Torts for Morons

Let me break this down for the moron in question:

Falsely accusing someone of stealing confidential documents, and of repeatedly engaging in similar misconduct: Defamatory.

Accordingly, I am retracting my claim that Herzig-Yoshinaga "surreptitiously shared confidential documents with" Irons. I have made a note of this on the errata page of my book. Moreover, I am directing Regnery to excise the words "surreptitiously" and "confidential" from future editions of the book.

In addition, I retract the following statements which appeared on my blog:

August 24, 2004:

Contrary to [University of North Carolina law professor Eric] Muller's assertion that the papers shared were "publicly available documents sitting in publicly available files at archives open to the public," the article makes clear that Irons did not obtain permission to receive the papers he acquired from Herzig-Yoshinaga.

August 25, 2004:

As I noted, these records, however, had not been cleared for public use, and Iron's request to copy them had been explicitly denied. By the way, this was not the only time Irons engaged in these sort of shenanigans.

I apologize to Irons and Herzig-Yoshinaga for the errors.

Claiming someone wore a bikini 10 years ago: Not defamatory.

Not even chuckleheads like Hinderaker or Morongoff would take your case, except on a hourly basis.

Top Ten Republican Pickup Lines

10. Do you like gladiator movies, Timmy?

9. Would you like to see my Washington Monument?

8. A/S/L?

7. Did you know that Saddam Hussein has reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, Timmy?

6. Put down that pipe, and get my pipe up! (And I'm not talking about the internet.)

5. Here's $200, Mr. Gannon.

4. No fats, no fems. Bisexual o.k.

3. That's just the Speaker of the House. He's cool.

2. Did you see me on Dateline NBC last Friday?

And the number one Republican pick-up line is:

Is that a Foley catheter in my pocket, or am I just happy to see you?

Bonus Line: I'm Representative Don Sherwood, and I approve this massage.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Meets Republican Family Values Edition

What does a Republican prosecutor do when her tax criminal husband starts banging other women? She calls the graft-taking, Judith Regan-screwing, bogus 9/11 hero, Bernie "Cut and Run" Kerik to illegally wiretap her husband's boat... I mean, to idly chit-chat about completely hypothetical illegal wiretapping.

And not just any Republican prosecutor -- the Republican nominee for New York Attorney General, Jeanine Pirro.

Let's listen in as Pirro and Kerik plan their totally imaginary caper:

[Pirro] suggests, "We can just simply say, if there is an issue, that I am redecorating it for our anniversary." She complains that Kerik's man is, "uncomfortable with that."

Kerik responded by saying, "But Jeanine, I'm having the same fucking problem with everybody. Everybody is panic stricken because it's you. I've gone out on a limb. I had two other people looking at this. It's a problem."

Pirro said, "What am I supposed to do, Bernie? Watch him fuck her every night? What am I supposed to do? I can go on the boat. I'll put the fucking thing on myself."

Don't forget, folks, Kerik was Rudy Guiliani's fucking lieutenant.

Pirro may have had an alternative to wiretapping:

Without her husband, sources said she told Kerik, "I move into the governor's mansion." That's an apparent reference to her aspirations for higher office, the documents said.

You should have spent the extra money, Jeanine, and had old Albert whacked.

Last year, Hyperion published [Nancy] Grace's book "Objection! How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System."

Grace was happy to hype the book, which spent five weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. She was less eager to draw attention to the fact that she'd lifted huge, verbatim passages in the book from that newspaper.

Grace notes in the book's bibliography that she drew on an Aug. 5, 2002, "Patents" column by Sabra Chartrand about a device that allows parents to track their children. But it was only after the book was out in hardcover that she acknowledged how much of pages 204 and 205 came from the article -- 359 words, to be exact.

Sources say Hyperion president Robert S. Miller was willing to accept Grace's claim that it was an "inadvertent" error. But he insisted that Grace alert The Times in a letter that promised the "error" would be fixed in future printings.

Word is, Grace refused to write that letter -- provoking Hyperion's lawyers to remind her that, under her contract, she was responsible to hold the publisher harmless if The Times sued over copyright infringement.

If only there was a way Grace could get jail time for this.

Allen Wretch

Salon reports that George Allen (R-VA) is a true Reagan Republican:

WASHINGTON -- Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word "nigger," though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. "My impression of him was that he was a racist," the third teammate said.

David Frum, Smear Merchant

Apparently while I was missing in action the left blogosphere turned virulently anti-Semitic:

This is -- the Allen-Webb race is one of the two most races most intensely followed by the left wing Web sites in this country. And if you read those left wing Web sites and go into the comment sections, Daily Kos MoveOn.org sites, you will see they are seething with anti-Semitism that is unbelievable to anyone who thought they understand what American life was about.

...And if we're going to talk about anti-Semitism on the campaign trail in 2006, I think people should be reading the comment section at the Daily Kos, where you will see it rich and bold and vivid.

Never mind.