Day late, dollar short on "Men I've dated"

I'm overdue for another "Men I've dated" post, I know. I've got one cooking about a performance artist who pays the bills by working for a moving company, but it'll be a few more days.

Paying work has come up. As well as laundry and housework. I need a wife!

Systematic cover-up of clergy child sex abuse acknowledged in Ireland

On the first day of the American Christmas season, a news item out of Ireland, where a commission was commissioned in 2006 to investigate how and when the Catholic Church and the Irish government ignored, covered up, and thus facilitated child sex abuse by the clergy from 1975 to 2004. The commission has published its findings:

The Commission of Investigation into Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese has concluded that there is “no doubt” that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the archdiocese and other Church authorities.

[ ... ]

In its report, published this afternoon, it has also found that “the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.”

It also found that “the State authorities facilitated the cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes.”

Over the period within its remit “the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages,” it said.

“Instead the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members – the priests,” it said.

The report concludes that the Irish national police force systematically allowed the abuse to continue for decades, in a sort of public-private partnership for the protection of pedophiles:

“The relationship between some senior gardaí and some priests and bishops was also inappropriate,” [the report] said. “A number of very senior members of the gardaí, including the Commissioner in 1960, clearly regarded priests as outside their remit. There are some examples of gardaí actually reporting complaints to the Archdiocese instead of investigating them.”

Dig that. That's theocracy in action: the police reporting to the church rather than putting suspected criminals into the justice system. (The Garda has apologized for its complete abdication of responsibility in the matter.)

The government's statement (full text) is a good start and a profound victory for generations of victims of clergy sex abuse. But sadly, it's only in my dreams and in better blogs where the church is called out as an international pedophile ring.

We're gonna need some bigger prisons

I've said it before, I'll say it again, and Chris Matthews said it for me yesterday: if you seek to outlaw abortion because you consider abortion murder, then you gotta be willing to put a lot of people in prison. If abortion is murder, then you have a whole new class of murderers and accomplices to murder -- the women, their doctors, the healthcare support staff, the people who help women get to and from the abortion facility, and the people who help women pay for their abortions:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

About 1/3 of American women get abortions during their childbearing years. If abortions are outlawed, then that's a lot of women to put in jail. If abortion is murder, and if the appropriate punishment for murder is life imprisonment (or execution), then what is the appropriate punishment for a woman who has an abortion?

Another implication: some 3/4 of all women who are trying to conceive will spontaneously miscarry a pregnancy. If abortions are outlawed, then every miscarriage will have to be criminally investigated to eliminate the possibility that the pregnancy was intentionally terminated.

Any intellectually honest discussion of outlawing or restricting abortion must address these questions.

"Sarah Palin Parking Lot"

A camera operator and a man with a microphone interview people in a Border's bookstore parking lot in Columbus, Ohio, and asks questions from Sarah Palin supporters:



From New Left Media.

(What the title of this post refers to.)

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: A Canadian real estate company recently bought the Pontiac Silverdome for USD 583,000 in a no-minimum-bid auction. How much value has your home lost in the past few years?

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Monday art house: Joe Boruchow

Joe Boruchow is a Philadelphia artist and musician (auto music) whose show "Public Service" is on display at the Bean Café, 615 South Street:


Boruchow's work is paper cut-outs. It's like Pennsylvania Dutch "Scherenschnitte," only seriously urban, modern, and worldly, often erotic or radically political. Over the years he's gotten more skilled and the pieces have become so much more intricate and detailed that it's hard to believe they're made from a single piece of paper.

He frequently makes photocopies of his work and posts it on poles and walls around town, especially around South Street, Old City, and Northern Liberties, carrying the copies in a R.E.Load bag embroidered with one of his own images. Maybe you've seen him.

On trying to find people without paying for a real search

There's a special circle in hell reserved for high-school friends of mine who keep themselves under the Google radar.

Damn you, old friends with un-Google-ably common names! And apparently uninterested in Facebook! And professionally successful enough to eschew LinkedIn! How can I possibly plan a trip to Florida between Christmas and New Years if I can't look you up properly?!

Not to mention the women who intolerably changed their names after getting married to men they started dating after we lost touch.

Hockey changes without me, even though I don't watch TV any more

In 2008, CTV bought the rights "in perpetuity" to Canada's other national anthem, the old Hockey Night in Canada theme. Which makes it no longer the theme to HNIC, which is a CBC program[me]. Instead, CTV has been using it during its NHL broadcasts for the past year.

I would have blogged about this change earlier if I were still living in a media market where the cable TV provider carried a CBC station. (I got so, so spoiled when we lived in Seattle; they carried CBUT-TV out of Vancouver as if it were a local station. Oh, man. Six hours of hockey makes a rainy winter afternoon and evening in the Pacific Northwest almost bearable.) As it is, it went completely under my radar that HNIC's theme had changed, and I didn't even know it until I saw today that Neil Peart of Rush will be recording a new version of the theme for CTV.

But as for HNIC, it must feel weird to have new music precede Don Cherry's antics outfits on Saturday nights. Will school bands play (skip to 1:15) the new theme in their symphonic concerts? Can people use it to teach themselves guitar (equal time: Canadiens version) and Mario Paint?

At least HNIC's opening titles still include Foster Hewitt's "Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland."

Official video of the Drexel Shaft implosion

Multiple "look what we didn't take down" views of the Drexel Shaft implosion on Sunday:



CDI had to avoid a parking lot, a rail bridge, and several converging rail lines when they brought down the Penn Coach Yard chimney. In the end, to bring down a building and make it land in a precise way, it's all about doing the math -- but what math.

"New Yorkers are generally unafraid of putting swarthy-looking terrorists on trial in their courts"

BooMan takes on "conservative cowards" and explains why why KSM and the other Gitmo detainees should be tried in S.D.N.Y.:

[Conservatives] want to fight the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them here. Why be afraid to fight terrorists wherever they might arise? After putting New Yorkers at increased risk of retribution by attacking and occupying a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, the conservatives feign concern for the safety of New Yorkers when they try to put the real culprits on trial. It is beyond insulting.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Did you send a coathanger to the anti-choice Democrats in Congress yet?

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Monday art house: "Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No"

For years after pitching a no-hitter in 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate Dock Ellis swore up and down that he'd been "high as a Georgia pine" on LSD and bennies during the game. Filmmaker James Blagden has put together 4:30 of animated video and sound effects to accompany an interview recorded for American Public Media:



"One time I covered first base, and I caught the ball and I tagged the base, all in one motion. I said, 'Ooh, I just made a touchdown!'"

But seriously, folks:

It was easier to pitch with the LSD, because I was so used to medicating myself. That's the way I was dealing with the fear of failure: the fear of losing, the fear of winning. It's just that it was part of the game, you know? You get to the major leagues, and you say, 'I got to stay here, what do I need?'"

A substance abuse counselor after leaving baseball ("I hope to make these young players aware of the stress involved in being a professional baseball player and drive home the point that drug and alcohol abuse is not the way to relieve that stress"), Ellis died in 2008 of irreversible liver disease.

An early fact-checking of the Palin book

The AP purchases and fact-checks "Sarah Palin's" memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, so you don't have to. One check:

PALIN: Says Ronald Reagan faced an even worse recession than the one that appears to be ending now, and "showed us how to get out of one. If you want real job growth, cut capital gains taxes and slay the death tax once and for all."

THE FACTS: The estate tax, which some call the death tax, was not repealed under Reagan and capital gains taxes are lower now than when Reagan was president.

Economists overwhelmingly say the current recession is far worse. The recession Reagan faced lasted for 16 months; this one is in its 23rd month. The recession of the early 1980s did not have a financial meltdown. Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent, worse than the October 2009 high of 10.2 percent, but the jobless rate is still expected to climb.

And another:

PALIN: She says her team overseeing the development of a natural gas pipeline set up an open, competitive bidding process that allowed any company to compete for the right to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48.

THE FACTS: Palin characterized the pipeline deal the same way before an AP investigation found her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited a company with ties to her administration, TransCanada Corp. Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders during the process, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.

I simply must figure out how to lead a life where I can continually speak in bald-faced lies -- get them printed, even, in actual books from otherwise respectable publishers -- and not face any real consequences.

Judge Andre Davis confirmed for 4th Circuit Court of Appeals

Back in July '08, I blogged about a case before Judge Davis, then at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. Re-nominated back in April for elevation to the 4th Circuit, he was confirmed by the Senate, 72-16, on the 9th.

There are 15 positions on the 4th Circuit, which comprises the federal district courts of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North and South Carolina; but only 11 positions are filled. While the Senate has notoriously stalled on 4th Circuit nominees for the past dozen years -- both Clinton's and G.W. Bush's nominees -- defendants have been waiting and waiting for their appeals to be decided, and victims have been waiting and waiting to see justice done in their cases. Judge Davis, for example, was originally nominated by Clinton 9 years ago, but the nomination expired with no action by the Senate. One editorial I found blamed G.W. Bush's "ineffective" politics for his numerous unsuccessful attempts at appointments.

Likely recognizing both the problem of long-delayed decisions in the 4th Circuit and seeing an opportunity to nudge the court a little toward the left, President Obama has quickly nominated some candidates for 3 of those last 4 seats: Albert Diaz of North Carolina, Barbara Milano Keenan of Virginia, and James Wynn of North Carolina. Here's to hoping that they're all seated and working soon.

An early summary of the Palin book

The AP purchases and reads "Sarah Palin's" memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, so you don't have to. Here's one he-said, she-said issue from the book:

Palin comes across as particularly upset about being stuck with $50,000 in legal bills that she says were directly related to the legal vetting process for the VP slot. She says she was never informed that she would have to personally take care of expenses related to the selection process, and jokes that if she'd known she was going to get stuck with the bill, she would have given shorter responses.

According to the book, Palin asked officials at the Republican National Committee and what was left of the McCain campaign if they would help her financially. She says she was told that if McCain had won, the bills would have been paid, but since he lost, the bills were her responsibility.

Trevor Potter, the McCain campaign's general counsel, told the AP the campaign never asked Palin to pay a legal bill.

"To my knowledge, the campaign never billed Gov. Palin for any legal expenses related to her vetting and I am not aware of her ever asking the campaign to pay legal expenses that her own lawyers incurred for the vetting process," Potter said.

If Palin's lawyer billed her for work related to her vetting, the McCain campaign never knew about it, Potter said.

What a clusterfuck it must be to try to work with her.

ABA wants to know your views on document review offshoring

Take a minute or two to fill out a brief survey and tell the American Bar Association exactly how you feel about offshoring American legal work to lower-paid workers in other countries. I covered the topic here at the end of September:

On the one hand it's accrediting new law schools left and right, generating literally thousands of new law grads every year that weren't flooding the marketplace just 5 and 10 years ago. Yay! More lawyers, more lawyering work, more big fees, and more big profits! Right? Well, wrong -- when the work that new law grads tend to do, namely, low-level document review, is now being outsourced, with the shiny stamp of ABA approval.

The Spectrum's top 10 sports moments, per ESPN

ESPN's list of top 10 moments at the soon-to-be-dearly-departed Spectrum includes Ron Hextall's goal, so I approve of the list:



Needless to say I didn't see any of those events live. But my fondest memories of the Spectrum are indeed sports moments, not concerts. I got to see a couple of Sixers games in the early 1980s, where Dr. J would go flying across the court and the late Dave Zinkoff would announce the basket with a call of "Julius ERRRRRRRR-ving!" Go ahead and skip to 1:37 and note that it's pretty darn late in his career (it's the "rock the baby" move during the 1983 NBA finals where the Sixers swept the Lakers):



Michael Jordan had to learn from somebody, after all.

SEPTA will give you a reimbursement or discount because of the strike

Reimbursements for SEPTA pass users who effectively lost money during the 6-day November strike:

Holders of eligible [i.e., unpunched] weekly TransPasses -- usually honored on buses, subways, and trolleys -- have until Dec. 31 to turn them in for new ones, SEPTA said. Those with monthly passes should finish using this month's pass, then surrender it to get a $20 discount for a December, January, or February pass.

[ ... ]

Eligible customers may use any sales location, SEPTA said. People with passes obtained through an employer program or a pre-tax program, however, must mail in their requests along with their passes.

Punched passes will not be honored. The punch indicates the pass was used to ride the Regional Rail system, which remained in operation during the strike[.]

[ ... ]

Those using employer or pre-tax programs to obtain passes should submit the pass by mail to: SEPTA SIP Refunds, Box 58609, Philadelphia 19102-8849. Be sure to enclose a note with contact information, including an address.

I'll probably re-post this message or at least put up a reminder -- mostly for myself -- at the end of the month.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Now that SEPTA's city division is back to work, you can actually use the public transit directions this week.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Dissecting the Stupak Amendment

Selected text of the Stupak Amendment:

No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act . . . may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.

As Booman points out, I don't see coverage for a D&C after a spontaneous but incomplete miscarriage, or for a D&C after an unsuccessful therapeutic abortion, unless the woman's life (not merely her health) is endangered.

How do you police and enforce this rule?

When I was pregnant, I passed a quantity of material that, considering what it looked like and how far along I was in the pregnancy, could have been nothing but a fetus. That is, I'm almost certain that I had been pregnant with twins, and that only one of the twins survived. Under the Affordable Health Care for America Act that the House of Representatives has passed, if I'd progressed to a full complete miscarriage and needed a D&C, my doctor and I would have had to be able and willing to certify to the U.S. government that my life was endangered in order for the procedure to be covered.

Here's another question: If a woman has a D&C to treat fibroids, or treat any of the other conditions that indicate a D&C, will the doctor have to certify to the government that she wasn't pregnant when the procedure was performed? What if the lab's urine or blood test for pregnancy returned a false negative and the doctor unintentionally aborts a fetus? I don't see a state-of-mind requirement in the language of the Stupak Amendment; but maybe it's elsewhere in the bill. As the language stands solely in the amendment, though, it looks like strict liability to me.

This is smaller government? If a woman you know needs a D&C -- your mom, your partner, your daughter, your sister -- do you want her to have to justify her healthcare to the government? The government is going to keep files of American women's pregnancy test results? (I guess I'd better forgo using my credit card and instead use small, unmarked bills next time I buy an E.P.T.) What else about your private medical information are you OK with giving the government?

If this language remains in the final version of the law that President Obama signs, we'll see the following developments from the new restriction:

one million American women every year will still get abortions

doctors will massage the paperwork, and mysteriously the rate of "life-endangering pregnancies" in the U.S. will go up

for larfs, maybe that'll turn into a public health crisis

but seriously: poor women, who can't get their abortions paid for through Medicare anyway, will find it that much harder to raise the funds for their abortions; the ensuing delay will result in riskier abortions, increased healthcare costs, and very likely deaths

government functionaries will decide which pregnancies are life-endangering enough that the abortions ending them should be paid for

For the life of me, I can't figure out how to reconcile that last item with ideals of small government and the protections of the 4th Amendment. But then, abortion restrictions are like that: Government out of my patient files and out of my doctor's office! . . . Unless the patient is a woman and the doctor is providing her with reproductive health care.

Monday art house: addiction

In the past year I have become completely enthralled by themes of addiction and substance abuse in modern literature. Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Leaving Las Vegas; of course On the Road. "I-80 Nebraska, M.490 - M.205," a mid-1970s short story by John Sayles (better known for his films) concludes with an amphetamine epiphany:

"And it's beautiful. Beautiful. The things a sleeper never sees open up to you. The most beautiful dream is the waking one, the one that never ends. From a straight line you see all the cycles going on without you, night fading in and out, the sun's arch, stars forming and shifting in their signs. The night especially, the blacker the better, your headlights making a ghost of color on the roadside, focusing to climb the white line. You feel like you can ride deeper and deeper into it, that night is a state you never cross, but only get closer and closer to its center. And in the daytime there's the static of cornfields, cornfields, cornfields, flat monotony like a hum in your eye, like you're going so fast it seems you're standing still, that the country is a still life on your windshield."

[ ... ]

"Do you know what metaphor is, truckin mamas and poppas? Have you ever met with it in your waking hours? Benzedrine, there's a metaphor for you, and a good one. For sleep. It serves the same purpose but makes you understand better, makes everything clear, opens the way to more metaphor. Friends and neighbors, have you ever seen dinosaurs lumbering past you, the road sizzle like a fuse, night drip down like old blood? I have, people, I've seen things only gods and the grandfather stars have seen, I've seen dead men sit in my cab beside me and living ones melt like wax. When you break through the cycle you're beyond the laws of man, beyond CB manners or Smokies' sirens or statutes of limitations. You're beyond the laws of nature, time, gravity, ,friction, forget them. The only way to win is never to stop. Never to stop. Never to stop."

Just finished reading Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting last week:

Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae's behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah'm gaunnae huv a short life, am ay sound mind etcetera, etcetera, but still want tae use smack? They won't let ye dae it. They won't let ye dae it, because it's seen as a sign ay thir ain failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whit they huv tae offer. Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

Well, ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts cannae handle that, it's thair fuckin problem. As Harry Lauder sais, ah jist intend tae keep right on to the end of the road . . .

It's the invisible hand of Henry Hyde!

In the U.S., about one in three women will have an abortion during their childbearing years.

Next time you're in line at the supermarket, coffeeshop, DMV, TSA security at an airport, look around you. Or you're in a crowd: a ball game, a theater, a bar. Or with your friends and family, look around you. About one third of the women you see have had or will have an abortion before they reach menopause.

And right now, government health insurance won't pay for it. It's the Hyde Amendment writ large: no longer just a part of Medicaid, but now a part of the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

Most American women fall pregnant, intentionally or not, during their fertile years; and about one million American women get abortions every year. One million women every year will be excluded from the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

You know someone who's had an abortion. Every day you see women who have had an abortion. Which one of these women would you say shouldn't have insurance for her reproductive healthcare?

Friday jukebox: Chicago

Low-quality video, insane-quality guitar:



They just don't make prog-jazz-Latin-experimental-fusion the way they used to.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

"I'm on a first-name basis," he said, "with vodka."

On a recent cross-country flight I was reading a paperback collection of short stories that I'd put away, half-read, some years ago. Stuck to the inside back cover was a Post-It note with a name, a phone number, and an Art Museum area address on it.

"Vodka, she speaks to me, and I speak to her. We get along well, except when we don't."

"When is that?" I asked.

"When I don't respect her," he said, and he refilled my glass.

When we met, he was updating one of those beat-the-test books for getting into professional school. He was facing a deadline for shipping his portion of the work on a new edition to his co-authors and editor. Although he worked at home in his apartment, the place was clean, if a little cluttered, in the way you'd expect an author's pad to be cluttered. I remember hardwood floors; an open-tiered desk with papers and books surrounding a Mac, which had been left on; table lamps that were placed so well in the rooms that the layout seemed scientific; and the square, black, reflective shapes of a few uncovered windows along one wall. There was a wooden mission-style bed with a rumpled plaid-patterned comforter. We spent most of my visit on the bed, just talking and drinking.

He was from Buffalo, where the lake moderates the summers but smothers the city in snow every winter. His family had been in Buffalo for a few generations. He said he wasn't the only alcoholic in the family, and not the first, either. He'd lost an uncle to vodka, an uneven sidewalk, and a snowbank a couple of decades ago.

"That's very Russian," I said.

"My uncle didn't respect vodka the way I've learned to respect her."

(Does the Art Museum area select for alcoholics? My friend from Buffalo lived literally one block away from the alcoholic pathological liar I had a later, three-year relationship with. They lived on opposite sides of the 33 bus.)

"Dozens of people freeze to death," I continued. "They pass out drunk on the streets of Moscow and never wake up, every winter, dozens of them." I moved a little further under the comforter. I get cold easily, and the apartment was one of several drafty flats in an old subdivided townhouse. An unintentional yet successful come-on: he put out his cigarette and we started necking.

We would have accomplished more, but as I say he was an alcoholic. I went home a little frustrated, and then disappointed that we didn't get together another time to try again.

Nowadays he's in New York City, and he's still co-authoring the same beat-the-test book. He's gotten married, which is great. I found a few photos of him online, looking older than it seems to me he should be looking. Or maybe he was already over 40 when I met him.

This is what happens when the Democrats fail to GOTV

What happens when the Democrats fail to get out the vote for Pennsylvania judicial elections? Republicans swoop into the appellate-level courts:

Joan Orie Melvin secures a Republican majority on the Supreme Court; Jack Panella would have brought an eastern, urban Pennsylvania perspective as well as tipped the court in the Democrats' favor

Superior Court: 3 of 4 open seats to Republicans

both open seats on Commonwealth Court gone to the Republican candidates

Turnout was low statewide, but particularly in Philadelphia.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Don't forget to vote before you head out for socializing! Polls are open 7:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. Since I'm working for the county board of elections at a polling place today, I imagine I'll be showing up pretty late. I know it'll be hard, but please try to enjoy yourselves without me until about 8:45.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

3d Circuit tosses combined buffer zone law

A federal appeals court has struck down an ordinance that created two types of buffer zones around medical facilities after a Christian legal group challenged the law on behalf of a nurse who protests abortions.

[ ... ] The Pittsburgh law bans protesters from standing within 15 feet of entrances but also makes them stand 8 feet from clients in a 100-foot buffer around entrances.

The court found that either zone by itself could be legal.

In other words, the court ruled that, under current Supreme Court precedent, Pittsburgh can have an ordinance that keeps protesters 15 feet away from clinic entrances (a "buffer zone"), or it can have an ordinance that keeps protesters, who are within 100 feet of a clinic, 8 feet away from clients as they approach the facility (a "bubble zone") -- but it can't have both (83-page PDF).

The news article does not indicate whether the city will seek a re-hearing en banc. I hope against hope that the city does not press its luck on this one. Please-please-please. I really don't want it to reach the Supreme Court any time soon.

Tonight at the Tractor Tavern, Seattle: Hoots and Hellmouth

"Home for Supper":



Sound ranges from hard-rocking blues to bluesy ballads to Kansas-City-blues informed jamming. They're a delight to see in person, school night or not, and the show should be cheep.