Controversies, Weirdness

Legal Eagles and Rabble-Rousers

Accountability is for Other People
So the biggest Katrina suit against the Army Corps of Engineers, who built the faulty levees and floodwalls, often skimping on parts, using poor materials and defrauding the federal government, has been dismissed despite all the evidence of malfeasance and fraud.

The reason? An old Federal law granting immunity to the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control related damages.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge threw out a key class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over flooding from a levee breach after Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps should be held immune over the failure of a wall on the 17th Street Canal that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005.

The suit led to 350,000 separate claims by businesses, government entities and residents, totaling billions of dollars in damages against the agency.

The fate of many of those claims was pinned to that lawsuit and a similar one filed over flooding from a navigation channel in St. Bernard Parish. It was unclear how many claims could still move forward.

The ruling relies on the Flood Control Act of 1928, which made the federal government immune when flood control projects like levees break.

Throughout the court proceedings, plaintiffs lawyers knew they faced a daunting task because the canals were, over time, used as flood control projects by the Corps.

Yeah, it does seem like the law left him little choice. What a terrible law though! They can do anything they want in the name of flood control, run any scam, employ drunks, steal materials, whatever you imagine, and it's ok, they cannot be held to account. Ever.

God Bless America. Except the poor parts that lie near the rivers.

Source: The Associated Press

Worse than the Suit Thing, Huh?
People thought the judge suing over his lost suit was bad.

HARO, Spain (CNN) -- A Spanish businessman withdrew a controversial lawsuit Wednesday against the family of a teenage boy he struck and killed while driving a luxury car.

Tomas Delgado had filed a suit asking the dead boy's parents to pay him €20,000 ($29,400) on the grounds that the collision that killed their teenage son also damaged his Audi A-8.

News of the case sparked outrage in Spain and generated deep sympathy for the parents of 17-year-old Enaitz Iriondo Trinidad. He was riding his bicycle home to a campground when Delgado's car hit and killed him in August 2004.

First of all, why is this lawsuit being filed now? Secondly, man, that's cold. I don't care if the boy was at fault, violating traffic laws or what not, who knows, it's possible, you don't sue the family; the kid's dead. Deal with your car's body work and move on.

Or you could antagonize people and make things much worse for yourself..

A traffic report said Delgado was traveling 113 km per hour (70 mph) in an area where the speed limit is 90 km (55 mph). An independent expert hired by Trinidad's family said Delgado was going 173 km per hour (107 mph).

Shortly after the collision, a judge dismissed criminal charges against Delgado after concluding that he had committed no criminal infraction, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.

...

A local prosecutor told reporters that he would take a second look at the case to see whether authorities can file fresh charges against Delgado.

Oops. That defense lawyer's going to cost you a lot more than 30 grand, you lunatic jerkass.

Source: CNN.com

Get Over Yourself, Conservative Catholics
So there are a lot of crazy right-wing Catholic groups that get upset every time there's any even slightly risque or critical or even humorous depiction of their Church in the media, right?

A new gym in Boston thought it'd be funny to run an add featuring nuns at an art class, sketching a nude male model. This is about as tame as I can think of. The right-wingers got really, really upset.

C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts said the ad shows contempt for the Catholic religion.

"It says a great deal about this perverse obsession in both the fashion industry and the advertising industry of exploiting and mocking and sexualizing Catholic religious imagery," Doyle said.

The fitness company responded with a written statement saying, "Our ad campaigns are based on personal motivation and fantasy and throughout history the body has been considered a form of art."

Yeah, where would anyone have gotten the idea that the nude body is utilized in artwork, let alone Catholic art? Heaven forfend.

Morons.

Source: The Boston Channel.com
Wikipedia (Various images)


P.S. These are hardly the first Catholics to get angry about art:

From the Wikipedia article on the Sistine Chapel:

The Ignudi[41] are the 20 athletic, nude males that Michelangelo painted as supporting figures at the four corners of the five smaller narrative scenes of central part of the ceiling. The figures hold or are draped with or lean on a variety of things which include pink ribbons, green bolsters and enormous garlands of acorns. The acorns are the symbol of the family of Michelangelo's patron, Pope Julius, and can also be seen as the finials on his chair in Raphael's portrait.[42]

The Ignudi, although all seated, are less physically constrained than the Ancestors of Christ. While the pairs of the monochrome male and female figures above the spandrels are mirrors of each other, these ignudi are all different. In the earliest paintings, they are paired, their poses being similar but with variation. These variations become greater with each pair until the postures of final four bear no relation to each other whatsoever. Their painting demonstrates, more than any other figures on the ceiling, Michelangelo's mastery of anatomy and foreshortening and his enormous powers of invention.[43]

The meaning of these figures has never been clear. They are certainly in keeping with the Humanist acceptance of the classical Greek view that “the man is the measure of all things”.[44] Their presence and nudity angered a number of critics, including Pope Hadrian VI who described the ceiling as "a stew of naked bodies" and wanted it stripped.[5]

He's a Loser Baby
This Beck really, really is one.

Discussing last night’s GOP debate on his radio show today, Glenn Beck and fill-in host Pat Gray mocked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by derisively calling him “Juan McCain.”

...

During the segment, Beck also commented on a new campaign by the National Council of La Raza that targets him and Lou Dobbs for their rhetoric, which La Raza believes “demonizes immigrants and Hispanic Americans.” Beck suggested that La Raza’s campaign to get him off the air “before the election” may be “connected” to McCain.

...


UPDATE: On Beck’s CNN Headline News show last night, Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist compared La Raza to the KKK while smearing the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Honestly, is there ANYTHING a conservative can say that will get them off the air, permanently? Anything at all?

Source: Think Progress

Tom's Pictures
My friend Tom likes to send me links to bizarre images from across the web. I thought I should put a couple of them in here for posterity.

Power Rangers
How Not to Use an iPhone