A 92-year old woman sold 1,300+ suicide kits in an "act of compassion" — without checking whether the customers were terminally ill.

Wayward do-gooder Sharlotte Hydorn faces a year in prison... for failing to file federal tax returns.

Agents who raided her home in suburban San Diego last year found checks that were not cashed and thousands of dollars in cash from buyers, her attorney said.

She wasn't in it for the money... unlike the federal government, which really does expect people to file their tax returns.  

Prosecutors said she took no steps to verify the physical condition, age, identity or mental state of her customers and therefore had no idea whether her kits were being bought by people suffering from depression or by minors acting without the consent of an adult. 

Which is all very relevant to the tax charge, no?

Investigators determined that the kits were sold to at least 50 people in San Diego County since 2007 and that four of those people last year used the kits to commit suicide. None was terminally ill, according to investigators....

You can be in the suicide business. Just pay your taxes. This is the world we live in.

“Goober is every man... Everyone finds something to like about ol’ Goober."

RIP, George Lindsey.



"Goober thought he had a talking dog... It revealed Goober's childlike qualities; it made you laugh and cry."

What if the "War on Women" is a War of Women... on men?

A question that occurred to me while reading this Wall Street Journal column by Carrie Lukas.

[P]olicies sold as protecting women can be used to bludgeon men, and they should spur greater skepticism of the idea that women need bigger government to succeed.

The War on Women rhetoric may be intended to derail specific candidacies, but it also derails needed public-policy debates. With trillion-dollar deficits, we need to make tough choices about funding priorities. Calling attempts to control government's costs an assault on women will only make deliberations less productive.

"Ponchos and sombreros: Partygoers don ‘insensitive’ attire despite student efforts."

Imagine! Student efforts failing to sear prick the conscience of the Mifflin Street Block Party people.

The student group that wants respectful seriousness and no horsing around on the subject of Cinco de Mayo calls itself Badgers Against Racism... or "BAR."

IN THE COMMENTS: pduggie said:

"sear the conscience" is the opposite of what you mean.

To have a seared conscience is to have one that is locked out from all claims of injustice.

I think you mean wound or prick.

He refers me to the New Testament, 1 Timothy:

¹The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. ²Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. ³They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. ⁴For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, ⁵because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

I stand corrected. Prick is a much better word.

And by the way — I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice — there's a nice biblical argument for same sex marriage. St. Paul contemned the bad religionists who "forbid people to marry," and — right at that point — said "For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving." Did God not create gay people?

Here we are "in later times." Is your conscience seared or pricked?

AND: Though I've read the New Testament many times (though mostly the Gospels), my experience with searing the conscience is overwhelmingly from something written by Felix Frankfurter, in a passage I've used repeated in my constitutional law classes. The case is Baker v. Carr — a great Warren Court landmark — and Justice Frankfurter articulates what is, to me, the most memorable statement of judicial restraint in the Supreme Court reporters:

We were soothingly told at the bar of this Court that we need not worry about the kind of remedy a court could effectively fashion once the abstract constitutional right to have courts pass on a statewide system of electoral districting is recognized as a matter of judicial rhetoric, because legislatures would heed the Court's admonition. This is not only a euphoric hope. It implies a sorry confession of judicial impotence in place of a frank acknowledgment that there is not under our Constitution a judicial remedy for every political mischief, for every undesirable exercise of legislative power. The Framers, carefully and with deliberate forethought, refused so to enthrone the judiciary. In this situation, as in others of like nature, appeal for relief does not belong here. Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate. In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives. In any event, there is nothing judicially more unseemly nor more self-defeating than for this Court to make in terrorem pronouncements, to indulge in merely empty rhetoric, sounding a word of promise to the ear sure to be disappointing to the hope.

I'm quite shocked to discover Frankfurter misused the phrase! But then — did you know? — English was a second language for Felix Frankfurter, who was born in Vienna.

If that’s a loophole, then the entire state statutes are a loophole."

Scott Walker was able to raise a lot of money, and some folks think that's so unfair.

Weed Searing.

It's Meade versus weed in this searing story of a man and his blowtorch:

"The last five years have been wrenching and often lonely. Michael was the love of her life."

"When she married him, her sister asked, 'How does it feel to hit the jackpot?' In more than 30 years of marriage, she never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. He was an engineer, lectured at conventions, did volunteer work, belonged to a history book club, ran marathons. Now he can no longer speak, read, write or walk."

Frontotemporal dementia — it's not Alzheimer's.

"Whatever happens, we will go through this together. I will be there."

If you do "closet editing," do you have a rule about getting rid of anything that hasn't been worn in X years?

I see that I blogged about that back in August 2005. That dress that I hadn't worn in 15 years? I still have it, 7 years later, and I still haven't worn it, nor can I get rid of it. And I still can't defend it as "vintage."

"'I just want to be happy' is a hole cut out of the floor and covered with a rug."

"Because once you say it, the implication is that you're not. The 'I just want to be happy' bear trap is that until you define precisely, just exactly what 'happy' is, you will never feel it. Whatever being happy means to you, it needs to be specific and also possible. When you have a blueprint for what happiness is, lay it over your life and see what you need to change so the images are more aligned."

That's Augusten Burroughs, in a metaphor-crammed essay adapted from his new book, "This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike." (Here's the audiobook. I'm a big fan of the Augusten Burroughs audiobooks. He has that gentle male voice that I love to listen to when falling asleep. (My absolute favorite is Bill Bryson.))

"French voters elected François Hollande as president on Sunday, giving the country a Socialist leader..."

"... who has pledged to shift the burden of hardship to the rich and resolve the protracted euro-zone sovereign-debt crisis by softening the current prescription of austerity."

"We'll take out Scott Walker."

Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

"'STABLE,' EH? Well, as they say at the Kentucky Derby: I’ll Have Another."

"Thanks for bringing me back, Glenn. Have a great vacation, as we guest horses attempt to inspire the disheartened crowd that many perhaps only partially fill the stands."

"Sorry about all the smoke, I just came from the tanning salon."

"I can't blame them for being jealous. I am alluring in a way they'll never be. Trust me, there are plenty of men in New Jersey who would love to snap into this Slim Jim."

Video here.

"It’s no surprise to anyone who pays attention that mainstream media tilt their coverage in favor of Democrats and leftish ideas."

"But it’s not confined to endless puff pieces about the president, or the ignoring of unpleasant facts."

I'm guessing even that is no surprise to you, but it's Glenn Reynolds, laying out the evidence, so it's good reading, and — it's in the NY Post — perhaps needed remedial reading for some.

"George Zimmerman is as black as Obama's son would have been had Obama married a white woman."

Says commenter Hari, at the post "George Zimmerman is 'one-fourth black, four times as black as Warren is Indian, though the New York Times describes him as a "white Hispanic."'"

See also, "Who is this woman?"

Don't you think Genevieve resembles Obama's mother, who was white? Imagine being a heterosexual man and feeling that you weren't supposed to be attracted to a woman who reminds you of your mother. There's this alternate never-to-be-written Obama search-for-identity book titled "Dreams From My Mother."

And "Obama — trying to be 'careful' — addresses the Trayvon Martin killing": "You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon."

***

By the way, I assumed it was conventional wisdom that men tend to feel attracted to women who remind them of their mothers, but I can see that I'm being mocked over at a blog I won't link to for referring to that relatively banal reality. Oh, hell, I don't care: here's the link.

It's really astounding how prissy lefties have become over the years. I remember when folk of the left-wing persuasion loved to delve into Freudian analysis. Now, they're so strait-laced about sex. They hew to politically required points about sexual/reproductive freedom, but there's no curiosity, no depth, no originality, no exploration of ideas. So dull!

Joe Biden is "absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights."

"All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that. [...] I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has done so far. People fear that is different and now they’re beginning to understand."

"How many middle-aged white women fear their husbands will find them less attractive if their weight drops to less than 200 pounds?"

"I have yet to meet one. But I know many black women whose sane, handsome, successful husbands worry when their women start losing weight. My lawyer husband is one."

From a NYT op-ed by writer Alice Randall.

If perceptions of feminine beauty vary by race, what does this mean for policymakers who want to shape our health habits? Won't it be race discrimination to incentivize weight loss?

When the biologist Daniel Lieberman suggested in a public lecture at Harvard this past February that exercise for everyone should be mandated by law, the audience applauded, the Harvard Gazette reported. A room full of thin affluent people applauding the idea of forcing fatties, many of whom are dark, poor and exhausted, to exercise appalls me....

Appalls her... and yet, Randall says:

WE have to change. Black women especially....

My goal is to be the last fat black woman in my family....

I call on every black woman for whom it is appropriate to commit to getting under 200 pounds or to losing the 10 percent of our body weight that often results in a 50 percent reduction in diabetes risk....

MEANWHILE: A new Rasmussen poll shows 63% of Americans oppose "sin taxes" on soda and junk food. Should we perceive these taxes as racially discriminatory?

"When not shouting profanities at the chefs, bursting into noisy and prolonged bouts of flatulence during the traditional tea ceremony..."

"... insulting and belligerently interfering with my crew by petulantly flashing his cell phone camera directly into their eyes while they were working ('I’m a journalist! I’m allowed!'), this guy was drinking himself stupid. It was only through their infinite mercy—and perhaps no small amount of pity for this elderly and shambolic creature, that my crew did not punch his face in. They were sorely tempted. Anyone who attended the event will surely recognize which particular steaming dribble of ordure I’m talking about."

Who is Anthony Bourdain talking about?  Guesses are accumulating here.

By the way, what's with the word "shambolic"? I just realized I've been coasting complacently on the meaning of that word for years, conflating it with the song "Shambala" by Three Dog Night. But Bourdain can't be saying anything about washing away our troubles, washing away our pain, and everyone being lucky and everyone being kind.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that "shambolic" grew out of the word "shamble," perhaps influenced by "symbolic," and it means "Chaotic, disorderly, undisciplined." It was "Reported to be ‘in common use’ in 1958," but the first quote provided is from 1970:

1970   Times 18 June 9   His office in Printing House Square is so impeccably tidy that it is‥a standing reproach to the standard image of shambolic newspaper offices.

For a second there, I grasp at the theory that Three Dog Night really is behind "shambolic," but the song only goes back to 1973.

Photo-free "café" post...

... for Lyssa... and everybody.

We don't want Lyssa to burst!

("Café" is Althouse blog code for open thread.)

Now we have photographs of the under-attended, supposed-to-be-huge Obama rally in Ohio.

The whole point was to get dramatic pictures of the awe-struck masses — the youth who adore the dear leader!

Beloved Dictator was never a good campaign theme, and — I love America! — it blessedly doesn't work. Not in the long run. It's tempting to laugh at Obama and his people for thinking they could make it work and for falling on their faces in Columbus, Ohio.

But I'm thinking: Good for us. In America, we don't idolize politicians.

A reading for Sunday morning: "... banish these thoughts from your Mind..."

A letter written to [George Washington] by Colonel Lewis Nicola... detailed the weakness of a republican form of government as they had experienced it, their desire for "mixed government", with him at its head, and their belief that "the title of king" would be objectionable to but few and of material advantage to the country. His reply was peremptory and indignant. In plain terms he stated his abhorrence of the proposal; he was at a loss to conceive what part of his conduct could have encouraged their address; they could not have found "a person to whom their schemes were more disagreeable"; and he charged them, "if you have any regard for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature."