Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Ever since my little kitty died / I have been locked in the chamber / of sadness and melancholy
I was reading some pages of Engrish (and being highly amused—the title up there comes from a billboard for the Backstree Boys) when I had an odd thought: are there webpages in Taiwan or China or Japan mocking our use of their language? I'm just curious.
Fox goes to South Park
For Mark, who is a big South Park fan—how the Fox Network handles South Park (which, in a way, I find just as amusing as the original episodes).
This never happened.
On an unspecified day last week an employee of a federal agency that cannot be revealed delivered a document that cannot be identified to a company that cannot be named seeking information that cannot be discussed.
The aforementioned federal agent left the unidentified document with an employee of the unnamed company. That employee then called the owner, who must remain anonymous, to inform him that the document that could not be identified sought information that could not be discussed. The owner who must remain anonymous instructed the employee to deliver the unidentified document to a lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege.
The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege examined the unidentified document and then reviewed the information that could not be discussed with the owner who must remain anonymous.
With the approval of the owner who must remain anonymous, the lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege contacted a U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed.
The U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed then claimed the owner who must remain anonymous violated a law that could not be disclosed and faced arrest for charges that could not be specified because he had referred to the document that cannot be identified in an article for a certain, but unnamed, web site.
The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege argued that his client could not be charged under the undisclosed law because he had been acting as a journalist at the time of the alleged publication and not as the owner of the company that cannot be named. He had, in fact, learned of the existence of the document that cannot be identified from a third-party, who was not named, and was not aware of its exact contents because he had not seen or read the document and, therefore, was not aware of the exact contents that cannot be discussed.
The U.S. attorney who demanded his identity be concealed consulted with others who names are classified and concluded that the owner who must remain anonymous walked a fine line between legal and illegal and would not face arrest for violating a law that could not be disclosed on charges that could not be specified.
So walking this fine line of justice allowed the owner who must remain anonymous to avoid confinement at an institution at an unknown location for an unspecified length of time.
In exchange for his freedom, the owner who must remain anonymous agreed to write a “clarification” of what happened, following the guidelines for publication laid down by the Bush administration.
Which is what you just read.
Nothing to see here. Move along. Nothing to see.
Now that's a problem. I own the company that hosts Capitol Hill Blue. So, in effect, the feds want me to turn over information on myself and not tell myself that I'm doing it. You'd think they'd know better.
Bush declares war on freedom of the press
Of course, this never happened. But if it did happen, then President Bush is in good company.
