Ariastis writes "Jack Thompson has filed documents with a federal court in Florida requesting to subpoena President George W. Bush for a deposition to retain Thompson's license to practice law. Ah, and Jeb Bush too, for good measure."
Jack: Mr. Bush, multiplayer kill-simulators are training young children to become killers. Bush: Kill...simulators? Jack: Yes. An example would be Counter-strike, where a player can be counter-terrorist or terrorist- Bush: TERRORIST! Jack: Yes, yes. Terrorist. And they play over the internet- Bush: The internets? Do they use The Google? JacK: Uhh...I'm sure they do... Bush: So The Google and the Internets are related to terrorists! Jack: Well, no... Bush: Put me through to Homeland Security! Every person found using the Internets will be taken into custody! Jack: Not what I was looking for...but works either way.
But see you've reversed the implication. That's "My friend is an enemy of my enemy" and that's normally true. If you assumed the other guy was your "friend" for no reason other than that he was also my enemy, you'd be setting yourself up for an unpleasant surprise.
I'll admit chance plays a significant role in Risk, but if you really believe that, try using the dice to decide where you place your armies and what countries to attack and I'd beat you 100% of the time.
And it has to insult linux, call evolution a fake, and then be found out to all be the working of the RIAA, funded by Sony who is working for the CIA. Then you'd have a lot of angry/.er...or at least angrier than normal...
Considering that not even congress can get Bush, Rumsfield, Cheny et al to respond to subpoenas -or even off the record chats ire the Plame affair, the attorney firings etc (maybe they can get Gonzales now that he has stepped down) I don't think he's got a prayer.
And when he loses his license he can blame Bush -just like everyone else
The time is approaching when someone is going to have to put this guy in the nut house. I hope all those self-serving pandering politicians who like to align themselves with Thompson against the invented evils of video games start seriously considering the kind of delusional maniac they've decided is their ally.
Ok, now that I've trolled in another post, I'm wondering if the folks trying to get him kicked out of the Bar could enter the subpoena ITSELF as evidence of JT's unfitness to practice law.
Ok, now that I've trolled in another post, I'm wondering if the folks trying to get him kicked out of the Bar could enter the subpoena ITSELF as evidence of JT's unfitness to practice law.
I don't know if it can be directly referenced or not. Is it necessary? The guy's record speaks for itself. This delicious piece of irony is just icing on the cake.
I'm more concerned about his fitness to walk down the street. I really do think Thompson is completely out of his mind. I think what's needed after the disbarment is a 30 day psychiatric review in a closed facility. Maybe there's some meds they can give him.
It makes me wonder, though. Schizophrenia quite often starts mild, debatably sane, and progresses over time to padded-room calibre. Just because at some point you might look like just a bit eccentric or slightly bizarre or a bit of a bad case of cognitive dissonance, doesn't mean that 17 years later you can't be diagnosed with proper schizophrenia.
And this guy's delusions started from half-way between mildly annoying and mildly funny, and progressed to outright bizarre. I can't diagnose him anyway, but it makes me, you know, wonder. Maybe a second examination would find it a bit worse than the one almost 2 decades ago? It's a possibility.
Plus, to the best of my knowledge, a lot (most?) doctors tend to prefer to err on the conservative side, especially when it would bury someone's career. If slapping a "yup, he's schizophrenic" label on him would terminate his right to act as a lawyer, even temporarily, they'll give him a lot of benefit of the doubt. He'd pretty much have to be at the raving lunatic stage to get that. It's just a different standard. Even if you'd consider giving him neuroleptics in a private consultation, you'd have to be convinced that he's to deranged to do his job to actually slap that on his dossier.
Plus, in that kind of context, I figure it's hard to diagnose anyway. Noone will start telling you about the voices in his head, when he's sent there to determine whether he's fit to keep working and doing his crusade. Being insane carries a major stigma. So unless they're deranged past the point of hiding it, a lot of people _will_ try to hide it, if you just send them to a psychiatrist. They might admit stuff to their therapist if it was their idea to go there, and it's going to be kept secret. But not to the guy who has to determine whether they're fit to keep their job, and whose conclusion will probably be public record.
What I'm trying to say is that it's entirely possible that he just slipped through the cracks the first time. (_If_ he's indeed nuts.) There's no telling if he'd still pass after all this time.
Suing the person that's meant to be mediating the dispute is taking things a little far, even for him... If he keeps suing the judges and courts, who's going to finally judge the case, and where? If you want to use the legal system to your advantage, you can't sue it... I would have thought a lawyer would realise that.
AFAIR, this won't be Jack' first time filing against a judge in one of his cases. Whenever he doesn't like a judge, he has convinced himself that suing the judge will result in a conflict of interest, and force the judge to recuse himself, allowing him to arbitrarily judge-shop until he finds somebody he thinks will kow-tow to his bullshit for fear of being sued.
Unfortunately for Jack, there is no clear precedent requiring a judge to recuse himself if he gets sued by someone involved in a case he is judging. Naturally, this is because such a precedent would enable exactly what Jack wants. IIRC, the last judge he sued didn't recuse himself because of being sued, but eventually did recuse himself because there was a conflict of interest arising from the fact that the judge was filing a formal complaint about Jack being an asshat.
There's no excuse for one human being to torture another. There's no reason to joke about it, either. Jack should be stripped of his ability to practice law in the United States, but being an obnoxious and pedantic lawyer isn't a reason to deprive him of his basic human rights and inflict pain on him. In fact, there's no reason why torture should be acceptable in the 21st century world.
My guess is that it's to prove that if Bush can be completely incompetent and misguided as President, then Thompson has the right to do so as a lawyer.
I'll never forget the stories a good friend of mine used to tell about his job as a vet tech for the Henry Villas Zoo, specifically the monkey house. To quote...
Try again, this time understanding something about the structure of the court system in Florida. The Florida Bar is an agent of the Supreme Court of Florida:
Article V, Section 15 of the Constitution of the State of Florida gives the Supreme Court of Florida exclusive and ultimate authority to regulate the admission of persons to the practice of law and the discipline of those persons who are admitted to practice. The Court performs those official functions through two separate arms: the Florida Board of Bar Examiners , which screens, tests and certifies candidates for admission to the practice; and The Florida Bar, the investigative and prosecutorial authority in the lawyer regulatory process. Neither of these two agencies, nor any of their functions, is supported by state tax dollars (source [floridabar.org])
Then he'll make elaborate laws that restrict our rights with promises that it will stop video game-ism, only to have video games become better at hiding, stockpiling weapons, and money laundering.
Get off your high horse. Jack Thompson is of interest around here, because of his links to the anti-gaming lobby. It's Friday, it's a hilarious story, and we're all enjoying it. You know who Thompson is, if you have been around for a while. That's like asking "Which Bill Gates? How should I know?"
Just because you don't know the name Jack Thompson, doesn't mean that most geeks/nerds don't immediately know who he is. You'll also note that this story is tagged as "humor" not as "gaming", so to be perfectly honest, it could be *any* lunatic lawyer that's issued a subpoena for the President in defense for the deposition of his license to practice law. The fact that it's Jack Thompson just makes it better for those of us who know who he is (which, I'm sorry, I would bet that there are more of us who do th
"News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Anyone else remember when that was "News for Nerds ON THE Stuff that Matters?"
No, I don't remember that, and I remember the first day when Chips N' Dips was dead and Slashdot was live. Was it really different? Because I really don't remember it having "on the" in there, which really reduces the punchiness of the tag line and really I doubt would make any difference regarding the content. As if they said "whew, now that we got rid of 'on the' we can start posting irre
That's a really nice rant, and I agree with you somewhat in your general assertion that Slashdot has drifted pretty far away from being a nerd site (WTF is up with the Politics section, for example). However, I have some issues:
1.) I haven't been around quite as long as you have, but I don't recall the slogan ever being "News for Nerds on the Stuff that Matters". That may have been the original intent, but I don't think that was ever the actual slogan. The oldest page from Slashdot I could find on web.archive.org is from November, 1998 [archive.org], which was prior to the Andover.net buyout (thereby presumably before the major corporate influence began). On that page, the slogan is "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
Now, I grant you, prior to maybe 5 or 6 years ago, the "stuff that matters FOR NERDS" was sort of implied, but that hasn't really been the case for a long, long time.
2.) Jack Thompson has been going after the gaming industry for a long time. Seeing his long, slow descent into madness is of great interest to gaming nerds, even if not to you particularly. Even if you decide that the site should be limited only to things that the typical nerd would care about (not your decision or mine to make), this still would fit that category.
So, even though I agree with you that Slashdot in general has strayed pretty far from its roots (but what site this old hasn't), I disagree with you about this particular story.
I'm with you on the editors (remember how kdawson would put almost everything into the Enlightenment category?), and the overall quality of the site over time. I pretty much agree with your other points as well. On another note, something that may only be funny to me:
I was browsing your comment history briefly, and noticed that the VERY FIRST comment that Slashdot shows you having posted is from January 1999, and is complaining about the QUALITY OF AN ARTICLE ON SLASHDOT! That is just hilariously awesome.
I'm torn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Funny)
turd... polish... still a turd...
no, it's gone
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Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Funny)
Give us forever, we'll get there eventually.
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Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Funny)
Uh...which "he"?
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Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Funny)
And if you don't believe that, then we should get a group together to play Risk. For money.
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Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Funny)
The enemy of my enemy is... a low priority!
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Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Funny)
Jack: Mr. Bush, multiplayer kill-simulators are training young children to become killers.
Bush: Kill...simulators?
Jack: Yes. An example would be Counter-strike, where a player can be counter-terrorist or terrorist-
Bush: TERRORIST!
Jack: Yes, yes. Terrorist. And they play over the internet-
Bush: The internets? Do they use The Google?
JacK: Uhh...I'm sure they do...
Bush: So The Google and the Internets are related to terrorists!
Jack: Well, no...
Bush: Put me through to Homeland Security! Every person found using the Internets will be taken into custody!
Jack: Not what I was looking for...but works either way.
~Jarik
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Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Insightful)
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ObSchlock Mercenary (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I'm torn (Score:4, Insightful)
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Rotaderp .sv Neila (Score:5, Funny)
wow - Bush AND Thompson in the same story (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wow - Bush AND Thompson in the same story (Score:5, Funny)
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i said it before, i'll say it again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i said it before, i'll say it again... (Score:5, Funny)
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good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)
And when he loses his license he can blame Bush -just like everyone else
-I'm just sayin'
The Time Is Approaching (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Time Is Approaching (Score:5, Funny)
I agree, but we need to do something about that Thompson guy too.
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Re:The Time Is Approaching (Score:5, Funny)
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Who's next (Score:3, Funny)
Subpoena as evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Subpoena as evidence? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if it can be directly referenced or not. Is it necessary? The guy's record speaks for itself. This delicious piece of irony is just icing on the cake.
I'm more concerned about his fitness to walk down the street. I really do think Thompson is completely out of his mind. I think what's needed after the disbarment is a 30 day psychiatric review in a closed facility. Maybe there's some meds they can give him.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
KCN perhaps?
It makes me wonder, though (Score:4, Interesting)
And this guy's delusions started from half-way between mildly annoying and mildly funny, and progressed to outright bizarre. I can't diagnose him anyway, but it makes me, you know, wonder. Maybe a second examination would find it a bit worse than the one almost 2 decades ago? It's a possibility.
Plus, to the best of my knowledge, a lot (most?) doctors tend to prefer to err on the conservative side, especially when it would bury someone's career. If slapping a "yup, he's schizophrenic" label on him would terminate his right to act as a lawyer, even temporarily, they'll give him a lot of benefit of the doubt. He'd pretty much have to be at the raving lunatic stage to get that. It's just a different standard. Even if you'd consider giving him neuroleptics in a private consultation, you'd have to be convinced that he's to deranged to do his job to actually slap that on his dossier.
Plus, in that kind of context, I figure it's hard to diagnose anyway. Noone will start telling you about the voices in his head, when he's sent there to determine whether he's fit to keep working and doing his crusade. Being insane carries a major stigma. So unless they're deranged past the point of hiding it, a lot of people _will_ try to hide it, if you just send them to a psychiatrist. They might admit stuff to their therapist if it was their idea to go there, and it's going to be kept secret. But not to the guy who has to determine whether they're fit to keep their job, and whose conclusion will probably be public record.
What I'm trying to say is that it's entirely possible that he just slipped through the cracks the first time. (_If_ he's indeed nuts.) There's no telling if he'd still pass after all this time.
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sounds to me (Score:5, Funny)
like he's a lawyer, alright...
Re:sounds to me (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIR, this won't be Jack' first time filing against a judge in one of his cases. Whenever he doesn't like a judge, he has convinced himself that suing the judge will result in a conflict of interest, and force the judge to recuse himself, allowing him to arbitrarily judge-shop until he finds somebody he thinks will kow-tow to his bullshit for fear of being sued.
Unfortunately for Jack, there is no clear precedent requiring a judge to recuse himself if he gets sued by someone involved in a case he is judging. Naturally, this is because such a precedent would enable exactly what Jack wants. IIRC, the last judge he sued didn't recuse himself because of being sued, but eventually did recuse himself because there was a conflict of interest arising from the fact that the judge was filing a formal complaint about Jack being an asshat.
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At least.. (Score:5, Insightful)
One good send deserves another (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No excuse for torture. (Score:4, Insightful)
Human Rights Watch [hrw.org]
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Perfect lesson in english usage (Score:5, Funny)
The psychotic Jack Thompson is sending a subpoena to the psychopathic George Bush.
It's clear who Bush needs to defend him... (Score:5, Funny)
Duck Hunt (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Prepare for cranial explosions! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"When in doubt, throw poo"
-Rick
Re:Prepare for cranial explosions! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Prepare for cranial explosions! (Score:5, Informative)
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What if.... ha... you almost had me there. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:WORST ... SLASHDOT ... STORY ... EVER (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WORST ... SLASHDOT ... STORY ... EVER (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I don't remember that, and I remember the first day when Chips N' Dips was dead and Slashdot was live. Was it really different? Because I really don't remember it having "on the" in there, which really reduces the punchiness of the tag line and really I doubt would make any difference regarding the content. As if they said "whew, now that we got rid of 'on the' we can start posting irre
Re:WORST ... SLASHDOT ... STORY ... EVER (Score:5, Interesting)
1.) I haven't been around quite as long as you have, but I don't recall the slogan ever being "News for Nerds on the Stuff that Matters". That may have been the original intent, but I don't think that was ever the actual slogan. The oldest page from Slashdot I could find on web.archive.org is from November, 1998 [archive.org], which was prior to the Andover.net buyout (thereby presumably before the major corporate influence began). On that page, the slogan is "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
Now, I grant you, prior to maybe 5 or 6 years ago, the "stuff that matters FOR NERDS" was sort of implied, but that hasn't really been the case for a long, long time.
2.) Jack Thompson has been going after the gaming industry for a long time. Seeing his long, slow descent into madness is of great interest to gaming nerds, even if not to you particularly. Even if you decide that the site should be limited only to things that the typical nerd would care about (not your decision or mine to make), this still would fit that category.
So, even though I agree with you that Slashdot in general has strayed pretty far from its roots (but what site this old hasn't), I disagree with you about this particular story.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On another note, something that may only be funny to me:
I was browsing your comment history briefly, and noticed that the VERY FIRST comment that Slashdot shows you having posted is from January 1999, and is complaining about the QUALITY OF AN ARTICLE ON SLASHDOT! That is just hilariously awesome.
T [slashdot.org]
Don't trust everyone on your side (Score:3, Insightful)
The guy is loony.
This is not the kind of person you want arguing for your side & case.
Seriously.