Assorted Stupidity #101
- "To put it cautiously, giving your own bank-account details is not sensible," Judge Eberhard Hausch reportedly stated recently in Reutlingen, Germany. Well, it depends who you give them to, but if you give them to the person you're trying to extort money from so that they can easily deposit the proceeds into your personal bank account, then yes, that is not sensible.
- Before adjourning this week, the Oklahoma Legislature managed to squeeze in a repeal of the provision it recently and accidentally passed requiring the losing party in most civil litigation to pay the winner's attorney fees. They stuck the repealing language in HB 1570, a pending bill on other aspects of civil procedure. Sen. Sykes, who seems to have written the problem language in the first place, also voted in favor of repealing it.
- As you likely know, the Montana candidate who was charged with assault after he hit a reporter on Wednesday was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. Nearly 30 percent of votes had already been cast before Greg Gianforte body-slammed Ben Jacobs, and the assault didn't change enough minds to make a difference. Since Trump won Montana by 20 points, the Democrats nominated a folk singer (!) who had never run for office, and it was already widely known that Gianforte is (among other things) a creationist who believes humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, that is really not too surprising.
- On the topic of whether someone can continue to serve in Congress after being convicted of a crime, see this 2014 post, which explained that the answer is, of course, yes. They tend not to stay around as a practical matter, but there is no rule against it.
- Also tending not to stay around as a practical matter: those trying to avoid paying a judgment, a group that includes former hot-yoga creep and serial-lady-harasser Bikram Choudhury. See, e.g., "Jury Laughs at Hot-Yoga Guy" (Jan. 27, 2016) (reporting on a $7-million judgment against him) and "Hot-Yoga Guy and His Cars Are Missing" (Jan. 9, 2017) (reporting it didn't look like he was planning to pay it). The Washington Post reports that a judge has now issued an arrest warrant for Choudhury, who seems to have fled the U.S. but is still traveling around yoga-mastering elsewhere. The warrant may make that more difficult (the traveling, that is).
- "The Heat Is On, Hot-Yoga Guy" would have been a decent headline, had that item been worth an entire post. But it really wasn't.
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