Archive for February, 2012
Firewall Videos (Bill Whittle)
Feb 20th
Two videos from Bill Whittle’s youtube channel…The first concerning Obama’s massive spending to get reelected to a second term and the second on the whole notion of class warfare.
Book Review: Lee Goldberg’s McGrave is Badass Fun
Feb 10th
Lee Goldberg’s book, McGrave was free on Amazon the other day, so I snatched it up. Last night I was browsing through the over 500 books on my kindle fire, and the wonderful book cover for McGrave just popped out at me. (the cover, pictured to the left is kind of badass to say the least). The book basically screamed, “read me, damn you.” So, I obliged.
Holy crap, this book is insanely fun. I’m not the world’s fastest reader, and with a lot of books, I get easily distracted and take forever to finish. But, I could not put this one down. Sure, I started reading it at 12:30AM, knowing I had to be up at 6AM for classes, but what the heck. I can hate my life tomorrow for the fun I’m having right now.
McGrave isn’t high art. It’s not the type of book you’d see listed in Stuffy Victorian Novels Monthly, and thank God for that. It’s fun for the sake of fun. It’s high impact, high adrenaline, and high class all the way.
McGrave is a cop who is always right in front of havoc. Mainly because he’s the kind of guy who wreaks havoc like waffle irons wreak…uhh waffles. He’s a badass cop who doesn’t answer to any higher authority but the law itself. He causes shootouts, insane car crashes, and millions of dollars worth of damages. Probably why they call him Tidal Wave McGrave.
In this book, McGrave causes a few million dollars worth of damage trying to chase down some German thieves. In the process, he gets fired from the force, pisses off his ex-partner, faces a number of lawsuits, might possibly be charged with attempted murder, and creates an enemy in the form of a German crime ringleader whom he tracks to Berlin. In Berlin there’s another chase after some solid detective work, and things pretty much conclude nicely. No fluff, just solid, additive action from start to finish.
It’s a quick read, and it feels almost like an episode from a 1980′s cop show. The writing style, the characters, the dialogue- the entire time I read it, I kept imagining this on the screen. Would make a fantastic movie series. Think Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, make him about 100 times more badass, toss in some spectacular explosions, and you’ve got something sort of like McGrave.
How can you not adore a book that includes the line, “The only thing missing is Robert Palmer’s reanimated corpse and it would be the 1980′s all over again.” That alone is, in my book, worth the small price of admission. Just one question for Mr. Goldberg- can we please have some more?
9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ Circular Reasoning on Prop 8
Feb 7th
Judicial activism is alive and well, and we’d be silly to even try to deny it after today’s decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled today that California’s voter-approved ballot Proposition 8 (banning gay marriage in the state) was unconstitutional.
I’m no attorney, so I’m working on the legal analysis already given. Basically the court ruled that because the “right” of gays to marry existed before prop 8, and they didn’t see any legitimate state interest promoted by banning that “right,” then such a proposition was unconstitutional.
This is some sad circular reasoning. Now, remember Prop 8 only came about because the California State Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was a “right.” It was certainly, up to that point, illegal for gays to marry, thus the right was, in fact, a new right altogether.
The appeals court, today, ruled that because the right existed, it could not be taken away.
Think about that. An instance of judicial activism on the part of the CA Supreme Court created a new “right.” Voters initiated a procedure to amend the state Constitution to clarify that issue. Then, an appeals court comes along and says that since the right existed, it should stay. Yes, the right existed because the courts suddenly decided a year earlier that the right existed!
What this ruling means is that courts can now make any rulings they so desire in terms of new constitutional “rights,” and the citizens of the state have no redress when it comes to changing that. Why wouldn’t judges across the state just start writing, into the law, new rights everyday? Then the appeals courts can simply declare the right existed, and that’s why we can’t take it away?
Absurd logic on the part of the supreme court of the state and the court of appeals.
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