Archive of Crablaw Maryland Weekly, Blogger Format Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

This is the final post of Crablaw Maryland Weekly, Blogger format.

You may explore the archives of the prior format, now discontinued, through the links in the sidebar. In addition, you may enjoy the NEW Drupal-based Maryland Weekly at http://www.crablaw.com/weekly.

Many thanks!

1,389 - A very enjoyable run Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Crablaw Maryland Weekly has published 1,389 posts net of "kills" and "duplicates," including this final post. Other Crab Media projects have contributed another hundred or so, perhaps.

For the foreseeable future, this post will be the last post of Crablaw Maryland Weekly. For a number of reasons, I am shuttering the windows and putting out the "closed for business" sign here and on most of Crab Media's projects. The shuttering will including the demolition of most of Crab Media's content and form out of www.crablaw.com and most of its subdomains, save one.

Careful readers may have noted a drop in both quality and quantity of production of late here. I myself have noticed the quality drop more than that of the quantity. My old sense of humor is hitting a little flat, and I struggle to make myself read the Baltimore Sun daily to scrounge for news on which to comment. One very regular reader of CMW once commented that there was (for him) an inverse relationship between happiness and blogging. While I would not personally go that far, I don't have the spirit I once did for the hobby as a hobby. That's a sign of which a reasonably cautious person should take heed. But it's more about business issues than personal burnout; a vacation could (and partially did recently, for me) cure the latter.

I have been more focused on career and financial matters for my family in recent months. As some readers may know, both of our boys have a diagnosis of autism. Sam, 4, has made remarkable progress in language development of late; he now nags and connives for additional "Baby Einstein" playings and chocolate chip cookies far closer to chronological age level than before, and he is a model pupil at his special ed school to which he has this week happily returned. Noah, 2, has a "profoundly autistic" diagnosis which means little, since his high-functioning brother had the same diagnosis at the same age. In practical terms, this means that I am the sole paycheck since daycare for two autistic kids is not really practical or economical.

Due to my age and unusual career path, it is not a simple matter to transition back into the traditional feudal career model which big firm attorneys typically follow. I have been a solo practitioner in the past which fact makes me look like a flight risk at my age. BCG Attorney Search, a well-known search firm, drove this home to me in a form email they sent to me explaining that solos like me could not get jobs with their clients. Never mind the fact that those jokers at BCG cannot read or choose not to read English; while I have the escrow accounts and tax ID numbers needed for a solo practice, I have made less than 1% of my gross income as a solo since Bill Clinton was impeached in late 1998-early 99, right before we got married. The word "solo", like the words "disbarred" or "molester", appears to evoke an allergic reaction in much of the market, even the term is a decade old at the bottom of the resume. (To clarify for any readers as snarky as myself, only the first of those words applies to any part of my history....)

But from their perspective, who would rather work hard and long for someone else rather than for himself, especially if one is half a generation older than some of the junior associates ranked higher in the firm's structure? They would fear that I would walk off with a small piece of their clientele or at least that I would walk off before they recouped their investment in training me for their type of work. Government work remains a possibility as does, on the extreme opposite end, reopening my own practice, using the professional and personal advantages that the nine years after mothballing full-time solo practice have given me. Those skills and traits include successful first-chair jury trial experience, pre-trial motions and discovery practice, tax audit representation, business entity transactional work, fighting the State of Maryland in administrative hearing: the basic "eggs and coffee" work of a working full-service attorney with individual and small business clients. Along with those professional skills and experiences come cynicism about the legal profession, occasional bitterness, the recollection of past mistakes of youth and inexperience and some greater improvements in physical endurance and personal discipline than I would have thought likely at another time.

The work I am doing now in DC I actually like, both in itself and for the interesting people I get to meet. From multi-lingual pressure-deadline litigation document review, one can draw a very good income, but not build an asset or a fund fully a retirement plan. Plus I am rarely home during sunlight, due to the commute. This cannot stand; the portal-to-portal time distance needs to shrink drastically both for my family life and for the elimination of the economic non-billable dead-weight losses.

When I do a search for "Bruce Godfrey" on Google, I find Crab Media's content at the top. And that's fine for me personally, especially since other "Bruce Godfreys" are out there elsewhere. But Crab Media pays me only in personal satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment, not in shampoo or mortgage payments or diapers (!!??) or payments to Sallie Mae. I made a decision to blog in my own name and I do not apologize for that choice or regret it at all. But if I am going to make the most of my resources, I need to make some painful decisions about both my time and my web presence for marketing the one product I need to sell the most: myself.

I cannot allow my current Crab Media projects to be the first sites that people see when/if they Google me professionally. Not because I am ashamed of my work but because I am trying to achieve professional goals based on the delivery of a consistent message. Artemia jokes and tagging some politician's behavior as "aggressively stupid" are funny to me but they don't harmonize with making me better known professionally, whether as an employee or as a solo attorney. They don't help the customer/employer make the decision that is in their professional interest. While I don't know how common it is to Google an attorney before sending an employment offer letter or signing a retainer, I would Google someone under those circumstances and most decision-makers don't think or act like bloggers when reading a blogger's snark.

Anyway, enough "Rhapsody in Blue Funk." Here's what's going to happen.

1. Effective quite soon, perhaps within 72 hours, Crablaw Maryland Weekly is going down. All of the content of Crablaw Maryland Weekly on crablaw.com will be stripped and trashed, with the exceptions of a few very high profile posts (e.g. Take Back the Blog will stay up, as will some or all posts requested for preservation by readers). The original content will remain in Blogger's database unharmed as an archive, but crablaw.com will not host any of it; links to most such pages will mostly or completely become dead links. None of this will "scrub" my presence from the Internet's caches, Wayback Machine, etc., and "scrubbing" is not the goal. Striking Crab Media's current content will allow me to move beyond Crab Media's current projects in search engines towards professional goals and exposure to be described below; it's an issue of positioning, not sterilization.

2. The foregoing will be mostly repeated for Crabernet and the Disbarment blogs, though they don't amount to much. I will keep Crab's List up for a longer period because people are pretty actively using that site to find jobs through my RSS feed there, and I don't want to hinder somebody's access to getting a job.

3. Crabopedia is in limbo. I have some ideas on how to preserve Crabopedia off site but don't want to engage those ideas here without talking to some good folks about these ideas first. I do not have the time to purge Crabopedia routinely of the content generously offered by spammers originating from Taiwan and the PRC (or elsewhere.)

4. On the index pages of each stripped subdomain and on CMW's home page, I will put up a "thanks and all the best" page that will stay up for a short while. Thereafter, the subdomains will be destroyed (again, the blog content will remain within Blogger as an archive.) CMW's main page will redirect to www.crablaw.com/index.html.

5. The RSS feeds that feed the sidebars of some pages will not be disturbed initially but will no longer feed into Crablaw.com. If there is interest in the feeds, I will provide a means for those who wish to get those feeds to get them or their functional equivalent.

6. After the stripping of Crab Media is complete and a suitable short period of the "thanks, gang" pages has passed, Crablaw.com's index page will become the locus of my professional activities within the legal profession. It will revert to its old roots: a page and site dedicated to the practice of law in Maryland, with a strong possibility of forming the professional page of my new practice or practice environment. Crablaw.com will probably contain a blog but if so it will reflect far less political snark and more professional content. At some suitable point, I will probably redirect the new content to a new web domain altogether, one with a less ambiguous name for me as a professional, though that's a difficult decision to make and I don't need to make it today.

To my regular commenters - MBA members of course, Mr. X, Alon Levy and others whom I may be overlooking in my whirlwind of distraction, thanks very much, you have made this a lot more worthwhile and, frankly, enjoyable. A special thanks to commenter David Kyle, whom I predict we will see rising quickly in the Maryland blogosphere at his site The Candid Truth. While his politics are about 150-179 degrees opposite mine, I enjoy his blog and his sense of snarky humor. He is a smart, wily, tough-minded sparring partner (as are others noted above.) Besides, any man that chooses to dress both himself and his site in the style of the late Johnny Cash merits respect.

I consider myself a proud alumnus of the Maryland Bloggers' Alliance and will still be a regular reader, though less often a commenter. Those who would like me to keep specific post pages up for discussion or other purposes (e.g. recent links to Carnivals, etc.), please let me know and I will try in good faith to accommodate that request. Otherwise, to all readers and fellow bloggers, all the best.

Uniformed Paramilitaries for Christ in Fort Lauderdale Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Check out the new Christian militarism, replete with military garb.

One thinks of the morals police in Saudi Arabia: the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Or the quote attributed to Sinclair Lewis:

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

I think we need a little more Ethan Allen, Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin and Tom Paine, and a whole lot less of these freaks.

To what extent the Republican Party has gone from being the party of a government-skeptic Goldwater and to being the Christian Nationalist Party, I cannot say, though the overtones of the bloodbath at the recent Anne Arundel County Republican Central Committee as reported by Greg Kline, Brian Griffiths and David Kyle left me chilled. I found of particular interest the comments of Maryland Chesapeake Blog, whose unstated assumption from the MORE MODERATE side of their recent unfortunate intra-party food fight seemed to be that specifically Christian teachings were or should have been the governing principles of how the Republican Party should operate there. Implicit therein: non-Christians, meaning non-evangelical Christians, practically - were not part of the community, or at least were not of consequence. Mind you, I don't know that a Christian Nationalist Party is per se a bad thing. I would rather that those who support an integration of Christian ecclesiology and doctrine into the forceful apparatus of the state make their case openly and without apology, same way that I fight for liberal, secular values and governance.

UPDATE: David Kyle suggests in comments that he did not blog very well but it is I who failed to add the appropriate tone of snark and humor to the prior paragraph that I sought. Long week, been working too hard. Please note the Schadenfreude and humor tags in reference to the parliamentary food fight in Annapolis. While I do believe that the Republican Party is slouching towards theocratic tendencies, Annapolis' recent kerfuffle is not evidence of same. Frankly, was just trying to find the sense of humor that I seem to have difficulties finding of late. Harrumph and good natured ribbing to all.

Lower Manhattanite's Family Reunion - A Must Read Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Lower Manhattanite of Group News Blog, Sept. 5, 2007 (note: context-appropriate extreme language below the fold)

There was a note about the local nightspots. Namely, that there were none. Save for the juke joint down the road a piece across from the “Fish Shack”, and of course, the few spots some 35 minutes away in Wilmington. But one of the note's points of interest got some of the young people going. It stated, that after 8:00 P.M., NO ONE WAS TO GO DOWN ACROSS THE RAILROAD TRACKS, PAST THE GREEN HOUSE (an actual green-colored house), AS THAT WAS THE DEMARCATION LINE BETWEEN FREE-GOING COUNTRY, AND KLAN TERRITORY.

...

And then my Uncle R. The supposedly “crazy” Uncle R. (mentioned in comments in Jesse's “Genius” post) stood up, towering in his crisp overalls and bright red work shirt—and brought his frying pan-sized hand down suddenly on a table, and it boomed like a grenade in the lunchroom, stopping us all dead in our tracks.

He thundered, “Ya'll have no clue do you? No clue at all! I read the papers—I hear about what goes on up north. Cops shootin' you down every God-blessed day, but that's okay! That's fine! And then you all come down here, thinkin' everything is fine and mellow. You haven't a care in the world. And you leave your brains at home and forget the simplest things. Do you have the common sense that God gave a gnat? Do you understand where-you-are?”

This story is not from the 1950s, but from 1993. In 1993, I was finishing up my second year of law school. In 1993, Lower Manhattanite and his cousins at a family reunion in North Carolina were warned not to across the railroad tracks into town, lest the Klan execute them, which the Klan or other assassins attempted to do.



Go read the whole thing. It is always a correct move, in my mind, to take the time to read Lower Manhattanite's work, but this may be one of the five most powerful things I have ever read on the net. This kind of writing makes me proud, very proud, to be a blogger, no matter what slanders this whining, pampered aristocratic imbecile Richard Cohen says, to whom Atrios and Markos Moulitsas were far too gentle. Cohen and his ass-kissing editors cannot hold a candle to the writing quality of Lower Manhattanite.

What's Nuttier Than Cindy Sheehan? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Answer: the American Land Rights Association (HAT TIP David Kurtz at TPM):

By ambushing Senator Larry Craig, the Minneapolis St Paul Airport Police have effectively declared war on the West. They are primarily responsible for greatly weakening private property rights and Federal land use advocates in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and in Congress. We are urging you to make all your flight arrangements avoiding the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport for at least the next year and probably longer. We’ll keep you posted as the boycott develops. Urge your friends, neighbors and fellow workers to try to avoid any flights that take them through Minneapolis St Paul Airport. We must inflict economic pain on the airport authorities to get them to change their behavior. -----And they must apologize to Senator Larry Craig.

This is about as stupid as saying that the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton were really a "declaration of war" by House Republicans on behalf of Kentucky Fried Chicken against McDonald's in an effort to lower the profits of their rival by distracting McDonald's' best customer with bureaucratic garbage, preventing him from enjoying as frequently the former President's second favorite vice. Good reasons exist to view with skepticism and opposition the criminal case against Craig but a regional airport authority and the cop who arrested Craig were interested in airport toilets, not Western land.

Quechup scam - DON'T OPEN THE EMAIL Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

To anyone who gets alleged email from me or referencing me about Quechup, I am truly sorry. I got hit with this virus/malware from a business contact. It scoops addresses out of Outlook, Gmail and other address lists and spams them. This Quechup virus is a known virus and it's hitting all over the place. Whether Quechup is a legit social networking site I do not know but I did NOT authorize any contact with anyone. I do apologize and urge you NOT to open the email at all, but just to trash it.

Thanks and again, very sorry for this aggravation.

Bruce Godfrey

Spamming the Gospel Post-Rapture? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

From raptureletters.com, HAT TIP to Twisty Faster of I Blame the Patriarchy, Sept. 5, 2007:

Rapture.com [sic] explains its free service this way:

After the rapture, there will be a lot of speculation as to why millions of people have just disappeared. Unfortunately, after the rapture, only non believers will be left to come up with answers. You probably have family and friends that you have witnessed to and they just won’t listen. After the rapture they probably will, but who will tell them?

We have written a computer program to do just that. It will send an Electronic Message (e-mail) to whomever you want after the rapture has taken place, and you and I have been taken to heaven.

Here’s an excerpt from the actual letter:

This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been taken up to heaven.

While this service is free, its contract is incapable of being enforced. Those with both standing to sue and a cause of action would have been raptured, outside the subject matter and personal jurisdiction of any court with enforcement or judgment power. And then you'd be likely to have the bad fortune of getting a non-Christian judge, essentially by definition.

I am indeed curious about those who would maintain the servers upon the triggering event - I guess some non-raptured Jewish or atheist or Catholic (i.e. idolatrous) post-apocalyptic tech support. At least the owners of the site did not have the audacity to charge money for this Eternal Spam, though I cannot help but imagine that a database of those seeking to spam their loved-ones during the early years of the Apocalypse would be of IMMENSE value to those who are currently soliciting money from that same group.

My only frustration with this story is technical. Raptureletters.com (which, I suspect, Twisty mislabeled) cannot be accessed from Wandering Wi-Fi at Caribou due to its "inappropriate content." Since Wandering Wi-Fi is free, I cannot complain too much, though it was an inducement for me to come to Caribou this morning. I am prepared to believe that raptureletters.com may be judged inappropriate by some but it's difficult for me to see why when other religious messages including apocalyptic religious messages are fully accessible. But again, I remain free to take my business elsewhere, of course.

The latest from Attila Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Go check out the latest from Pillage Idiot, wherein he explores both nude geezers and designer vaginas in detail.

Richardson Says God Put the Iowa Caucus First in Primary Calendar Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, September 4, 2007:

Richardson is really becoming the buffoon of this campaign.

"Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord, should be the first caucus and primary."

"Reasons related to the Lord"? What, are the Iowa caucuses in scripture? What the hell does that even mean? What, did God personally come down and wax poetic on Iowa with Bill?

And I'd really like to see where in the Constitution Iowa is guaranteed "first in the nation" status.

What a stupid thing to say. What an epic pander -- easily the biggest pander this cycle.

Meanwhile, his chief consultant/advisor, Steve Murphy, is going on Fox News to yuk it up with Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter -- and actually spent time defending Coulter.

I can't believe I ever flirted with voting for the guy. He's now down in Kucinich/Gravel territory on my list.

Update: Ooops, I forgot about Richardson's other epic pander -- claiming that he's both a Yankees and a Red Sox fan. So which is the bigger pander?

Kos speaks for me. I expect theocratic pandering and idiocy in a political campaign - we are largely a nation of vain, childish narcissists that love to enjoy pandering administered to our religious vanities by panderers, i.e. whores. But just as the framers did not put "God" into the U.S. Constitution, "God" did not put the Iowa caucuses into the U.S. Constitution either - in part because God either does not exist or at least does not write documents for the governance of republics, and in part because neither contested primaries nor caucuses nor Iowa existed when the Constitution was drafted.

Pandering idiot. I want to see him swirl the drain. Can someone please find this idiot Richardson trying to have sex in a toilet?

Baltimore Elections 2007: No Endorsement from Crab Media Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

No candidate has impressed me with his or her ability to lead, administer, budget, cheerlead, "fight crime", "get good-paying jobs," "support our families," etc. I want to vomit upon hearing these words from any candidate for City office, especially Mayor. I spew them out of my mouth and indeed out of all orifices.

My only regret is that I cannot vote for Mayor next week, in part because I am not a City resident and in part because I do not belong to the de facto single party of the City. My only wish is that everyone currently in elected City government - female or male, young or old, black or white, gay or straight, Democrat or Democrat - could be, somehow, caught in an embarrassing sexual act or solicitation inside a toilet, so all could depart in disgrace, yielding every office open for other City residents less obviously and immediately connected with machine politics, payoffs, financial misconduct and a sickening sense of inherited or other entitlement. Every last one of them. Consider this an explicit anti-endorsement of all incumbents - including Keiffer Mitchell whom I once met and found pleasant and engaging, and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake whom I recall as a solid and serious law student in the early 1990s - but an endorsement of no one.

There are days when I wish that elected office were a draft by lottery rather an than election, adults randomly chosen from the voter rolls. Corruption would set in fast but the first 8-10 weeks of relative sunshine before the corruption ossified might yield a few good results.

No endorsement. May every office sit empty and may this term serve as a metaphorical extended Sabbath year.

Go Enjoy A Little Anti-GOP Schadenfreude Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

In the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons that graced the Saturday mornings of my childhood, sometimes the Coyote would find himself in a painful situation having grabbed an anvil while not standing on firm ground. The anvil would send him crashing down to the desert below, often after he dared to look down and realized he had walked off of a cliff.

In similar vein, we may enjoy the scene of theocrats chewing one another to pieces. We should feel free to lend, purchase and indeed toss them as many anvils as possible, for maximum broken bones and blood on the dust of the desert below. But sometimes, the theocratic political hacks and politicians turn to feed on each other in seeming unforced errors. In such joyous cases, we should not interrupt but just enjoy the tint and smell of copious blood on the ice:

FIRST MESSAGE: "Hello, this is Doug Lamborn calling for either Jonathan or Anna. Something very serious has happened. There was a letter to the editor that you both put in your names to the editor of the Woodmen Edition and there is something that is blatantly false in that letter.

"I would like to get together with you and show this to you and appeal to you as a brother and sister in Christ. You didn't give me that opportunity but I am happy to overlook that and deal with you on that level because I think that is the right thing to do and show you where you made a blatant, wrong statement.

"Now there are consequences to this kind of thing, but I would like to work with you in a way that is best for everyone here concerned. So please call me at your earliest convenience. It is now 2:40 (p.m.) on Saturday afternoon.

SECOND MESSAGE: "Hello, this is Doug Lamborn again, I'm finishing up my message from a moment ago. I got cut off. It is critical that you get back to me as soon as possible on this because I'll be going back to Washington here in a few days and I have to make sure that this is resolved one way or another. And like I said I'd rather resolve this on a Scriptural level but if you are unwilling to do that I will be forced to take other steps, which I would rather not have to do. So please call me. This is essential. Call me by tonight, Saturday night and we can get together sometime Sunday afternoon."

It is a strange moment when I feel sympathy for anyone associated with James Dobson, but it was his operatives in Colorado Springs who criticized Rep. Lamborn (R-Dobsonville CO, aka Colorado Springs) for his opposition to federal anti-dogfighting proposals.

Now reasonable minds may differ as to whether dog-fighting is a legitimate target of state prohibition (lobsters are boiled alive and ducks fattened forcibly for foie gras lawfully in most states) and whether the federal government is the appropriate level of government for any such laws. I find dogfighting disgusting, but cannot formulate at hand an argument as to why a dogfighter's pleasure does not merit respect while a gourmand's taste for lobster and foie gras do merit such respect. Perhaps it's the income level of the respective parties, or the fact that dogfighting is a spectacle whereas lobsters and ducks are tortured out of direct public sight, or that the torture is a (perhaps undesired, perhaps reluctant) means for the gourmand as opposed to an end in itself for the dogfight enthusiasts.

But for a Congressman to call and threaten his constituents on a voice mail is pretty brazen. I take it as a sign that the GOP is cracking under pressure, and losing its bearings. To quote one Republican operative:

"It's always darkest right before you get clobbered over the head with a pipe wrench. But then it actually does get darker," said a GOP pollster who insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly.

The Schadenfreude tag has not seen nearly enough work lately. Shame on me.

Why I Still Read Atrios Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Atrios gets on my nerves with his occasional unprovoked attacks on libertarian ideas, as does Pandagon. But his critiques of our supine, ass-kissing traditional media are perfect. So upon him and Pandagon peace and cheap beer.

The Right Way to Humiliate the Ku Klux Klan Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Asheville IndyMedia, May 28, 2007 (HAT TIP Digby, Sept 3, 2007):

"White Power!" the Nazi’s shouted, "White Flour?" the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt "White Flour".

"White Power!" the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, "White flowers?" the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.

...

At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed "White Power!"

The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. "Ohhhhh…" the women clowns said. "Now we understand…", "WIFE POWER!" they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting "WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!"

Good Crabbing Award to this assembly of flour-tossing "Wife Power" militants. Nobody got killed, nobody got hospitalized and probably a couple of the younger Klan-lings got the point that what they were thinking and doing was completely ^@*$@#) asinine. The best way to get to these idiots is not to throw a brick at them but to give them Marxist ridicule, in Jean-Luc Godard's sense of Marxism.

What if Senator Craig had tried the truth? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

HAT TIP Pandagon.

Steve Benen at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo explores the question: what if Craig had stepped forward and admitted he was gay, instead going with the Roy Cohn "I am not a homosexual" routine.

The libertarian in me thinks intuitively that it might work, but that's because the libertarian in me doesn't get intuitively the unbelievably deep well-spring of anti-gay hostility that is present in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to which approximately 40% or more a very substantial fraction of Idaho residents belongs (General HAT TIP to LDS-matters consultant, fellow Princeton dissident/graduate '91 and friend of Crab Media Craig Harman, please see comments below.) The libertarian in me thinks that gay people should be as free to enjoy the amazing non-stop joys without responsibilities of parenthood and marriage as we straight breeders do in our hedonistic self-indulgences of ER trips with bleeding children, sorting out money matters (!!?) and the occasionally emitted "@&#^@ you I want a divorce!!" which completely loses its satisfying "oomph" if you are not, in fact, able to get a divorce due to lack of court jurisdiction over a marriage that does not exist in law.

But that's because the libertarian in me is not intuitively acclimated to who votes for what in places like Utah and Idaho. My instincts are perhaps good for moderate-leaning-liberal Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut and maybe one county in Iowa but no good for Idaho, I am afraid.

There is a libertarian, Goldwater-esque streak in Rocky Mountain conservatism, no doubt, but that probably characterizes Colorado, Wyoming and Montana more than Idaho. Craig would be dead meat in the next primary election, especially since Craig built his own base not on flinty, small-government values but a perma-pander to the religious hard-right and to the Iraq War, neither of which would be practical winners for him.

It would be difficult for him to sponsor legislation as other Senators, Republican and Democratic, would not want to associate their names with him. Every photo of Senator Craig with another Senator becomes a political liability to her or him, including this "Singing Senators" photo with respect to Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) and former Attorney General, now Ashcroft Group founder, John Ashcroft. Nobody wants to take the call of a Senator caught trying to get sex in the toilet.

Tale of a Jilted Tearoom Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

"The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy - a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” - Senator Larry Craig (Republican-Idaho), 1998

The Republic has withstood the drama, denials and ultimate disgrace of anti-gay, right-wing Republican Larry Craig, who now stands convicted by his own statement under oath that he engaged in the conduct described by a Minnesota police officer who arrested Craig at the Lindbergh (ugh) Terminal I. As usual, The Smoking Gun has links to most of the salient documents. (HAT TIP Zuzu.)

Of greater interest to me is the police interrogation of Craig. Now Craig is over 60 years of age and has been in the Senate for over 15 years, on Capitol Hill since he was 25. So he should have a passing familiarity with the U.S. Constitution, one would hope, which provides an absolute right to remain silent, to say "jack" to the police. The Minnesota constitution does likewise, though one should forgive the "just-passing-through", non-attorney Senator Craig for not knowing that. But the U.S. Constitution which he had taken multiple oaths over multiple decades - he should have known that.

But in case the good Senator forgot, the office read the Senator his 5th Amendment rights, per Dragnet, as can be heard and read here at TPM Muckraker.

At least one witness claims to have had sexual relations in the Washington Union Station mens room with Craig some years back. And it's this bathroom, this neglected tea-room for politicos, lobbyists, para-government anonymous travelers and the presumed wayward tourist to which I turn my attentions.

Union Station is one of the top three or four railroad stations in the U.S. for total passenger volume. (This is not saying much, of course, because the U.S. treats rail shabbily, more shabbily than any European could possibly imagine.) I use this Union Station bathroom infrequently for purposes entirely consistent with the intentions of the architects, civil engineers and D.C. building permit authorities who authorized its construction. It is a disgusting place, 100% of the time, even if one does not dare "gaze" into the cracks between the stalls. I think it is the unlawful permanent residence of several people, and baggage does occasionally crowd the front of a stall, though whether that's a legitimate tactic against baggage theft by a resident or a passer-through, rather than an obscurement of a different violation of the D.C. Code, I cannot say and would rather not contemplate too deeply.

But I cannot help feeling that the Union Station "tea room" that this bathroom is said to be, now feels jilted. Larry Craig appears to have plied his tea room trade in, of all places, Minneapolis. Yet Union Station is only 6 blocks from his DC office. So close, and yet so far. The one widely-reported incident in Minneapolis cannot but leave the poor, under-appreciated restroom at Union Station feeling a little miffed. Railroads have lost out in federal funding, support and construction to airlines even though railroads are often more time and energy efficient for medium-distance travel and involve fewer (though NOT zero) security concerns. So of course Union Station will feel slighted.

Washington is a bigger and wealthier city than Minneapolis. So I suspect there is a bit of the resentment of the fallen nobleman jealous of the poorer but, in reality, freer merchant class, giving rise to bitchy snobbishness. Union Station has a statue of civil rights and labor organizer A. Philip Randolph, who was not gay but who associated closely with gay allies. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport's main terminal is named after a vicious anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer who, in total random coincidence, shot on the same riflery team as the Crab's grandfather at the University of Wisconsin. So it probably burns Union Station's, er, chaps, to lose out in attention to such an unworthy venue. Especially since Washington may now be the largest gay city proportional to population in the country, approaching San Francisco and perhaps surpassing it.

The entire incident has made me more, not less, supportive of gay marriage. I wish that Craig were gay married right now, and had been so three months ago, for several reasons. One is that if Craig were same-sex married, he probably would not be an advocate against same-sex marriage in the halls of Congress. Another would be that he would be less likely to have done what he did, though in fairness plenty of men (and, my divorce attorney colleagues keep reminding me, women, usually with greater discretion) openly married in opposite sex marriages do reckless and brazen things as well.

But no matter what I think, Union Station's feelings will remain tender for some time, no doubt. Show Union Station some love, though I would recommend visiting Sbarro's or the newsrack instead of the john if you have a choice.

Baltimore Sun: Maryland First in Household Income Among U.S. States Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, August 29, 2007:

It's the kind of statistic that makes politicians and economic development gurus cheer: Maryland ranked as the richest state in the nation last year, according to estimates released yesterday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

...

Look no further than Howard County, with a median household income of $94,260 - the nation's third-wealthiest behind the Virginia counties of Fairfax and Loudoun. In Maryland, Howard came in first [emphasis Crablaw].

...

Statewide, Maryland became wealthier in the first half of the decade, with the median household income rising to $65,144 in 2006, from $63,973 in 2000, when adjusted for inflation. Demographers note that while Maryland took the top slot last year, its median income was not statistically different from New Jersey's at $64,470. Maryland's income was nearly three times that of the nation's poorest state - Mississippi.

A few points.

First, if Howard is third in the nation, and two Virginia counties are ahead of Howard, it stands to reason that Howard must be first in Maryland. Thus, the sentence highlighted in green above is surplusage that a careful editor should have caught.

Second, the term "household income" skews to the vanity of two-income households. When two single people earning $60,000 a year marry or move in together, their household income doubles. Whether chils support or alimony payments were taken into consideration in the definition of "household income" is unclear. Howard County has a lot of medium and large-acre zoning, along with a lot of tall, skinny townhouses in Columbia. Some apartment condos and rentals, but not many.

Third, Maryland and New Jersey are within the margin of error of each other for household income.

Fourth, per capita or household incomes do not translate into standards of living directly. I would rather be a bus driver in Baltimore making $40,000 than an Alaskan fishing boat captain making $150,000+, and would rather be impoverished in Berlin or Rome than either of them. There are many externalities that per capita and household income statistics don't measure. One of the best things about Howard County is that is a relatively crime free, though hardly absolutely so. It is better to be a poor person in Howard County than in Baltimore City in many ways not only because local government is better funded and far more efficient, but because some aspects of the poverty tax (i.e. additional costs borne often by poor people) such a crime are reduced. On the other hand, local transit in Howard County is not as good as in Baltimore, though still pretty good for a suburban county with many spread-out destinations. (Transit-phobes like Julia Gouge in Carroll County, please take note.)

Income is not synonymous with wealth; the article describes Maryland as the "wealthiest" state in a few places but wealth is net assets, not a stream bearing unidentified expenses.

Fourth and most importantly, there is no Maryland. I mean, there's the Maryland Annotated Code and Form 502, and there are goofy traditions like Maryland's state song calling Lincoln a despot and trivial garbage like ring jousting as the state sport (a sport which probably less than 1% of the state has ever seen live, and only 1% of those has ever played.) But I have more in common with a suburban attorney living outside of Seattle, Toronto or Amsterdam than I do with most of the Eastern Shore, and I have been a legal resident of the state my entire life. You can find bumper stickers for Ireland nationalism showing a green 26 + an orange 6 = the map of Ireland, representing the Irish Republic and Ulster's six counties, respectively. An analogous sticker for a united Maryland would be a farce.

Maryland is at least six states, psychologically and economically. Montgomery County has the financial resources to secede and may technically have done so without notice by the newspapers. The Eastern Shore is our own little piece of Mississippi, though happily with somewhat higher income as noted in the Sun article. Carroll County is scared to death of the Baltimore Negro Menace that commuter buses to Baltimore threaten to inflict on white womanhood. Prince George's County is mostly black, mostly wealthy by U.S. standards and full of very strong local pride. Baltimore County is too busy being ... not Baltimore City. Baltimore City is bleeding to death: income, wealth and literal blood. So hearing that the wealthy part of Maryland grew, or just enough Baltimoreans slipped through the statistical cracks, retired to South Carolina or died of natural causes or gunfire doesn't tell you very much.

Thank a Gay Mom and Dad Day Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

When you find a gay parent, you are finding someone who, in general, went out of her or his way to become a parent. Put simply, if "Adam and Steve" or "Marcia and Janet" are raising a child, it means that they a) probably went through some unusual headaches to get to the point of raising a child, and b) probably are going through some unusual headaches to continue to raise the child, "unusual" meaning not experienced or minimally experienced by most het couples. Ditto for single gay parents, times two.

A large number of children of het couples are formed by "oopsie." They did not plan the kid, but three tracks of Marvin Gaye or two glasses of Chianti later, the kid is on her or his way. Modern birth control (controversial morally among many of the critics of same-sex parenting) reduces the chance of "oopsie" but hardly to zero. Gay/lesbian couples or single parents, on the other hand, are usually undergoing a lot of resistance to doing what some Christians call "agape" - love for the sake of love of the children that they raise. They aren't doing it parenthood by default or because they are afraid of Social Services; they could have avoided parenthood and social services by default. They aren't doing it because of child support issues; they are doing because they really want to do it well, to show lots of love to a child and to do the amazingly difficult work of child-rearing. Why else bother; parenthood is a wonderful experience but, let's get real, a royal pain in the neck also, as many worthwhile experiences of life are for a certain percentage of the time.

Often, though not always, gay parents come in when het parents have dropped the ball. This is particularly true of gay adoptions, about which this blog has posted previously. So instead of these ridiculous right-wing moralists complaining about the horrors of a child experiencing stigma because of having gay parents - stigma which these moralists take pains to perpetuate - they should be offering gay couples assistance in doing the child-rearing better.

I don't know of churches or other religious institutions that provide male role models for children of deceased servicemen; their freak-out about Heather having two Mommies would seem a little less thin if they were going out of their way to provide male role models for single het moms whose husbands died. Ditto re: single dads through divorce, abandonment of the children by the mother, becoming widowers or otherwise.

Regardless of why the moms are single, if having male role models around is so paramount for kids, you'd think that the preachers would be demanding that the men of their congregation volunteer to offer themselves that way rather than just asking for donations so that the minister can get a new Bentley or, more likely, a fresh coat of paint for the sanctuary. Paint is nice but providing support to children of unusual family circumstances either matters more or matters not one bit. You'd think they would sell the altar and the pews to help the children. But no. Ditto with single dads and coupled dads.

Let's put it another way. Let's say that all of us do things that traditional religion favors and things that traditional religion discourages or criticizes or even condemns. Presumably, feeding a child, teaching a child to read and learn a useful trade or profession, or funding that education, clothing the child, carting that child to the E.R. when she has the roto-virus or a fishing hook stuck in her mouth, teaching the child to tell the truth, to refrain from fraud, trespassing on the rights of others or violence and teaching that child to obey the law of the land likely fall into the "favors" category above. Sexual acts can sometimes fall into the "discourages" or "condemns" column - or indeed the "favors" column - depending on specific act, specific tradition and surrounding circumstances.

Yet child-rearing is a economic competitor with sex for time and energy; every parent knows this to be true. The percentage of couples who have as much time for personal intimacy after becoming child rearers as before is stone zero. A person who had a different viewpoint from mine about human sexuality might argue for child-rearing as a method of abatement of the evils of sinful sex, perhaps under the theory that the devil likes idle hands but hates a tired-ass parent asleep and temporarily celibate after a miserably long day of brat management.

Regardless of one's religious or non-religious viewpoint about gay sex, we should thank gay parents who are doing good parenting. James Brown may have urged us to "get on up - like a Sex Machine" but none of us, gay or straight, are sex machines. We are people, usually people trying to get difficult things done under painful constraints. We should thank all parents of course who are doing good parenting, but especially gay parents who went out of their way and defeated obstacles to take on this massive responsibility with specific intent, often after straight parents failed.

HAT TIP to Terrance for getting me thinking today.