The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

Note to self: When reading news stories about court decisions, always download and read the decision. And look up the statute being ruled upon, because apparently the media does neither of these things, nor do the organizations filing amicus briefs in the cases.

Take, for example, the EFF’s triumphant message that an onerous provision of the USA PATRIOT Act has been struck down. Now see Orin Kerr’s post at the Volokh Conspiracy.

So finally I just downloaded the decision myself (it’s available from a link in the EFF post) and looked up the statute actually at issue- which I did by Googling “title 18″ and then searching for 2709, the section at issue.

The USA PATRIOT Act amended Title 18, section 2709, to have a much lower standard of evidence required before a National Security Letter can be used. I strongly oppose that, of course, but Kerr is correct- it was completely irrelevant to the court’s decision. The statute authorizing the use of NSLs was struck down for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that the gag order provisions prevent any sort of judicial review of what evidence the government does have anyway. So the decision had nothing at all to do with the USA PATRIOT Act and the Bush Administrations anti-terrorism policies (which were passed with overwhelming, if misguided, bipartisan support).

In fact, only one of the amicus briefs filed in the case actually addressed the issue of the revisions from the USA PATRIOT Act. Guess what? It wasn’t the EFF’s. (You’ll find that in the decision as well, I think on page 22 or 23.)

While I’m always flattered when blogs link to me, I’m trying to figure out what made Morgaine at What She Said think I met her criteria…

Any snarky cracks about being “inclusive” while sticking to left-leaning views are temporarily delayed…

I say to my boss, “[Sales Director], if you want me to announce a price increase, I’m still going to need new pricing to announce.” I’ve only been asking for this for three weeks.

Boss: “Um, what do you think it should be?”

Me: “I don’t know, maybe 10%?”

Boss: “Great. Rewrite the pricing table with a 10% increase and use that.”

So now I am apparently the Sales Director with a (barely) a Sales Manager’s salary?

So, my toilet completely stopped flushing this morning. It’s non-functional. Great. I called maintenance, and no one was in the office yet, so I had to leave a message with the answering service. The last time I had a plumbing problem and had to leave a message with the service, it took them 5 days of my increasingly irate calls for them to actually get someone up there to fix it, and in the meantime I was completely unable to use my kitchen sink.

This time I am prepared to get irate much more quickly, and escrow my rent, if necessary. I have a houseguest this weekend and would not like to make alternative arrangements for us both because my bathroom has been unusable for a week.

Freaking slumlords.

After my description of yesterday’s PMS mood swings, I just have to share this found at Mary’s blog.

The comments are as good as the entry, but it’s all pretty much true, from the self-loathing, to the suspicion that the people closest to you secretly hate you, to the hair-petting being required.

My PMS was really pretty mild until this most recent formulation of the Pill I’m on- it’s pretty good and didn’t have any of the problems the other versions did, and my cycles are finally regular and my ovaries are no longer destroying themselves, but the trade off is that for 2 days a month, I have to lock myself in a closet while I turn into some fire-breathing monster bitch from hell.

Just wanted to clue you all in to the cool tool I used to pick the colors for my new template. You upload a .jpg, and the tool generates a color palette based on it, complete with hex codes. Very handy.

By the time I left Common Grounds this evening, I was deep in the throes of a pretty wicked PMS mood swing. Bad. And exacerbated by the onset of “Oh-dear-God-I-have-to-go-to-my-crappy-job-AGAIN-tomorrow” dread. I was feeling pretty crappy. Like, on the verge of tears and screaming crappy.

And since I had just been sitting around watching other people eat chocolate chip cookies, I decided it was time for some self-medication, courtesy of Ben & Jerry. I headed to Tom’s place to watch Dead Like Me and got there a few minutes after he had returned from the NSO Gala. (By the way, I am insanely jealous that he got to see Sir James Galway, who has been a hero of mine since I was 10 years old and taking weekly flute lessons.) So we shared ice cream and watched Showtime and I am finally starting to feel better.

So, this is the new template. There will likely be additional tweaking coming- like making the fonts match each other and all that, but this is the basic idea of what I wanted.

And does everyone recognize Pedro from South of the Border?

In U2’s new song, Bono starts out the song by yelling, “Uno, dos, tres, catorce!”

That means “One, two, three, fourteen!”

Really Bono. I expect better from you.

So, I’ve got this beer in my fridge.

“But Tiff, you don’t drink beer!” I hear you say.

Which is why I’ve got beer in my fridge. I bought two six packs when I moved into the place, because I had pledges from several friends to come help me move. Everyone but Tom and the Wasyliks flaked, and since Dineen was nursing Alex, she chose not to partake. Tom and Mike drank one beer each.

It is now just over a year later. The beer is in brown and green bottles, so my beer experts tell me it’s still just fine. But I’m not going to drink it, and my aunt is coming to visit me next weekend.

You can see my dilemma- the last thing I need is for my mother’s eldest sister to notice that I keep beer and not a lot else in my fridge.

So, do any of you local people need beer? It’s 5 bottles of Sierra Nevada and 5 of Sam Adams Summer Ale.