Master pranksters The Yes Men crashed the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary this week, impersonating a rep from the National Petroleum Council at a keynote in which they proposed to convert people who died from climate change disasters into fuel.

Hah!

Boing Boing: Yes Men crash oil expo, propose turning corpses into fuel

Earlier today, a judge threw out Genarlow Wilson’s sentence of 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

The judge also amended his conviction to a misdemeanor, not a felony, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I think this should be read as justice being served.

Or not... an appeal is delaying his release.

Creative Loafing Atlanta » Fresh Loaf » Blog Archive » Genarlow Wilson’s a free man

Seconds later, the judge announced his decision: “The defendant is remanded to county jail to serve the remainder of her 45-day sentence. This order is forthwith.”

Hilton screamed.

Eight deputies immediately ordered all spectators out of the courtroom. Hilton’s mother, Kathy, threw her arms around her husband, Rick, and sobbed uncontrollably.

Deputies escorted Hilton out of the room, holding each of her arms as she looked back.

Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.

This is obscene. We have a lawless and barely sane president, a hopeless war in which American soldiers and innocent Iraqis die daily, condone torture, hold people without charge or trial, a viciously repressive Right who would utterly demolish the constitution in favor of a religious totalitarian surveillance state, oil companies fleecing the public for billions and this, THIS FUCKING SPOILED BRAT is commanding our national attention?

Her attorneys should be summarily disbarred for having no fucking clue about anything. There's some rumor that they plan to file a fucking writ of habeas corpus. How much fucking nerve can people have, that they think their money truly should mean that they are above the law.

If this had been a poor black kid in Atlanta, or, for that matter, ME, well, never mind, the double standard is just too fucking glaring to need more elucidation.

She should be getting extra days for each fucking ridiculous outburst she makes. You don't get out of jail because it sucks in there, that's the fucking point. And get her off the road, forever, she's lost that "right" in my book.

Every time I think we've hit bottom in this country I realize how wrong I am. We're completely fucked from top to bottom. It's incredible we haven't already collapsed from our own obscenity.

Judge orders Paris Hilton back to jail - Celebrity News - MSNBC.com

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.

As my compatriot r (who is the supernicety, in these parts) says, "everyone wants tort reform until they are hurt."

The level of cognitive dissonance this kind of thing should create in Bork's brain ought to be sufficient to cause hemorrhages. Instead, selfishness and hypocrisy make such people capable of spewing forth about the evil of trial lawyers without even a hint of introspection.

What a fucking piece of work.

ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society: Leading Conservative Activist Seeks Punitive Damages

In search of the ultimate sushi experience, the author plunges into the frenzy of the world's biggest seafood market—Tokyo's Tsukiji, where a bluefin tuna can fetch more than $170,000 at auction—and discovers the artistry between ocean and plate, as well as some fishy surprises.

Fascinating.

If You Knew Sushi: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com

Now that Paris Hilton is settling into her expected 23-day stay in jail for transgressions against mankind, one can only hope that her stay in the pokey will erase, or at least dilute, the delusional and masochistic qualities that seem to swarm in her DNA.

On the red carpet, here's what Paris told us: "I feel like the media portrays me in a way that I'm not."

Huh? How's that?

Oh, you mean the sex tapes? Or the party tapes featuring Paris spewing ugly racial and homophobic epithets? Or did she mean the let's-humiliate-Lindsay Lohan "firecrotch" tape? Or was it the new season of "The Simple Life" in which the opening episode featured her and Nicole Richie as camp counselors at a so-called "Fat Camp" where they squealed in seeming delight as they administered enemas to overweight campers?

...

And served a softball, [Sarah Silverman] cranked her bat like a propeller and knocked it out of the park. After announcing that Paris was going to jail, a roar of cheers went up from the crowd as Paris squirmed in her seat. And then came Silverman's crack of the bat. "As a matter of fact, I heard that to make her feel more comfortable in prison, the guards are going to paint the bars to look like penises."

How America turned a dumb blond who likes to do amateur porn into a star is anyones guess. Nice to see things in perceptive every now and again.

[ You'll note, however, that we're still talking about her, which is all it takes.

I don't think it's anyone's guess at all. It's pretty clear how this all came to be, and it's mostly depressing.

(pedant note, I believe you meant "perspective" ;) -k]

Paris and Prison

Super-wow. Really, just, um, yeah.

agentbedhead.com - pretty fly for a white girl

"I feel awful," he said, speaking through a mask from his hospital room in Denver, Colorado. "I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety for a week now, and to think that some else now is feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way.

"I don't expect those people to ever forgive me. I just hope they understand that I truly never meant them any harm."

Oh really? The only possible excuse would be not knowing you were infected prior to the traveling. But since you both did know *and* took extraordinary measures to avoid detection by border security, all the above sounds like a giant pack of lies.

You can't willfully endanger others and then say you didn't mean them any harm. At the very least, you didn't give two shits one way or another.

I'm almost completely unsympathetic to his plight.

U.S. border security scrutinized after TB patient slips in - CNN.com

close to home?

Wellington Grey -- Miscellanea -- Of Angels, Monkeys and Fat Men

But if you don’t think it was waged on behalf of oil or empire, then one reason for our involvement was an attempt to do some good — rid the world of a really bad guy and make life better for Iraqis and others in the region. This “liberal” intent may have left Dick Cheney cold and found Don Rumsfeld indifferent, but it appealed to Bush and it showed in his rhetoric and body language.

This is too depressing for words. Cohen thinks that Bush sincerely cares about helping “make life better for the Iraqi people.” And how does he know this? Is it from watching Bush’s actions? No! It’s from watching his “rhetoric and body language!” Wow, that’s some hard-hitting skeptical journalism right there!

...

Contrast it to the position of the so-called foreign policy realists, exemplified by the first President Bush and his trusted foreign policy sidekick, Brent Scowcroft. It was their decision — cold realism at its best — to end the Persian Gulf War with Saddam Hussein still in power and not to intervene when Hussein later decimated rebellious Shiites in the south. Realistic? Sure. But also sickening.

Bu-bu-but… th… g… holy crap. Richard. You just told us what a disaster the Iraq war was. And now you find the fact that Bush I and Scowcroft wisely decided against plunging us into this national nightmare to be “sickening?” Oh. My. God. Fly me to another country. Fly me to another planet. I refuse to accept that I’m the same species as the people who write for the Post’s editorial page.

Sadly, No! » Fire Richard Cohen