Quote of the Day

It's easy to have high self-esteem -- just aim low.

- Albert Bandura

Creepy quote of the day

... the overall presence of strong governmental control is healthy and should improve operational efficiency of the Games.

- 2001 Report of the IOC Evaluation Committee on Beijing. The committee was evaluating whether holding the Olympics in a communist dictatorship was a good idea. (Dominic Lawson. Mr. Lawson notes that "China and the Olympics are made for each other ... A super-sized portion of hardened commercialism, marinated in whipped-up nationalism and topped off with obsessive media control.")

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people ...

... seems so passé in Connecticut. The State Commission on Human Rights has ruled in favor of its investigator's report that anti-discrimination laws prevent the city from requiring timed exams ... on fireman exams. From the Stamford Advocate:

STAMFORD - The city discriminated against a firefighter with a learning disability by denying him extra time on a promotional test and it must be trained in disability law, state human rights officials ruled.

The state's Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities ruled the city violated anti-discrimination law by denying extra time to David Lenotti, a fire lieutenant with attention deficit disorder.

The city defended the denial by claiming a fire captain, the position Lenotti sought, must be able to read and process information quickly at a fire scene. But state officials said the city never proved that was true, never consulted with disability rights experts and does not use a promotional test that actually measures how fast a candidate can read.

"It's a very nice victory," Lenotti said. "The city has basically been shown they can't just push people around."

So Mr. Lenotti has a right to a job for which I (and his superiors) think that he is clearly unqualified, and innocent victims of fires have a right to look like this if he is unable to make decisions quickly enough in a fire emergency.

Art and the law

In New Mexico, photography has been ruled to be a commercial enterprise, and thus ineligible for protection under that pesky 1st ammendment to the Constitution.

Photographers Denied
the Freedom To Choose What They Photograph:

Elaine Huguenin co-owns Elane Photography with her husband. The bulk of Elane's work is done by Elaine, though she subcontracts some of the work some of the time. Elane refused to photograph Vanessa Willock's same-sex commitment ceremonies, and just today the New Mexico Human Rights Commission held that this violated state antidiscrimination law. Elane has been ordered to pay over $6600 in attorney's fees and costs.

(From Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy.)

Quote of the day

... if the presumptive Republican nominee can survive five years in prisoner-of-war camps, then surely the Democratic nominee can survive five more months of opposition on the campaign trail.

-Nicole Crosby, letter to the Norwalk Advocate.