Posner's new weblog

According to Ernie the Attorney, Judge Posner is going to grace us with his own blog. Too bad the Google toolbar can't block arrogant content.

ABC, for shame

20/20's idiotic expose on the death of Matthew Sheppard was a shameless pageant of sensationailst journalism and the profound stupidity of Elizabeth Vargas, whose insipid questions and sympathetic demeanor towards two murderers made me want to turn off the television.

The longer I watched, the madder I got. The story painted the death of Matthew Shephard, a young University of Wyoming student who was tortured, beaten and left to die, as a media conspiracy preying off of the fact Sheppard was gay. 20/20, somehow privy to stunning new information about the murder, portrayed his assailants, Aaron James McKinney and Russel Arthur Henderson, as helpless victims of child abuse and drug addiction. Vargas took special note to portray Sheppard as an HIV-positive drug addict with profound psychological problems, almost making the argument that he either wanted or deserved to die.

It amazes me that an entire story could be founded on the testimony of two individuals convicted of murder, and that a sympathetic ear could possibly be bent to violent criminals who beat a man to death while high on methamphetimine, whether that man was gay or not.

Vargas' line of questioning Shepard's limousine driver about one of the assailant's alleged bisexuality, obviously designed to make the assailant seem more gay-friendly, backfired in a tragic display of sophomoric interest in three-way sex.

Federal Sentencing Guidelines under which Shephard's assailants were prosecuted have been criticised recently, especially for its treatment of hate crimes. Obviously, hate crimes should be punished more severely than others. Moreover, one's sexual orientation is not worn on the outside, like one's race, and it is easier to argue that Shepard was not a victim because he was gay than it would be if he were black.

An entire website of awful people

An entire website devoted to great reasons to leave New York, if you haven't done so already.