At the Cream-of-Mushroom Café...

... I'm sorry, we're closed.

(Enlarge for the soup, etc.)

"Passing the sexual Turing test."

It's not easy! The computer hears the laughter on comedy shows and thinks it's porn.

The world-did-not-end traffic.

From my Site Meter, just now, under "Referring Search Words Ranked by Visits":



It's not all about the world not ending — Google traffic going to this post of mine. Somebody came here looking for "music to read to" and got to a post that I'm proud of. And then there was "you know i work on my hair" — which went here, where the clip from the movie with that quote no longer plays.

Sunset in Monroe, Wisconsin.

How can Mitch Daniels announce that he's running for President when he's got 16 stitches in his big bulbous forehead?

"Indiana Republican governor Mitch Daniels was hit in the forehead by a swinging door after concluding a workout Friday afternoon, prompting an injury that required 16 stitches."

Prompting an injury. What the hell happened? Was another human being involved, did the inanimate object — the door — lose control, or did he do some crazy-ass slapstick with the door? Whatever... you can't run for President with a Frankenstein head.

Planking — "the seemingly harmless trend of lying face down, perfectly stiff, on various structures in public."

But it killed a guy... so let's worry about it.

If Tammy Baldwin were to run for the Senate seat vacated by Herb Kohl, could she simultaneously run for reelection to her House seat?

You know, like the way Joe Biden ran for Vice President and for reelection to his Senate seat in 2008 (and then resigned the Senate seat). The answer is: no.

ADDED: I've reworded the title to this post because somebody in the comments found it ambiguous.

The Daily News heaps bad PR on a dress shop for refusing to give a cash refund for a $1200 prom dress.

The store's policy is only to give store credit for returns, but supposedly an exception must be made because the girl's boyfriend died.

What do you think?
	The store is right to stick to its policy. It's best to apply the same rules to everyone.
	The store would have been nice to make an exception, but not doing so doesn't belong in the news.
	It's good that people learn that this store failed to do something compassionate.
	The store was morally obligated to give the refund and deserves public shaming.
pollcode.com free polls

At the County Courthouse Café...

... you can talk about anything, but I'd love to hear about the county courthouses of America. This one, photographed yesterday, is in Monroe, Wisconsin, the county seat of Green County. I love small cities like this, with a central square dominated by the county courthouse. Lafayette, Indiana is like this. Tell me about others that you know.

The world did not end. That's not the big news.

The big news is that big news covered the nonnews. We were supposed to find it amusing. Amusing to snicker at marginal people who believe religious things. They're so dumb. We're so smart. No, you're not. You are part of the system of dumbness you purport to report.

"Paula Deen's recipe for English peas. Read the recipe. Then read the comments."

Tell people to melt a whole panful of butter and dump 2 cans of peas into it and see what they say.

"This was outstanding! I did make a couple modifications. I eliminated the butter, and in place of the peas I substituted one can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs."

"A huge opening-day pop is not a sign of a successful I.P.O., but rather a massively mispriced one."

"Bankers are rewarding their friends and themselves instead of doing their fiduciary duty to their clients."

Suppose... your trusted real estate agent persuaded you to sell your house for $1 million. Then, the next day, the same agent sold the same house for the new owner for $2 million. “How would you feel if your agent did that?”... That...  is what Merrill and Morgan did to LinkedIn.

"White House on War Powers Deadline: 'Limited' US Role in Libya Means No Need to Get Congressional Authorization."

Jake Tapper reports:

“Since April 4,” the president wrote, “U.S. participation has consisted of: (1) non-kinetic support to the NATO-led operation, including intelligence, logistical support, and search and rescue assistance; (2) aircraft that have assisted in the suppression and destruction of air defenses in support of the no-fly zone; and (3) since April 23, precision strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles against a limited set of clearly defined targets in support of the NATO-led coalition's efforts.”

A senior administration official told ABC News that the letter is intended to describe “a narrow US effort that is intermittent and principally an effort to support to support the ongoing NATO-led and UN-authorized civilian support mission and no fly zone.”

“The US role is one of support,” the official said, “and the kinetic pieces of that are intermittent.”

Get it?

UPDATE: Jake Tapper emails:

i know you're not responsible for the folks who post to your site -- God knows i stopped reading my comments long ago -- but FYI, per your first commenter, I never defended Helen Thomas.

He's referring, apparently, to the second comment, from chickenlittle, who said: "Sorry but I lost a lot of respect for Jake Tapper when he defended that hag Helen Thomas."

Gifts/Candles/Birthday/New Age/Body Jewelry/Stuff/Tobacco/Bachelorette/Incense/Weapons.

A puzzling storefront in Monroe, Wisconsin:


(Enlarge.)


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"Justice Anthony M. Kennedy... said he aspired to Ernest Hemingway’s stripped-down language..."

Talk about falling short of your aspirations! Of all the Justices on the Court today, I find that Justice Kennedy writes in the least straightforward style. Ah, well. At least he means well. Or is he conning us with this Hemingway talk?

The linked article — by Adam Liptak, in the NYT — links to this set of long recorded interviews with Supreme Court Justices about how they write and how they want lawyers to write.

Justice Ginsburg said she had learned much from a course Nabokov taught at Cornell on European literature.

“He was a man in love with the sound of words,” she said of her former professor. “He changed the way I read, the way I write.”

Justice Thomas, on the other hand, cited only a single author, and then only by way of contrast. “It’s not a mystery novel,” he said of a good brief. “People can’t think, ‘I’m Agatha Christie,’ or something like that.”

Ginsburg and Nabokov. Thomas and Christie. What do you think of Liptak's juxtaposition? It's a literary device. Would you put it at the Nabokov level? The Christie level? Somewhere lower?

ADDED: Both Nabokov and Agatha Christie are discussed in the Wikipedia article "Unreliable Narrator":

A controversial example of an unreliable narrator occurs in Agatha Christie's novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the narrator hides essential truths in the text (mainly through evasion, omission, and obfuscation) without ever overtly lying. Many readers at the time felt that the plot twist at the climax of the novel was nevertheless unfair....

Humbert Humbert, the main character and narrator of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, often tells the story in such a way as to justify his pedophilic fixation on young girls, in particular his sexual relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter....

Now, you want your judges and lawyers to be reliable narrators when they tell you about the facts of the case and interpret and apply the law. Thomas said don't be like Agatha Christie. You need to tell it straight. But Ginsburg said she learned from Nabokov, learned to love the sound of the words. Liptak — I think — intended to make Ginsburg look good and Thomas bad, but it didn't quite work out that way.

"Mildred said [Schwarzenegger] had long hands. He would grab her behind often... She liked the attention."

I'm passing along what The Daily News passes along.

At the Morel Café...

... maybe you'll find what you're looking for.

The new Wisconsin Law School dean: Margaret Raymond!

"Margaret is a distinguished legal scholar and a lively intellect. She has a keen sense of the strengths of our Law School. We are delighted she has decided to join our team."

Said UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recount is finally over, Prosser has won by over 7,000 votes, but Kloppenburg may move the battle for judicial power into court.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

Former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske said she saw little chance that a court challenge to the recount would succeed. "I think it's going to be a very, very difficult road for Ms. Kloppenburg to upset Justice Prosser, unless there are things we do not know about," said Geske, now a professor at the Marquette University Law School. Any evidence is "going to have to be extensive to overcome that number of votes."...

Prosser attorney Dan Kelly said earlier this month he was concerned a legal challenge would take months and lead to a temporary vacancy on the court. The next 10-year term on the seven-member Supreme Court begins Aug. 1.

It would seem that the only reason for taking this into the courts would be to delay in order to produce this vacancy. The vacancy has special value because of the hot controversy over the budget-repair bill:

Unions rallied behind Kloppenburg in the hope that she would vote to overturn the law, while conservatives stepped up their support for Prosser in the hope that he would vote to uphold it. Now that bill has been passed by the Legislature but blocked from taking effect by a court challenge....

Ultimately, the issue could be decided by the Supreme Court - unless a temporary vacancy in Prosser's seat produces a 3-3 tie, in which case a lower court might have the last word.

So Kloppenburg failed to win a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an election that focused on the budget-repair bill, but she could try, by initiating a futile lawsuit about the election, to affect the way the Wisconsin Supreme Court decides the budget case and to affect it in a way that is contrary to what the voters voted for. And, if she does that, expect to hear her say lofty-sounding things about protecting the interests of the voters.

As a libertarian, you ought to love the way government buildings are ugly.

I tell Matt Welch: