Monthly Archives: December 2003

Contrasting Views of the Return of the King

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First from Moe Freedman at Occam’s Toothbrush:

I just returned from seeing the latest installment of the Lord of the Rings, and I have to say I just hated the hell out of it. It’s not that I’m not a fan, I am. I’ve seen the first two, and loved the books as a teenager but this one was just way, way, too long.
Peter Jackson decided to tell the story using the faces of his actors and the long, lingering close- ups go on forever.

Second from Ghost of a Flea:

Let’s see… at 3 hours and 12 minutes I figured I would want to stretch my legs at some point but for that first two and a half hours I was completely lost in the world of the film. Rushed, yes, even at three hours plus the story is rushed and abbreviated. I have high hopes for the extended version… there are points where scenes have almost clumsily been removed. At this point, however, I am prepared to give Peter Jackson almost any leeway. If not for the last half hour this would have been the greatest film I have ever seen (and others may be happier with the last half hour).

For those interested in such things the Flea also provides a link to Tolkien’s views on elf sex.

bush is busy

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Sawyer interviewing bush:

And he signaled to Sawyer he has a bit of a Rose Garden strategy in mind for the campaign:
�early in the process there�ll be all kinds of pressures to respond to this, or respond to that�
�and I just want to warn you, I�m going to do my job. I got a lot to do. As we say, the dance card is quite full these days.

Yep, fund raising takes a lot of time.
Via Skippy.

11 Lessons from the Vietnam War

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Bilmon posts these from Robert McNamara’s memoirs:

But for the most part, McNamara’s eleven points are a pretty good capsule summary of the lessons that should have been learned from Vietnam, but which weren’t — in large part because the people now running the foreign policy of the U.S. government have never even been able to face up to the fact that we lost the Vietnam War, much less understand why we lost it.

Go read them.

Kudos to the 9th Circuit Court

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For doing this good deed:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that prosecuting these medical marijuana users under a 1970 federal law is unconstitutional if the marijuana isn’t sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes.

Volokh blogger Randy Barnett argued and won this case and he provides technical details and more links here.
We need more like this:

The decision was a blow to the Justice Department, which argued that medical marijuana laws in nine states were trumped by the Controlled Substances Act, which outlawed marijuana, heroin and a host of other drugs nationwide.

No, what we really need is for the myriad local, state and federal drug laws to be eliminated.
Via Talkleft.

Congress Critters aren’t Immune Either

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Immune to what? The same thing as the police in the last post: wasting their time (not worth much) and ours with laws that should not exist in the first place.
Nick at Hit & Run tells us about Rep. Doug Ose’s (R-Calif.) current important legislation:

to increase the FCC’s infamous seven dirty words to eight (by doubling up on versions of “asshole”).
No grammatical novice, Ose wants to ban noun forms as well as “verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms” of the words too terrible to speak. Ose is pissed–excuse me, peeved–that U2 frontman Bono got away with saying “fucking” during the Golden Globes Award broadcast a while back.

Ose is not alone in his concern nastiness on the airwaves:

The FCC’s enforcement bureau ruled that Bono’s utterance was neither indecent nor obscene because it did not describe a sexual function.
Sens. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and 11 Republicans, including Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), introduced a resolution last week blasting the FCC’s ruling on Bono.

These critters need to spend more time at home relaxing instead of worrying about our sensitve ears. Get rid of the rules/laws and let folks use the tuner to listen to whatever makes them happy.
Nick closes his post with this question:

Question for all you amateur lawyers out there: Would it be illegal to go on TV and call Ose a fucking asshole who’s wasting everyone’s time with shit like this?

I don’t know about the legality but I do know that the expletives whether used as above or by Bono add no value to the discourse so why use them in the first place.