Wait. Not excessively intrusive in light of her age and sex? What the hell does THAT mean? Since when does a person's gender or age mean that a strip search is less intrusive? You're making somebody who's dramatically underage, BUT old enough to know what's going on, strip naked. If anything, the fact that she's young and female makes it MORE intrusive (I think the average boy would shrug it off better than a girl would; I might be wrong in that assumption, though). It sounds like whoever said that thinks young girls are worth less than other people, but I hope they're not actually saying that.

I'm not quite THAT dumb. But the resolution only recognizes 14 March of this year as Pi Day, and 14 March 2009, will always be on a Saturday.

[curmudgeon]

Good work on declaring a National Pi Day on 3/14, for whatever significance a Congress-designated "National * Day" has, but they had to do it when it falls on a Saturday? Methinks that schools won't do much to teach about Pi and math on a Saturday, and a lot of the significance of the date would be lost if they taught about it on Friday or Monday, neither of which are 3/14.

[/curmudgeon]

Of course not, but they might if he'd been hit by one. The fact that this court records/streams its proceedings means that the judges on it see no problem with it. Given that, it might be tough to expect them to hear RIAA's argument that there IS a problem with it in quite as unbiased as a way as maybe they should, just like a judge who'd been hit by a car might not be completely impartial during a hit-and-run case. I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with streaming court cases, generally speaking, but this particular situation raises the rather interesting prospect of a venue change or something similar. Unless of course Ray says otherwise.

If the court is to decide on the acceptability of something they do (i.e., streaming), can the RIAA fight for a change of venue? I mean, you wouldn't want a Ten-Commandments-in-the-courtroom case to be decided in a courtroom where the Ten Commandments are on the wall, right? Usually, if there's a conflict of interest, the judge can just recuse him/herself, but that wouldn't work here. Can RIAA put up a straight-faced argument about changing venue (say, to a court they think might be more friendly anyway)?

I read it differently. "Before he enter on the Execution of his Office..." To me, that means that, sure, he's President at noon, but he can't *execute* that office---do anything with it---until he takes the oath. (As an aside, I don't think that the 20th Amendment is the first time the starts-at-noon provision appears. I think it duplicated a provision from the Constitution proper, but changed the date.) What trips people up, I think, is that everyone seems to think that taking an oath requires a bible, the Chief Justice, and TV coverage. But all that's required is someone authorized to give oaths or affirmations as some sort of witness. A hurried new President could easily recite the oath in the presence of a notary or something while running somewhere, if necessary. Of course, realistically, no court would ever disqualify a President's action based on that under unusual circumstances. That takes a level of balls that probably doesn't exist.

I can't wait for the RIAA to air out their ridiculous tactics and for the judge to laugh them right out of court. Would it be legal to record this and, say, put it on YouTube?

Part of me wonders if this is not-trivially for publicity, like Greenpeace goes after Apple a couple times a year. But either way, not many people will care and I certainly doubt that they'll convert anybody. iTunes does, IIRC, sell non-DRM'd music (at a premium but also at a higher bitrate), and the DRM they do have is fairly unobtrusive as DRM goes. I don't like DRM'd media any more than the next person, but I can think of much worse offenders to go after than Apple.