Dramatic video below the fold of protesters carrying riot shields, being fired upon by government troops.

Hot Air digests the end of the very brief truce. It is now estimated that somewhere between 25 and 50 people have been killed; most of these (if not all) would be protesters.

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Posted by: Ace at 07:21 AM | Comments (429)
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Sorry, got caught up doing other things. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:40 AM | Comments (207)
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Being married and having a child at age 23 is now an "alternative lifestyle".

Well done, NBC. Well done.

Posted by: andy at 02:59 AM | Comments (345)
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Result: a draw.

This article reviewing this series on honey badgers describes the animal as "a souped-up weasel."

Hilarious: The music. The music.

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Posted by: Ace at 06:34 AM | Comments (193)
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Quote of the Day

Those who turn away from fighting evil need to be aware, that the notion of evil as dark is actually the opposite of the truth. Evil is so bright, that people can't stare at it with their eyes. It's blinding; so people look at other things. Instead of fighting evil, they fight carbon emissions.

-- Dennis Prager

The International Passions of Barrack Obama

In the years since his election, Obama has reacted strongly to only three international issues:  climate change, gay rights, and Libya.  The first two are pet issues of the Left.  As for Obama's enthusiasm about invading Libya . . . well, that continues to mystify me.  Obama's silence has been most pointed and damaging when it comes to naturally occurring democratic movements within a despotic state.

The weekly 10% EPA-mandated Cuteness

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:46 PM | Comments (691)
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First the oil companies and now the cows. Soon we'll have everything they love.

The severe drought in California is forcing ranchers to thin their herds and sell off to buyers in Texas and Oklahoma. Both states are still dealing with drought conditions too but not nearly as severe as what's happening out west. Rainfalls in the Lone Star State and that ballcap Oklahoma have been better the past couple years which means grass is growing and can support hungry cows.

Because of historically dry conditions, California’s soil moisture — a key ingredient for the forage that cattle graze on — is low throughout the state. With feed costs high and weeks of dry weather in the forecast, ranchers are already selling off parts of their herds as normally green grazing pastures have turned brown.

“We’re in the drought now, so a lot of these are going back to Texas,” said rancher and auction house co-owner Monty Avery, gesturing to a pen packed full of cows. “We usually sell about 100-150 animals per week. Now we’re seeing 800-1,000 per week, so the volume’s jumped up.”

The bad news for everybody is the cost of raising cattle, even migrant cattle shipped where there's water is driving up beef prices. Oh, In N Out Burger has opened up a bunch of joints here too. Tried one last week. Not bad.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:58 PM | Comments (393)
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You guys just totally ignored this when it was in the French open thread (fil ouvert) yesterday, but you're not getting away with it that easily.

Deal with it.

View co-host Jenny McCarthy asked Walters if she has "more self-confidence and more self-love" given her age.

"Self-love?" Walters asked.

"Barbara, are you talking about that vibrator of yours again?" Whoopi Goldberg chimed in. "I can't handle it."

“How did you know? You know what it's called?" Walters replied. "A selfie."

Yeah I don't get this. Not the vibrator part, but the fact that about six years ago, everyone in the Media Class (and those who take cues from that class) decided that it was about time we all started talking about vibrators a whole heck of a lot.

I guess people think it's a little bit of naughty honesty, and not much different than a guy saying something along the same lines.

I dunno, though. I kind of want to throw a yellow flag on this particular play by Tastemaking Society Types.

I don't think anyone should be ashamed to use a vibrator. But there is a whole category of things which we are not ashamed of, per se, and yet we don't talk about publicly with strangers. With friends, sure. But with strangers? No.

I pooped earlier today. I would not mention this except that it falls into this category of "Not shameful, but also not really fodder for casual conservation." I'm not ashamed of my poop, and if pressed, sure, I could even be persuaded that my poop was Empowering or whatever.

But -- absent using it as a "for instance" in this category of Things Which Are Not Shameful But It's A Bit Self-Indulgently Narcissistic to Overshare This TMI with People -- I also don't think people really want to hear about my poop, and, this post and its dark turn towards the fecal aside, I generally respect people's wishes about remaining ignorant about my netherous voidings.

There is a certain social protocol which announces something like this: You will not discuss anything in public, with strangers, if 20% of the population is uncomfortable with it. This is part of why I say that racial jokes are a breach on the site -- more than 20% of the population is uncomfortable with them, so such jokes, even if a racist intent is proven by a panel of Bishops to be absent, still make a big chunk of the room uncomfortable.

(I say "20%" arbitrarily -- you cannot literally live by the rule that no one can ever be offended by what you say, because there's always someone willing to be offended by anything. So "20%" is my way of saying a "significant minority.")

Commenters have likewise been warmed about using overly graphic sexual language. It didn't really bother me personally, not in that I was scandalized, but I was bothered that the person wasn't observing the normal rules of decorum.

Now I don't know what the percentage is on discomfort with vibrator talk, but I imagine it's more than 20%.

And so while I'm not really offended, per se, I'm sort of annoyed to see a social breach going on, as if the 20% (or more) who might be uncomfortable about this matter just doesn't count.

Well I think they should count. My objection here isn't about sexuality per se, or about naughtiness; it's more about social boorishness.

Maybe I'm too inhibited, but I think this sort of basic politeness, avoiding making people uncomfortable, is part of good behavior, or at least ought to be.

One Defense for Babs: She didn't offer the information; Jenny McCarthy and Whoopi Goldberg kept asking her about it, probably to embarrass her (in a friendly way).

But that defense of Babs would just shift the breach to the other two.

And, Open Thread.
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Posted by: Ace at 03:32 PM | Comments (498)
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Yesterday, thugs did what thugs do. The protesters did something unwise in retaliation-- they set a fire.

With hundreds of riot police officers advancing from all sides after a day of deadly mayhem here in the Ukrainian capital, antigovernment protesters mounted a final desperate and seemingly doomed act of defiance late on Tuesday evening, establishing a protective ring of fire around what remained of their all-but-conquered encampment on Independence Square.

Feeding the blazing defenses with blankets, tires, wood, sheets of plastic foam and anything else that might burn, the protesters hoped to prolong, for a while longer at least, a tumultuous protest movement against President Viktor F. Yanukovych, a leader who was democratically elected in 2010 but is widely reviled here as corrupt and authoritarian.

“It is called the tactic of scorched earth,” said a protester who identified himself as Andriy.

The police reported earlier in the day that at least nine people, including two police officers, had been killed, but then raised this to 14, making it by far the worst day of violence in more than two months of protests and, for most Ukrainians, the bloodiest in living memory. The final death toll appears certain to be higher.

Doctors and nurses treating protesters in a temporary medical center in the Trade Unions building on Independence Square reported gunshot wounds and evidence that the police had doctored percussion grenades in order to inflict more serious injury. By early Wednesday, the union building had caught fire and the blaze raged out of control, with flames spreading to adjacent buildings.

Yesterday's death toll is now put at 26.

An opposition leader said the situation was precarious, but despite the burning fires and police lines, a strange calm pervaded central Kiev -- even as security officials rebranded the protesters as terrorists and announced a nationwide security operation to restore order.

Meanwhile, European and U.S. leaders threatened quick sanctions against the Ukrainian government over what French President Francois Hollande called "unspeakable, unacceptable, intolerable acts."

While insisting that "peaceful protesters (should) remain peaceful," U.S. President Barack Obama made a point in saying that the Ukrainian government carried an especially big burden for what's happened so far and what's to come.

The EU is "weighing" sanctions, which seem useless, given the whole point of Russia's influence/control over Ukraine is to bring them further into the Russian fold anyway.

Following failed talks overnight, Kiev's Independence Square was quieter Wednesday even as the opposition moved to retake the square after thousands of police armed with stun grenades and water cannons rushed at protesters in a camp Tuesday.

That standoff led to stories of individual brutality including that of Vyacheslav Veremiy, a journalist with daily Ukrainian newspaper Vesti. He was returning home from the newsroom around 2 a.m. Wednesday when his taxi nearing a police station was attacked by a group of armed thugs.

The driver and a fellow passenger were beaten. Veremiy was pulled out of the car and shot in the chest. He died shortly after.

Veremiy is one of the victims of roving bands of paid government "helpers" directed to cause disorder, who are currently roaming the streets with bats and guns, according to witnesses of the violence.

As I said, thugs do what thugs do. The Ukranian government is now calling protesters "extremists" and "terrorists," just as Morsi did in Egypt, and just as Erdogan did in Turkey.

The security authorities in Ukraine offered the first indication on Wednesday that the deadly political violence afflicting Kiev had spread far beyond the capital, announcing a crackdown on what the Interior Ministry called “extremist groups” that had burned down buildings and seized weapons nationwide.

The Interior Ministry announcement of an “antiterrorist operation” across the country came a day after Kiev was gripped with the deadliest mayhem since protests erupted in November, leaving at least 25 dead, including nine police officers. The Health Ministry said that 241 people had been wounded but Ukrainian news accounts put the number at more than 1,000.

Below, one face of the opposition.
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Posted by: Ace at 12:25 PM | Comments (338)
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Paul Alan Levy is one of the nation's top First Amendment lawyers and the nation's top expert, period, in a particular specialized field-- in the defense of John Does, anonymous writers, from subpoenas seeking to "out" them as part of a lawsuit. And defending online speech as a general matter -- see this case, for example, which is pretty egregious.

He is the country's most authoritative jurist on this subject, and his track record consists almost entirely of wins.

He has kindly agreed to represent me in fighting Brett Kimberlin's motion to compel a third party to give him my name and address, so he can then sue me in a suit which, in my opinion, is entirely baseless, and once again an attempt to chill Free Speech rights.

Which is what this has been about since the beginning.

What makes me particularly happy that Mr. Levy is representing me is that he is, by his confession, a "lefty." It has bothered me from the outset of this entire affair that people who I thought might take an interest -- people in the left-leaning media who ought to care about attempts to chill and punish Free Expression, left-leaning bloggers whose very jobs put them in danger of having the same tactics used against them -- failed to do so.

Instead, what seems to have happened is everyone just "picked teams," based on the typical tribal impulses. If anyone on the left wrote about this -- not because they agreed, politically, with any of Brett Kimberlin's targets, but because they supported the principle that people ought to be free to comment on news and newsworthy stories without the threat of a lawsuit hanging over them. (One person did cover it, briefly, in an "Interesting Thing Going on on the Internet" sort of way, but without actually examining the issues raised.)

And as far as the media, I'm afraid, the idea seemed to be "a pox on both their houses." One guy is using the courts to pound critics and stifle free speech; but on the other hand, these guys are conservatives, so, of course, they are Unpeople, and They Were Probably Doing Something Bad Anyway.

I am very grateful that people like Mr. Levy exist, who do not simply pick tribes, but who undertake to support and defend important principles, whether any particular support of this principle might help someone on the right, or someone on the left, or someone not particularly political at all, like someone who anonymously criticizes a company's performance on a message board, and whose identity is then sought by a company willing to use a little bit of lawfare to shut down criticism.

I am heartened by this. I am not just heartened to have impeccable representation in this matter (and by this matter, I mean only the subpoena to out me), but I am heartened to know that even in this state of utter polarization, in which people routinely declare an allegiance to The Tribe Ãœber Alles, there are still people who will fight for principle, not tribe, and for what's right, not what's politically agreeable to one's "side."

I should also note that the Maryland ACLU has agreed to serve as Mr. Levy's co-counsel in the matter. (Levy will be applying to the court to appear pro hac vice, just for this matter, and he needs Maryland co-counsel to do so, I think.)

I did not expect the Maryland ACLU, either, to come to my aid, but come to my aid they have.

Mr. Levy has written a blog post about the matter here.

If you like reading motions, you can read his response in opposition to Kimberlin's motion here. It was just submitted yesterday.

Mr. Levy is taking this case pro bono -- donating his time and expertise. However, Public Citizen does, of course, take donations, and if the mood strikes you to support someone, on principle, who is himself taking on a fight not his own, on principle, you can donate to Public Citizen's efforts to protect online speech, to protect the First Amendment, here.

I should note that Public Citizen is one of Ralph Nader's organizations. The donation button I've linked is specifically the donor button for the organization's First Amendment practice, not its other efforts.

If you were thinking of hitting the the donation button for me recently, hit it instead for Mr. Levy. He's already spent a lot of time on this case, and will undoubtedly spend a lot more.

One last point: I know that this is obviously a newsworthy subject, and that people naturally like commenting on newsworthy subjects, particularly when the subject is one you personally know (sort of -- in a fake internet friend sort of way).

I would however just caution you all, as usual, to exercise judgment and discretion in commenting. The problem isn't the law, per se: The problem is, as ever, an extremely litigious person.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (260)
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I had an exchange with Emperor of Icecream. Because this idea is central, in my opinion, to the mechanism by which we lose elections we could and should win, I'm popping it out as a main post.

Below, the exchange. Emperor's comments signaled by my ">>>" idiosyncratic quotations. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (430)
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