Roscoe's Blog

USC quarterback Mark Sanchez has been accused of rape.    And there doesn't seem much question that he was guilty of underage drinking.  I am waiting for the calls for Coach Pete Carroll to resign and for the USC football schedule to be canceled.  Or are there different standards for college football and lacrosse teams?

Be Careful How You Treat Your Waiter

On Best of the Web today, Taranto went on about this waiter blog, and how he couldn't stop reading it.  Well, I clicked on it, and I couldn't stop reading it either.    Definitely worth a look.

This is very funny, and its got my buddy Kevin James there at the end.

John Galt, Call Your Office

Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan has had this to say about the supposed 400 million dollar compensation package given to retiring  Exxon CEO Lee Raymond:

"There can be no more compelling evidence that the price gouging and market manipulation which has produced record oil prices is out of control, and is working to serve the forces of individual greed and corporate gluttony at the painful expense of millions of American consumers," Dorgan said.

Wow, does this guy sound like a villain from an Ayn Rand novel or what?  First off, a big chunk of this "compensation" was in the form of stock options, all of which were issued over five years ago.  Exxon wasn't intending to compensate Raymond at this level, it is just that the company (and hence the stock) has done remarkably well during his tenure.

Second, Raymond has spent his life making sure that there was plenty of gas to pump into the tanks of our cars.  Athletes like Andre Agassi and media types like Oprah and  Tom Cruise make the same type of money as Raymond, and I don't recall that any of them have ever done anything for me (although Agassi was nice to my oldest daughter, once).  How come no subpoenas from the Senate about the "gluttony" of some of these folks?

Don't get me wrong, I have no beef with what Oprah and like make; they didn't point a gun to anyone's head to get paid at that level, and I presume they earned every penny.  It is just that no one ever talks about the "obscene" amounts made by celebrities.  It seems that this kind of talk only happens when some business type gets his.

Hu's on First

The wife was looking at the news this morning, I was still in bed.  We had the following conversation:

Wife:  Bush is seeing the President of China today.

Me:  Hu?

Wife:  The President of China.

Me:  Hu?

Wife:  The President of China.  Bush is meeting with the President of China.

Me:  Bush is meeting with Hu?

Wife (really exasperated now):  I told you, the President of China.

Me:  Hu?

Wife (after looking again at the news story):  Jerk.

My Take on the Duke Rape Accusations

I have thought for some time that the Duke students accused of raping that exotic dancer (read stripper) didn't do it.   I wish I had time to blog about it earlier, so I could have looked like a visionary and all that.  Now that the DNA tests have come back negative a lot of people are beginning to reach this conclusion.

Why do I think nothing happened?  Two reasons, really.

First, the defense lawyers were predicting days ago that the DNA results would exonerate their clients.  Now, the first rule of defense lawyering is to keep your mouth shut until you see the government's evidence, so you can construct a defense around it  (actually, that is the second rule of defense lawyering, the first rule is to make sure you get paid).   Because if you start talking too early, you foreclose potential defenses, and when the DNA comes back positive it is a little late to say it was consensual sex.

So, why were the defense lawyers talking?   The only answer is that they had to be absolutely convinced that no sexual contact of any type took place.  You can be sure that they all leaned on their clients hard for the straight story and they, at least, were convinced.

But how do we know that Duke kids told their defense lawyers the truth?  That gets into the second reason why I am pretty certain that the rape never happened, which is the basic unreality of the situation.  There were 40+ people crammed into that not very big house, and if a violently protesting girl was dragged into a bathroom by three men and violently assaulted over a period of time, you can be pretty sure everyone would have some idea that something odd was going on. 

Now, I know that the net is full of stories about how these tight knit lacrosse teams stick together.  But we are talking about upper class kids from good families.  You might be able to expect them to keep the faith about stuff like drugs and underage drinking, but rape and kidnapping are serious crimes going way beyond the "boys-will-be-boys" stuff.

And with this many witnesses  and this level of scrutiny from the authorities, I wouldn't care if they were all "made men" from the Cosa Nostra.   Prosecutors learn early that the way to break down criminal conspiracies is to offer a sweet deal to whoever is the first to rat the others out.  Even with hardened crooks, someone usually takes the deal.  And here you have 40 witnesses that are looking forward to careers as stock brokers and stuff, and none of them want to spend the next ten years being somebody's girlfriend in the state pen.  If there was a story to tell somebody would have told it.

So, I think the accusation is based on a hoax, and it will be loads of fun to watch it unravel.  (Do I feel sorry for the Duke students, being hounded about a crime they didn't commit?   Not really, they brought a lot of this on themselves, and maybe they will learn a lesson or two).

Useful Links - TalkLeft has been making a lot of sense on the issue, and La Shawn Barber has been causing a lot of peoples' heads to explode.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Part Whatever

A young mother in the oh-so-trendy neighborhood of Park Slope (in New York, where else) finds a little blue hat.   Looking for the owner, she e-mails about the hat to a group of "Park Slope Parents", referring to it as a "boy's hat".  The ensuing p.c. firestorm which erupts (how did she know it was a boy's hat, little girls can wear blue if they want, etc.) is just way to funny for words.  (H/T The Corner).   (p.s.  Some of the comments are worth reading too).

Yeah, But Was It a Leak?

Everybody in the news media is in a tizzy because, they say, President Bush authorized Scooter Libby to "leak" classified material to  a NY Times reporter.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "President Bush personally authorized leaking classified information."   

The Boston Globe story starts out "President Bush authorized the leak of a classified intelligence report about Iraq to a New York Times reporter." 

And the New York Times tells us that "President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to leak key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq."

And so on.  The problem is, people, that a "leak" is, by definition, an unauthorized disclosure of information.   According to Dictionary.com, to "leak" is "[t]o disclose without authorization or official sanction: leaked classified information to a reporter."   

So, if the President authorized the disclosure, then by definition it isn't a "leak".  And the fact that it was classified information ain't a big deal either, given that Bush, as the Post notes, "had the unquestionable authority to approve the disclosure of secret CIA information to reporters".

It will take a day or two for everyone to realize that the President's action was neither illegal nor a leak, and they they will start searching around for some reason why it was still "bad".  Then it will likely come out that Presidents have been doing this sort of thing since time immemorial.  Then everyone will move on to Katie Couric or something equally important.