 year sentence, while Meesouk\’s attorneys have asked for 364 days, to avoid the one-year threshold that could trigger deportation. Meesouk now has a two year old daughter, and his attorneys argue that he should stay in America to care for her. Since breaking in and assaulting the elderly man, Meesouk has had \”minor scrapes with the law,\” including a 2003 \”altercation\” with his sister for which he received two years probation.

Lueders concludes that deportation is too harsh of a penalty for Meesouk, as he is still a young man and is now a caring father. My observations differ dramatically:

1. We have reached a point in society now where having an illegitimate child is actually a sign of responsibility. The article doesn\’t explicitly say the child is out of wedlock, but trust me – if Meesouk was married to the mother, that would have been in his talking points. Meesouk\’s attorneys argue that he can\’t be deported because he\’s responsible… because he had a child with a woman to which… he\’s not married. It\’s like we\’re living in a bizarro world – it\’s like a kid killing his parents and then complaining that he\’s an orphan.

2. Meesouk\’s attorney argued for leniency and \”maintained the youths broke in believing the residence was empty.\” So it\’s the old guy\’s fault that he was there in the apartment when they broke in? How dare he be sitting home and enjoying Wheel of Fortune when these thugs broke into his house – the nerve of that guy! Kind of sounds like he deserved to be beaten and smothered unconscious to me.

3. The article argues that Meesouk is no longer a threat because he has a job. What happens when he\’s fired or quits? Does he then go on an uncontrollable elderly nut-punching spree?

4. The article quotes the 77 year old victim as saying \”that the trauma of this crime paled compared to what he experienced in World War II.\” What in the world does this possibly mean? When people commit crimes, should we immediately compare their transgression to a World War II battlefield to see if it measures up? Does Meesouk deserve a lenient sentence because he wasn\’t throwing grenades at the old guy? Try this defense when your wife catches you sleeping with your babysitter – \”Yeah, honey, it was wrong. But you should have seen what was going on in \’Nam.\”

5. Chances of Lueders going to the wall for Meesouk if he has a white kid from suburban Middleton – zero point zero. Unfortunately for the victim, testicular pugilism knows no skin color.

So anyone willing to chip in for a plane ticket for Meesouk, I\’ll set up a collection. It\’ll save you the cost of having to wear a protective cup while you\’re sitting at home watching \”According to Jim.\” In fact, I might make the trip with Meesouk, if only to save myself from having to hear about the Rosie O\’Donnell/Donald Trump feud anymore.

(Oh, and lest you think I\’m bagging on The Isthmus, they are more than generous in linking to my posts via their internet site. And lest you think I\’m afraid of using the word \”lest,\” I have now proven you wrong.)

Today, the Milwaukee Bucks traded Steve Blake to the Denver Nuggets for guards Earl Boykins and Julius Hodge. You may remember Hodge from his days at North Carolina State, where he was a standout player and apparently a fantastic quote. Here\’s a website that has compiled some of his funnier theories. Among them:

Advice given to Cameron Bennerman, starting in place of the injured Scooter Sherrill, before a March 6, 2004 game at Wake Forest’s Lawrence Joel Coliseum:
“When you’re hungry, you eat; when you’re a frog, you leap; if you’re scared, get a dog.”

On the differences between Harlem, NY and Raleigh, NC, January 21, 2002
“New York is the place to be. I could wake up there at three in the morning and decide to go to the store for some chips and Snapple and there would be cars racing down the street and people walking around everywhere. If I do that here, I\’d probably get attacked by a deer.”

As for the trade, I think it\’s a steal for the Bucks. I dumped on Steve Blake a month ago, and I stand by it. The only possible explanation for his generous playing time was that he secretly only has a couple weeks to live and the Bucks were granting him his Make-A-Wish.

In his book \”The Tipping Point,\” Malcolm Gladwell cites a study from influential British psychologist Hans Eysenck when making a link between smoking and certain personality traits. He says:

In countless studies since Eysenck\’s grounbreaking work, this picture of the smoking \”type\” has been filled out. Heavy smokers have been shown to have a much greater sex drive than nonsmokers. They are more sexually precocious; they have a greater \”need\” for sex, and greater attraction to the opposite sex. At age nineteen, for example, 15 percent of nonsmoking white women attending college have had sex. The same number for white female students who do smoke is 55 percent.

This is why cities who ban smoking in bars have it so wrong. Think about the desperate dorky guy who regularly hits the bars hoping to trick a random \”precocious\” young lady into some lovin\’. The City of Madison has removed a valuable arrow from that young man\’s quiver by not allowing him to see which girls at the bars smoke and which ones don\’t. This changes your odds significantly – we\’re talking about a 40 percent swing here.

Smoking issue aside, men have used nonverbal cues for centuries to pick out eligible mates. Tattoo? Check. Nose ring? Double check. Wearing a necklace with a marijuana leaf on it? Hit the family planning aisle ASAP. Wearing her UW Softball Team jersey? Run like the wind, my friend.

By removing these cues, men would waste infinite amounts of time talking to women with which they have no chance (for me, also known as \”all women.\”) They have it easy in the animal world – when male monkeys go to monkey bars, they just have to find a girl monkey with a swollen buttocks. Dogs just have to make sure they don\’t have a stuffy nose, otherwise they\’re guaranteed to go home empty-pawed (where they will pour themselves a drink, have their way with a sofa leg, and pass out.)

The only other option, of course, is a process known as \”dating,\” where apparently you are supposed to actually get to know a girl for a while. But this is a high risk proposition, as it can be expensive and cuts into your time normally spent attending license plate conventions.

I\’m surprised that this ordinance wasn\’t more ardently opposed by nerdy college guys and guys with bad breath. Of course, that would make for a pretty unpleasant public hearing for everyone involved.

The nonverbal clues women offer you to hint that they don\’t want to go home with you are varied. They involve kicking you in the groin, pouring a drink on you, hiding under a table, and having their girlfriend beat you about the head, neck, and chest area.

And for the ladies that are looking for nonverbal clues as to whether a certain guy will go home with them, there is one telltale hint that says he will: He\’s alive.

Yesterday, I had to take my car in for service and they gave me a loaner car to use while it was in the shop. As I drove away from the mechanic\’s shop, I felt a disconcerting warm sensation under my rear. I thought maybe I had developed a urinary problem I didn\’t know about, so I actually stopped the car and checked my pants, only to realize that the car had built-in electric seat warmers.

I guess I\’ve never had a car fancy enough to have a seat warming device, so this took me by surprise. Kids these days and their fancy new technology. Next thing you know, they\’ll let women vote.

In only marginally related news, a girl at work told me that she went on a date with a guy who attempted the \”pretend to yawn and put your arm around her\” maneuver at the movies. She asked me if this was actually still an acceptable way of trying to \”get close\” to your date.

I told her that I hadn\’t been on a date since the invention of the internal combustion engine, and that I was surprised that this procedure was still utilized. I figured that since the time that I was single, someone would have invented some kind of new and exciting hug sneaking technology that the kids would now be using. In fact, I told her that I admired this guy for kicking it old school and using a maneuver that I had thought was retired to the Lame Date Moves Hall of Fame.

I now have to go soak my teeth.

A few posts back, a reader left a comment accusing me of libel and threatening a lawsuit against me, in which he would collect \”a handsome five figure amount.\” I was wondering exactly what a \”handsome amount\” would look like, so I figured I\’d send him a bag of these in the mail:

Now that\’s a handsome sum.

It\’s taken me about 20 clumsy posts to try to say what George Will sums up in this one 800 word column. In fact, it\’s so good, I\’ll post the whole thing – plus, there\’s a local Wisconsin angle.

A Retreat on Rationing Free Speech?

By George F. Will
Sunday, December 31, 2006; B07

A three-judge federal court recently tugged a thread that may begin the unraveling of the fabric of murky laws and regulations that traduce the First Amendment by suppressing political speech. Divided 2 to 1, the court held — unremarkably, you might think — that issue advocacy ads can run during an election campaign, when they matter most. This decision will strike zealous (there is no other kind) advocates of ever-tighter regulation of political speech (campaign finance \”reformers\”) as ominous. Why? Because it partially emancipates millions of Americans who incorporate thousands of groups to advocate their causes, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.

And Wisconsin Right to Life. It is another organization by which people assemble (see the First Amendment) to speak (see it again) in order to seek redress of grievances (the amendment, one more time). In 2004 Wisconsin Right to Life was distressed because Wisconsin\’s senators, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, were helping to block confirmation votes on some of President Bush\’s judicial nominees. It wanted to run ads urging people to \”contact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster.\”

But Feingold was running for reelection, and the McCain-Feingold \”reform\” makes it a crime for entities such as Wisconsin Right to Life to use their corporate funds to broadcast an \”electioneering communication\” within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. An \”electioneering communication\” is one that \”refers to\” a candidate for federal office.

Although in 2003 the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold, the court said later that it would consider appeals against the law \”as applied.\” The majority on the three-judge court, preserving the distinction between electioneering and grass-roots lobbying, held that Wisconsin Right to Life\’s ads were exempt from the McCain-Feingold election-eve blackouts of speech because the ads were not \”coordinated\” with a candidate\’s campaign and did not engage in \”express advocacy\” — did not use the words \”vote for\” or \”vote against\” a candidate.

The dissenting judge wanted to examine the \”intent\” of the ads by examining their \”context,\” looking for clues as to whether the group hoped to not only advocate an issue but influence an election. Imagine: Judges scouring the political landscape, searching for evidence (people\’s past opinions or associations; e-mails and other communications) that would empower them to rule that grass-roots lobbying about an issue is \”really\” the functional equivalent of electioneering (express advocacy).

Such a process would necessarily be so protracted that no challenged ad could be authorized in time for an election. Besides, Bob Bauer, a Democratic campaign lawyer, rightly warns that the prospect of such inquiries should \”make a sensible citizen\’s blood run cold.\” An uncircumscribed inquiry into \”intent\” would become \”an intrusive process\” in which an organization\’s internal communications would be subpoenaed and political operatives and consultants would be \”put under oath and questioned about what they meant and intended and thought.\”

The Wisconsin Right to Life case is probably heading for the Supreme Court. There, Justice Samuel Alito occupies the chair that Sandra Day O\’Connor occupied when she voted with the majority in the 5 to 4 ruling that upheld McCain-Feingold.

Still, the reformers\’ zeal for regulating speech is undiminished. The Federal Election Commission recently fined some \”527\” groups (named for the tax code provision under which they organize) $630,000. Their offense? Issue advocacy in 2004 that, \”taken as a whole,\” could \”only be interpreted by a reasonable person as containing the advocacy of the election or defeat\” of a federal candidate. Editorial writers at The Post and the New York Times, ever eager to regulate political advocacy not done by newspaper editorial writers, approved, although the Times thought the fines insufficient, and although The Post, calling the current law \”murky,\” thought the FEC should have enforced the murkiness quicker.

The Times no longer bothers to pretend that its rationale for speech regulation is fear of corruption or the appearance thereof. Rather, the Times justifies suppressing 527s on aesthetic grounds — they are run by \”hard-edged activists\” and their ads are too negative. Presumably, suppressing 527s will elevate political discourse — and, presumably, it is the government\’s business to enforce the elevation. The Post also is tellingly silent about the reformers\’ original corruption rationale for rationing political speech by restricting the political money that finances it. Instead, The Post says 527s wield \”significant\” — by implication, excessive (relative to The Post\’s?) — influence.

Bauer wonders why, absent a compelling government interest in combating corruption, unregulated speech resulting in influence should be a federal offense. When, as surely it will, the Supreme Court considers that question, it can begin undoing the damage it did at the time it affirmed McCain-Feingold and licensed government to ration political speech.

Courtesy of the Fond du Lac Reporter:

This week, the local Madison ABC affiliate (Channel 27) added a 6:30 newscast to its slate of 5:00, 6:00, and 10:00 newscasts.

It\’s no secret that I\’m partial to Channel 27 ever since anchor Christa Dubill played along with one of my joke posts about her. That being said, I watched the 6:30 show, and it appears to be a great idea.

First, it fills a need for people who want more news. Local newscasts are famously devoid of any real content – they are essentially vehicles to show off the latest version of the Doppler weathercast they subscribe to. And they appear to be trending in the direction of attempting to avoid any real news at all.

So it\’s refreshing to see a station that is actually giving viewers credit enough to try to provide more real news. It looks like they are using the extra half hour to discuss the top stories at more length and in more detail. And the cut-ins with State Journal reporters seem to be a good idea, although they might want to keep a coat and tie ready in the Journal newsroom, just in case. The extra time should also be an opportunity for the station to provide some opinion content or debate, which is sorely lacking in local television.

As a reward for the station treating you like you\’re not a dope, you should tune in. Giving viewers credit for actually wanting real news should be encouraged. Otherwise, enjoy Wheel of Fortune or Entertainment Tonight at 6:30.

My wife and I are working our way through the \”Freaks and Geeks\” DVDs, and Episode One featured this song. Since I haven\’t been able to get it out of my head for a week, I thought I\’d subject my reader to it, too.

And as a bonus, here\’s another classic – although the violin player has caused me not to sleep for days. I\’m 97% certain he\’s hiding under my bed.

When they\’re not trying to convince us that Madison, Wisconsin is somehow the rap music capitol of North America, The Isthmus can occasionally do some good reporting.

Take this article from last week, for example. The story describes State Representative Terese Berceau\’s irritation at the Wisconsin Elections Board for charging more for the voter lists they generate. Berceau has her Capitol staffer, Tom Powell, obtain the lists from the Elections Board (apparently he has extra time when he\’s not engineering distasteful smear campaigns about city council members.*)

The fourth paragraph of the story says:

Berceau, who uses the list for campaigning and to target newsletter mailings, says the additional cost is “no big deal” for her and other incumbents. But “if somebody is trying to run for office, that’s a big whopping amount of money they have to put out immediately.”

Yes, you read that right. Berceau uses her taxpayer funded capitol staffer to obtain lists from the taxpayer funded Elections Board, which she then uses for campaigning. Surely, the media is outraged at such a blatant use of taxpayer dollars for political gain. I\’m certain newsrooms around the state are burning the midnight oil trying to figure out why Berceau uses the same list to campaign that she uses for sending out her official state newsletter.

Of course everyone remembers former Speaker of the Assembly Scott Jensen, who is likely on his way to prison for ordering staff to use state resources to do campaign work. Since there is no statute that explicitly prohibits using state resources for political gain (which was one of Jensen\’s defenses), one has to go to the statutory footnotes to find out what he did broke the law. They say:

946.12 – ANNOT.
Sub. (3) is not unconstitutionally vague. It does not fail to give notice that hiring and directing staff to work on political campaigns on state time with state resources is a violation…Legislators or their employees are not prohibited from doing or saying anything related to participation in political campaigns so long as they do not use state resources for that purpose.

When you read the Appeals Court decision in the Jensen case, it lays out specifically what Jensen did to break the law on page 35 (my emphasis): **

All the allegations of the criminal complaint describe campaign activity of the most basic type: the preparation and dissemination of campaign literature, political fundraising on behalf of a number of candidates for the Wisconsin Assembly, the delivery and receipt of campaign funds in state offices by lobbyists and state employees, campaign data management on state computers, daily monitoring of campaign progress by all three defendants, development and implementation of campaign strategy and debriefing of an election cycle on state time in state offices. The result:public financing of private campaigns without the public\’s permission. There is no reasonable argument that this alleged activity serves any legitimate legislative duty or purpose. No statute, rule or policy sanctions this behavior.

This decision was affirmed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, so all of the above transgressions are now apparently prohibited by law (even though the law doesn\’t explicitly say so, and the Court came to this decision based on a couple e-mails sent to Assembly employees – which now apparently have the force of law. One wonders if it is now legal to solicit dates from HoRnY HoUsEwIveS.)

So according to this new standard of what is legal and illegal in politics, it appears that Berceau has admitted to breaking the law. If she has been using her taxpayer funded staff to obtain taxpayer produced voter lists to campaign, that would certainly appear not to have any \”legitimate legislative duty or purpose.\”

But here\’s the problem – I don\’t have any problem with what Berceau did. Nor do I have any problem with much of what Jensen did. Jensen, however, has been killed in the media for using taxpayer resources for campaigning – and here we have a Democrat who admits as much, and it won\’t even elicit a yawn.

If you concede that there is a line between politics and legitimate government business, then I do believe Jensen crossed it by condoning the employment of a full time fundraiser on a state payroll. You just can\’t have people dialing for dollars from a Capitol office.

Furthermore, no reasonable person would try to equate the actions of Berceau and Jensen – Jensen was the Speaker of the Assembly, and if you believe that politics is inherently wrong (I don\’t), then what he did was on a much grander scale.

But to somehow think that Scott Jensen was the only one engaged in politics at the Capitol is ludicrous. Whether anyone actually cares seems wholly dependent on what party you belong to, and whether you support full taxpayer financing of elections. And yes, I know Chuck Chvala went to jail, but I believe there actually was a statute that explicitly prohibited extortion.

*SIDE NOTE: If former Speaker John Gard had hired a staff member who had been caught posting distasteful doctored internet pictures of city council members, how do you think he would have been treated by the media? Do I even need to ask?

**DOUBLE SIDE NOTE: Actually reading the Jensen decision was enlightening. It essentially boils down to the court saying \”there\’s really no statute saying he couldn\’t do this, but the chief clerk sent out an e-mail saying he shouldn\’t do it, and \’common sense\’ says it is wrong, so therefore he\’s guilty.\” Needless to say, there are plenty of things that I think are \”common sense\” with which the court would likely disagree.

New York (AP) – In a stunning development, New York Giants special teams specialist Chad Morton died on the field on Sunday after a hit by a New Orleans Saints backup tight end. \”I can\’t believe he would actually die from a sprained ankle,\” said team doctor Harris Trinsky. \”But he didn\’t have his insurance card on him, so what could I do?\” said Trinsky.

Earlier this fall, the Giants cancelled their team health insurance, instead choosing to let the government implement a universal health care plan. \”The taxpayers of New Jersey are building us a new stadium, I don\’t see why they shouldn\’t be on the hook for our medical care,\” said team President John Mara. Experts have noted that if the Giants had been covered by a public health program, Morton would have had to wait five months for treatment, and would likely be misdiagnosed as having acute halitosis instead of a sprained ankle.

Morton\’s presence on the field became a distraction during a crucial fourth quarter drive, when the Saints\’ Reggie Bush was running for the end zone and tripped over his rotting corpse. Bush fumbled the ball, then had his limbs torn off by the vultures that had previously been feasting on Morton. The vultures were each penalized 15 yards apiece, and after the game one signed on to return punts for the Minnesota Vikings next year.

The Giants did begin giving their players a stipend for health savings accounts several months ago, but Morton spent his money on a Playstation 3 and the first three seasons of Silver Spoons on DVD.

A few weeks back, I (justifiably) made fun of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign\’s insistence on making Catholic churches disclose their funding, due to the churches\’ advocacy in favor of the gay marriage ban. It seemed to be a clear example of attempting to thwart a church\’s right to disseminate their teachings.

Often times, people reach for hyperbole to describe such actions. They\’d say things like \”that sounds like something the Nazis would do,\” or \”what is this, Communist Russia?\” However, in this case, I don\’t need to use hyperbole – Russia has done it for me (and since I just read a book on Russia, it makes me an instant expert).

From USA Today:

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia — The Kremlin might back away from a new law that would force churches and religious groups to report to the government on their services, sermons and sources of income.

The rules, contained in a law passed in April, have sparked outrage among human rights groups, churches operating in Russia and Western governments, including the European Union. The Russian government passed the law in an effort to monitor the activities of organizations such as Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders, foreign-funded groups that President Vladimir Putin has warned might interfere in domestic politics.

During his seven years as president, Putin\’s government has asserted greater state control over independent Russian media and business. It also has eliminated most political opposition in parliament and turned the country\’s governorships from elected to appointed jobs…

The country\’s religious leaders say the reporting requirements are onerous and a painful reminder of the religious suppression of the Soviet era. \”We think it\’s wrong and even impossible to comply,\” says Thaddaeus Kondrusiewicz, the Catholic archbishop in Moscow.

Well, I have news for Russian citizens – there are groups here in Wisconsin that think it\’s a great idea.

The Wisconsin Democracy campaign is afraid of religious organizations that attempt to influence politics, so they try to regulate their speech. The Kremlin is afraid of religious organizations that attempt to influence politics, so they regulate their speech.

And just for the record, The WDC is the group that most newspapers are completely comfortable with writing Wisconsin\’s new campaign finance reform laws. If you want Mike McCabe to be in charge of how much speech you are allowed with regard to candidates and elections, his group is for you.

I don\’t have any opinion as to whether Brett Favre will retire or not, but I think my actions on Sunday night kind of tell which way I\’m leaning.

I was lucky enough to go to the Thursday night Packer game against the Vikings, and my ticket stub got soaked in the rain. After Favre gave his teary-eyed speech on national TV, I realized something – I didn\’t know where my ticket stub was. After all, that could have been Favre\’s last home game, right?

So I started scrambling around the house looking for it. I asked my wife if she had seen it. She looked at me and said, (make sure you\’re sitting down):

\”What\’s the big deal?\”

So if you see my ticket stub laying around somewhere, let me know. I\’ll give you big fat York hug. (Side note: In college, I once opened a beer, took a few sips, and misplaced it. Distraught, I took a marker and drew up a \”LOST: ONE BEER\” sign, complete with an artist\’s rendering of what the beer looked like. I xeroxed them off and put them up all over the neighborhood before I realized that I had taken my beer into the bathroom with me. Trust me, at the time it was pretty funny, as the missing beer was probably my ninth.)

Oh, and one last thing – this Sports Illustrated article on whether Favre will retire was a little odd. Notice at the end how they talk, not once, but twice, about how fat Aaron Rodgers is. Is this Sports Illustrated or Teen Cosmo?