Murderous and bizarro, part 2

My voice to god's ear? Three weeks ago I suggested that someone might start a disciplinary proceeding against the lawyer in California seeking to legalize extra-judicial killings of gay people, an astonishing abuse of California's direct democracy process. Today:

[T]he California Legislature's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus [has] filed a formal complaint against McLaughlin with the State Bar of California, asking that he be investigated.

So . . . keep an eye on Matthew McLaughlin's listing, I guess.

bisy backson

Spent all weekend and all day yesterday working, making Philadelphia safe for democracy, with nothing but a low-powered, only somewhat smartphone keeping me in touch with the world.

What did I miss, other than a plane crash in the French Alps?

Friday Jukebox: Harrison

Good one for a snowy vernal equinox.

Shane Bauer back in prison

Wow, one of the Iran hikers can't seem to stay away from prison:

On Friday night, sheriff’s deputies from Winn Parish, La., arrested reporter James West for trespassing at an area prison and discovered a camera-equipped drone among the reporter's belongings. And early this week, an employee of the prison resigned his position in the aftermath of the arrest and was called an "operative" of Mother Jones by Winn Parish Sheriff Cranford Jordan in a chat with the Erik Wemple Blog. "He was working as as guard," said Jordan.

Jordan identified the now-former prison employee as Shane Bauer, who is a senior reporter at Mother Jones, according to the magazine’s Web site.

Looks as though Bauer parlayed his experiences in Iran into a gig doing an exposé on Corrections Corporation of America for Mother Jones. I'm looking forward to the article.

Scene from a suburban Philadelphia courthouse, March, 2015

The scene: A large courtroom in the courthouse of a county in southeastern Pennsylvania. Large-scale portraits of recent-looking judges (some female but all white), apparently painted from photographs, line the room's walls. The case is a petition to set aside the nomination petition of a candidate for the office of commissioner in a mid-sized township. In other words, someone's trying to get a candidate kicked off the ballot for the primary election. Three COURT WORKERS stand between the JUDGE's bench and the parties. They are not sure what's going on -- it is Florida, 2000, writ small.

COURT WORKERS: "What's a petitoner? What's a respondent? We don't know where you should sit. Parties, just pick a table, any table."

ATTORNEY FOR PETITIONERS: "Your Honor, the law states that a candidate has to file Statement X with the Ethics Board and file a copy with the Board of Elections. The law further states that failure to file with the Ethics Board is a fatal defect to candidacy. Candidate filed only the latter. Therefore, her candidacy is fatally defective and she should be stricken from the ballot. Please issue an order to that effect."

CANDIDATE: "It's true I didn't file the statement with Ethics. But I'm disabled and I had to take my son to sportsball game and the notary had stepped out and the Party person said they'd take care of it. In fact, this lawyer should be representing me, not the petitioners, because the Party person didn't do what they promised."

ATTORNEY FOR PETITIONERS: "The law as written is unambiguous about the requirement. Also, Case Y from just 2 years ago in the state supreme court says that judges aren't allowed to make an exception when a candidate says they relied on someone to do something and it didn't happen. Please issue our order."

JUDGE: "Board of Elections, do you have anything to add?"

BOARD: "Nope."

JUDGE: "Sounds good to me. I'm not interested in getting overturned by Superior Court. Too bad, so sad, Candidate. Order issued as requested."

Fin

Holy shit, Moorestown (N.J.) declines to militarize its police

Unlike the NYPD, we finally have a police department that has come to its senses and realized that it doesn't actually need a mine-resistant vehicle to patrol its suburban and small-town streets:

The Moorestown Police Department on Thursday backed off its plans to acquire a mine-resistant vehicle from the federal government, citing concerns expressed by residents.

"It was more than we needed," Moorestown police Lt. Lee Lieber said. "The vehicle was more than we really needed as far as its capabilities."

The 1033 Program is ridiculous. No, it's not. It's not at all. It's a not-unreasonable way for the Department of Defense both to take in a little bit of cash and also to eliminate the ongoing cost of maintaining this equipment. What's does maintenance look like on a Navistar MaxxPro Dash? How about parts? You can't just head over to ACDelco or Pep Boys -- the closest source for Navistar vehicle parts is in York, Pennsylvania. (I tried to look at their spare parts catalog online to dig prices, but the document had been removed. Maybe you can find parts on EBay?)

I also wanted to find out how much one of these babies costs, but the DoD website specifically doesn't list them; instead, you have to establish a relationship with the program first. I'm really curious to know.

Why not make them here?

OK, I'll bite. Why are there no U.S. manufacturers of execution drugs?

Texas is down to its final dose of lethal injection drugs after the US state executed a man on Wednesday.

States across the country have seen their drug inventories dwindle after European manufacturers opposed to capital punishment have refused to sell the lethal concoctions.

Shouldn't the market be taking care of this shortage? What facts am I missing here?

"And, damn it all, they might have left me my toothbrush!"

The Odd Couple: The Americanized Huis Clos that found its ultimate expression in Bottom.

Discuss.

The rain it raineth every OH MY GOD KILL ME NOW

Readers, I give you the dourest production of Twelfth Night ever committed to videotape:

2011 law grad running for judge in Lehigh Valley

That is some ego, right there (also, one of so many, many reasons why judges should not be elected):

A 28-year-old Lower Saucon Township lawyer will challenge incumbent David Tidd for his position as district judge.

[ ... ]

[Amanda] Kurecian graduated from Bethlehem Catholic High School, Lehigh University and Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, according to her release. She now works as a divorce attorney at her own practice in Allentown, according to her firm's website. The Republican said she plans to cross-file for the race.

[Incumbent Judge David] Tidd, a bankruptcy court attorney, was first elected district judge in 2009. He plans to seek a second term.

The incumbent has been on the bench for about 6 years, which is longer than Kurecian has been practicing law. And Kurecian hasn't been at it even that long. The disciplinary board's website is down, so I can't check a primary source; but good old Avvo indicates she got her Pennsylvania license in 2011. That squares with her age of 28 and her Facebook birthday in May, 1986: on a traditional track she would have finished undergrad at 21 (2007) and law school at 24 (2011).

Her website is vague on her biographical details. It's not inaccurate or deceptive or even necessarily incomplete. But it leaves out details. It doesn't state when she finished law school. It doesn't state that she ever had a clerkship or worked with a firm with any prestige. Instead, it says that she "[worked] for other Lehigh Valley law firms for a number of years" until she hung her own shingle in 2013. So . . .  she picked up work here and there for two years (two being "a number") before scraping together enough cash to open up shop in some class B office space in Allentown.

Don't get me wrong. This is fine and it's not hugely different from my own experience. But does her four-year career track qualify her to be a judge?

Not sure if this candidacy is primarily an indicator of the need for merit selection in Pennsylvania, or an indicator of the glut in the market for lawyers. (Insert whynotboth.jpg here.) She never would have made it past a real screening committee if Pennsylvania had a real, merit-based process for putting qualified people on the bench. And there's an actual, real chance she'll be seated if she simply gets a good position on the ballot. With four years' experience out from a school that did not have a stellar first-time pass rate on the bar exam in 2011 (PDF).

But then, in 2011, Pennsylvania added 1,684 newly qualified lawyers to its already over-populated bar. If Kurecian draws a lucky ballot position, she could be getting herself a steadier paycheck than quite a few others in her cohort. Good for her.

San Francisco for visitors from the First World

There's a pile of gems in this piece, but if I had to pick a favorite, as a godless pinko commie I guess I'd have to go with:

The inequality will shock you and continue to shock you. Even if you're used to London. People who have lived in SF for a while become numb to it, often taking the poverty as a point of pride for the city. "At least they won't die out on the streets. Unlike other cities, we're much less heavy handed about using police to clear them out of the city". The californian liberalism is more of a passive agressive "fuck you, got mine".

H/T @sorenrags

Murderous and bizarro

I don't understand the bizarro focus, the murderous bizarro focus some people have on non-heterosexual behavior.

Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.

That's text from a proposed ballot measure in California (PDF). It's not on the ballot yet; the proponent has just filed and paid the fee to be allowed to start gathering signatures.

The proponent is an attorney, one Matthew McLaughlin, so he should know better -- you can't magically make something constitutional simply by getting voters to pass it. This proposed measure comes about a decade after he attempted, but failed (PDF), to require public schools to provide KJV Bibles to students.

McLaughlin's previous initiative had the plausible opt-out that it was voluntary to use the provided Bibles. He failed anyway because it was so obviously an attempt to get the thin end of the Christian religion wedge into public schools, and voters saw through it early in the process. He never gathered enough signatures. So now . . .  McLaughlin is doubling down? With some full-bore extreme reaction against the ultimate demise of Prop 8, maybe?

Whatever it is, as I said when I started writing this, I don't get it. I don't get how one person starts with reading the term "abomination" in their religious text and then carries that through to attempting to get it legislated that gay people can be legally executed on the street. It's not laughable. It's sad and intriguingly scary. Perhaps at this point someone in California can institute some lawyer disciplinary proceeding against him for this move.