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Jack Thompson Sends Subpoena to Bush
Ariastis writes "Jack Thompson has filed documents with a federal court in Florida requesting to subpoena President George W. Bush for a deposition to retain Thompson's license to practice law. Ah, and Jeb Bush too, for good measure."
Is the enemy of my enemy my friend, or is he still an asshole?
It's sorta like Alien vs. Predator, but backwards. Whoever loses, we win.
I bet you Slashbots are just foaming at the mouth.
jack thompson: greatest troll who ever lived
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Considering that not even congress can get Bush, Rumsfield, Cheny et al to respond to subpoenas -or even off the record chats ire the Plame affair, the attorney firings etc (maybe they can get Gonzales now that he has stepped down) I don't think he's got a prayer.
And when he loses his license he can blame Bush -just like everyone else
-I'm just sayin'
The time is approaching when someone is going to have to put this guy in the nut house. I hope all those self-serving pandering politicians who like to align themselves with Thompson against the invented evils of video games start seriously considering the kind of delusional maniac they've decided is their ally.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
CowboyNeal!
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
My guess is that it's to prove that if Bush can be completely incompetent and misguided as President, then Thompson has the right to do so as a lawyer.
Ok, now that I've trolled in another post, I'm wondering if the folks trying to get him kicked out of the Bar could enter the subpoena ITSELF as evidence of JT's unfitness to practice law.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Jack is currently suing the mediator, Judge Dava Tunis, along with the Florida Supreme Court and the Florida Bar.
like he's a lawyer, alright...
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
Then he'll make elaborate laws that restrict our rights with promises that it will stop video game-ism, only to have video games become better at hiding, stockpiling weapons, and money laundering.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Wait until January 20, 2009, that's what.
Most likely, Bush will be able to claim executive privelege and force Thompson to wait until then.
All Thompson is trying to do is stick a monkey wrench in the works, delaying the end of his disbarrment hearing in front of the Florida Bar.
The guy's a whack job. Seriously, he needs to get a life. He's tried to sue the Florida Bar more than once, a clear violation of the 11th Amendment (which says you can't sue the court system).
My blog
Anyone have a picture of this guy. You cannot make up some of the stuff this guy does and I am curious to see if you can see the crazy in his eye.
Bar associations are not courts. They're unions for lawyers. You can sue unions. You can sue bar associations.
Get off your high horse. Jack Thompson is of interest around here, because of his links to the anti-gaming lobby. It's Friday, it's a hilarious story, and we're all enjoying it. You know who Thompson is, if you have been around for a while. That's like asking "Which Bill Gates? How should I know?"
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Rule 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less.
Just because you don't know the name Jack Thompson, doesn't mean that most geeks/nerds don't immediately know who he is. You'll also note that this story is tagged as "humor" not as "gaming", so to be perfectly honest, it could be *any* lunatic lawyer that's issued a subpoena for the President in defense for the deposition of his license to practice law. The fact that it's Jack Thompson just makes it better for those of us who know who he is (which, I'm sorry, I would bet that there are more of us who do than those who don't).
Every time I see a story involving Jack Thompson, I wonder if it's some guy making stuff up - this guy is stranger than fiction...
he can claim that gaming has driven at least one person to raving lunacy... Himself! (at least in my personal opinion.)
More Caffeine. NOW
Fogive my ignorance of the US legal system but my understanding from TFA is that because they wont respond to his supeona that the disbarment is stuck in limbo for the time being at least? Could the bar board just ask relavence of these people and discount these supeonas? What would be next, him sending supeonas to dead people or the children of pregnant women?
You must be new here.
Don't think you understand.
The guy is loony.
This is not the kind of person you want arguing for your side & case.
Seriously.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
My blog
"News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Anyone else remember when that was "News for Nerds ON THE Stuff that Matters?"
/. whipping-boy due to his long standing aggression against games, and we love to see stories where he makes himself look insane. Yeah, it's like replying to a bad troll, we're only giving him the attention he wants, but still it amuses me. Much like stories about every little decision and motion in SCO's ongoing slow death spiral isn't very important, but simply amusing for those of us who've been watching. The fact that SCO was a major Linux antagonist has given them a position of relevance. Similarly, because he's the "anti-gaming lawyer", JT and his legal antics are a relevant slashdot topic, like it or not. Like we used to say back when someone would complain about an article's appropriateness for slashdot: "It's Rob's site".
No, I don't remember that, and I remember the first day when Chips N' Dips was dead and Slashdot was live. Was it really different? Because I really don't remember it having "on the" in there, which really reduces the punchiness of the tag line and really I doubt would make any difference regarding the content. As if they said "whew, now that we got rid of 'on the' we can start posting irrelevant nerdy stuff, and non-nerdy relevant stuff!"
Anyway, this is a story about Jack Thompson being a nut job in trying to prove he isn't a nut job. JT is a
The enemies of Democracy are
That's a really nice rant, and I agree with you somewhat in your general assertion that Slashdot has drifted pretty far away from being a nerd site (WTF is up with the Politics section, for example). However, I have some issues:
1.) I haven't been around quite as long as you have, but I don't recall the slogan ever being "News for Nerds on the Stuff that Matters". That may have been the original intent, but I don't think that was ever the actual slogan. The oldest page from Slashdot I could find on web.archive.org is from November, 1998, which was prior to the Andover.net buyout (thereby presumably before the major corporate influence began). On that page, the slogan is "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters."
Now, I grant you, prior to maybe 5 or 6 years ago, the "stuff that matters FOR NERDS" was sort of implied, but that hasn't really been the case for a long, long time.
2.) Jack Thompson has been going after the gaming industry for a long time. Seeing his long, slow descent into madness is of great interest to gaming nerds, even if not to you particularly. Even if you decide that the site should be limited only to things that the typical nerd would care about (not your decision or mine to make), this still would fit that category.
So, even though I agree with you that Slashdot in general has strayed pretty far from its roots (but what site this old hasn't), I disagree with you about this particular story.
I'll never forget the stories a good friend of mine used to tell about his job as a vet tech for the Henry Villas Zoo, specifically the monkey house. To quote...
"When in doubt, throw poo"
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
George Bush sends Jack Thompson to Guantanamo
Someone asked me the other day about the difference between psychotic and psychopathic. Here it is laid out nicely.
The psychotic Jack Thompson is sending a subpoena to the psychopathic George Bush.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney!
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
I'm with you on the editors (remember how kdawson would put almost everything into the Enlightenment category?), and the overall quality of the site over time. I pretty much agree with your other points as well.
On another note, something that may only be funny to me:
I was browsing your comment history briefly, and noticed that the VERY FIRST comment that Slashdot shows you having posted is from January 1999, and is complaining about the QUALITY OF AN ARTICLE ON SLASHDOT! That is just hilariously awesome.
The comment.
Wow, after reading this article I actually thought it was the first of April for a while. I kind of wish Jack Thompson sticks around, though. By the time he's caused enough chaos our legislative branch will finally push for more frivolous lawsuit and ethics reforms. He'd be the Bar Association's equivalent to Enron.
Jack better watch out. Some of out government officials have already been trained on violent video games. I hear Cheney is pretty good at Duck Hunt.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It makes me wonder, though. Schizophrenia quite often starts mild, debatably sane, and progresses over time to padded-room calibre. Just because at some point you might look like just a bit eccentric or slightly bizarre or a bit of a bad case of cognitive dissonance, doesn't mean that 17 years later you can't be diagnosed with proper schizophrenia.
And this guy's delusions started from half-way between mildly annoying and mildly funny, and progressed to outright bizarre. I can't diagnose him anyway, but it makes me, you know, wonder. Maybe a second examination would find it a bit worse than the one almost 2 decades ago? It's a possibility.
Plus, to the best of my knowledge, a lot (most?) doctors tend to prefer to err on the conservative side, especially when it would bury someone's career. If slapping a "yup, he's schizophrenic" label on him would terminate his right to act as a lawyer, even temporarily, they'll give him a lot of benefit of the doubt. He'd pretty much have to be at the raving lunatic stage to get that. It's just a different standard. Even if you'd consider giving him neuroleptics in a private consultation, you'd have to be convinced that he's to deranged to do his job to actually slap that on his dossier.
Plus, in that kind of context, I figure it's hard to diagnose anyway. Noone will start telling you about the voices in his head, when he's sent there to determine whether he's fit to keep working and doing his crusade. Being insane carries a major stigma. So unless they're deranged past the point of hiding it, a lot of people _will_ try to hide it, if you just send them to a psychiatrist. They might admit stuff to their therapist if it was their idea to go there, and it's going to be kept secret. But not to the guy who has to determine whether they're fit to keep their job, and whose conclusion will probably be public record.
What I'm trying to say is that it's entirely possible that he just slipped through the cracks the first time. (_If_ he's indeed nuts.) There's no telling if he'd still pass after all this time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm hoping that it's a trick for the president to set a precedent of answering to subpoenas. Hopefully during the next administration, there will be quiet a number of neocons called to take the stand.
We are all just people.
Attorney Lionel Hutz!
Mr. Thompson, you're in luck. Your suit against the President is just the thing I need to rebuild my shattered practice! Care to join me in a belt of scotch?
Human Rights Watch
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
was allegedly under the influence of Grand Theft Auto
Whoa.. I've heard of people smoking some crazy stuff, but a video game? How the hell do you smoke that? You can burn the cd, but then you're smokin the cd.. burn the computer? How the hell do you burn a series of 1s and 0s? And how do said binary digits "influence" you?
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
If you want the original story, check out the Gamepolitics article The submitted link is practically word for word plagiarism of the gp article. At the end of the submitted link, they state "thanks gamepolitics", but that hardly makes up for ripping off the article.
In summary, if you want well written and interestering articles on politics and games with no advertisements, check out Gamepolitics.com. I'm not affiliated with the site in any way, I'm just a fan.
Cheers
From the link you gave to the oldest slashdot page:
Booker writes "So IBM announces a 25 gig hard drive... does the world need this yet? Unless this is in a RAID, would you really want to trust 25 gigs on a single drive? What would you use this for? 400+ hours of MP3s comes to mind... "
I don't know what's scarier, the echoes from the past, or the echoes from the present
SB
(remembering with fondness my first 5MB IBM PC drive)
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I dunno, but it must involve Cowboy Neal.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.