UPDATE: We told you the Fins would win and we told you the Fins would not cover. And we told you that the Texans would hand the Titans their second loss of the season. Not bad. Not bad at all. And we won the Carolina under pick. We finish the day up 150 (2-0 on the picks) and +989 for the year.
We started the week up 839 Blagojevich's.
Denver travels to Carolina where the Panthers are 9 point favorites. But we like the under 48 here. That number has creeped up this week, meaning the initial money was on the over. Be that as it may, we think the Broncos are overrated and the Panthers have a decent defense that keeps this game under. +100 under 48.
The Titans go to Houston where the Texans are three point home dogs. Something tells us this is a trap game for the Titans. First of all Kerry Collins is coming down to earth real soon when he meets a real defense (The Steelers or the Ravens) in the playoffs. That being said, Titan coach Jeff Fisher is not just the longest serving coach in the NFL, he is one of the best. We see the Titans losing the AFC Championship game, but that analysis is for another today. Today the Titans stumble in a fairly meaningless game against the Texans. Houston +3 +50.
We're keeping our eye on the Eagles/Browns Monday Night Football match up. The question is how high the line goes and whether we feel comfortable saying the Eagles will cover.
Speaking of the Browns, they were everyone's pre-season darlings. They stink. Their coach is the first to be fired. Unfortunately, Marvin Lewis, a really decent guy and a great defensive coach, will be fired by the Bengals the day after the season is over as well. Not even Lewis could bring discipline and success to that mess of a franchise.
Here's something to think about: Name the number one scoring offense over the last eight weeks? Cowpokes? Ha. San Diego Super Chargers? Nope. High flying Falcons? No way.
It's your AFC North second place Baltimore Ravens led by Joe Flacco and O Coordinator Cam Cameron. Remember Cam Dol-fans?
The o/u line in the Steeler/Ravens shootout is 33. Huh? The Steelers can't run, and the Raven can pass. Why so low? Because both sets of coaches know that a defensive turnover can turn the game around. So the pros expect the "Mindset" of the teams to be conservative. But what if one coach sees the trend and the expectations and decides to mix things up? What if the Steelers open with a 50 yard bomb to Nate Washington and the Raven respond with a flea-flicker when they get the ball? This game could go way over- or it could end 10-7. We sorta, kinda, maybe like the over under because we're basically contrarians. However, when the bookies are practically begging you to go over- and 33 is about a low a number as you will see in a professional game, you have to be wary. Conversely, and counter-intuitively, if the number was 39-40, we would go on the over number big time.
Just a sneak peak into our thought process.
Go Dolphins.
Out of respect for the great almighty Rumpole I have deleted the Fake Rumpole blog that was once located at:
ReplyDeletehttp://thejusticebuilding.blogspot.com/
You will no longer find the blog. I also deleted the entire account with google including the gmail email address.
It was fun for about 2 minutes.
I accept your surrender.
ReplyDeleteBitchin Babes, hot grille, cold beer. The last Dolphins home game tailgate party will be the best.
ReplyDeleteFor those about to rock with the Dolphins today, we salute you!!!!!
Not surrender RESPECT:
ReplyDeleteRespect is esteem for, or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability.
As Churchill said- NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP.
ReplyDeleteRump, I put $100,000 on the under on the Steelers/Ravens game, and threw down another $50,000 on the Steelers +3. Needless to say, a nice holiday season awaits me.
ReplyDeleteWow, 5 whole comments in a 24-hour period -- 2 by Rumpole, himself. Your hits are in a serious decline, despite the phony hit counter on your main page.
ReplyDeleteJohn B. Thompson, J.D.
ReplyDelete5721 Riviera Drive
Coral Gables, Florida 33146
305-666-4366
amendmentone@comcast.net
December 15, 2008
Justice Charles T. Canady
Chief Justice and the Other Justices
Florida Supreme Court
500 South Duval Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399 Via Mail and Fax to 850-487-4696
Re: Bar Complaint No. 2009-50,626 (17E), Bar v. Gelin
Dear Justice Canady, the Chief Justice, and the Other Justices:
I write with particular emphasis to you, Justice Canady, for reasons that will appear obvious below.
As you all know, The Florida Bar has decided to open a formal Bar complaint file against the lawyer/owner of a Ft. Lauderdale lawyers’ blog on the basis of the assertion, which cannot be denied, that this blog publishes derogatory comments about legal officials, including sitting judges. It is my view, as it would be of our nation’s Founders, that criticism of all government officials is protected by the First Amendment. The notion that judges enjoy special protection from the rough and tumble of “political speech” is absurd and clearly at odds with any fair reading of the Bill of Rights. See, for example, the recent federal court ruling in Michigan which this state Supreme Court has chosen to ignore: Feiger v. Supreme Court of Michigan.
What prompts my complaint against Mr. Gelin, the lawyer/owner, is that he is the one who published Sean Conway’s comments about Broward Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Aleman. The comments, which never would have seen the light of day without Mr. Gelin’s assistance, are still available at Gelin’s site. This is all the more remarkable in light of The Bar’s and this Court’s decision to punish Mr. Conway for having made them. You entered an order dated October 29, 2008, approving of The Bar’s reprimand of Mr. Conway in Case No. SC08-326.
As you also know, I sought to file an amicus brief in the Conway case, referenced immediately above. If this Court had done the right thing and granted me amicus status, as a federal court did eighteen years ago, and as the Supreme Court granted the ACLU amicus status, I would have pointed out to you an important issue that the ACLU missed (the ACLU routinely misses quite a lot). It was this: If The Bar and the Court are to go after First Amendment-protected speech uttered by some lawyers that inconveniences certain troubled judges, then it must go after ALL such inconvenient speech by lawyers about judges. This is particularly so in instances in which the Judicial Qualifications Commission nails the very judge that Mr. Conway criticized for the behavior that gave rise to Mr. Conway’s criticisms of this confused Judge Aleman.
Otherwise, if you pick and choose which lawyers whose First Amendment rights you seek to impinge upon based upon who they are, then you are going you have an equal protection problem that will wind up proving fatal to your haphazard assault upon the First Amendment. How so? Let me pause, before answering that question, that it is shocking that a mere citizen should have to explain some pretty simple concepts to seven state supreme court justices:
Bar Rule 4-8.4(a) is an aiding and abetting Rule which requires that if The Bar is going to punish one lawyer for suggesting that judges are not inerrant and infallible, then it must, to be consistent, punish all lawyers who assist other lawyers who have said so. More specifically so that even The Bar’s Mr. Marvin will understand: Without Mr. Gelin, there would have been no public comment by Sean Conway about Judge Aleman. Put even more simply so that The Bar’s doltish Board of Governors get it: You can’t put the hook into Conway and let Gelin off the hook. This is called equal protection of the law.
This is pretty basic stuff. I don’t expect lawyers who have gone to law schools which are little more than technical colleges to understand this, but anyone with any training in logic and philosophy and jurisprudence and the Constitution gets it. My complaint against Mr. Gelin is intended not to harm Mr. Gelin but to bring this idiotic, anti-liberty Bar to its senses. It is a sign of the age, sadly, that some people who call themselves lawyers and Justices don’t understand that a contraction of the liberty of some contracts the liberty of all. Further, it is a very loosely educated individual who does not understand or even know that the method by which Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., brought down oppression was by forcing the oppressors into taking their absurd positions to the wall.
Put then in a way that even Jay White, current Bar President gets it:
If you Justices want to do a reprise of the Little Dutch Boy trying to plug one leak in the dike that holds at bay the flood of First Amendment speech, then you’re going to have to have a Bar prosecutorial staff ten times its current size and they’re all going to have to have ten times ten fingers to plug the leaks in that dike.
Also, this fascistic prosecutorial staff will have to swear an oath of allegiance not to the Constitution but to the “goose-stepping brigades” of an integrated state bar that Justice Douglas predicted would come our way in Lathrop v. Donohue. In Florida, the goose-stepping brigades ran right over Conway. Unless we disband them, and unless you come to your senses, then they will run over not only Mr. Conway and Mr. Gelin, but over every single lawyer in this state to whom you are sending the message that even the truth spoken about corrupted, incompetent judges must not be spoken.
By your idiotic decision in Conway, you have made it necessary for The Bar to make a choice: It must whack Mr. Gelin as well, or it must admit its mistake in Conway and set The Bar upon a course that rewards and indeed encourages criticism of judges by the folks most in the know about who the good ones and the bad ones are.
The Bar presently says it is for an “independent judiciary.” Independent of what? The truth? Independent of accountability for its own mistakes? Independent of the US Constitution? Independent of sanity? Independent of fairness?
By this Court’s assertion that Mr. Conway cannot criticize Judge Aleman, then, it intimidates each and every lawyer in this state from bringing to light idiotic things such as Judge Aleman was doing. And if you do not see that disciplining Conway makes it necessary to discipline Gelin, then all you accomplish is make it possible for me and others to bring the entire arbitrary, unequal, favoritism-plagued disciplinary system crashing down.
Justice Canady, you in particular ought to appalled at what is going on here to contract liberty and to which you signed your name. Here you were, a new Justice on the High Court, and yet mere days into your tenure you put your name to the Conway order declaring that the First Amendment in this state is dead.
You of all people, as a conservative who thus distrusts government as the great enemy of liberty, should know that having The Bar and this Court be the speech and thought police in this state is at odds with every tenet of the body of thought that distrusts an activist judiciary.
Justice Canady, you were the guy who came up, in Congress, with the term “partial birth abortion.” Good for you. I applaud you for that, as you did what you could to stop this inhumane medical practice. But by opposing that practice and by signing on to the assault upon all our liberties by putting your name on the Conway order, you remind me of the very clever and accurate statement of Congressman Frank, with whom you served in the Congress: “Evangelical Christians act as if life begins at conception and ends at birth.”
You think a fetus, Justice Canady, has more rights than a lawyer? By signing the Conway order, that is exactly the position you have taken.
So, here’s the deal: Admit your collective mistake. Admit you screwed up the Conway case, because it leads, inexorably to disciplining Mr. Gelin and anyone else who participates in the criticism of judges, whether it be the utterance of the initial critical comment by the lawyer or the publishing of that comment to the whole world by another lawyer.
You think you can go after the one and not after the other? Well, checkmate on that, Justices. I just got a formal ruling from The Bar that says any lawyer who publishes, by any means, a critical communication about a judge made first by another lawyer, is on the hook for discipline as well. So The Bar has committed itself to a consistent regulation of both Conway’s and Gelin’s speech about Aleman.
Again, I don’t expect anyone who is incapable of analysis at the level of sixth-grader to understand this point as to consistency and how it imperils the entire disciplinary system of The Florida Bar, but I do expect you to get it. This is not below your pay grade, although the bizarre ruling in Conway indicates how utterly confused all of you are when it comes to the First Amendment.
What you ought to do, then, is vacate your Conway order, which clears the way to exonerate Mr. Gelin. You’re either going to uphold the First Amendment, or your “official arm,” The Bar, is going to pay a wicked price for nailing Conway while looking away from Gelin. You should clear them both. You have no other rational choice.
If you don’t solve this problem, I shall. We are already talking to key people in the state Legislature—the people who fund the court system—about ripping the discipline of lawyers from the corrupted Bar.
I also have a lawsuit that will explain to a jury that this High Court and its fascistic Bar, with its thought and speech police, needs to be punished for ignoring what the US Supreme Court has warned you all not to do.
But go ahead, tell The Bar to let Mr. Gelin off the hook and keep Mr. Conway on the hook. You will thereby prove your fatal lack of equal protection when it comes to Bar Rules 4-8.4(a) and 4-8.2(a). Or go ahead and be consistent and whack Mr. Gelin as well.
Either way, go ahead, and make my day.
Or, better yet, admit your mistake in Conway and declare the First Amendment alive and well in the Sunshine State.
I may be a disbarred lawyer, but I’m three steps ahead of all of you. Wake up.
Regards, Jack Thompson
Sue the deep pockets, Jack.
ReplyDeleteFile a lawsuit against IBM which was the brand of computer he was using, for without a computer, this never would have been transmitted. Oh, and Dell, because I have a Dell monitor, without which I wouldn't have been able to see his comments.
And don't forget BellSouth, my ISP, because if they didn't provide my internet, I never would be able to engage in this ridiculous discussion.
Monday, December 15, 2008 10:52:00 AM
ReplyDeletePRICELESS!!