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Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson (R, District 18-Mesa) is no stranger to stupidity. She was one of a number of legislators who got in bed with the Church of Scientology last year, accepting invitations to Scientology events and sponsoring anti-psychiatric legislation pushed by Scientology’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) front organization. Now she’s behind SCR 1026, a proposal to amend the Arizona Constitution to prevent courts from the ability to address violations of the separation of church and state: Her proposal, SCR 1026, would specifically bar courts from being able to grant any injunctions or other legal relief if the question involves “the acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty or government.” And that bar would remain in place whether the action were brought against the government as a whole or any state or local official.She goes on to demonstrate that she doesn’t understand the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause: Johnson said she is unhappy that judges in other states have ruled that the words “under God” have to come out of the Pledge of Allegiance, and that a monument of the Ten Commandments had to be removed from an Alabama courthouse. “We don’t want that,” she said. ...

The strange objects that set off a scare in Boston and caused at least one of them to be blown up were magnetic lights set up by Turner Broadcasting to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. They had been in place for weeks before being mistaken for something dangerous and causing authorities to shut down bridges and access into the Charles River. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is a usually entertaining short cartoon that appears on the Cartoon Network’s adult swim. This isn’t the first time that a movie marketing campaign has resulted in this kind of hysterical over-reaction. In April of last year, a device that played the “Mission: Impossible” theme was placed into Los Angeles Times newspaper vending machines. One of the devices in Santa Clarita had exposed wires, was mistaken for a bomb, and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office arson squad blew it up. UPDATE: CNN has a photo of one of the Aqua Teen light boards, which depicts the Mooninite named Err (the smaller one), extending his middle finger. (Correction–it’s the bigger one, Ignignokt, in the picture above, though there are some of Err as well.) UPDATE (February 1, 2007): Here’s how an Associated Press story in the Arizona Republic described these devices: “The exact nature of the objects was not disclosed. But authorities said some looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them." That sounds a lot scarier than the reality, doesn’t it? It conveniently omits the fact that there’s a clear pattern of lights depicting a cartoon character. That article goes on to say “At least some of the devices resemble one of the villains on “Aqua Teen,” part of Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim lineup.” Is there any evidence that any of them did not? Nine of ten cities where these devices were put in place did not have a panicked overreaction, and the one that did waited two to three weeks before jumping into a panic. Had they been actual malicious devices, their reaction would have been too late. One word of advice for future marketeers: put a label on your devices with a phone number that can be called so you can explain what you’re doing before the authorities blow up your equipment. Here’s another picture of one of the devices in place. ...

This video of John McCain shows video clips of him saying one thing and then the opposite on a number of subjects including the war in Iraq, the Confederate flag, the religious right, and gay marriage. Some of these are a bit misleadingly edited, such as the gay marriage item, where it doesn’t look like he actually contradicted himself to me. Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars. ...

It’s been two months since my last update of Maricopa County’s Notices of Trustee’s Sales. January’s 1623 notices didn’t beat the past 145 months’ record high of 1738, like I initially thought they would. However, before you go shouting such fantastic news from the rooftops, you should know that 1623 is the second highest number. Here are the latest descriptive statistics: Trustee’s Sale Notices Mean917.2Median811Mode746Standard Deviation296.35814Range1256Minimum482Maximum1738Sum132994Count145 Since I started compiling this data I’ve noticed a sharp uptick in real estate gurus trying to sell info on the latest real estate investment fad: the “Short Sale” - a technique designed to get around the problem that most of the defaulting mortgages behind these sad numbers are less than 2 years old, and thus are tied to properties with zero equity. I’ll probably write a little more about this technique at some point over at Die Eigenheit. I promise to update this post as necessary.

Here’s a nice flash game that requires you to screen airport passengers on the basis of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules. (Via Bruce Schneier’s blog.)

Todd Underwood offers a fascinating look at how various natural disasters have caused outages in parts of the Internet. He begins with the recent earthquakes that damaged seven subsea cables in east Asia (the cables built by Global Crossing which now belong to Hutchison Global Communications and Asia Netcom were among the very few that were unaffected). He also looks at the effects on the network from the 2003 northeast U.S. power outages and Hurricane Katrina. Here’s one vote for him to post an offered followup that shows which providers gained and lost transit customers and network capacity in the outages.

Trent at The Simple Dollar writes about Phoenix’s bogus financial wizard, Robert Kiyosaki, and gets a bunch of loonies appearing in the comments, including Amway advocates. Trent gets it right, though probably doesn’t even go quite far enough in condemning Kiyosaki. I recommend John T. Reed’s overview of Kiyosaki, and Einzige’s extensive series on John Burley (who has occasionally teamed up with Kiyosaki). UPDATE (January 30, 2007): Mike Linksvayer has been prompted to comment on Kiyosaki, and his remarks are well worth reading. ...

Trent Stamp of Charity Navigator points out that, rather than distinguishing themselves from Republicans Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay, each of whom played fast and loose with the rules on nonprofits, prominent Democrats in Congress are doing the same. Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, and Evan Bayh are each officers in their family charities; their failure to disclose this makes them guilty of felonies. Pelosi calls her failure an “oversight” and promises to file amended annual disclosure statements.

Today I received the following email from John Martin of Phoenix (whose email address begins with “satguys01”), who was apparently set off by my web page reporting my record of lawsuits against telemarketers, which he came across about 30 minutes earlier while doing a Google search for “arizona telemarketing attorney” (could he be in need of one?): Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:12:22 -0800 (PST) From: John Martin Subject: Get a life You are just as bad as the telemarketers that call you. Just like a scummy attorney that profits from filing frivolous lawsuits. You raise the cost of doing business for companies, raise taxes by overburdening the courts, and therefore raise the cost of goods for consumers in the marketplace. What do you care? You made a dollar. Telemarketing is critical for the economy to function. The wheels would stop turning if there were no phones or business conducted on them. The Federal and State do no call list is just another angle for the Fed and State to make a buck. Just ask yourself, why is it legal for politicians to contact and harass millions of citizens with automated messages and call people on the so called do not call list? So its OK for them to fund raise and get re elected (profit) using unscrupulous methods. But a legitimate business offering legit goods or services is restricted. Are there Marketers that take advantage of people yes. Like any other business there are bad apples. But most offer legit goods and services. Does your mailbox get full of junk mail? Do you watch commercials on TV? or even now at the movies? Why not sue them? Junk Mail does more damage to the environment than anything else. But the US post service make money on it so that will never stop. Screen you calls, that’s what caller id is for, hangup on automated messages and telemarketers. And stop with the lame lawsuits. Do you really suffer any damages by listening to a message or having a dialer hang up on you? Or are you just an other greedy opportunist like you EVIL telemarketing counterparts just out for a quick buck? I sent the following reply: From: “James J. Lippard” [my email addr] To: John Martin Subject: Re: Get a life In-Reply-To: [email protected] The difference, John, is that they are knowingly violating the law, and I’m not. None of my lawsuits have been frivolous, which is why I have a 100% record of success. I’m only raising the cost of business for companies that are blatantly breaking the law; my impact on the courts is negligible–I always offer to settle out of court for the minimum statutory amounts before filing a lawsuit, and I always file in small claims which minimizes the paperwork. The money I collect is specified as damages in the statutes, and serves not only to compensate me for the violations but to act as a deterrent to further violations. It has worked pretty well–I don’t get many such calls any more. If you think the law is wrong, petition to have it changed. But if you violate it, be prepared to get sued and to lose. What’s your interest that motivates you to send a nasty email to someone you don’t know? From your email address, I would guess that you’re in the satellite dish resale business, which is well known for its sleazy violations of telemarketing law. Are you a regular violator of the TCPA, John? BTW, I have a nice life. What kind of life do you have that you seek enjoyment out of sending such an email as this?For the record, I don’t watch television commercials (thanks, TiVo!) and I’m also very opposed to spam (and much of my professional life in the Internet industry has been devoted to combatting it). We also don’t go to see movies in the theater anymore except on rare occasion; we rent DVDs. I’m an advocate of permission-based marketing to individuals, not indiscriminate broadcast advertising.

Arizona State Representative Pamela Gorman (R-District 6, Anthem) was one of several legislators who accepted gifts from the Church of Scientology and helped promote bills for Scientology’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights. She is also on the Legislative Advisory Board to the Heartland Institute, publisher of Environmental & Climate News, a publication that is still, as of its February 2007 issue, arguing that global warming is mythical. This issue contains articles such as “Greenland Coldest in 60 Years” and “Little Ice Age May Return Soon,” and contains a set of graphs of global satellite temperatures on p. 7 that attributes 1998’s high temperatures to El Nino. The Heartland Institute’s past articles have included titles like “Eight Reasons Why ‘Global Warming’ is a Scam” (2003), “National Geographic Promotes Global Warming Myths” (2004), and “Michael Crichton is Right!" (2005) (Rep. Gorman’s Blogger profile lists “Anthem Shrugged” as one of her favorite books. Ayn Rand wrote books called Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, but it appears Rep. Gorman has combined them. She has apparently been too busy to blog much; she posted twice in January 2006 and has only posted again this month.) ...