A Stitch in Haste

I'm having trouble coming up with a non-expletive term for our infamous local megalomaniac:
After being dealt a rare public embarrassment by the City Council, which forced his administration to acknowledge on Monday that he was legally required to send out $400 rebate checks promised to hundreds of thousands of New York homeowners, a defiant Mr. [...]

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You may have noticed the current Sidebar Sidetrack, which links to a survey of ugly buildings.
By sheer coincidence, word has come down that New York City's out-of-control Landmarks Preservation Commission continues to justify its own unjustifiable existence by finding new sharks to jump:
Silver Towers/University Village, three concrete towers designed by I. M. Pei that were [...]

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Interesting:
A state appeals court ruled Wednesday that a western Pennsylvania township violated constitutional protections in forcing a sexually oriented business to close on minor holidays such as Flag Day.
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The video and book store, Adultland XXX, faced the prospect of being shut down for a year because it conducted sales on Flag Day 2006. It previously [...]

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Another oblivious contribution from the increasingly silly New York Times "Ethicist" column. The question put to him:
I own a busy cafe-delicatessen with 25 employees. All the workers except two enjoy listening to background music from the radio while they work, as do I; those two say it irritates them, gives them headaches and makes it [...]

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(Or: "Bringing Kelo to Copyright?")
Two law professors suggest exactly that:
After vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin finished her big speech at the Republican National Convention, the 1977 song "Barracuda," by the band Heart, blared out over the roar of the crowd. Convention organizers chose the music to highlight Palin's high school basketball-team nickname, "Sarah Barracuda." But [...]

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As is so often the case with Religion of Peace posts, not much commenting is required:
The most senior judge in Saudi Arabia has said it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes.
Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan said some "evil" entertainment programmes aired by the channels promoted debauchery.
Dozens [...]

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… and putting a fence on it doesn't help:

While John Jay Park itself may be a bit of a thorn in my libertarian side, a fence around the park is not, nor is this sign. Perfectly reasonable in my opinion.
But when does my opinion ever count?

I tease, of course: the sign was put up recently [...]

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Ezra Klein does what he does best: be wrong —
As [Jacob] Sullum says, "If customers really were clamoring for conspicuous calorie counts, restaurants would provide them voluntarily." That sentence competes for space with a poll showing 84 percent of Californians support caloric labeling requirements, and the basic reality the article is responding to: Democratically [...]

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More 20/20 hindsight, from the blawger who inspired this recent post, regarding the subprime sutuation —
Now that the recent housing bubble has burst, it seems obvious that too many people who shouldn't have tried to buy houses were approved to take out mortgage loans. One take on the problem, therefore, is that these people [...]

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"If people were cool, this would not be an issue."
And what is the issue over which people are being un-cool?
James Hetfield, co-founder of the legendary heavy metal band Metallica, has erected a barbed-wire fence on his property near San Rafael, cutting off a fire trail that has been open to public use for decades.
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Hetfield has [...]

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