Update on the leaf installation at Meadhouse.

I showed you Meade's leaf project 6 days ago. It looked like this:



3 days ago, it looked like this:



The pumpkins — nicely and sharply carved — were picked up by the side of the street down the block. And here's how it looks this morning:



I like the way the pumpkins — with appropriate facial expressions — appear to be drowning in leaves and the unintended and unnoticed inclusion of Zeus.

Minimizing the crimes of women (in a serious case about federalism).

Here's how WaPo's Robert Barnes begins his report about a case of attempted murder:

A melodramatic love triangle begat a ham-handed revenge poisoning. That led to what one Supreme Court justice called an “unimaginable” federal prosecution of the scorned wife under a law enacted to implement a global chemical weapons treaty.

As long as the victim didn't actually die, it's just some kind of joke?

Now, there is a problem with the feds taking over this prosecution, and that should be the focus of the story about this case. But you should see how outrageous it is to diminish the criminal behavior in this gendered fashion.

Carol Anne Bond, a Pennsylvania microbiologist... ordered a rare blend of chemicals, partly off the Internet, and over the next several months tried to poison [Myrlinda] Haynes 24 times by putting them on her doorknob, car and, critically, mailbox.

Just some nutty lady's bumbling parry in a cat fight?

Federal prosecutors charged Bond with violating the 1998 Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act, a law based on the chemical weapons ban treaty that is signed by all but four of the world’s nations.

The problem here is not the unseriousness of attempted murder. It's that murder is traditionally left to the states, and the federal government is — at least theoretically — a government of limited, enumerated powers. With this important constitutional principle at stake, Bond is represented by the great ex-Solicitor General Paul Clement:

Clement...  said that if the law implementing the treaty “really does reach every malicious use of chemicals anywhere in the nation, as the government insists,” then it violates the “bedrock principle of our federalist system that Congress lacks a general police power to criminalize conduct” that does not have distinctly federal concern....

[Justice Elena Kagan] said the treaty gave Congress the power to pass implementing legislation. “So you have to find a constraint on the treaty power. Where does it come from?” she demanded.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor worried about the courts hamstringing efforts to deal with terrorism. 

Writing tip for Barnes: If you've already got "ham-handed," don't use "hamstringing." Too much ham.

“It would be deeply ironic that we have expended so much energy criticizing Syria, when if this court were now to declare that our joining or creating legislation to implement the treaty was unconstitutional,” she said.

Now, we're getting to the real meat of it. The government was represented by the current Solicitor General, Donald B. Verrilli Jr.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who posed no questions to Clement, asked Verrilli if it would be possible for the president to join a treaty that gives national governments all powers and for Congress then to put in place such legislation.

When Verrilli said that would be unimaginable, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy shot back: “It also seems unimaginable that you would bring this prosecution.”

That led the conservative justices — plus Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who usually sides with the liberals — to unleash a barrage of hypotheticals of what could be prosecuted under the broad law, which covers chemicals that could harm humans or animals: a wheelbarrow full of kerosene; a poisoned potato given to a horse; the performance-enhancing drugs allegedly used by cyclist Lance Armstrong.

“Would it shock you if I told you that a few days ago my wife and I distributed toxic chemicals to a great number of children?” Alito asked Verrilli, drawing laughter from the court’s spectators. He explained that chocolate Halloween candy is “poison to dogs, so it’s a toxic chemical” under the act.

Verrilli chafed, saying, “This is serious business.”

Yes, it truly is. It's easy to see Kennedy's point: The federal government shouldn't have chosen to prosecute this case. But it did, and now what? It's easy to think: The central government needs ample power to do everything that might need to be done at a national level and it should refrain from using that power to deal with matters that are better left to the states.

But it doesn't refrain.

Time to end Halloween.

Really this is the last straw. No, not Michelle Obama saying "Kids Will One Day Trick-or-Treat for Vegetables."

This lady, thinking she's got "the spirit of Halloween":

The woman who answered the door was wearing an apron covered in blood and had a mask covering her mouth and was waving a fake knife. She had a table out and on it were things like hearts and intestines and mince....

The woman reportedly grabbed one of the girl’s hands and gave her one of the hearts, and the children thought it was a fake heart. After placing the lamb’s heart – which was wrapped in a plastic bag – into the children’s hands, the woman picked up a fake knife and chased after the group.

Now, seriously, why isn't that the spirit of Halloween? How are people supposed to know how to do a night of transgressiveness that's scary and creepy, but just the right way?

I never want to read another story about a little kid that went as a KKK guy, when it's just completely normal to go as Satan. He didn't get on the right wavelength of EVIL. You can be Attila the Hun but not Hitler. You're supposed to understand that. When you are 7.

Come on, time to quit altogether. Why are we handing out candy? Why are we answering the door at night to strangers? Why are we sending kids around to the houses of strangers? Why are we publicizing children's costumes mistakes? It no longer makes any sense as anything other than a party time for adults. End Halloween.

The best Halloween costume of all time is in Madison, Wisconsin, on Tottie, the pug.

Says Buzzfeed.

Instructions on how to make it at the link. You need a pug and an old Barbie doll...

A quick wrap-up of today's incipient "mask" theme.

Sometimes the blog acquires a theme, like today, when the first post of the day was about masks that the Hopis don't like to call "masks" — you call them masks, we call them friends — and the second was a metaphorical use of the word "mask," to refer to Ben Carson's current persona. But I would be bullshitting if I said that the third and fourth posts were on theme. Oh, I could do that bullshitting. But I'm not going to waste your time. As the title of this, the fifth post, says, quick wrap-up. So here's the news about masks:

1. "Vogue models 'ate tissues' to mask hunger: Revelations follow similar claims by fashion industry insiders."

2. "Hamas militants’ menacing mask of defiance: Hooded gangs patrol Gaza as Israel fires first attack in months breaking fragile truce."

3. "A man wearing an 'old man' mask robbed a Cleveland Chase Bank Wednesday morning, the FBI said." (Hints for bank robbers: Use sunglasses to keep the rubber mask in place and to provide additional masking.)

4. "Do North Korea’s threats mask power struggle behind the scenes?" ("Those who study the Hermit Kingdom have very serious doubts that any attack on the U.S. or allies South Korea and Japan is even being seriously considered. 'It could be there’s a whole other game going on,' said Stephen Long, a North Korea expert at the University of Richmond.")

5. The General Zod mask from "Man of Steel" has been identified as the Halloween costume item for 2013, but the images that were at this link — purportedly terrifying — have been "removed at the request of the studio." Here's a 2010-era General Zod action figure, decidedly unscary.

6. "Police are looking for a man who went into a Turkey Hill [store] in Palmyra early Sunday morning wearing nothing but a ski mask." ("The man is described as a white male, approximately 50 years old, standing 6 feet tall with a 'heavyset' build. He had no visible scars, marks, tattoos or body piercings, police said." An amusing twist on the old phrase "no visible scars." Usually it refers to scars other than on the face. Here, the face is where the scars could be.)

7. The gas mask Justin Bieber wore around town in London last month was just "a joke." (And he "know[s] who [he is]" and is "not gonna let negativity towards [him] bring [him] down.")

So put down the tissues and eat some real food. Don't let the negativity bring you down, baby. Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy. It's not your style.

"I remember that night fondly, even though my feminist sensibilities cringe a little now."

Says the author of a WaPo op-ed titled "Time to stop hooking up. (You know you want to.)"   

That night was a Halloween when she was a college student and she dressed up as a whore. Now that she's not a college student it's time for you to stop hooking up. She did that whore-costume thing when she was younger, so it's time for you to stop. Guess why? Because of feminism! Ha ha. That was the most transparent slip I've ever seen.

And I don't mean why not wear a transparent slip next time you want to dress like a whore. I mean, she did what was fun for her when she was so young that dressing slutty easily made her look super-sexy, and now that she's older and it's others who are young and have this automatic sexiness at their command, she's suddenly staunchly feminist. Ha.

This woman, Donna Freitas, is flogging a book — "The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy" — but the sample of her writing she's sharing in WaPo is awful.  

I remember that night fondly, even though my feminist sensibilities cringe a little now. Not only is "fondly" the most cliché adverb to slap onto "remember" to try to give it some oomph — "sensibilities" can't "cringe."

And does feminism cause a feminist to cringe when thinking about things like that time she dressed like a whore? To cringe means (quoting the unlinkable OED):

To contract the muscles of the body, usually involuntarily; to shrink into a bent or crooked position; to cower.

Picture a position of the body. Is that a feminist position — shrinking and crooked, cowering? Figuratively, it's:

To experience an involuntary inward shiver of embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust, etc.; to wince or shrink inwardly; (hence) to feel extremely embarrassed or uncomfortable. Freq. with at.

Is that feminism — shivering with embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust? Maybe Freitas is purveying the same old shame with a deceptive "feminism" label, and maybe she's just a bad writer. Either way, I wouldn't recommend this book (though with that title, it could be a great gag gift for the right person).

Mystery at the Wisconsin Governor's Mansion: "the bullet passed cleanly through the eye of a decorative ghost."

This was back in October, and the much-protested Governor Walker was not at home. The ghost, part of a Halloween display, looked like this after the shooting:



A female Capitol Police officer lost her job for reporting that the shot was fired outside the mansion.

Tesch was stationed in the security office in a lower level of the mansion in Maple Bluff when her gun discharged, sending a slug through the eye of a cartoon ghost on the windowsill.

Stephanie Marquis, spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, which oversees the Capitol police, initially said the shooting was accidental, but she acknowledged Wednesday that it is difficult to be certain exactly why the gun was fired.

Accidental... and right through the ghost's eye?