Investigating Mars via Lawsuit

By NASA / JPL / University of Arizona [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It’s hard to tell, but the Face is expressing great disappointment right now.

A self-proclaimed astrobiologist has filed a petition for a writ of mandamus against NASA and NASA Chief Administrator Charles Bolden, seeking to compel it to investigate possible alien life on Mars (h/t). If you have access to the PACER online database, you can access the court file here, but the complaint is also available on Scribd.

Remember when a mysterious rock appeared in front of Opportunity, the rover that has been tooling around Mars for over a decade? It led to a bit of wild speculation as to how it might have gotten there, but scientists tend to take a cautious approach when forming hypotheses.

For one Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D., however, NASA scientists are not speculating nearly wildly enough. He saw the picture of the rock and thought it looked familiar, since (begin sarcasm) an object on Mars will obviously have immediate analogues here on Earth. He claims that he:

immediately recognized that bowl-shaped structure…as resembling a mushroom-like fungus, a composite organism consisting of colonies of lichen and cyanobacteria, and which on Earth is known as Apothecium.

Then he magnified an earlier picture of the same area, saw what he claims are spores, which would grow into an apothecium, and so on. NASA apparently did not come to the same conclusion right away, so he filed a pro se lawsuit seeking a writ of mandamus, by which a court would compel NASA to, um, investigate or something. It would involve “close up photos from various angles” and “microscopic images of the specimen,” for a start. Continue reading

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Lewd Asian Women

Several friends will be performing an original play entitled L.A.W. Lewd Asian Women starting next week. The play is based in part on a 19th-century court case involving 22 women from China who were detained by immigration officials in San Francisco based solely on the conclusion of one commissioner that they were “lewd and debauched.” The case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the California statute in question in Chy Lung v. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275 (1875).

KUT aired an interview with the cast about the show (hopefully the embed function works here):

The show runs Fridays and Saturdays, beginning February 28 and ending March 8, 2014, at the Salvage Vanguard Theater in Austin. Tickets might sell out, so you should buy some and go to the show.

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A Brief Bit of Font Fun

This is completely neither here nor there, but I find it amusing that the official style manual for the New Jersey state judicial system, the New Jersey Manual on Style for Judicial Opinions (PDF file), uses the Comic Sans font.

Screen Shot 2014-02-18 at 5.09.45 PM

Do as you will with this information.

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Texas Can’t Get Too Smug Over Russia

In the midst of everyone’s rush to give Putin’s Russia (much deserved) grief over the country’s law banning “homosexual propaganda” or whatever, the Washington Post published an article identifying eight U.S. states with laws that, while nowhere near the Russian law in letter, might seem close to it in spirit. The U.S. state laws, commonly known as “no promo homo” laws, presumably by people who never expect to have to say that out loud, apply specifically to public education regarding teh gayz. Unlike Russia’s law, they do not include provisions for incarceration and whatnot.

The Texas statute is worth examining, provided that any such examination is followed by peals of derisive laughter and ruthless mockery at our backwards legislators. Texas Health & Safety Code § 163.002(8) provides as follows:

Course materials and instruction relating to sexual education or sexually transmitted diseases should include…emphasis, provided in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under Section 21.06, Penal Code.

I see four glaring problems here:

  1. “Emphasis, provided in a factual manner.” The absurdity of this provision should become clear once it is demonstrated that nothing following it in the statute is in any way factual.
  2. “From a public health perspective.” Similarly, this really does not apply to either of the assertions that follow.
  3. “Homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” This might have been sort of true in 1991, when the Legislature passed this particular statute, but times have undoubtedly changed and continue to change, and it was never really the public’s business anyway. What happened to liberty, Texas Legislature? I guess that only applies to things you don’t personally find icky, right?
  4. “Homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under Section 21.06, Penal Code.” This was certainly true in 1991, but it hasn’t been true since 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that specific statute in Lawrence v. Texas. The fact that the Legislature hasn’t bothered to take it off the books in the subsequent decade is pretty embarrassing. Not as embarrassing, of course, as the law mandating that schools continue to teach kids that a statute ten years in its constitutional grave still has legal force.

EDIT (02/13/2014): Edited to correct a spelling error – “times have undoubtedly change” should say “times have undoubtedly changed.”

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Alabama’s Bold Legal Stand

[Trigger warning: Well, sort of. I shall allude to sexual assault and animal abuse in this post, but will also generally discuss things that some people might find inappropriate in polite company.]

andrewp001 on stock.xchng

Whatever feelings you have about this picture, please keep them to yourself.

Alabama’s state senate took a bold stand against bestiality last month, passing a bill that would make it illegal.

Wait, it wasn’t already illegal?

Nope. And it’s not in Texas, either—at least not expressly so.

Only 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have statutes specifically prohibiting sexual contact with animals. I’m of two minds on this, really. On the one hand, I am all for protecting animals, who, as far as any of us know, cannot consent to sexual activity with a human. On the other hand, do we actually need another law?

One state where it is expressly illegal is Louisiana, where a man was arrested last summer for alleged sex with livestock. He has been charged with four counts of “crime against nature.” I do not like the sound of that statute. Continue reading

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A Friendly Legal Reminder

It’s illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Chief Wiggum says so. Continue reading

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Tell John Peter Smith Hospital Where to Send Their Bill

John Peter Smith Hospital, the Fort Worth hospital that interpreted Texas law to require them to keep a pregnant woman on life support long after she was medically considered dead, and against her family’s wishes, might now be trying to bill the family for several months of unconsented and unwanted treatment.

For what it’s worth, sign this petition if you don’t think that’s right (h/t Jennifer).

You might also tell Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and your state legislators how you feel.

The law in question is a 1999 addition to the Texas Health & Safety Code, § 166.049:

PREGNANT PATIENTS. A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.

The key there is “life-sustaining.” Part of the dispute was whether the hospital should keep a patient who, it was generally agreed, was brain dead on life support.

Not at all surprisingly, Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, doesn’t get it.


I’d say shame on you, Rep. Zedler, but we both know it wouldn’t do any good, don’t we?

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I Wonder If Treasury Has an Accounts Payable Department

I don’t know much about Skinny Puppy or their music, but a few minutes on YouTube suggests two things: (1) I would have loved them when I was 16 and going through my industrial music phase, and (2) a whole lot of their music, played very loud and against my will, would probably make me very suggestible.

It should not be much of a surprise, then, to learn that the U.S. government has reportedly used their music on Guantanamo detainees, and not during recreation time. They also apparently did not clear any music rights.

Did Skinny Puppy, from the great socialist northern neighbor, Canada, sue the government? No, they did perhaps the most capitalist thing imaginable: they sent the government an invoice. Continue reading

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Did Someone Say Slippery Slope?

Murder in the House by Jakub Schikaneder [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsIn case you were worried about all those religious exemption cases (e.g. Hobby Lobby, etc.) creating some sort of slippery slope towards justifying all sorts of otherwise-unlawful acts in the name of sincere religious beliefs, you might be on to something: convicted (and admitted) murderer Scott Roeder wants his murder conviction reduced to voluntary manslaughter because, basically, of his religious beliefs.

Almost five years ago, the life of a man – a physician and father of four widely regarded as kind, compassionate, and dedicated to his patients – was abruptly ended. On a Sunday in late May of 2009, while Dr. George Tiller handed out flyers at his church in Wichita, Kansas, he was shot in the head at point blank range by Scott Roeder. What had Dr. Tiller done wrong? He was a doctor who provided legal, constitutionally protected medical care to women. But all Scott Roeder saw was an abortion provider, and Scott Roeder believes that abortion is wrong.

So he killed him.

Roeder has already been convicted of first-degree murder. But today the Kansas Supreme Court will hear further arguments about Roeder’s crime. Though he fully admits to killing Dr. Tiller, Roeder appealed his conviction, and is asserting that he should be guilty only of voluntary manslaughter. In Kansas, voluntary manslaughter, an “imperfect self-defense,” allows a defendant to argue that he truly believed in the moment that he was justified in using deadly force. In this case, that means that Roeder is asking for a lesser sentence for killing Dr. Tiller because Roeder truly believes that abortion is wrong. As my colleagues have written before, Roeder is asking the court to conclude that “vigilantism is okay if you really mean it.”

Under Kansas law, “voluntary manslaughter” is defined in part as: Continue reading

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A Quick Refresher on Defamation Law

A Hypocrite and Slanderer by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia CommonsStatements of opinion are protected by the First Amendment, and therefore are not actionable as defamation, e.g. “In my opinion, he has molested and tortured data…” or “I think he has molested and tortured data.” Your choice of words might make you sound like an ass, but you have the right to sound like an ass.

Untrue statements presented as fact are not protected by the First Amendment, and therefore may be subject to a defamation claim, e.g. “He has molested and tortured data…” It becomes a question of fact for a jury as to whether the statement is false, and whether the person made the statement with actual malice as to its falsity:

A judge for the D.C. Superior Court on Thursday refused to let libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and conservative news site National Review off the hook from a defamation lawsuit brought by climatologist Michael Mann, saying the sites’ musings about the accuracy of Mann’s research may not be protected by the First Amendment.

Mann had sued the outlets in 2012, claiming they published defamatory articles accusing him of academic fraud and comparing him to a convicted child molester, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Specifically, Mann alleged that CEI published — and then National Review republished — an article calling Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”

Judge Frederick H. Weisberg on Thursday ruled that while “opinions and rhetorical hyperbole” are protected speech under the First Amendment, accusing a climate scientist of lying about his seemingly factual data is serious enough to warrant defamation claims.

“The allegedly defamatory aspect of this sentence is the statement that plaintiff ‘molested and tortured data,’ not the rhetorically hyperbolic comparison to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky,” Judge Weisberg wrote.

In my opinion, the statements at issue in this lawsuit constitute defamation.

Photo credit: A Hypocrite and Slanderer by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

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