Judge Richard Sanders: A Very Cool Guy

Andrew Sullivan points toward this amazing report about Washington State Supreme Court Judge Richard Sanders, one of the last uncastrated men on the bench.

Sanders initially dodged reporters' questions about the incident this week, refusing to comment on anything he might have said at the event.

A video on the Federalist Society's Web site shows that Sanders' outburst came just over 17 minutes into Mukasey's speech, after Mukasey talked about what he said was the "casual assumption among many in media, political and legal circles that the administration's counterterrorism policies have come at the expense of the rule of law."

Shortly after that point on the video, a voice is clearly heard yelling: "Tyrant! You are a tyrant!"

Mukasey can be seen briefly stopping and looking up from his speech. A few minutes later, Mukasey began shaking and slurring his words.

Of course, in today's climate such courage cannot go without censure:

Chief Justice Gerry Alexander said Tuesday that he was very concerned about the outburst's potential damage to Sanders' reputation, and to the court.

Alexander said he planned to speak privately to Sanders to express his disapproval about the incident, but said he has no authority to discipline him.

"People have a First Amendment right to speak, but that's not conduct that I would like to see judges display," Alexander said.

Our Useless Department Of Homeland Security

One would have thought that with the NYPD responding to a "plausible but unsubstantiated" report of potential attacks on the New York City Transit System, and with the simultaneous attack on Westerners in Mumbai, the DHS might manage a little more precautionary status than "Elevated". Failing that, one might expect a little information from their website, beyond notifying us that "New Requirements for Maritime Cargo Carriers & Importers" are in place.

Just another ineffective and useless bureaucracy, I guess. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Classic K-Lo Post

This is the perfect exemplar of the style that dominates her day at NRO's Corner. It is incredibly brief, it is perfectly banal, it contains no insight about anything, it is not amusing and it refers to a news item that everyone in the entire World has known about for several hours before she posts on it.

K-Lo, K-Lo. Wherefore art thou, K-Lo?

A Prayer For The Prince Of Darkness

He has had me screaming, red-faced with rage. But, here at the end, I feel I should acknowledge as Timothy Crouse did long ago that he is one of the very greatest reporters. He has often been terribly wrong but he was sometimes bracingly right. When he finally shuffles off he will be greatly missed.

"Billion Dollar Charlie" v. Godzilla

Let the games begin.

There was fear and trembling on the Internets earlier this month when the word went out that storied Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson - "Billion Dollar Charlie" - had decided to go mano a mano with the most-hated institution in America. The Bush White House? No, the Recording Industry Association of America.
"RIAA Litigation May Be Unconstitutional," headlined Slashdot, a self-described "news for nerds" website. "Harvard's Charlie Nesson Raises Constitutional Questions in RIAA Litigation," trumpeted ZDNet Government. "Insane Harvard Law Professor Promises MP3 Justice," proclaimed Gawker.

Strange Brew, Girl What's Inside of You?

(h/t Ta-Nehisi)

This is a Great Atlantic article on so-called "extreme" beers. While not touching on home-brewing per se it contains much that should be useful and of interest to any homebrewer. Read the whole thing. Sample:

The tavern was a success from the day it opened. The beer took a little longer. Calagione had brewed fewer than ten batches before coming to Delaware, and he rarely used the same recipe twice. “I’d just grab herbs and spices and fruits from the kitchen and throw them in,” he says. “I used to think, Oh, it’s cool that every batch tastes different. It’s like snowflakes!” The pub’s brewing equipment consisted of three fifteen-gallon kegs on propane burners, and a rack of modified kegs for fermenting the beer. To keep up with demand, Calagione had to brew two or three times a day, every day; between shifts he slept on a mattress in the cellar. When the beer was ready, he and two employees would don ski goggles and green garbage bags and bottle the beer by hand, with a siphon and mechanical capper. In ten hours they could fill a hundred cases.

“It was a hot ghetto mess,” Bryan Selders, Dogfish’s lead brewer, remembers. By the time Selders arrived, in 2002, Calagione had jury-rigged some larger kettles out of stainless-steel tanks from a yogurt factory. To reach the cooked barley, or mash, Selders had to climb onto a metal grate twelve feet high and straddle the edge of the boiling kettle—one foot on the grate, the other on the kettle’s lid. Once, during a morning production meeting, Selders fell in. “The lid just gave way,” he says. The mash in the kettle was hot—around a hundred and fifty degrees—but came only to the tops of his boots. “I went home, took a shower, watched a little Sally Jessy, and came back.”

Typealyzer Sez....

According to the Typealyzer, the author of this blog is a "mechanic":

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Unfortunately, they also show a graph of my brain activity while writing which seems to indicate that I have all the warmth and poetry of Dick Cheney.