Bad news for Michael Moore: scummy trial lawyers are suing Krispy Kreme for bad management.
This is another sign of moral decay. (As opposed to tooth decay, to be sure.) If the management was imprudent in their stewardship of the company, they will be punished by declining sales and, ultimately, by losing their jobs. That’s a much more effective way to handle imprudence than involving Federal courts.
According to the story, it does not appear that the management was guilty of anything other than misjudging a market trend. Such things happen every day. They did not “cook the books,” or steal company money for their personal use, or trade stock based on “insider information,” or any other crime. They just didn’t do a good job calibrating their business strategy to the low-carb diet fad.
That might be dumb, but is it wrong? Is it even illegal? Don’t we all believe that “you can’t legislate morality”? Apparently it’s possible to litigate morality, or at least scummy trial lawyers think they should, for a decent cut of the settlement money.
Author: Eric Johnson
Legal vs. illegal combatants, and why it’s all right to kill the latter
I was involved in a discussion over on Mark Shea’s blog about legal and illegal combatants, and how they are to be treated when they are detained. I claim no special expertise, but I’ve had probably 40 hours of training over the last 13 years in the law of war, because members of my Marine unit were expected to be the “duty experts” on the subject so we could advise commanders.
So I’m not talking from a position of total ignorance, either. Below is an expanded and edited response to one of the more intransigent, confused people in the Mark Shea comment box.
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Certain prisoners under U.S. control — especially the ones from Afghanistan, and probably many in Iraq, are illegal combatants.
If the U.S. government makes it a policy to treat illegal combatants better than it is legally required to do, that’s its prerogative. However, neither civilian appointees nor DOD regulations trump the Geneva Conventions, which, as treaties signed by the president and ratified by the Senate, assume the same level in American law as the consitution.
Those Conventions state that if an irregular force (i.e., a group of fighting men not authorized by the state) meets certain conditions, they are entitled to protected status and should be treated as legal combatants. The Third Geneva Convention says:
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
Terrorists often meet the first condition but not the other three conditions, so they are not legal combatants. Since they fall outside the protection of the Conventions, an opposing force may execute them as spies or saboteurs. That isn’t my opinion, it’s the law.
In my view, we should have executed at least some of the illegal combatants from Afghanistan, as an example to others. I say this not because I am bloodthirsty, but because it might have encouraged our enemies to fight more humanely. If we made it clear that we would kill any terrorist who targeted civilians or used other illegal warfighting methods, but we would intern those who respected the law of war, that would provide an incentive for our enemies to stop murdering the innocent. That’s a worthy goal, isn’t it?
Mario Cuomo, still preening after all these years
On the weekends, after the older two children invade our bed, and I have gathered the courage to face the morning, I herd the little ones downstairs so they can watch something while I make breakfast. As we have no cable or satellite television, the television in the playroom is usually tuned to a PBS station.
While the “Thomas the Tank Engine” video was rewinding, I saw part of “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” describing how Catholic politicians are feeling the heat for not acting like Catholics while in office.
I have expressed my displeasure with PBS religious programming in another post, but this segment was evenhanded. It did, however, give disproportionate attention to Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor and failed radio talk-show host. I couldn’t immediately remember the part of my right-wing catechism that talked about hating Mario. All I remember was that he was prickly about his ethnic background (as if being Italian in New York City was unusual) and was, for a time, the #1 apologist for pro-abortion Catholics, including himself. As I was not Catholic in the 1980s or the early ’90s, when Cuomo was governor, I didn’t care too much about the Catholic angle, so I didn’t remember the details.
The only other time I heard Cuomo speak was on his short-lived radio show, and that was probably by accident. He seemed affable but clueless about what makes good radio, as evidenced by the show’s brief run. On this PBS show, he seemed thoughtful and possibly even prayerful, talking about why he was personally pro-life but politically pro-abortion.
“Maybe I can respect this guy,” I thought, as Cuomo explained that Catholics had Protestant beliefs crammed down their throats a century ago, so Catholics shouldn’t do the same to other people. That’s a plausible point, though as I keep saying, abortion isn’t a religious issue, it’s a straight-up question of natural law. But at least Cuomo appeared to have thought the issue through, and if he was misguided, he was honestly misguided.
The show moved on to capital punishment. Cuomo complained (always in a genial way) that the Church didn’t do enough to speak out about capital punishment. “For 12 years” he opposed capital punishment, and he claimed, “I even wrote the pope, saying ‘come on guys, help me out here!'”
This tactic was a clever way of saying that he was, in point of fact, more Catholic than the Pope, more pro-life than the Roman curia. Then it all came flooding back: this was the same man who vetoed laws authorizing capital punishment, even though New York voters favored it by a huge margin and the bills always passed by comfortable majorities. Those bills were passed every year until Cuomo left office, and always shot down by the governor.
It takes courage to stand up for your beliefs when they are unpopular, especially for a politician who must stand for re-election, so points for Mario. But we have to subtract points for honesty. For although Mario loves giving his hand-wringing moral lectures about the inner conflict of a Catholic politician when his beliefs differ from what his constituents want, he “allowed his personal beliefs” to “interfere” with his “duty” to do whatever the opinion polls tell him to do.
Mario Cuomo might be sincere and misguided, or he might just be running interference for the Left in the cases of the death penalty and abortion. However, he wants everyone to know he is a serious, deliberate man, and therefore I agree with the latter possibility.
Reuters: the anti-Fox
Show me any Reuters article from the Middle East, and I’ll show you at least one editorializing sentence. In this case, it’s the lead:
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (Reuters) – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew into the eye of the Iraqi storm on Thursday and denied his surprise visit was a publicity stunt to repair the damage from a scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
What kind of crap is that? It shocks me that a “serious” news organization would imply that the Secretary of Defense should not visit a theater of operations, or that by doing so, he is
They’re not even subtle. Usually, reporters who want to write stealth editorials will find someone else to mouth their agendas, but Charles Aldinger is apparently too lazy to do that.
The trip looked like a robust answer to critics who say Rumsfeld, one of the architects of the Iraq war, should resign, six months before President Bush seeks re-election.
“Looked like” to whom? The article doesn’t say, so we can safely assume it’s the reporter.
It’s also pretty bad to quote Senator Kennedy (“We are the most hated nation in the world as a result of this disastrous policy in the prisons”) accusing the Defense Department of deliberately abusing prisoners as a matter of policy — something no Democrat has previously done, and there is no evidence to support the charge. Aldinger reports the comment as if it is a fact.
Then again, Reuters doesn’t call terrorists “terrorists,” because “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” I’m not sure whether that’s moral equivalence or rank nihilism, but it’s sick, whatever it is.
Hell has a new motto!
The majority leader of the New Jersey state senate is leaving the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church because the church wants her children to stop supporting baby-killing. This entirely reasonable request was too much for Senator Bernard Kenny (D-Moloch), who said, “If every faith starts trying to impose their rules on elected officials, democracy is going to be factionalized along religious lines,” apparently thinking that there is something “religious” about defending innocent babies.
As interesting as that is, one other quotation caught my bloodshot eye:
U.S. Rep. William Pascrell Jr., also a Catholic Democrat, agrees that politicians have an obligation to represent all their constituents.
“This is exactly what the Catholic Church said 50 years ago would not happen when Catholic politicians were trying to get elected to office,” said Kenny, a former altar boy from Essex County….
“I will continue receiving Communion – not in defiance, but out of conscience,” he said. “I have nothing to apologize for.”
That should be Hell’s new official motto:
“I have nothing to apologize for.”