From: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 01:25:46 +0800
To: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Subject: [noise] Re: Do you feel lucky, punk?
In-Reply-To: <m0twHPF-00091DC@pacifier.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960311213348.11349A-100000@polaris.mindport.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Mon, 11 Mar 1996, jim bell wrote:

> At 05:54 PM 3/11/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:
> >
> >
> >[rant including some very dubious abstracts of legal opinions deleted]
> >
> >Not only is your law poor and badly reasoned,
> 
> Just what George Will said about this recent Bennis SC decision.

My issue was with your application of the cite and decisions to the 
pending bill.  (Perhaps if you are not qualified to make your own 
comments about court cases, and limited to citing the critiques of 
others, you should refrain from making inferences as to their likely or 
unlikely application to other legal issues).

> > your mastery of  the jurisprudence of forfeiture law flawed,
> 
> Ditto, and I notice you give no specific examples.  Why is that?

My issue was, again, with regard to your choice of cites, the way you 
chose to apply them to represent a general (and flawed) attitude toward 
statuatory construction, and the manner in which you try to mold all of 
the above in a way suggesting it has the least bit to do with the bill in 
question.

But, for the sake of equality, let's examine some of your legal assertions.  
Or, more accurately, legal conclusions.  (BTW, where is your J.D. from?)

1> In fact, I would argue that a remailer operator will actually be 
considered MORE responsible, legally, than Mrs. Bennis:

2> I argue that a person who runs an anonymous encrypted remailer could be
clearly claimed to be  "entrusting" that "property" to someone else, under
the meaning of the above paragraph.

The "above paragaph," incidently, doesn't even rise to the level of court 
dicta, but is a abstract of dicta by a court commentator.  Using such 
authority to back a legal conclusion (especially when applied to an 
entirely seperate legal area) is twisted at best, and dangerous at worst.

3> At least, that is the position the prosecutors could surely take, 
especially given this Supreme Court decision.

Uh huh.  They might also take the position that the defendent is ugly, 
and should be convicted.  That doesn't make it a legally viable argument.

> 
> > and your rhetoric twisted, 
> 
> Again, you give no specific examples.  And what is "twisted rhetoric", at 
> least as you've used it here?

I'm not going to delve into semantics or be distracted by a war of the 
dictionaries.  You proport to be knowledgeable in these areas, and yet 
say nothing of value.  Your appeal (what of it there is) is based 
entirely on skewing meanings, using critiques of dicta, and generally 
applying inflamatory language taken out of context in a manner which suits 
you.  I don't think I'm off base calling it "twisted."

> 
> >but you don't seem to know the difference between dicta and holdings.
> 
> I didn't use either term.  Neither did George Will.

Perhaps you should have.  It would have set of the alarm bells of others 
who might have been looking at your work with anything like a critical 
eye and saved them the time of reading the trash.

> Maybe you read that item too rapidly to notice that most of it was George 
> Will's column, not my wording.  

Again, its application to the bill is what I question.  All of which 
throws your understanding of law, dicta, holdings, jurisprudence, and 
rhetoric into question.  What you should have cited was some statuatory 
construction and legislative history cases, not forfeiture law.  But how 
could you be expected to know this?

> BTW, I get particularly suspicious when people "respond" 
> to my posts and quote NOTHING that I have said.

I delete fluff from my postings as a matter of courtsey to the readers.  
This is a habit you do not seem to share with me.

  This seems to be a pattern: 

I guess I'm not the only one who thinks your prose has the bouquet of 
rotting herring.

>  The person clearly disagrees with my position in general, but can't cite 
> specifics and in fact studiously avoids them.  Padgett Peterson is an expert 
> at this, it appears you're trying to emulate him. 

I do not know Mr. Peterson, nor am I familiar with his works.  I deleted 
a bunch of useless gibberish, commenting in the process on its general 
unsuitability in the context of the post.

> What, then, was the point of sending me the note, as well as wasting 
> bandwidth on CP to share your unhappiness?

Distribution of reputation capital (or in this case, negative reputation 
capital).  I believe I also wanted to make a point (in 1,200 bytes) about 
the utility (or lack thereof) of your article (10,500 bytes) on this list.

Perhaps in the process I might save a newcomer from the unfortuante and 
embarassing fate of actually lending some authority to anything you have 
to say.

> Jim Bell
> jimbell@pacifier.com

---
My prefered and soon to be permanent e-mail address: unicorn@schloss.li
"In fact, had Bancroft not existed,       potestas scientiae in usu est
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