The family of Ben Martinez, 80, allege that Reverend Scott Mansfield said he was “living in sin,” “lukewarm in his faith” and that “the Lord vomited people like Ben out of his mouth to hell”.

Gotta love the imagery in that last sentence. G-D hugging the porcelain while St. Peter holds His hair out of the way, muttering all the while, “next time, none of this ‘free will’ stuff, I’m going to micromanage them from conception to death, install a PS2 controller at the base of the spine for them.”

Meanwhile, the bereaved family sues. This ugly scene could had been avoided if the Mother Church still traded in indulgences.

He should be thankful he wasn’t treated like the terrorist he is.

The document walks you through the process of writing a petition, using the analogy of developing code or documentation according to a written spec.

The lawsuit you prevent may be your own.

Judge: Come on, Mr Lovelace! I think you are still being given the run-around here. You can do better than that. At least, for the sake of the English bar, I hope you can.

I’d bring “Ally McBeal” back from cancellation long enough for the writers to use that transcript.

HURIDOCS already have controlled vocabularies and formats for documenting abuses of human rights, but are going to the developer and human rights communities to see if there’s interest in XMLizing them.

Woah, I bet you might not have been expecting that conclusion…

A reasonable person would have to presume that Bush, while he wouldn’t admit to it, must love this whole Pledge and G-D business. It’s red meat for evangelicals and conservatives. They get to beat up on their favorite targets, the Courts and non-Christians. But hey, this time it was bi-partisan, with everyone in Congress falling over themselves to swear fealty to G-D and flag. It’s tragic to think these people were elected to uphold the Consitution, when they seem more interested in salving the wounded pride of an evangelical mob.

At least Bush had the decency to trot out Paul O’Neil to say something about WorldCom crashing into the NASDAQ. I wonder if he wore wraparound shades.

I would had rather the 9th Circuit had run this by a full panel, instead of three judges, first. Getting a rulling from a full panel would had taken some of the fire out of the predictable reaction. And this is one of those matters which will go to the Supremes.

But the problem with raising the question about G-D and the Pledge (which, modulo the G-D thing, I think should be done away with because free people don’t need to swear an oath to be free, but that’s moot because the Supremes don’t see it that way), is if the High Court agrees with the current judgement of the 9th Circuit, then, given the reaction we saw from the Congress, we’re going to see an effort to put an ill-considered patch on the Consitution that will bite us in the ass later.

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