(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

The law is an ass, Part the Infinity. From The Cincinnati Enquirer:

Earlier this month, against the wishes of his school administration, Cooper Caffrey walked out of Madison High School–past the cafeteria–as part of a day of protests around the country in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Florida. The sophomore got a detention. And so did 42 other students who walked outside with him…But Cooper’s dad is fine with what the school did.



Marty Caffrey understands school officials were put in a tough position, worried about safety, and will always be grateful for how they helped his son in the aftermath of the shooting. “The whole purpose of a walkout is to protest against an establishment,” he wrote on Facebook. “I do not expect the establishment to support the walkout." Without punishment, he told The Enquirer, it would have been meaningless.

I don’t entirely disagree with Mr. Caffrey here. He defines non-violent civil disobedience strictly by the book, and good for him. But the school board at least should have considered that they had a chance not to look like a blunt instrument to the rest of the country—as though they were, I don’t know, Texas prosecutors or something. Which brings us to…

The law is an ass, Part the Infinity+1. From CNN:

When she voted in the 2016 election, Crystal Mason had already served almost three years in prison for her fraud conviction but had not yet completed her sentence and was still serving a three-year supervised release period, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Convicted felons lose their voting rights in Texas until they complete their full sentences, including parole and probation. Mason reportedly told the court, however, that she was not aware of that prohibition and had not been informed that she was ineligible to vote until her sentence was complete.



"She voted in good faith," Mason's defense attorney J. Warren St. John said in an interview. "I don't think she should be going to prison for that." Her attorney has already filed an appeal. "I think Texas law is extreme in terms of sentencing people to prison for voting violations," he said.

Mason signed an affidavit in order to cast a provisional ballot, which stated that it is a violation of the law to vote if you are a convicted felon, but Mason did not see that part of the ballot, St. John said. "Ms. Mason was never asked if she was a convicted felon by the election judge nor did she indicate that she was a convicted felon," her attorney said. "Ms. Mason voted in good faith that she could legally vote because she was never notified by any government agency that it was against the law to vote."

Unless there’s more to this story—like, for example, that Ms. Mason showed up at the polling place immediately after knocking over a bank—this sentence is completely ludicrous. Five years for what may be an honest mistake? First, you make it an incredibly complex business to vote, and then, when somebody gets confused and makes a mistake, you toss them in the hoosegow for five freaking years? The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has some interesting details.

“You think I would jeopardize my freedom?” Mason said. “...You honestly think I would ever want to leave my babies again? That was the hardest thing in my life to deal with. Who would — as a mother, as a provider — leave their kids over voting?” Voting illegally is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Mason said she believes she is being targeted for prosecution because she voted for Hillary Clinton and her indictment comes at a time when voter fraud continues to draw national attention. Most recently, a woman was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Tarrant County jury for voting illegally.

Mason said she thought nothing more of her vote until she was called in for an unexpected meeting with her supervision officer Feb. 16. She was leaving that meeting when she was met by Tarrant County Sheriff’s deputies and arrested on an illegal-voting warrant. When told what the warrant was for, Mason insisted that she had voted under her legal name and correct address — assuming that was the issue. “She was like, ‘You’re not supposed to vote while you’re on probation,’ ” Mason said. “I’m like, ‘No one told me this.’ ” Mason was released from jail the next day after posting a $10,000 bond. “I can’t even explain my feelings right now,” Mason said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I don’t think I’ll ever vote again. That’s being honest. I’ll never vote again.”

Which is, of course, the whole damn point.

It’s time for the Green Party to go spend more time with its family. It’s become little more than a useful tool for people who do not have the best interests of what the Greens purportedly want at heart. There’s apparently some serious chicanery going on in Montana. From the Missoulian:



“It is clear that an out-of-state political firm with ties to the Republican Party and a history of misleading voters was hired to electioneer in Montana," said Montana Democrats executive director Nancy Keenan in an emailed statement. "However, the names of who bankrolled this extensive effort are being hidden from the people of Montana. Montanans demand truth in our elections, and we deserve to know if out-of-state dark money is trying to influence our democracy." On March 12, the last day possible, the Montana Green Party filed to get candidates on the ballot for this year's election. The last-minute addition of a far-left party may pull voters away from Democrats like U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who is running for his third term in what's expected to be a closely contested race.

This is the hoary old trick of finding some guy with the same name as your candidate and shoving him onto the ballot, except with data-mining and hyper-speed. And it’s being employed by some of the usual suspects.

Copies of the signature petitions used to qualify the Green Party for the ballot show that Pope, along with several other out-of-state residents, gathered signatures in Great Falls, Helena, Missoula and Billings. That includes Garrett Laubach, Matthew Maaske and Nicholas Mahrer, all from North Dakota; Jacob Steele, from Wisconsin; and Jeff Hatfield and Robert Carter, of Las Vegas. The complaint says that Advanced Micro Targeting website lists North Dakota, Nevada and Wisconsin on states under its “reach.”

If jacking with the vote has become a lucrative industry in and of itself, I honestly don’t know where this country goes with that.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Come Home, Sinner” (The Mercy Brothers): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.



Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Fifty years ago this week, Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was killed in a mysterious plane crash. (Gagarin’s crash has been variously attributed to the Soviet government, to Gagarin’s having been drunk while flying, and incompetent air traffic control. The prevailing theory is that he either collided with another jet, or spiraled in to avoid that.) Here’s the video from his funeral. History is so cool.

Congratulations to the Boston Celtics and Sacramento Kings for stepping up before their game in Sacramento to stand with the people protesting the police killing of Stephon Clark, an unarmed man, in his grandparents’ backyard. From Reuters:



Seventeen players from the two teams also appeared in a public service message that was played on the giant jumbotron TV screen inside the Kings’ home arena at Golden 1 Center during a time-out in their matchup on Sunday. The 30-second spot, which carried the slogan “Accountability. We Are One,” was greeted by cheers from among the thousands of fans attending the game, Kings spokesman Chris Clark said. The same slogan appeared in white letters on the front of the black-T shirts players wore during their warm-up exercises, with the social media hashtag “#StephonClark” on the back. The on-court display, which the NBA announced on its official website under the headline: “Kings, Celtics Unite for Change,” came three days after a Black Lives Matter protest of the Clark killing disrupted the Kings’ previous home game against the Atlanta Hawks.

This issue is not going away. At least the NBA is out in front on it. The NFL is going to regret deeply not being there with them.

I have to admit I’m enjoying watching Laura Ingraham’s flopping around in the bottom of the boat. I’ve long been a fan of her ability at dehumanization, all the way from that time at Dartmouth when she helped to out gay students. Read that old New York Times Magazine piece. God, it was a high time to be a conservative without a conscience.



As we sat in the bar of the Tabard Inn knocking back big glasses of Sambuca ("Should we all sing 'Kumbaya'?" suggested Ingraham), she entertained us with stories of her adventures in El Salvador during the mid-80's. What was she doing there? I asked. "Subjugating third-world nations," she said with a dry laugh.

Between 1980 and 1992, estimates say, 75,000 people were killed in a civil war in which the United States was intimately involved. Archbishop Oscar Romero, who’s on his way to becoming a saint, was murdered on the altar during mass. Four American nuns were raped and murdered by our client army. Wasn’t Ms. Ingraham just a card back then?

Anyway, when she first took her cheap shot at David Hogg, there was a part of me that said, well, he walked into the slaughterhouse with the rest of us with his eyes open. What I didn’t know is that he would be so good at operating therein. In less than a day, Hogg scared Ingraham’s sponsors so badly that she was frightened into a hapless apology (note to Laura: Holy Thursday did not make you what you are) that nobody believed, and that Hogg, god bless him, declined publicly. (If the Democratic party had more people with this attitude toward the flying monkeys of modern conservatism, we’d all be better off.) This is just tremendous.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, National Geographic? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!



Fossils from various periods have been found there, and this isn't the first T. rex fossil to be found, but University of Kansas scientists think it could be one of the most intact. The entire fossil remains of the upper part of the dinosaur's jaw, with all its teeth, was found. Paleontologists dug up parts of a skull, foot, hips, and backbones. If the remains do in fact belong to a T. rex, that would make them around 66 million years old. Adding to the rarity of the find is the fact that the fossils may belong to a juvenile. "They're hard to find," says Burnham. "Ours is so important because we have so many bones. Every tooth position is filled."

Further work will determine whether the team actually has a T. rex on their hands, or possibly a Nanotyrannus, a tiny genus of tyrannosaur that's a matter of scientific debate. Many paleontologists think that so-called Nanotyrannus fossils are actually juvenile T. rex specimens. "We're trying to keep our minds open," Burnham says of studying the remains. He believes the fossil could be an illuminating touchstone for the paleontological debate.

Kids today, and 66 million years ago, nothing but trouble. But dinosaurs lived then only to make us happy now.

I am spending the weekend in San Antonio, watching the baskets, and hoping Sean Hannity doesn’t become Fed chair. I’ll be back in Monday rested and ready, I hope. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and try to stay out of detention, OK?

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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