Popehat Goes To The Opera: Un ballo in maschera
It's time once again for Popehat Goes To The Opera, the feature in which I demonstrate that opera is more bizarre, ridiculous, and wonderful than[Read More…]
A Group Complaint about Law, Liberty, and Leisure
It's time once again for Popehat Goes To The Opera, the feature in which I demonstrate that opera is more bizarre, ridiculous, and wonderful than[Read More…]
Filed Under: Culture, Music Tagged With: Popehat Goes To The Opera, Successful (Sort of) Conspiracies
I used to have DreamHost as a webhost. We parted ways, but I always admired and appreciated that they reliably stood up for their customers — including me — in the face of bogus legal threats seeking to suppress speech. This week they're standing up admirably for internet users once again, this time in the[Read More…]
Filed Under: Law Tagged With: Criminal Justice
Discussions of free speech in America are usually dominated by hypotheticals — or by slippery slope arguments, if you prefer. The First Amendment unquestionably and broadly protects what we call "hate speech." If you point that out, you get hypotheticals in return. "Really? So, the day that Nazis march the streets, armed, carrying the swastika[Read More…]
Filed Under: Law, Politics & Current Events Tagged With: Free Speech
I know you've already explained things twice this week but I have questions. no mas. no mas. No, this time it's not about search warrants or grand juries. It's about John Oliver. Is the question "will smug ridicule take down Trump this time for sure even though it never has before?" So hostile! Drink some[Read More…]
Filed Under: Law Tagged With: Lawsplainer
This series is about my investigation of a mail fraud ring that attempted to scam my firm, the history of its bad actors, and the methodology that I used to look into it. You can see the whole chapter index here. Just shy of six years ago, in September 2011, a direct-mail scammer tried to[Read More…]
Filed Under: Law Tagged With: Anatomy of a Scam
You promised a second chapter of the federal grand jury lawsplainer! i do what i want That's fine. Because I want to ask about something else anyway. You have the attention span of a fruit fly. What is it now? Did you hear? FBI agents working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller raided the house of[Read More…]
Filed Under: Law Tagged With: Criminal Justice, Lawsplainer
I have good news! I doubt it. I was going to ask you how federal grand juries work, but now I don't need to! That is good news. I'm just going to learn about them on Twitter! wat Newt Gingrich is posting some very informative stuff! This is low. This is low, even for you.[Read More…]
Filed Under: Law Tagged With: Lawsplainer
So, I can't post on Twitter right now. Twitter is mad about this tweet, and wants me to delete it: You can't see the referenced threat attached to that tweet. Here it is: The backstory to the bizarre threat by Jason Van Dyke is here and here. In short, I wrote about a Texas lawyer[Read More…]
Filed Under: Culture
On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 8:17 PM, Catherine Park wrote: Hello There, I am a business content writer and I chanced upon popehat.com. I must appreciate that the content of your website is par excellence and exceptionally useful. I’ve been a blogger for about 10 years, with special interests in small, medium enterprise/business and[Read More…]
Last week I wrote about Jason Van Dyke, a lawyer, violence-threatener, bigot, and perhaps-ironically self-styled Proud Boy. This was a post of little consequence, unless you count the attempt to glitterbomb me through the mail: Anyway, the post attracted a commenter who styled himself "Cory G." who came bearing a fantastical tale about Mr. Van[Read More…]
Filed Under: Politics & Current Events
Over the last couple of weeks I've gotten communications from five different strangers alerting me of something outrageous: the Los Angeles Times has brought a SLAPP suit against Ted Rall! OMG! Except they haven't, of course. But the people who wrote me aren't to blame — at least not entirely. They're only accepting Ted Rall's[Read More…]
Filed Under: Law Tagged With: Free Speech, SLAPP