It's a Family Affair

Who's your daddy now, Diego Armando. FIFA speaks:

The FIFA Disciplinary Committee, chaired by Marcel Mathier, decided today 15 November in Zurich to impose a two-month ban on taking part in any football related activity and a 25,000 CHF fine on the head coach of Argentina Diego Armando Maradona, in relation to the disciplinary proceedings related to the incidents following the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying match between Uruguay and Argentina played on 14 October 2009 in Montevideo.

The committee reached this decision following a three hour meeting at the Home of FIFA in Zurich. The head coach of Argentina was heard by the committee during 40 minutes and apologised to FIFA and the world football family.

I'm going to read family in the Corleone and Barzini sense of the term. I think it works here, both for me and for FIFA.

Reuters says 25,000 Swiss francs equal 24,630 US dollars and that he'll miss a friendly match against the Czech Republic.

C.R.E.A.M. Cheese

When you're the Mamá Grande of the cult of juvenile selfishness, bad taste is a prerogative, in both life and death.

She was an unforgettable figure on college campuses in the 1960s, wearing a black cape cinched by her trademark gold brooch in the shape of a dollar sign.

[…]

At her funeral, a six-foot tall flower arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign stood beside the coffin.

From Kimberly Phillips-Fein's review of two recent books on Ayn Rand, in the December 2009 issue of Harper's.

In case this whole Quest for Vault Copy doesn't yield that coveted book, TV, or movie contract

This is for all you haters, doubters, and nonbelievers out there who think birthers are monothematic and lack any interests outside of bringing down a duly elected president. From Lucas Smith's rambling, moralizing, and self-aggrandizing affidavit submitted to federal Judge David Carter in Santa Ana (p. 16):

I'd even spent money on the 'Obama trail' that I had saved for documenting another story in Africa about the dinosaur-like creature named Mbembe in the Congo (Africa).

The Quest for Mokele Mbembe!

Attention, Josh St. Lawrence. We have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that we've found a research and travel partner for you. The bad news is that he's a birther.

They gave the Nobel Prize to Obama, but he never taught me anything about weights and measures

Isaac Bashevis Singer did. If I have a pood of beans, I have just over 36 pounds of beans. Now there's a Nobel Prize well earned.

So what do you call rat fucking on Twitter?

Tweety fucking?

A fake Twitter account aimed at discrediting a prominent critic of state GOP leaders appears to have been linked back to a senior official at the Republican Party of Florida. Brevard County Republican Chairman Jason Steele says three months after discovering someone was tweeting inflammatory messages using his name and his picture, law enforcement investigators have determined the account was created on a computer in the home of Tim Nungesser, who last month was promoted to director of the party's field operations department.

From the Buzz.

Nineteenth-Century Moralism for Twenty-First-Century Culture: An Object Lesson in Opposition Cluelessness

The Chávez government put on its free concert at the La Carlota airfield this weekend. Calle 13 played Saturday, and the state television channel carried the show live. On Sunday, José Luis Farías of Un Nuevo Tiempo responded. Un Nuevo Tiempo is the opposition party founded by Manuel Rosales, currently in exile in Peru. Farías denounced Calle 13's performance due to Residente's naughty lyrics and announced his party would go to CONATEL (the National Telecommunications Commission) to file a complaint against the state TV channel for violating Venezuela's content laws. You can't say or show certain things during hours when it can be assumed children are watching. Okay so far, if Farías had limited himself to trying to expose the government's inconsistency on this issue. Calle 13's lyrics are explicit in terms of sex and bodily functions, and on this the rules are clear as to what content can be broadcast when. The Chávez government has applied these rules selectively and vindictively, and a formal complaint against state TV, a complaint that would assuredly go nowhere bureaucratically, would serve to highlight this discrepancy in enforcement. But Farías didn't stop there because it turns out he actually agrees that such content should be prohibited during kiddie viewing hours and that Calle 13's live performance was an affront to morality. He was taken aback by Calle 13's lyrics and said that in addition to CONATEL, his party would also appeal to international authorities "because the Venezuelan people deserve respect." I'm not sure which agency he was referring to—the OAS' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has better things to do than worry about reggaeton lyrics. The same goes for UNICEF. But Farías wasn't done yet. He then crowed that Venezuela provides a healthy correction to Residente's vulgarity: “a Residente Calle 13 le sale Manual de Carreño.”

The Carreño Manual (Spanish Wikipedia entry), for those not familiar with it, is an important text written by Venezuelan musician, educator, and diplomat Manual Antonio Carreño. It's an encyclopedic catalog of proper social behaviors—how to dress, how to court, how to be courted, how to be a host, how to be a guest, how to travel, how to behave at the dance, at church, at the dinner table, on the public square. For a long time, it was widely read, taught, and followed in Venezuela and throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. It was published in fucking 1853.

It wasn't too long ago that Un Nuevo Tiempo set aside its concerns with Residente's failure to follow the Carreño Manual when composing lyrics. In 2006, when Rosales ran for president against Chávez, his campaign asked Calle 13 if they could use the song "Atrévete-te-te." Calle 13 said no; Un Nuevo Tiempo used it anyway. They stopped after Calle 13 threatened to sue.

I do not recall if the manual includes a chapter on proper etiquette when threatened with legal action.

Give me a G, a bouncy G!: Critical Questions in Honduran Constitutional Theory

I believe I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I am one of the leading internet citizen-experts in Honduran constitutional law due to my ability to open and link to a Georgetown web page. Of late I've been working on two critical questions and hope to share the results of my research in the near future. They are:

• Has Zelaya proposed to hotbox the presidential palace upon being restored to power?
• What song is he playing? Is it "Feel Like Making Love," "Jane Says," "April Come She Will," something else?

Notable Moments in Nobel Peace Prize Trolling: Concern for the Constitution

Republican Representative Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida sent a letter to the White House this past week (pdf by way of the St. Petersburg Times' Buzz blog). Two other Republican members of the House signed off on it—Cliff Stearns of Florida and Ron Paul of Texas. They are, it turns out, concerned, concerned President Obama respect the Constitution and ask Congress for approval before he accepts the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, just like Teddy Roosevelt did.

I would like to take this opportunity to urge you to follow in the footsteps of a great American President and one of the first recipients of a Nobel Peace Prize, Theodore Roosevelt, and fulfill your Constitutional obligation to obtain Congress' consent before formally accepting the Nobel Prize.

Artice I, Section 9 of the Constitution clearly states: "no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state." As the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee appointed by the Parliament of Norway, the Storting, the prize is clearly subject to the requirement set forth in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. Obtaining permission from Congress should be straightforward.

The letter makes no mention of Woodrow Wilson, who also won the prize while President, nor cites the political theory upon which they base their expansive understanding of a foreign state.

Cliff Stearns has further concerns.

"Let's say you had a nonprofit in the Mideast that gave him a large sum of money, would we want that?" Stearns said. "The president should be careful about accepting gifts while in office."

Non-profit organizations are now states. Good to know.

Where did Brown-Waite and her colleagues get this idea?

Brown-Waite said she got the idea from an aide, who read something on a blog right after the announcement.

Behold the power of the blogosphere. The internet makes you stupid. Both axioms apply here.

Not to be outdone by citizen-journalist-pundits, the Washington Post, in its continuing effort to give voice to right-wingers and tick off thunder, two weeks ago published an op-ed piece by two law professors in which they make the same argument. They even have a suggestion for how Congress—not Obama—should use the prize money: apply it "to some worthy cause, such as reducing the deficit."

That's exactly what Gandhi would have done if he had ever won the Peace Prize.