So..in addition to being a thoroughly reprehensible collection of mendacious censorious nitwits, the National Organization for Marriage also appear to be a collection of scofflaws in multiple states and legal jurisdictions. I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked...
Warren Sapp, the former Bucaneers and Raiders player, files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Given that his debts and his assets almost exactly match, I am wondering why he decided to file Chapter 7 now. He lives in Florida, which has a generous homestead bankruptcy exemption (his house is untouchable to pay off creditors). On the surface though, this should be ample material for the 2012 NFL Rookie Symposium...Sapp made a lot of money in his NFL career, but it seems to have mostly been dissipated, with extra-curricular child creation being a significant drain on his cash flow.
On to another football story...former Florida Gators QB Chris Leak, who led the Gators to a BCS Championship, but who then bounced around the NFL and CFL for several seasons, seemingly unable to catch on for any length of time anywhere, returned to Jacksonville to join the Jacksonville Sharks of the Arena Football League. However, that homecoming lasted...one game. After throwing 5 touchdowns in the Shark's opening game, which they won, Leak was told that he would be replaced in the next game by his backup Omar Jacobs. What exactly happened after that is still unclear, but the net result is that Chris Leak has left the Jacksonville Sharks, and that the Sharks, with Omar Jacobs under center, proceeded to lose their next two games and are now 1-2. Just by the numbers, you would have to say that the decision to bench Leak has not worked out well.

With the Bounties scandal still reverberating around the NFL (and no, I am not going to use any word ending in Gate to describe it, that is utterly childishly non-inventive), Profootball Talk is pointing out the relationship between the bounty system apparently employed by the New Orleans Saints and the often-abused injury reporting system operated by the NFL.
The NFL injury reporting system is a game of charades. Originally introduced with the laudable aim of preventing inside information about team injuries from being used for nefarious purposes, the system is routinely abused by all NFL teams. Most commonly, teams obfuscate about injuries, to avoid giving opponents any information that they can use (like, for example, going after specific players known to be carrying injuries, which is where the bounty scandal comes into play...). Some teams may even create injuries in an attempt to deceive upcoming opponents.
Profootball Talk tries to suggest changes to the NFL injury reporting system to make it less useless than it currently is. However, this is all a band-aid that covers up the current underlying issue. Right now players try to play while injured, and teams often let them. That being the case, the only change likely to have long term success is for teams to stop allowing injured players on the field.
Until (and unless) players are fully fit when taking the field of play, any opponent that knows about injuries can be expected to target an injured player.
Making this change will be difficult and will take time, given the current macho culture of the game. It will require two changes:
1. Teams will have to prevent injured players from playing (which they should, in many cases, have been doing all along e.g. concussions)
2. The NFL will have to be prepared to penalize times who are found to have played injured players, by applying draconian penalties to any violations (as in, loss of game points, draft picks etc.).

(1) is going to require teams to monitor player health more closely, and to refuse to allow players carrying significant injuries that can be aggravated or compounded by further wear and tear or contact to suit up for games.
(2) is going to require NFL leadership to grow a spine
Proper implementation will probably require changes to the CBA to broaden the scope of Injured Reserve or create a new Injured list to allow players with less severe injuries to be temporarily assigned to the Injured list during the season. If that is not done, clubs will start releasing run-of-the-mill players with injury settlements if they are forced to wait until they are fully fit, and try to put important players on injured reserve.
IMHO, tinkering with the injury reporting system is just that - tinkering. It will merely paper over the cracks until a player suffers a catastrophic injury caused by them already being injured and not fully recovered, at which point the shit will hit the fan, all hell will break loose, and, as is normally the case, a collection of not-very-smart decisions are made in a hurry.
UPDATE - I am aware that a properly organized campaign to reduce injuries in a collision sport also needs to take into account the laws of physics. One area where the NFL has changed dramatically in the last 20 years is player size and strength. When William "Refrigerator" Perry first appeared in the NFL, people were aghast at his sheer size and power, but today players of his size are common. The increase in both size and speed has increased the kinetic energy of collisions dramatically, increasing the chances that eventually a serious injury (as in, player is not going to function fully again, ever) or a death will eventually occur in a game. The NFL needs to be considering how to address that other fundamental issue. My personal opinion is that they may need to introduce an upper weight limit for players at various positions. Nearly every heavyweight player in the NFL "eats up" to that weight, so a weight limit of (say) 300 pounds would probably be workable. Without it, I live in fear that one day we will have to watch endless replays of a player leaving the field having suffering life-changing or life-terminating injuries in a collision.

When you are involved in a motorbike accident, and it emerges that you had a young lady passenger who was not your wife, but you arranged for that material information to be covered up, you are either going to end up in a heap of personal hurt, or professional hurt, possibly both. In the case of Bobby Petrino, it's both.
Marine Lt. Gary Stein's hearing has ended with a recommendation to the chain of command that he be dismissed from the Marines. Further evidence emerged during the hearing confirming that Stein is a childish douchebag - superimposing puerile and racist slogans on pictures of the President is the sort of thing that most people grow out of by their junior year in high school. If the recommendation for his dismissal is upheld, the time may be right for an appeal on the grounds that the UCMJ unfairly restricts free speech, although, given the deference that just about everybody in government and the judicial branch has for the military in the USA, I am not optimistic that any appeal will be successful. There is a clear and compelling case for restricting what military personnel can say in any public forum, lest they reveal operational or classified information, and the challenge is defining the limits to be placed on service personnel when communicating on their own time.
The abuse of the US legislative branch by would-be lawyers continues - a complaint has been filed in California seeking to overturn the rejection of a lady named Peta Lindsay, representing the Peace & Freedom party, for a place on the Presidential election ballot. The complaint is here. The bizarre thing about all of this is that Lindsay does not reach 35 years of age until 2019, and the Constitution clearly states that any candidate must be a minimum of 35 years of age...the complaint is a legally incoherent rant, the only thing missing from it are crayon marks.
Mississippi law may force the state's only abortion clinic to close, but elected representative Dean Kirby actually offered this as one justification for the bill:

"That's what we're trying to stop here, the coat-hanger abortions," Kirby replied, in reference to the abortions provided at the clinic in Jackson. "The purpose of this bill is to stop back-room abortions."

I will leave you to read this and consider whether Rep. Kirby is merely a bloviating political posturer, or whether he actually believes what is quoted there. If it is the latter, then he is a total f**king idiot.
Accountability in most of the USA is on life support a lot of the time these days (remember the infamous phrase "mistakes were made" after 9/11?). In Wisconsin, after two utter cock-ups in election administration, the Waukesha County Clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, has finally agreed to step down. This is probably two bungled elections too late of course, but better late than never. Since Ms. Nickolaus is up for re-election this Fall, it would be nice if the voters of Waukesha County enforced accountability by giving her the heave-ho, but given the tendency of electorates to have short memories and little interest beyond their pocketbook, she might actually get re-elected. Failure to enforce accountability in Waukesha County could lead to a fiasco along the lines of the one that unfolded in Arapahoe County, CO a few years back, where a County Recorder named Tracy Baker, together with a county employee with whom he was having a relationship, engaged in malfeasance which cost the county a pretty penny in legal settlements and bad publicity. In Arapahoe County, the voters actually initially declined to recall Baker, only finally voting him out of office the second time around in early 2004. Brief summary of the affair and some of the fallout here.

The continuing abuse of asset forfeiture laws continues. These laws have become the thin end of a rapidly thickening wedge to undermine the whole concept of due process in the judicial system.
Ken at Popehat nails the bloviations and posturing on both sides of the fence over the political slogan that is "judicial activism". Please spare us the pearl-clutching, bloviating GOP leaders. Your side has been equally culpable of screeching about court verdicts you don't like. One of your own Presidential primary candidates, Newt Gingrich, recently mused out loud about setting US Marshals on activist judges. Do you remember that, hypocrites?
Fox News reporter Heather Childers floats the latest conspiracy theory about Obama threatening the Clintons on Twitter, then acts puzzled when a number of people lay into her over the sheer idiocy of even treating the idea seriously, pulls Tweets, makes her account private. The low point is her repetition of the modern day journalistic cop-out of "we present both sides, you decide". This is bullcrap. She starts out by treating a conspiracy theory seriously and pretends to be presenting both sides? Stop insulting our intelligence Heather.
Marine Sgt. Gary Stein, who has been expressing some pointed political views on his own personal Facebook page, is currently appearing before a review board to answer allegations that he violated the UCMJ, which forbids conduct contemptuous of the military chain of command, which goes up to and includes the Commander In Chief, one President Obama.
There is a lot of hot air being spread around about Sgt. Stein's First Amendment rights being violated, but as is normal, this misses the point. Sgt. Stein's First Amendment rights were not violated - the fact that he was able to post what he did on Facebook proves that. However, actions have consequences. The First Amendment forbids Congress from abridging freedom of speech, not the military, and the UCMJ has not been declared unconstitutional.
Quite why the ACLU is arguing on behalf of Sgt. Stein puzzles me. If they are arguing that the restrictions in the UCMJ are unconstitutional, that I could understand, but this hearing is not the place to do that. The hearing is about whether Sgt. Stein violated the UCMJ, not whether the UCMJ itself is unconstitutional. If Sgt. Stein is found guilty, then is the time to make that argument via an appeals process. I have limited sympathy for Sgt. Stein based on what I have read. He initially stated that he would not obey any orders from the President, only later did he backtrack to the weasel words "illegal orders", which is almost laughable, given that the UCMJ specifically enojoins soldiers from obeying any illegal order. He strikes me as being contemptuous of the President (which is his right) but also showing a lack of understanding of his duties as a military member to obey all lawful orders from his chain of command, and not denigrate the military by showing a lack of respect for his chain of command. At best he has been naive, at worst he has been deliberately cocking a snook at his C-in-C.
The NFL Bounty scandal rumbles on, with various New Orleans Saints coaches trying to talk their way out of long suspensions today (likely to be unsuccessful), more revelations about Gregg Williams' motivational talks to defensive team members, and admissions by New York Giants players that they openly discussed how to knock opponents out of the game by injuring them,specifically targeting players known to have past injuries (e.g. concussions).
None of this is going to end well for the NFL. Talk about injuring opponents on the field of play in the UK would be actionable as a felony named "conspiracy to cause grevious bodily harm". Contrary to what some players believe, the laws of the land governing violent behavior and assault are not suspended on the field of play in professional sports (ask Todd Bertuzzi or Marty McSorley if you don't believe me). In the UK rugby players have been jailed for violent conduct in games. It is all very well for the NFL to come down hard on the New Orleans Saints, but in order to avoid a lot of bad publicity, they are going to have to punish other examples of intent to injure opponents also. If they do not, the NFL and their 32 clubs may become legally culpable for player injuries if a jury in a court case can be persuaded that the intent was to injure an opponent. A jury of "street people" is going to set the bar for proof of intent a lot lower than a jury composed of former football players.

In case you hadn't noticed, the peculiar group of people who continue to believe that Barack Obama is ineligible for the Presidency are not going away. As all cult members do when their beliefs are not validated by others, they have doubled down on their beliefs and are frantically filing motions to try and have Barack Obama removed from Democratic Party primary ballots in the individual states, where he is the only candidate. So far, as this report shows, they are 0-16 on those state ballot challenges.
One state where they have been attempting this is Arizona, where the courts are about to rule on a complaint that seeks to have Obama removed from the Democratic Party ballot. Lawyers representing Obama have filed a Motion To Dismiss.
The plaintiff has now filed a Motion To Reconsider..
I want you to compare these two motions. You tell me which one is better structured, more tightly argued, and more compelling to a court. Which one would you be more impressed by when you read it? Bear in mind that a Motion To Reconsider should address all of the points in a respondent's Motion To Dismiss...
By the way, you will notice that the Motion To Reconsider refers prominently to the report of Sheriff Arpaio's Cold Case Posse that was unveiled on March 1st. For a number of reasons that I won't go into in detail, but you can read here, that report is NOT a new report that is the result of a full and proper law enforcement investigation. It is a cut-and-paste of information from other sources, and most of that information has already been debunked. By the way, when did you last see a law enforcement body announce that they had found evidence of wrongdoing BEFORE issuing indictments against suspects, and when did you last hear the head of that law enforcement body essentially say "I don't know" when asked what his law enforcement body intends to do in terms of actions on his report?

My partner Mary Long has a new business, Rainpebbles Glass, selling one-of-a-kind fused glass objects. Her store front is here. There is also a link on Facebook.

Over the last 19 years, since Daniel Snyder purchased the Washington Redskins from the estate of the late Jack Kent Cooke, the franchise has under-achieved, and has chewed through head coaches. The replacement of Jim Zorn by Mike Shanahan after the 2009 season was only the latest in a long line of coaching changes that have created something of a a revolving door at the top of the organization.
A brief analysis of team histories shows that stability is a key enabler to high achievement in the NFL. The most consistently successful franchises turn out to be the ones with the fewest top-level coaching changes over time. Frequent coaching changes play havoc with teams. Every new coach wants to install his own system on offense or defense (sometimes both at once), and the tendency on the part of many coaches to pass over more talented players in favor of "system" players means that system changes invariably result in high player and assistant coach turnover.
Having said that, let us take a brief tour of the Washington Redskins coaching and franchise leadership landscape and look at how many of the recent events have violated some fundamental components of what might be termed Leadership and Management 101. Here goes...

1. Conflicts of interest
No matter how charitably you view it, when the head coach hires his son as the offensive co-ordinator, that creates a whopping great conflict of interest. There are so many possible downsides to that scenario I don't know where to start, but the biggest one is that Mike Shanahan is extremely unlikely (I am being charitable the way I phrase that) to ever fire Kyle Shanahan as the offensive co-ordinator if the offense is not functioning correctly. It is also unlikely that any offensive players who are unhappy with the offense are going to be able to promulgate any message to leadership that even hints at issues with Kyle Shanahan's leadership and coaching.
The presence of Kyle and Mike Shanahan makes it highly probable that the offensive approach is going to be some variant of "my way or the highway, no discussion". That leadership style only works in a crisis situation, and it has a limited shelf life even then.

2. Conflicting signals on the #1 quarterback
When a team trades for a quarterback, declares him to the the cornerstone of a franchise, then benches him, cannot get it's story straight about the benching, then signs him to a contract extension that turns out on closer examination to be worth nothing in terms of that quarterback's job security, then benches him for the rest of the season, but keeps him as an offensive captain and has him walk out to the coin toss at the Cowboys game, I think the obvious question is: how seriously dysfunctional is this behaviour? At best it sends utterly conflicting signals concerning the quarterback position, at worst it demonstrates that leadership within the Redskins is not capable of even reading from the same book, never mind staying on the same page.

3. The Albert Haynesworth Saga
The Redskins eventually suspended Albert Haynesworth for the rest of the 2010 season after a long series of run-ins between Haynesworth and the coaching staffs. There was never likely to be a positive resolution to the stand-off, given that the Redskins installed a defensive scheme for the 2010-11 season that Haynesworth had never played in in the NFL before.
Ideally the Redskins would have traded Haynesworth before he became a serious distraction, but he has a current contract lasting until at least the end of 2012 with over $40m in guaranteed money, a contract agreed to by none other than, er, Redskins current leadership. No team is likely to want to assume that contract as part of a trade, and Haynesworth has little incentive to agree to re-structure it because the years up to 2012 are loaded with guaranteed money. A true rock-hard place scenario for the team. Haynesworth still remains under contract until at least 2012 if a new CBA is agreed, and even if the Redskins cut him after 2012 they are going to end up carrying a lot of "dead" money on their cap for the 2013 season.

3. Suing the media
Daniel Snyder filed a defamation lawsuit against the Washington City Paper earlier this year over an article which he alleges contained anti-Semitic smears. A lawyer comments on the lawsuit here, and as you might expect, in addition to wondering out loud why the hell Snyder thinks it is a good idea to file a lawsuit against a local paper that still buys ink by the barrel, he does not think much of the chances of success with the lawsuit:

...Snyder is a public figure, the columnist was making fun of him, and I’ll be shocked if this suit survives a motion for summary judgment.
Snyder might be as good at picking football players as I am at picking out healthy lunch options, but we know he can identify a good lawyer when he sees one. He has got to know that this lawsuit is probably dead in the water. So why did he file it?
I’m forced to believe that the only reason he did this was that he wanted to get a headline calling a newspaper anti-Semitic and possibly gain some public sympathy with a fan base that generally can’t stand him. Most people take claims of anti-Semitism seriously.

I have no idea why the lawsuit was filed, but it merely continues to make Daniel Snyder the story when the phrase "Washington Redskins" is mentioned. Perhaps that is the real reason for the lawsuit, if the on-field product continues to disappoint..

I believe that we are witnessing the same dynamic unfolding in Washington as has unfolded in Dallas, with an egotistical, controlling owner struggling to establish a productive working relationship with his front office and head coach. (Actually it is worse than that; Daniel Snyder seems to be working hard to alienate the local media also, which is something that Jerry Jones, for all his faults, has never done). It seems that Joe Gibbs is the only recent coach that Daniel Snyder feels comfortable with ,judging by Gibbs' appearance with Snyder in the owner's box at a Redskins home game last season. Quite what Mike Shanahan thinks about that visit from Gibbs is anybody's guess.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/06/av-over-yes-campaign-routed

The crushing defeat for the AV system as an alternative to the "first past the post" voting system in the UK convinces me that, on balance, most electorates are dominated by bozos...the existing UK system merely supports the perpetuation of the two-party Labour-Conservative duopoly. Neither party has anything remotely innovative or interesting to offer the electorate most of the time.
One of the reasons why I left the UK was a conviction that real political change was not possible with the perpetuation of the current voting system. (Of course I landed in the USA, which also has its own two party duopoly, but there were other factors pushing me towards moving to the USA). Since I have never voted for either of the two major political parties in either the UK or the USA at national election level, this display of head-in-the-sand dumbassery by the UK electorate changes nothing. I shall continue to support parties and candidates that endorse and support true libertarian principles (note to readers: the Tea Party is populated by a lot of people who are not remotely libertarian in outlook, they are wolves in sheep's clothing).

Link: http://bit.ly/hdOZ00

You would think that one attack of idiocy in a year ought to be enough for a major online retailer like Amazon.
Alas, no.
Before their recent decision to stop supporting WikiLeaks servers on their cloud infrastructure for stated reasons that are, quite simply, nothing more than implausible BS, for which I made the decision to stop buying from them (I already had one order in the system that I could not cancel, but That Is It - Amazon is not going to get a cent from me from now on), Amazon also got into a spat in January 2010 with MacMillan that led them to suddenly de-list from its store all books published by MacMillan, which, the last time I looked, was a pretty damn big book publisher. The stand-off is explained here.
Suffice it to say that when a leading Sci-Fi author named Charlie Stross announces that Amazon can go take a hike, you can be sure that authors are beyond pissed-off.
Amazon needs to wise up. They are starting to behave like the record industry, who have been simultaneously screwing recording artists and suing their own customers for 15 years, and we know how that is working out...

From 2003, a comprehensive slap-down by Marci Hamilton of the whole lobby (led by the infamous Roy Moore) who would place imposing-looking representations of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms.