It’s Day Five in the Boston Herald’s Tony Scalia Made An Obscene Gesture Crisis.

By now I wish my almost favorite Supreme Court Justice really had flipped-off the delicate reporters from the Herald, and then thrown a gavel at them. Followed by a chair.

If you know the name Ben Domenech, which I didn’t a week ago, then you don’t need to read this, this, this, this, or this.

I admit to being tempted to take shots at the figuratively speaking wounded Mr. Domenech, who stridently opposed impure conservatives, but I don’t really get my jollies from that kind of misfortune (I see conservatism as fairly big tent, some of which doesn’t even fit under the G.O.P.’s even bigger tent, but some conservatives are of the opinion that conservatism is a certain something something that you either belive in or you’re not a conservative).

Clearly Mr. Domenech wasn’t the right man to write for Washington Post’s Red America blog. But the more interesting question is whether the Post should have such a blog at all?

Since newspapers have opinion columnists, often at least one who consistently opposes the newspaper’s editorial line, it would seem quite natural to add opinion blogging to the its offerings. On the other hand, there is no shortage of bloggers out there, and, as the Post has learned the hard way, it’s hard to find really good ones. Why spend precious dollars on opinion-mongers whose voices would be readily available to readers anyway?

I guess there are two reasons: Links and personalities.

Links are a valuable asset for any website, not just because they drive users to the site through clicks, but also because they make Google and other search engines think more highly of your site. If you have a right-leaning or out-right right-wing blogger on a major news website you can expect to get a lot of links from right-wing bloggers. The same obviously works for left-wing bloggers if you have a Lefty blogger on your site. An opinion blogger is, in other words, a goldmine of links for a news site.

The other reason is that a good blogger can become quite a personality within his or her niche, and well-known and not-quite-so-well-know people can also be valuable assets. For one thing, they can easily get more media exposure, which gives their employer/organization more publicity. A few years ago I worked at a new media company - a search engine! a portal! a destination! - that had a handful of popular services, not top of the line popular, mind you, but still popular, but the company had nobody who could pick up the phone and be somebody to anybody at a media outlet. Well, we eventually had one guy, actually, and he did score some mentionings in various places, but he was poorly cultivated and he never became the go to guy in his niche.

Obviously, the Post doesn’t lack personalities, if you pardon the interruption, but I don’t think it has people who can instantly connect with right or left-wingers. Having an opinion blogger of the right kind of stripe would presumably give the newspaper a leg up when it comes to wooing the most intensely partisan audiences.

I’m not saying links and personalities are good reasons or ROI-appropriate reasons for newspapers and other major news sites to hire bloggers, only that those are two pretty good reasons that I can think of (I certainly don’t buy the “balance” argument, that is, that newspapers should get right-wing opinionators to balance left-wing reporters: You don’t balance slanted reporting with slanted opinionating, you balance it with good editing).

However, if newspapers go down the opinion blogger route, they’ll likely find more landmines like those the Post stepped on during the Domenech fiasco. For one thing, bloggers don’t enjoy editors or other sanity filters/quality checks. What may seem as plagiarsim to an editor may just be a sloppy post in the eyes of an amateur blogger. For another, a blogger may well come across as reasonable on his or her own blog, but may have some kee-rayy-zee views that he or she posts anonymously on various message boards or blogs. It won’t be so much fun if your newly hired middle-of-the-road, health-care-for-all! progressive blogger is exposed as a closeted enviro-terrorism cheerleader.

One last thing, regarding the name of Domenech’s Post blog: Red America. The Red/Blue divide is almost entirely a white thing. Black voters, most of whom live in the red states, aren’t split like that. They’re overwhelmingly Democrat everywhere. It’s also unlikely that Hispanic voters, who are much less numerous than black voters, follow the Red/Rlue divide, although Mexicans may be somewhat more right-leaning in Texas than in California. Though I am a conservative in Massachusetts, I am quite comfortable here and I certainly don’t think of myself as some poor “red stater” in a “blue state.” Red/Blue is good for remembering how states voted in the last presidential election, but not for describing how Americans approach politics or life or culture or religion and all those other things that Red/Blue is supposed to do. At least not if you’re talking about those more than 30% of Americans who aren’t white.

So, really, what does the Religion of Peace have to say about somebody who wants to leave it?

“The Quran is very clear, and the words of our prophet are very clear. There can only be one outcome: death,” said cleric Khoja Ahmad Sediqi, who is also a member of the Supreme Court.

Here’s what I said about Crash, Best Motion Picture of 2005. Now check out this article, one of many from Saturday’s anti-anti-illegal-immigration rally in Los Angeles.

Mickey Kaus counted flags at the rally.

Universal Hub heter en av de bästa bloggarna i Boston. Förra veckan bytte den sin ursprungliga look till en ny, en som är ren och skär MUF/MSU “Frihet ger fred” a la tidigt 1980-tal: Den ljusblå färgen, typsnittet, t.o.m. måsjäveln!

Löntagarfonder? Helknäppt!

(Oh boy. Adam linked here based on a somewhat halting though mostly accurate translation. Here’s my own translation of the blurb above:

“Timless MUF/MSU-style lives on

Universal Hub is the name of one of the best blogs in Boston. Last week it changed its original look to one that’s pure MUF/MSU “Freedom gives peace” a la early 1980’s: The light-blue color, the font, even the damn seagull!

Salary-taking funds? Nuts!”

(”Freedom gives peace” sounds like a pretty stilted translation. “Peace through freedom” or “Freedom makes peace” or some such is probably better.

Some explanations: MUF was the largest center-right/right-of-center political youth organization when I was a kid. It was a radically libertarian and anti-communist group. MSU was its high-school K-12 sister organization. I was pretty active in MSU for a few years, but after spending a year in North America in the mid-80’s I became entirely too conservative for it - although, to be fair, I had been part of its then-dying and now long dead conservative-ish faction from the get go.

“Freedom” was the rallying cry for center-right kids back then, while leftists wanted “peace” above all else. You see, back then, there was this country called the Soviet Union, and people like me didn’t like that country at all, while other kids were like “dude, sure the Soviet Union is bad but America is just as bad!” (Those people also listened to Howard Jones, I’m sure). Yeah, that’s the kind of back and forth we had in those days.

“Salary-taking funds” was some bizarre scheme that was one of the top two issues in Sweden back then (nuclear energy was the other one).)

A consequence of leaving your native country is that you gradually fall out of touch with it and its culture. Things that used to be important in your Old Country fade away without you having any idea about it happening. New things pop up, things you’ve never heard of and have no idea of how or why they popped up.

Like Nordic Walking. Yes, technically, Nordic Walking was invented by a Finnish company to sell more poles, but you know, Swedes, Finns, Scandinavians, Swiss, they’re all the same, more or less.

Nordic Walking became an overnight sensation in Europe in the mid-1990’s, according to the Boston Globe and it may well be correct. I’ve just never heard of it before. Never. N-E-V-E-R. When I saw a picture of Nordic Walkers my first reaction was “so they’re mountain hikers with out a mountain. Big deal.” But no, they’re Nordic Walkers.

You can even take a class in Nordic Walking. That’s right, you can take a class in…walking?

Jay Fitzgerald over at HubBlog is as confounded as I am:

Anyway, what’s ‘Nordic walking’? Why, it’s, well, walking with a walking stick. Or actually two walking sticks. But now you get to buy special Nordic-walking ski poles, Nordic-walking shoes, Nordic-walking tight-fitting spandex pants and fleece, and, perhaps, one day, if we’re really lucky, special Nordic-walking hats with cute wool tassels and, perhaps, even Nordic-walking helmets for the little ones. The yuppies are going to lap it up.

Some rival company should strike back with Power Herding - “based on the techniques used by Italian shepherds to traverse rugged mountains!” PowerHerding.com is available. Go for it, people!

(Am I hearing a Brokeback Herding joke?)

This is not at all a brawl-porn post, but, in fact, a thoughtful analysis of the use of surveillance camera evidence in a recent trial in the United Kingdom.

But first, the brawl porn:

English hooligans clash with each other and attack random people before a game against Wales in Manchester in 2004 (opens in new window, double click the movie to get full screen viewing - please note that there’s graphic violence in this clip).

All those clips were captured by the nearly omni-present surveillance cameras that dot cities and towns in the United Kingdom. The cameras obviously provided valuable evidence in the trial. Without such evidence it can be difficult to get convictions since eyewitnesses often have a hard time remembering whom they actually saw do what. Their memories become blurs of kicks and punches and people running and yelling, and that’s just not conducive to getting convictions.

On the other hand, all those cameras did nothing to prevent or stop the violence when it happened. They just recorded what was going on, just as they always record what’s going on, crime or no crime. Even with all those cameras, it still took a year and a half to get convictions.

But then again, to be honest, if I were mugged and the crime was captured on a camera, wouldn’t I be happy to have that evidence available to the prosecution? of course I would. But what if the camera missed the first few seconds of the mugging and only capture the last few where I punch the assailant in self-defence, only the camera doesn’t show that, it just shows me punching a guy for no reason?

No, at the end of the day, I just don’t see surveillance cameras as the way to go. We need cops, we need citizens who look out for each other, we need families who raise so many good guys that the bad ones are swamped. Surveillance cameras move strength - moral strength, in particular - from individuals and communities to government. The latter has far too much power as it is today, and far to little is bestowed on the former.

Yes, back in the days there was Tony Franklin, but he was a penthouse to the outhouse back to the penthouse player, as he once said himself.

But Franklin was no Adam Vinatieri. Vinatieri was always on top of his game, but never one you’d think of as a penthouse guy. Adam wasn’t just a kicker, not just the best clutch-kicker ever in football, but an actual football player.

And now he’s gone to the Indy Colts, America’s Whiniest Team, where he’ll be mopping up the perennial shortcomings of the Manning & Dungy Underperformance Express. Considering Vinatieri’s stature, he’ll probably be waving the Colts’ offense off the field on 4th&2. Heck, maybe he’ll even throw a touchdown pass to himself.

The I saw It With My Own Eyes: Adam Vinatieri score a two-point conversion against the Buffalo Bills after Ben Coates had hauled in a last second game-winning touchdown pass from Drew Bledose, prompting the somewhat robbed Bills to leave the PAT uncontested. It was in 1998.

A distant relative of mine was the mascot for the Jackrabbits in the mid-1990’s. He’s got a picture of himself posing with then-South Dakota State University kicker Adam Vinatieri. Pretty cool. I never got to see Vinatieri himself, but I did visit his then-homefield in 1994. It’s a great place, but trust me, when I was there, I wasn’t thinking “this is where the Patriots will find their Super Bowl winning player.”

Thank you, Adam Vinatieri, for all the memories.

(Update: Gino Cappelletti wasn’t just a kicker but also a receiver. Had he been a full-time kicker I don’t think he would have been much remembered. Hence, Adam Vinatieri, the only kicker we ever loved).

The little town of Newfane, Vermont, is making a name for itself by voting to impeach President George W. Bush. That’s a pretty silly thing to do, of course, but I find it hard to believe that a small town in Vermont - an ur-American type of town, if you will - is a “disgrace to America” or will bring down America, as some its critics claim.

What’s interesting is that the impeachment resolution passed with 121 votes to 29, suggesting a homogenity that comes close to making the town more or less a private club where all the members share the same values. And that’s just about my favorite kind of small town!

Although I’d prefer one that didn’t impeach our President for defending the country against Muslim terrorists.

[Update: Stupid typos fixed.]

Odd-ball story in the Boston Herald:

The family of a New York teenager is accusing his school district of violating his civil rights by sending him to a Massachusetts school that uses electric-shock therapy to treat people with behavioral problems.

Antwone Nicholson, 17, was routinely shocked whenever he swore or did not cooperate with staff at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, where the Freeport Union Free School District sent him when he was 14, according to the notice of intent to sue that his family filed last week.

The school uses what is call “aversion” therapy on students whose behavior can’t be properly modified with less severe regiments. The Herald explains:

The average student [in aversion therapy] receives one two-second jolt per week, he said, although some receive as many as 50 shocks a day.

And here comes the obligatory reference to something unpleasant that people are more familiar with:

The New York State Department of Education does not allow students to be disciplined with corporal punishment, but refers children to the center because Massachusetts has yet to ban corporal punishment of disabled people. “What we’re doing is essentially exporting our torture since we can’t do it here,” Mollins said. “I think people in Massachusetts need to ask why they’re allowing this to go on in their state.”

Why shouldn’t we want to take New York tax-money in return for jolting the Empire State’s obnoxious residents? Hey, send us some Yankees fans!