Righthaven's Business License Expires...Again

Copyright troll Righthaven is again in trouble.  From the ever-useful Steve Green at Vegas Inc.:

Righthaven LLC’s financial position appears to have deteriorated further: For the second year in a row, the Las Vegas company's state business license has expired and now it’s listed in default....The development indicates the copyright infringement lawsuit filer either can’t or won’t come up with the $200 needed to reactivate the license.

Since Righthaven isn't filing suits anymore, it may not matter.  But I wonder if this will impair their ability to pursue their appeal of their many losing cases to the 9th Circuit.  I can at least hope.

FBI Arrests Suicide Bomber On Way To Capitol

Fortunately, the FBI supplied him his suicide vest, and the results would have been less dramatic than he expected.  From NBC Washington:

The man, said by law enforcement officials to be from Morocco originally and in his late 20s, was arrested at about noon Friday after he received what he thought was a vest containing explosives. In fact, it had inert material that was not hazardous, according to NBC News.

From Morocco? So he was obviously one of those Christian theocrats that the left wants us to believe will be unleashed if Santorum gets elected.  

FBI officials said the suspect was in the country illegally, after overstaying his visa.

Another illegal alien.  You know, there might be a case for actively seeking out those who are illegally in the country, and deporting them.

Bush's Third Term

There are more than a few conservatives who have chortled that Obama's use of drones in the Middle East, refusal to close Gitmo, and a number of other foreign policy actions, were Bush's third term.  This is not quite fair, either to Bush or Obama--but it does seem as though a lot of the promises that Obama made to the Code Pink crowd were quickly forgotten.  (And when it comes to crony capitalism, Obama makes every previous president combined look squeaky clean.)

Now, one more example, from Rolling Stone:

Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration's high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush's record for medical-marijuana busts. "There's no question that Obama's the worst president on medical marijuana," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. "He's gone from first to worst."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-war-on-pot-20120216#ixzz1mfYde8AC

I have never been supportive of federal regulation of marijuana, especially marijuana that does not cross state lines.  The Raich decision was so utterly wrong--holding that marijuana grown and used in California was still subject to federal regulation under Congress' authority to regulate interstate commerce.  Nonetheless, the job of the President of the United States is to enforce the laws of the United States, and I can't be too upset with either Bush or Obama for, you know, enforcing the laws of the United States, especially when the Supreme Court insists that the law is constitutional.  Do you really want a law enforcement official deciding which laws he should enforce and which he should just ignore because he disagrees with them, thinks them silly, or whatever?  Sometimes the best way to get a stupid law repealed is to enforce it full force.  

Still, I can feel a certain sense of gratification at a time like this when someone suddenly figures out, as Instapundit describes the above article: "Hey, rube!"  An awful lot of people on the left end of the spectrum demonstrated a depressing aspect of democracy: the complete suspension of critical judgment when a politician tells them what they want to hear.

From Mandatory Christian Prayer to Mandatory Multiculturalism

If you have read William J. Murray's My Life Without God, you know that the mandatory Christian prayer with which Maryland schools opened their day was into the 1960s really quite stupid.  Murray, who is now a Christian evangelist, points out that it was very perfunctory, and done only because the law required it.  While where this led the courts seems positively mad, at least they were taking a consistent position: removing religion from public schools.  Now I see that progressive sorts are busily putting prayer back in public schools, in Quebec.  Quebec, like many American states into the 1950s, until the 1990s had religion classes in its schools. There were classes for Catholics and classes for Protestants--and once upon a time, there were so few of any other religion to be an issue.

Now, Quebec has an Ethics and Religious Culture curriculum (ERC) that runs from elementary school through graduation that appears to be an attempt to teach children about all religions.  In some abstract sense, this is a good thing: you should have an awareness of what other religions believe.  But a number of Catholic parents were concerned both about the substance of the class, and the likely effect it would have to be teaching about other religions to seven year olds, while attempting to raise them as Catholics.

In light of the dominance of anti-Christian sentiment among school teachers and curriculum writers, I can certainly see why there might be some reluctance to have their kids put into what was likely to be a propaganda campaign directed against Christianity, apologistics for Islam, and enthusiasm for New Age ideas.  So the parents asked to have their kids exempted from these classes.  Nope!  And the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the requirement that they send their kids to these classes.

For those liberals who find this reasonable, ask yourself what your reaction would be if, in an alternate universe, your public school system had a curriculum called Love & Sexuality taught by people who promoted the idea that while there were many expressions of sexuality, some were clearly better than others: and you get one guess which deviance forms would be treated as worthy of contempt.  Now, imagine that your children had to take this class if they went to public school, and there was no way to remove them.

I'm So Surprised...

From February 17, 2012 Fox News:

BANGKOK –  The three Iranian men detained for allegedly plotting bomb attacks in Bangkok on Israeli diplomats had more than terror on their minds in Thailand. Police said Friday that they had also cavorted with prostitutes at a beach resort.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/17/thai-police-2-more-suspects-in-terror-case/?test=latestnews#ixzz1mf8diHNJ

The 9/11 hijackers apparently spent a bit of money on strip clubs, "escort services," and porn, especially in the last few days before their crime.  There is always a tendency of people who subscribe to very puritanical value systems to fall off the wagon--but when it involves people with such violent behavior, I confess to a certain pleasure in pointing out their failings.

Humor Is A Dangerous Tool

Foster Friess, one of Santorum's major fund raisers, is apologizing for a joke that indeed, probably went over well with people over 50, who caught the reference, but did not with anyone younger.

There's a Song in This Somewhere

I mentioned yesterday the embarrassing details of how David Brock of Media Matters for America was promoting very restrictive gun control...while having one of his aides carry a Glock in Washington, D.C. to protect him.  Let's see, Glock, Brock, and crock all rhyme.  Can't someone put together a song mocking Brock's hypocrisy?  Let me try for a few lines, perhaps set to the The Ballad of Gilligan's Island music:

There once was a journalist/media hack, a Democrat through and through,

who led what started as a tax-exempt,

and ended up in the poop.

David Brock was his name; Media Matters was his crew.

Faux journalists spread their word, no matter whether it was true, 

no matter whether it was true.

The paranoia started getting rough,

his security team afraid; 

if not for the Glock his bodyguard had, 

Brock might have been lost, Brock might have been lost.

Obviously, I am not a songwriter.  But I am sure my readers can figure out how to improve this, and work in the hypocrisy of Brock's support of restrictive gun control while having his people carry illegally in D.C.