{"id":69,"date":"2003-10-21T01:35:17","date_gmt":"2003-10-21T05:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/10\/legal_notes\/"},"modified":"2003-10-21T01:35:17","modified_gmt":"2003-10-21T05:35:17","slug":"legal_notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/10\/legal_notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the defendant has courtroom skills I’m unaware of, but I’m guessing this is a bad idea<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad won a surprise request Monday to represent himself at trial and he delivered a rambling opening statement in which he spoke about the meaning of truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Elsewhere, we have yet another ten commandments case underway<\/a> (via How Appealing<\/a>). This part amuses me:<\/p>\n

Jon Graham, worship pastor of Barrow’s Bethlehem First Baptist Church, said there are no plans for organized support today. But he said his church is encouraging aid for the Barrow legal defense.
\n“We are trying to raise $250,000,” he said. “We’re not there, but we have got a lot of folks saying they’re thinking about it, praying and deciding how to give.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Think about this solely from an economics standpoint. Let’s assume you’re someone who has a burden that people read or learn about the ten commandments. Let’s say further than you had a $250,000 budget to advance your cause. How would you do it?
\nI could be wrong, but I’d say you won’t<\/i> get the most bang for your buck using all that money to see that a plaque gets hung in a courthouse somewhere. Imagine, instead, that you use it instead to mail a nice brochure out to people in the county. If you did a mailing at $1 per address, you could reach 250,000 households. Which I suspect is a lot more people than would see any display in the courthouse for a long, long time.
\nBut then this really isn’t about teaching people about the ten commandments, is it? It’s about a religious political agenda. And therein is the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the defendant has courtroom skills I’m unaware of, but I’m guessing this is a bad idea: Sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad won a surprise request Monday to represent himself at trial and he delivered a rambling opening statement in which he spoke about the meaning of truth. Elsewhere, we have yet another ten commandments […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-69","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}