What's Wrong with this Picture? Part Two

Even after Donald Trump's feud with Rosie O'Donnell that played over the airwaves in 2007, I missed out on Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice. After looking at the distortion in Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's face this week, I remember that I had caught a glimpse of the same thing on The Apprentice this past March. The Ivanka Trump part does not show up in this video, but check out Stephen Baldwin's face when Trace Adkins and Piers Morgan chose teammates:

What's Wrong with this Picture?

If you caught Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee D-TX speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday, you should have noticed that her face looked markedly different. I have posted a video of her in the same lime green dress suit and cream blouse. Below that one, is a video with a side angle shot of her speaking on the House floor today about Juneteenth.

Thesis

Speaking of 1963, this clip was produced by filmmaker Martin Scorsese as a course requirement for his master's degree at New York University's School of Film. What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This is a short that depicts a writer's uneasy formality with life that teeters on an incredulous departure from reality at the film's end. Having only mulled on Scorsese's The Aviator, a biopic film that begins at Howard Hughes's childhood, I admired how he encapsulated, against a sixties backdrop, a man's eventual disassociation from the here and now in the film's ten minutes. Airline mogul and Hollywood socialite Hughes, played by Leonardo Di Caprio, grappled with an obsessive compulsive disorder that travelled with him from childhood, in his business ventures and with each of trysts with screen actresses. What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This shows the opposite. What does a man do when the cookie-cutter story book life gets the better of him?

Alien Jurisdiction

Today, United Nations' International Court of Justice heard emergency oral arguments over the case of Jose Medellin who is set for execution in the State of Texas on August 4th. At issue, is the United States' adherence to a 2004 interpretation of the 1963 Vienna Convention requiring that a Mexican national be notified of his right to contact the Mexican consulate before facing capital punishment charges. Personally, I believe that even in spite of the procedural defects in Medellin's case, that it is a travesty of justice to interfere with a sovereign's right to administer punishment to an irrefutable murderer and rapist. However in times such as this, Jose Medellin's case does merit the public attention because legal issues involved raise questions of human rights law and what force is attributed to international treaties made with foreign governments. The United Nations' world courts and other governing bodies are important courts of last resort for many countries where the judicial or political system is bereft of justice. Such as in the case of the murder of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistani officials have requested a United Nation's investigation into the suspected murderer, millitant commander Baitullah Mehsud's ties to the Pakistani government and al-Qaeda. Any sovereign where there is a military rule of law, seems to deserve a review of its internal processes even if the only relief that can be granted is a review by the UN Security Council. The United States has given representative party Medellin and his cohorts plenty of bites at the apple.

Office Depot

A District Judge for the District of the District of Columbia exempted the Office of Admistration from having to produce White House emails from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Although prior precedent has determined this type of correspondence to be public, the memorandum opinion based the denial of access to the emails on the specific component of the Executive Office of the President and not on the content of the information requested.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all Dad's out there!

Public Policy Argument

Who needs Freudian enthusiast film director Roman Polanski when there is Judge Roman Kozinski? Judge Kozinski is the chief federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals bench that went ahead and recused himself from a pornography case for posting human pornography and animal beastiality on his personal website that is no longer functional. Somehow, the difference between the two Romans, Polanski and Judge Kozinkski, lead to the differentiation between definitions of endorse and indorse many times used interchangeably as the word endorse. A person can endorse or approve of a candidate, but that definition is distinct from the action of indorsing, or inscribing your own name to become the payee of a check. Conflating the two endorsement meanings yet again, Ponzi schemes are named for the Italian born Charles Ponzi method of circumventing the law with shoddy high risk business practices by bringing in more investors to line his fleet of early investors' pockets. In particular, the International Reply Coupon gimmick allowed Charles Ponzi's Security Exchange Company investors and customers to cash in on international arbitrage by buying postage overseas and redeeming them for higher postal rates in the United States. In modern history, founder of EarthLink Reed Slatkin's scheme netted him millions dollars stored in a Zurich, Switzerland bank from over 800 investors. The fradulent investment scheme that raised money early on from celebrities and movie producers also netted the Scientologist minister fourteen years in federal prison. CNBC's American Greed series showcased a Ponzi scheme orchestrated by an art dealer that passed off obviously worthless paintings and sculptures as multimillion dollar works of art. Worse than a 3:30 appointment with Donald Rumsfeld, Ponzi schemes begin with a venture into the legal morass of the unknown to becomming patently offensive when the arrangement impedes on traditional law and our common sensibilities. Leading us back to Judge Roman Kozinkski's public endorsement for lewd art, when is enough, enough already?