This is a "whiskey" license plate

These white license tags — known officially as special registration plates — always feature the letter "W" followed by a second letter and a series of numbers. Issued primarily to drivers convicted of driving drunk, they have taken on the nickname "whiskey plates" as whiskey represents the letter "W" in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Minnesota is one of two states that under certain conditions require DWI offenders to surrender their traditional plates and replace them with whiskey plates — the other is Ohio...

Under Minnesota law, courts are required to order drivers to display whiskey plates if their first DWI offense resulted from having a blood alcohol content (BAC) of at least 0.16% — twice the legal limit for driving. The special tags are also mandatory for drivers convicted of several DWIs within 10 years, DWI with a child under 16 in the vehicle, or refusing to take a BAC test within 10 years of a DWI conviction.

Details about their issuance, implementation, implications etc in a longread at the StarTribune.

Pregnant in Alabama

From a report in The Guardian:

In March 2021, sheriffs in Etowah county, Alabama, arrested Ashley Caswell on accusations that she’d tested positive for methamphetamine while pregnant and was “endangering” her fetus.

Caswell, who was two months pregnant at the time, became one of a growing number of women imprisoned in the county in the name of protecting their “unborn children”.

But over the next seven months of incarceration for “chemical endangerment” in the Etowah county detention center (ECDC), Caswell was denied regular access to prenatal visits, even as officials were aware her pregnancy was high-risk due to her hypertension and abnormal pap smears, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday against the county and the sheriff’s department. She was also denied her prescribed psychiatric medication and slept on a thin mat on the concrete floor of the detention center for her entire pregnancy.

In October, when her water broke and she pleaded to be taken to a hospital, her lawyer says, officials told her to “sleep it off” and “wait until Monday” to deliver – two days away.

During nearly 12 hours of labor, staff gave her only Tylenol for her pain, the suit says, allegedly telling her to “stop screaming”, to “deal with the pain” and that she was “not in full labor”. Caswell lost amniotic fluid and blood and was alone and standing up in a jail shower when she ultimately delivered her child, according to the complaint and her medical records. She nearly bled to death, her lawyers say...

Data suggests the county is the national leader in arresting women under the guise of protecting their fetuses...  The group logged 649 cases in which women in the state were arrested or faced other criminal consequences in the name of protecting their fetuses or to punish actions that authorities said endangered their pregnancies.

"Constitutional sheriffs"

"The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association has nine Minnesota events planned in October. They’ll be led by Sheriff Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff who is also a founder of an extremist group that played a role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

Mack gained notoriety after he was part of a lawsuit that successfully overturned a provision of the Brady Law in the 1990s.

Since then, Mack founded the constitutional sheriffs group and has traveled the country, recruiting law enforcement officers — particularly sheriffs and deputies — to join his movement. Their central tenet, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, is that the county sheriff is the ultimate legal authority and can refuse to enforce any law they consider unconstitutional. This idea has no basis in law and aligns with so-called sovereign citizens , an anti-government extremist movement that believes they are sovereign from the U.S.

The Oath Keepers recruit law enforcement and have gotten more media attention, but the constitutional sheriffs group has “arguably had more success infiltrating law enforcement,” according to the ADL. 

Mack’s group believes county sheriffs’ powers exceed those of any other authorities when they’re protecting Americans from foreign or domestic enemies. Mack has claimed sheriffs have the power to call out the militia to support them — the same logic employed by the Posse Comitatus, which the ADL calls a loosely organized, far-right, violent anti-government group that sprang out of the West Coast around 1970, peaked in the early 1980s and evolved into the sovereign citizen movement. 

The Posse Comitatus also believed county government reigned supreme and sheriffs could nullify laws. One of their members, Gordon Kahl, was involved in two fatal shootouts with law enforcement in 1983, one in North Dakota and later in Arkansas, where he was killed.

Mack refers to his supporters as his posse.

The constitutional sheriffs’ group has honored as a “sheriff of the year” Wisconsin sheriff David Clarke, Jr., who described Black Lives Matter as a hate group and claimed they would join with the terrorist group ISIS to destroy American society. 

More at the link.

Theater surveillance of the audience

The image embedded above is a screencap from a video in a Newsweek article documenting Lauren Boebert vaping in a performing arts theater.  

What is interesting to me is not the misbehavior, but the fact that the video is clearly from an infrared monitor aimed at the audience.   I suppose it is not surprising that this occurs, but I hadn't realized it is routinely done in some movie theaters.  Apparently the screening room, along with the lobby and corridors etc is considered public space where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.  You learn something every day.

With apologies to Jane Austen

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that an American billionaire, in possession of sufficient fortune, must be in want of a Supreme Court justice. Nothing seems to bring billionaires so much simple joy as having a personal justice to accompany them on yacht and fishing trips, flights on their private planes and jaunts to rustic lodges where the wine was certainly not $1,000 a bottle (in Justice Samuel A. Alito’s opinion). Instead of getting upset (which is unproductive and irritates the people who decide whether we can vote and control our bodies), we need to acknowledge that people who want their own Supreme Court justices are going to get them — if they are wealthy enough. Instead of pretending that a code of ethics can prevent this, let’s find a better system so we can end all this sneaking around."

The essay continues at the Washington Post, proposing that Supreme Court justices could be sponsored, using all that blank space on their robes.  Even the hoi polloi could pool their lesser resources using Go Fund Me to sponsor one of the judges.

Billions in reparations proposed for black Californians

 As reported by NPR:

California's reparations task force voted Saturday to approve recommendations on how the state may compensate and apologize to Black residents for generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies...

After California entered the union in 1850 as a "free" state, it did not enact any laws to guarantee freedom for all, the draft recommendation notes. On the contrary, the state Supreme Court enforced the federal Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people, for over a decade until emancipation.

"By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal disbursal of state and federal funding," the document says.

California has previously apologized for placing Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II and for violence against and mistreatment of Native Americans.

The panel also approved a section of the draft report saying reparations should include "cash or its equivalent" for eligible residents.

Some estimates from economists have projected that the state could owe upwards of $800 billion, or more than 2.5 times its annual budget, in reparations to Black people.

The figure in the latest draft report released by the task force is far lower. The group has not responded to email and phone requests for comment on the reduction.

I have never understood how the concept of financial reparations can logically be justified for African-Americans but not for native Americans.  I suppose a lawyer could argue that the displacement and genocide of native Americans occurred before the "state" of California legally existed, but IMHO that's bullshit.

Should the rape of children be punished by death?

The Florida Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow the death penalty for people who commit sexual batteries on children under age 12, sending the issue to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Lawmakers hope the bill (HB 1297) will ultimately lead to the U.S. Supreme Court reversing a 2008 decision that barred the death penalty for people who rape children. The state House passed the bill last week.

Under the bill, defendants could receive death sentences based on the recommendations of at least eight of 12 jurors. Judges would have discretion to impose the death penalty or sentence defendants to life in prison. If fewer than eight jurors recommend death, defendants would receive life sentences.

The arguments for a death penalty carried the day in Florida, including one Senator who argued that "people who sexually abuse children can't be rehabilitated."  One argument against the death penalty is religious...

"I love kids, and I'll do anything to protect them," Osgood said. "But I struggle from a faith perspective. If I believe in my faith that God can redeem and save anybody, then how do I support someone getting the death penalty? 

The other argument against death was articulated by Thomas More 500 years ago:

"I think putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished; for if a robber sees that his danger is the same if he is convicted of theft as if he were guilty of murder, this will naturally incite him to kill the person whom otherwise he would only have robbed; since, if the punishment is the same, there is more security, and less danger of discovery, when he that can best make it is put out of the way; so that terrifying thieves too much provokes them to cruelty."

"Liberals should give up on the judiciary"

The title of this post is a TL;DR summary of an article in Harper's Magazine entitled "Courting Disaster."  Herewith a few of the most salient arguments:

To purify the court, the good court’s disciples tell themselves, they need to expose the fraud of originalism, to devise rival philosophies, to outmuscle and undermine the cabalists. The high court, made good again, will then resume the righteous work of its fabled forebears.

This story gets told because it offers a straightforward lesson for liberals at a moment when little else seems simple: if Democrats could only reclaim the judiciary, it would rescue them from a political sphere that increasingly seems to have gone off the rails. There’s comfort in talk of restoration, of a halcyon era recovered. But this is the wrong lesson. The good court of the postwar period was an aberration. The court has rarely been friendly to progressive ideals, and what it giveth, it can taketh away...

Law is a conservative profession by nature. It attracts rule followers. Its practitioners tend to come from the moneyed classes, and then cater to their interests. The courts, too, tilt in this direction. They’re principally backward-looking, with the authority to maintain the status quo or restore the status quo ante. Federal courts are generally given the prerogative to curtail government programs but not to create or expand them. Likewise, judges often block regulatory action but rarely order it. This asymmetry lends itself to libertarian outcomes more naturally than progressive ones.

Given this structural and sociological bias, it’s not surprising that for most of American history the courts have been aligned with political conservatives and capital—the elites, who had the most to lose from popular democratic rule...

... they misdiagnose the deeper problem the court poses for the left, or any group whose policy agenda—unlike the present-day GOP’s—depends on enacting federal legislation. With judicial supremacy uncontested, the Supreme Court has installed itself at the apex of national politics. The justices hold an absolute veto on almost any government action. They endorse and demote individual rights at will, picking political winners and losers along the way. After all, American constitutional rights are “trumps,” as Dworkin put it, that defeat most, if not all, competing claims of interest. Who controls the court matters, but more important still is what the court controls. And for decades now, it has controlled far too much.

    

Objections to judicial supremacy from both the left and the right are most often articulated in terms of its undemocratic character, what the constitutional theorist Alexander Bickel called the “counter-majoritarian difficulty.” The basic critique is compelling: core political rights and even the most popular laws exist at the mercy of five unelected justices insulated from accountability by life tenure and a salary that can’t be docked...

Some might raise the specter of the political philosopher Judith Shklar’s “liberalism of fear”: judicial supremacy as a check against the bad things an unrestrained state can do. But the courts won’t stop an able autocrat. In countries that have recently slid toward authoritarianism, judiciaries either have learned to love the tyrant or have been crushed by him. When constitutionalism thwarts effective governance, moreover, it supplies the ideal conditions for populist authoritarians to rise. The greater risk today isn’t that Congress will occasionally pass bills that many of us won’t like. It’s that five well-to-do lawyers will prevent Congress from responding to the country’s needs.

Others may wonder who, if not the Supreme Court, will articulate and secure minoritarian rights against the tyranny of the majority. The courts, in truth, recognize relatively few rights; most of those we enjoy derive not from the Constitution but from federal statute. To name just a few: voting rights; labor rights; disability rights; rights against discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. As the legal scholar Jamal Greene argues in How Rights Went Wrong, Congress has the institutional capacity to weigh and reconcile various values and interests, not only to pick which interests get to trump all others. When it comes to statutory rights, the court’s primary role since the Eighties has been to undermine them by curtailing, and at times usurping, congressional power...

“Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society,” the scholar Grant Gilmore argues at the conclusion of The Ages of American Law, his classic survey of American legal history. The worse a society’s politics, he claims, the more it will lean on the law to resolve deep-seated disagreements, which tends to deepen them further still. “In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb,” Gilmore writes. “In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.”

Much more in the source article at Harper's Magazine, which should be read before starting to argue the points made.

Can an unborn fetus be a state employee?

"Lawyers representing the Missouri Department of Transportation want you to believe an unborn baby was working for the state during a fatal work zone crash, all in order to have a lawsuit dismissed.

The bizarre opinion is in response to a lawsuit over the November 2021 tragedy that killed two MoDOT employees, one of whom was pregnant.

“First of all, it’s illogical. How would somebody who hasn’t even been born yet work for you?” he said. “But if they were to get someone to buy that, then that means your case is dismissed out of St. Louis County, go to the comp system, where they’re going to take a different position, just like they did initially.”

Workers’ comp already denied Anderson’s family claim because Kaitlyn was not married and had no dependents. Mundwiller says workers’ comp will certainly deny an unborn baby.

“What they’re hoping is they don’t pay anything,” he said.

MoDOT did not have a protective truck in place that day, even though it’s a department policy. That’s the focus of a lawsuit that, Kaitlyn’s mom says, MoDOT keeps avoiding."

Scavenging

Matthew Stohr salvages bottles of vodka from an eddy of containers that settled off the west end of a bridge into Fort Myers Beach on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022 after Hurricane Ian devastated the area. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

This photo and caption from a gallery at the Tampa Bay Times brought a variety of thoughts to my mind.  

First, the terminology.  "Salvaging", from an Old French word meaning "to save" is commonly used for maritime rescues of ships, crews, and cargo - but can be used to refer to making good use of damaged material.  I think a better term for the scene depicted here is scavenging - to look through refuse or abandoned items for useful material.

Then the thought that there must be a ton of this going on in Florida these days.  The scene above appears to be of flotsam originating in a liquor store, but the beaches (and streets and properties) of Florida must be covered with all sorts of items washed from fragmented homes and businesses.

What are the rules (written or unwritten) covering this?  Is it up for grabs - first come first serve?  Most material would not be "abandoned" in the traditional sense of owners relinquishing title to it - but in a practical sense owners are unlikely to be reunited with lost items.

The debris on the streets will include jewelry, fine art, money, collectibles and the state is awash in people who have lost much of what they previously owned.  Are they morally justified to scavenge seeking some compensation for their losses?

"Jerry-building"

"... a local poacher who killed a gamekeeper in a fight and was transported for eight years... When he returned to England at the end of his sentence, he built the Image House... according to the old custom of "jerry-building" which permitted a man to claim land without purchase or lease, provided he could build some sort of a house in a single night and have the chimney smoking by sunrise."

Text from Witchcraft in England by Christina Hole (1947).   Clearly the current Image House in Bunbury is not the same one that was "jerry-built," but I've posted this for the concept, which was new to me. 

Image cropped for size from the original at Ludchurch.

I can't even...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Geico could be required to pay a Missouri woman $5.2 million because she said she contracted a sexually transmitted disease while having sex in the car of a man who is insured by the company...

According to court documents, the woman, identified as M.O., and a man, who were in a relationship, had sex in the man’s car. She contends she contracted HPV, human papillomavirus, because the man did not tell her he had the disease. HPV can cause cervical cancer, certain other cancers and genital warts.

In February 2021, M.O. notified Geico she planned to seek a $1 million insurance settlement against the man. She argued the man’s auto insurance provided coverage for her injuries and losses.

The insurance company refused the settlement offer, saying the woman’s claim did not occur because of normal use of the vehicle, according to court documents...

An arbitrator eventually determined she should be awarded $5.2 million for damages and her injuries.

Via AP News.

Word for the day: "originalism"

“What principle of constitutional self-government requires that the permissible age to purchase an AR-15 should be 18 rather than 21? A recent ruling out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the right of 18-year-olds to buy what most of us would call ‘assault weapons.’ Its reasoning? ‘America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army.’ In fact, the enlistment age for the Continental Army was 16 — just 15 with parental consent. Some served at age 14. Is this a sufficient legal and historical basis to allow young teens to purchase nearly military-grade weapons in 2022? This type of 'originalism’ is indistinguishable from idiocy.”

-- Michael Duffy, Washington Post

Minnesota city bans hopscotch on city sidewalks

And not just hopscotch - all chalk art on sidewalks.  Details at the StarTribune:

Drawing a hopscotch board on a sidewalk or street in Anoka is now against the law — one of the ramifications of a new ordinance governing displays on city property recently passed by the City Council.

The ordinance regulates flags, murals, memorials, banners and even chalk art displayed on buildings, light posts, flagpoles, streets and sidewalks, parks and other city infrastructure. It's designed to allow the city to protect and maintain aesthetics of city-owned property...

Council members asked City Attorney Scott Baumgartner for advice in crafting the ordinance, wondering if there was room to allow certain types of chalk art, such as hopscotch boards.

Baumgartner advised adopting an all-or-none approach. Subjectivity in determining what is and not allowed could land the city in trouble. He cited federal precedent that allows cities to regulate the use of chalk art on sidewalks...

Rice said it is unfortunate the city needs an ordinance like this, but "it protects the integrity of the city, our community and our citizens and all of that from … more nonsense."

Reading between the lines, I suppose the ordinance is designed to prohibit chalk art on sidewalks supporting or dissing Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez et al, and the children's games are just friendly-fire casualties.  Very sad.

But it's not really blank...

Everyone has seen pages like this, typically on reports from financial institutions or health-care firms.  It seems to be a cover-your-ass adaptation to the fear that some recipients will be distressed to confront a blank page, or that a malefactor will insert extraneous material in a report.  Perhaps some reader can offer insight into the rationale.

Addendum:  within minutes of my posting this, a reader provided the link for a Wikipedia entry on Intentionally blank page.

Intentionally blank pages are usually the result of printing conventions and techniques (allow chapters to start on odd-numbered pages, allow for additions later etc).  In standardized tests it prevents subjects from proceeding to subsequent sections.  Other considerations for sheet music.  Most of these examples don't justify the addition of a sentence to declare blankness.  Maybe the part re classified document page checks is the best in that regard.

If you've read this far in the post, then it will be worth a couple seconds of your time to peek at the This Page Intentionally Left Blank Project.

Flaying as judicial punishment

"This, then, is what Darius said, and after appointing Artaphrenes, his father's son, to be viceroy of Sardis, he rode away to Susa, taking Histiaeus with him. First, however, he made Otanes governor of the people on the coast. Otanes' father Sisamnes had been one of the royal judges, and Cambyses had cut his throat and flayed off all his skin because he had been bribed to give an unjust judgment. Then he cut leather strips of the skin which had been torn away and with these he covered the seat upon which Sisamenes had sat to give judgment.  After doing this, Cambyses appointed the son of this slain and flayed Sisamnes to be judge in his place, admonishing him to keep in mind the nature of the throne on which he was sitting."                   --- Herodotus, The Histories, Book 5, Chapter 2.

There is some relevant discussion at the via.

Related post at Atlas Obscura: Saint Bartholomew Flayed.

17 "priors"

"A 73-year-old Green Bay man has been charged with his 18th drunken driving offense, after a crash Friday that took out power lines and caused an outage.

Wallace Bowers had 17 prior operating while intoxicated convictions between 1988 and 2011, but he had a valid license at the time of Friday's crash.

WLUK-TV reported that Wisconsin law now requires driver’s licenses to be revoked after a 4th OWI conviction, if the most recent conviction was within 15 years. But Bowers' last conviction was in 2011, before the new law went into effect in 2018.

“I’ve been sober since the 2011 (incident), that last DWI, and I blame the medications I have to be on (they) can interfere with the few drinks I did have,” Bowers told Court Commissioner Cynthia Vopal during an initial court appearance."

I live in a state famous for its beer and its tolerance of alcohol abuse.  The Tavern League of Wisconsin is a major contributor to political candidates at all levels of government.

Addendum: a multi-vehicle collision at 0245 in the night:

Traffic laws infringe on her "rights"

"In 2019, Diane Tomko of Beaver Dam was issued citations after being found operating a motor vehicle without insurance, not registering the vehicle, operating a vehicle without carrying a license and providing false information to mislead an officer after being pulled over for expired plates.

She took the citations to Dodge County Circuit Court following municipal court, and a judge upheld the citations in June. Judge Brian Pfitzinger ordered her to pay fines totaling $546.40. Tomko then took the case to the appeals court.

She argued in a brief to the appeals court that she has a right to drive on public highways “freely unencumbered” under the constitution and that state laws requiring insurance, licenses and vehicle registration infringe on her constitutional rights...

“We do not want to live in a country, as in 1940s Germany, where citizens are in danger simply because they do not carry valid papers,” the filing said. “Ms. Tomko urges the Court to evaluate for her whether what happened to her here is a step on the road to such a country.”"

This woman was sent to jail because of her clothes

For wearing pants, as reported by the Los Angeles Times:

On Nov. 9, 1938, Helen Hulick, 28, wore slacks to court to testify against two men. Judge Arthur S. Guerin rescheduled the case, asking Hulick to return wearing a dress. 

Hulick was quoted in the Nov. 10, 1938, Los Angeles Times. “You tell the judge I will stand on my rights. If he orders me to change into a dress I won’t do it. I like slacks. They’re comfortable.”.. 

In a scathing denunciation of slacks — which he prosaically termed pants — as courtroom attire for women, Municipal Judge Arthur S. Guerin yesterday again forbade Helen Hulick, 28, kindergarten teacher, to testify as a witness while dressed in green and orange leisure attire. 

Miss Hulick, who Thursday was ordered to return to court in a dress, was called to testify by Dep. Dist. Atty. Russell Broker against two [men] accused of burglarizing her home. 

“The court hereby orders and directs you to return tomorrow in accepted dress. If you insist on wearing slacks again you will be prevented from testifying because that would hinder the administration of justice. But be prepared to be punished according to law for contempt of court.”.. 

The next day, Hulick showed up in slacks. Judge Guerin held her in contempt. Given a five-day sentence, Hulick was sent to jail.

Class-action lawsuits are a ripoff

Embedded above is my windfall from the settlement of the StarKist class-action suit.   It was supposed to be much higher:

"The settlement provides that StarKist will pay $8 million in cash and $4 million in vouchers redeemable for StarKist tuna products. You may submit a claim for either:

a) a cash payment of $25, or
b) $50 in product vouchers redeemable for StarKist tuna products."

But... "The significantly lower payout is due to the fact that more than 2.5 million people signed up for payment, which is 12 times more than Starkist anticipated."

The attorneys, however, did well, despite a 4% reduction in their fees:

Class counsel was awarded $3.6 million, but the amount was reduced by $154,987 to cover objectors’ counsel fees and costs.

This week I also noticed some numbers related to the Harvey Weinstein lawsuit:

Elizabeth Fegan, the lead attorney representing the women who are part of the original class action lawsuit and all future claimants who choose to join it, could receive up to 25% of the payout if the settlement goes ahead, legal observers said. They pointed out that sum could end up being 10 times or more the payment to individual victims, especially if more join the case and dilute the amount of the awards.

Perhaps some attorney reading this blog could come out in support of fairness (not the legality, which is presumed) of such litigation.