“Happy Birthday to You” is copyright protected through 2030. The rights are owned by Time Warner and it brings in around $2 million a year.
If you sing it in public without permission (which means paying Time Warner for the privilege), it’s a copyright violation.
I wonder if I could get a job as a copyright bounty hunter. You know, hang out at Chucky Cheese and similar places, and when the kids all sing “Happy Birthday” demand payment for Time Warner and then get a percentage.
At Slate Magazine there’s an edifying and somewhat thought provoking discussion of Thursday’s school integration Supreme Court decision by Walter Dellinger, Dahlia Lithwick, and Stuart Taylor Jr. It’s up to seven parts at this writing, but each is brief and worthy of your time.
The opinion itself is here. [pdf]
——–
Follow my thinking for a minute.
Race is a bogus construct biologically. It is still, however, a sociological construct of some power.
So, my question is, how do we eliminate the latter now that we understand there is no basis for the former?
It seems to me that assigning children to a school on account of race — whatever the motive — perpetuates the racial distinction, a distinction that doesn’t exist in nature.
So, maybe, the Court got it right — whatever the legal issues, and despite the fact that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito are moral peasants. (I’m giving Kennedy, the waffler, a little benefit of the doubt, deserved or otherwise. He actually might be the most reprehensible of the five.)
Maybe this decision will force society — and right-minded school districts — to find means to correct socio-economic issues in our society without relying on the age-old racial distinctions that have brought about so much of the inequality to begin with.
——–
Walter Dellinger has a different point of view.
“Today is both the anniversary of the event that started World War I and the day that the treaty was signed that officially brought the war to a close.” The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media has a succinct summary of the two.
At Slate Magazine there’s an edifying and somewhat thought provoking discussion of today’s school integration Supreme Court decision by Walter Dellinger, Dahlia Lithwick, and Stuart Taylor Jr. It’s up to about five parts at this writing, but each is brief and worthy of your time.
The opinion itself is here. [pdf]
Conservative commentator and former Reagan appointee Bruce Fein thinks the congress should Impeach Vice President Cheney. (The blogosphere sees Fred Thompson as the likely man Bush would appoint to the job — under the 25th amendment — if Cheney left for any reason. Do you think Thompson could get a majority in both houses?)
Sexist for sure, but amusing nonetheless, Benjamin Franklin advises a young friend to consider the advantages of an older paramour. Old Mistresses Apologue by Benjamin Franklin.
And Pearl is back in Good Cop, Baby Cop. Not as funny as when she was Will Ferrell’s landlord, but amusing at times.
NewMexiKen is currently reading Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime: From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism
You might prefer instead Constitutional law: the five-minute crash course by Walter Dellinger.
Best line from the five-minute crash course: “Finally, one needs to understand judicial restraint, the doctrine that a judge should avoid ‘legislating from the bench’ and should instead strictly apply the text of the Constitution ‘exactly as written.’ This approach is very appealing to those who have never read the Constitution.
When she moved into her retirement condominium on a golf course, Eleanor Weiner admired the lush, pristine views of the fairways and greens, a landscape she never had to mow or maintain. Not long after, as she prepared dinner, a golf ball shattered the kitchen window, whistled past her head and crashed through the glass on her oven door. Ms. Weiner retrieved the ball from her oven and stalked outside to confront the golfer who had launched the missile.
“He told me that’s what I get for living on a golf course,” said Ms. Weiner, who has lived for a dozen years alongside Rancho Las Palmas Country Club near Palm Springs, Calif. “That was the first time I heard that, but it surely hasn’t been the last.”
Nor is it necessarily the law. Read the article to see that some homeowners are suing — and winning — including the one who “collected 1,800 golf balls from her property … then lugged them into court when she sued the club.”
And this: “The one time I did catch the guy, he gave me an address and phone number that turned out to be phony. He was playing in a church outing.”
“When police make a traffic stop, a passenger in the car, like the driver, is seized for Fourth Amendment purposes and so may challenge the stop’s constitutionality.”
Justice David Souter writing for a unanimous Supreme Court as reported in The New York Times.
The Washington Post has the better summary of the case and decision.
California had argued that during a traffic stop only the driver was the target of the stop and a passenger “would feel free to depart or otherwise to conduct his or her affairs as though the police were not present.”
[NewMexiKen is trying to picture a car pulled over by the police and the passenger getting out and strolling off. My imagination isn’t up to that challenge.]
“Writing for a unanimous court, Justice David H. Souter ruled that ‘a traffic stop necessarily curtails the travel a passenger has chosen just as much as it halts the driver. . . .’ He said a ‘a sensible person would not expect a police officer to allow people to come and go freely’ from the scene of a stop.”
In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court found on this date in 1966 that Ernesto Miranda had not been informed of his rights before he confessed to the rape of a mildly retarded 18-year-old woman in 1963. His case was remanded to Arizona for a new trial. More importantly, the decision stated that the Constitution required that all persons arrested be informed of their rights before they were interrogated. These rights became known as Miranda Rights.
Ernesto Miranda was retried (he had remained in prison throughout on another conviction). He was found guilty on other evidence and sentenced for a second time to 20-30 years for rape. He was paroled in 1972 and for a time sold autographed “Miranda” cards such as the police carried.
Ultimately Miranda was stabbed to death in a bar fight in 1976.
Read the decision.
View Chief Justice Warren’s handwritten notes.
Listen to the oral argument [45 MB mp3 file].
AmericanHeritage.com had some background last year on the 40th anniversary.
I really recommend reading (at least) the first 11 pages of the court’s decision, where the court sets forth in very stark and clear terms exactly what we have done to al-Marri. I recall the sensation, back in law school, of reading legal opinions from various periods of time throughout our country’s history which began by recounting the government’s behavior and finding it difficult to believe that any government could engage in such conduct without provoking a massive backlash (and sometimes it did).
That is the reaction which this opinion provokes (even though the facts are familiar). No matter how many times one thinks about it, reads or writes about it, it never ceases to amaze — literally — that our government has asserted the power to imprison people, including those on U.S. soil, and keep them locked up for years and years, indefinitely, without so much as charging them with any crime or even allowing them access to lawyers. And that is to say nothing of what is done to them while being held completely incommunicado. That was just a line that one thought the American Government could not cross without enormous backlash.
Here’s the decision. [pdf]
In June, 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:
Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.After their convictions, the Lovings took up residence in the District of Columbia. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. …
Forty years ago today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled:
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.
These convictions must be reversed.
It is so ordered.
Here’s an AP report on the Couple [That] Broke Marriage Barrier 40 Years Ago.
At the time the Supreme Court overturned the convictions in 1967, Virginia was one of 16 states that still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
Thanks to John for the tip.
While Scooter and Paris get all the attention, here’s a case that deserves notice. A report from Talk Left begins:
As TalkLeft argued here, it is ridiculous for the State of Georgia to make Genarlow Wilson serve a minimum of 10 years because, at age 17, he engaged in a consensual act of oral sex with a 15 year old girl. Public outrage caused the Georgia legislature to change the law, but Georgia’s courts have refused to apply the change retroactively to save Wilson from an unfair sentence.
NewMexiKen is surprised at Georgia. You’d think a civilized place like that would want to make the punishment fit the crime. Why not just cut his tongue out?
Update: Wilson was released after 27 months on Monday, June 11, 2007.
It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in the Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.
Judge Reggie B. Walton in a footnote in accepting an amicus brief filed on behalf of Scooter Libby.
Reported by the American Constitution Society Blog.
Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.
Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law.
Link via Eschaton.
NewMexiKen read yesterday about a movement in Vermont advocating that the state leave the United States. Other states have similar talk.
NewMexiKen thought the issue of secession had been settled in 1865. What do you think? The comments are available for you to elaborate.
Via Digital Daily, an incredibly clever — if not altogether easy to follow — explanation of copyright and fair use using Disney characters.
Here’s the link to the video.
Good stuff.
Exactly!
Read about unintended (but clearly predictable) consequences at Eye On Albuquerque.
As we noted here last summer, according to Santa Fe Sheriff Greg Solano, studies have shown that “accidents increase at intersections with red light camera’s due to motorists making abrupt stops in order to avoid the citation.”
Listen at least long enough to get the idea.
Then, the answer to my question is at BBC NEWS.
Oh, and here are some riddles.
Links via Discourse.net.
“Throughout, the opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions not by the titles of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label ‘abortion doctor.'”
Justice Ginsburg in her dissent. She is referring to the majority opinion issued today in Gonzales v. Carhart.
Around midday today, Central Time, two men in Angola Prison in Louisiana will quietly mark the moment, 35 years ago exactly, when the bars of solitary confinement cells closed behind them. They will likely spend the moment in their 6 by 9 concrete cells reading, or writing letters to their hundreds of supporters around the world. And most of America and the rest of the world will still have never heard of them, or that in the United States of America, it is still possible to spend a life sentence in solitary confinement without interruption and without any real means of appeal.
AlterNet has the details.
White House personnel appear to have been systematically avoiding using their government emails on the job because they knew they might some day be subpoenaed.
But as we noted earlier with Karl Rove, this may have been too clever by half. If the president’s aides were using RNC emails or emails from other Republican political committees, they can’t have even the vaguest claim to shielding those communications behind executive privilege.
They would also seem to be violating federal law that requires adequate documentation.
Through the implementation of records management controls and other necessary actions, the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records pursuant to the requirements of this section and other provisions of law.
Walt Mossberg says Congress Must Make Clear Copyright Laws To Protect Consumers. Hear. Hear.
NewMexiKen recommends Sebastian Junger’s A Death in Belmont
In a review last April, Alan Dershowitz wrote that A Murder in Belmont “though nonfiction, reads like a novel. Its narrative line is crisp. Junger takes us through the trial and conviction of Roy Smith, the series of stranglings in and around Boston, and the arrest and confession of Albert DeSalvo. But there are threads left untied by the imperfect system of Massachusetts justice that Junger describes so well.” Dershowitz does find fault with the speculative nature of some of Junger’s conclusions: “But when a writer has a stake in playing down coincidences and emphasizing connections, his work must be read with caution, especially when it contains no footnotes or endnotes.”
Indeed, but it’s a great read.
Junger is best known for The Perfect Storm.
Thanks to Ken for recommending the book.
Advice to aspiring U.S. Attorney candidates: Don’t get pregnant.
The document dump from the Department of Justice shook loose this letter from Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor to Alberto Gonzales in reference to the Karl Rove lackey Tim Griffin, who was appointed U.S. Attorney after the ouster of the popular and competent U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.
What’s revelatory here is the excuse Gonzales’ liason gave Pryor for why Cummin’s deputy wasn’t elevated to the post: She was on maternity leave.
Pryor describes himself as “astonished” that DOJ would use “pregancy and motherhood as conditions that deny an appointment” argued that such “discrimination” would be actionable in court had such a decision been made in the private sector.
Paul Krugman in today’s Times via The Daily Dish:
Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.
How can this have been happening without a national uproar? The authors explain: “We believe that this tremendous disparity is politically motivated and it occurs because the local (non-statewide and non-Congressional) investigations occur under the radar of a diligent national press. Each instance is treated by a local beat reporter as an isolated case that is only of local interest.”
And let’s not forget that Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove’s time in Texas: “In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.”
The text of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, was posted earlier today by NewMexiKen, on this the 215th anniversary of their adoption.
Originally 12 amendments were proposed to the legislatures of the 14 states by the First Congress. Numbers three through twelve were ratified, beginning with New Jersey in November 1789, and culminating with Virginia, the eleventh (i.e., three-quarters of the states), on this date in 1791. (The amendments were ultimately ratified by the remaining three legislatures of Massachusetts, March 2, 1939; Georgia, March 18, 1939; and Connecticut, April 19, 1939.)
The draft first amendment concerned the numbers of constituents for each representative. It has never been ratified. The draft second amendment was ratified by the required number of states in 1992. It took effect as Amendment XXVII (”No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”)
The image is of the actual document with the 12 proposed amendments. Click image for larger version.
… was ratified by Virginia on this date in 1791, and thereby became part of the Constitution of the United States as its first ten amendments.
The Bill of Rights
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.