In 1995, O.J. Simpson was acquitted in the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. In 1997, a civil jury found that he was liable for battery against the pair and for the wrongful death of Goldman. At the time, I remember thinking that, while he was likely guilty and deserved some punishment (and that the loss in the civil case was better than nothing), it seemed odd that he could be found not guilty and then still found responsible for the deaths.

I realize it’s in a completely different jurisdiction, but I can’t help thinking about the similarities between that case and the case of Robert Zarinsky:

Zarinsky, however, was acquitted. Jurors believed he did it but felt prosecutors did not build a strong enough case to prove it, the foreman said.

Elizabeth Bernoskie sued Zarinsky for wrongful death and was awarded $9.5 million in 2003. Zarinsky posted his $150,000 mutual fund as a down payment.

On Tuesday, a state appeals court panel ruled that Bernoskie’s lawsuit should not have been allowed since Zarinsky had already been acquitted. The $150,000 must be returned, it said.

Just a quick bit of advice for women.

If you honestly believe that your boyfriend or husband would leave you if you couldn’t have sex with him because you were recovering from surgery, you might want to take a good hard look at the relationship and whether or not he’s worth your time. As a man, I’d think that anyone who would abandon you for the lack of sex, especially if it’s because of a short-term medical issue, isn’t worth it.

Still, even if you decide he’s worth hanging on to, he’s not worth contracting your 15-year-old daughter as a sexual stand-in.

A Nevada couple is blaming the Internet (specifically, online video games) for the criminal neglect of their children. As regular readers know, I tend to get pretty agitated by the “Video games made them do it” explanation for why people commit atrocious acts, and this is no exception.

This case isn’t really about the Internet or video games, but I have a feeling that if not for the involvement of those two factors, most of us would never have heard anything about this story. Investigations into criminal child neglect are tragically common in the United States today, and only a handful of those cases make the national news. The fact that this particular case involves a few particularly disturbing facts (“[H]ospital staff had to shave the head of the girl because her hair was matted with cat urine.”), combined with the fact that it involves the nation’s second favorite scapegoat, video games, bumped it up to national status.

The real story here shouldn’t be the fact that these two individuals were so preoccupied with video games that they neglected their children to a horrific extent. The story is that these individuals were so preoccupied that they neglected their children that badly period, and that their story is not unique, or even particularly rare.

The problem here is not the internet or video games, and it’s not a matter of technological advances providing more distractions. The problem is that we live in a society that is increasingly all about “me”, and far too many people have reached legal adulthood without actually becoming adults and learning how to balance responsibilities with the things they want to do. Blaming an individual distraction is simply targeting a symptom, when we should be looking for the actual source of the problem, and doing what we can to fix it.

(Also, because I can’t leave this alone, here are Michael and Iana Straw’s MySpace profiles.)

I think that maybe Dan Froomkin needs to work on his reading comprehension a bit:

At his press conference this morning, President Bush tried to redefine the debate about the war in Iraq.

“Sometimes the debate over Iraq is cast as a disagreement between those who want to keep our troops in Iraq and those who want to bring our troops home,” he said. “And this is not the real debate. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to see the day when our brave service men and women can start coming home. . . .

“The real debate over Iraq is between those who think the fight is lost or not worth the cost and those who believe the fight can be won, and that, as difficult as the fight is, the costs of defeat would be far higher.”

On a literal level, at least, Bush is wrong. The current debate in Congress is precisely about whether U.S. troops should start coming home soon or whether they should stay in Iraq until some ill-defined and potentially unattainable goals are met.

Bush: “This debate is not about whether we want our troops to come home.”
Froomkin: “Bush is wrong! This debate is about whether we want our troops to come home soon.”

Either Froomkin doesn’t see the difference between the two statements, or he’s being disingenuous here.

Bush may not be right — some of his remaining supporters assert that the problem is not that Democrats don’t believe the strategy is working, but that they fear it is, since a working strategy now would mean disaster for their defeatist rhetoric over the last several months — but if we take everyone’s stated positions as true, he’s absolutely correct.

Either a) you believe the fight is lost or it’s not worth the cost, and therefore the troops may as well come home now, or b) you believe it can still be won, and it is worth the cost, and though you want the troops home now, you feel it is still too early. That is the core of the debate, and Froomkin even seems to understand that with the rest of the piece. He just takes an unfounded dig at Bush early in his piece.

Most Americans don’t believe that [we are making security progress that will enable the political track to succeed as well] anymore, however, and their beliefs are supported by a growing mountain of evidence. Even the White House’s own progress report, released today, provides little cause for hope.

Dafydd ab Hugh, as I’ve said before, believes that the preliminary assessment of Iraq’s benchmarks does provide cause for hope, and he does a pretty good job proving his case.

Asked why Americans should trust his vision for Iraq, given all the mistakes he has made thus far, Bush essentially blamed his commanders — but then said that Americans should trust him because he relies on his commanders.

From the transcript that Froomkin linked before, I think that’s an unfair assessment of what Bush says, but let’s assume it’s not.

Let’s keep in mind that until January 2007, the commander in question here was General George Casey, and that in January, General David Petraus was appointed Commanding General of the multinational force in Iraq to lead the United States forces. He testified before Congress, described his plan for more troops and a change to classic counterinsurgency doctrine, and was unanimously confirmed by Congress. In May, Congress enacted legislation that requires Petraeus to report to them in September so they can assess his progress with the change in strategy (at the time, he said there were “astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad).

The commander that was leading our troops when the mistakes made “thus far” were made is not the same commander in charge now.

(Incidentally, for those who believe there’s been no progress in Iraq and don’t care about the benchmarks, here it is in graphic form.)

Someone with more patience than I might go through and tear apart the rest of Froomkin’s piece, but it really doesn’t get better.

CNN’s response to Michael Moore, who was apparently upset at their coverage of his film, SiCKO:

POINT NO. 8:

FROM MOORE’S WEB SITE:

CNN: “But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts, and he did fudge some facts…”

“The Truth” (from Michael Moore’s Web site):

This is libel. There is not a single fact that is “fudged” in the film. No one has proven a single fact in the film wrong. We expect CNN to correct their mistakes on the air and to apologize to their viewers.

CNN RESPONSE:

Gupta believes picking and comparing numbers from different places and times to suit an argument is not the best approach to a complicated issue like this one. Again, as pointed out earlier, by mixing types of data and time periods in some of Moore’s comparisons, Gupta felt that the film effectively fudged points that could have been made just as compellingly by comparing data from the same source and time period.

The entire exchange is worth a read, especially since I don’t remember Moore’s previous film, Fahrenheit 9/11, coming under this sort of scrutiny from the mainstream press. I remember other independent films being made (such as Fahrenhype 9/11) to counter that one, but I don’t remember any mainstream media analyzing it in quite the same way that CNN apparently has done with SiCKO.

Just a quickie today since this is the weekend.

Clayton Cramer takes on those who claim that the Bush Administration is the most hostile in history to the Bill of Rights, and determines that such claims are woefully misinformed.