Donald Trump says he's suing Bill Maher for $5 million after Trump accepted his offer, making a valid contract.

The "offer," made last month, was to "pay $5 million to Trump’s charity of choice if he provided a birth certificate proving that he’s not 'spawn of his mother having sex with orangutan.'"

Maher was comically commenting on Trump's offer to pay $5 million to Obama's charity of choice if Obama releases his college records.

This lawsuit news is, of course, Trump, once again, hogging — orangutanning — the media spotlight. Fine. I don't care. But to actually file a lawsuit is: 1. An offense against free speech, and 2. An irresponsible appropriation of the public wealth that will be consumed processing the lawsuit.

“I don’t think he was joking. He said it with venom. That was venom. That wasn’t a joke. In fact, he was nervous when he said it. It was a pathetic delivery,” Trump said on Fox News.

Speaking of pathetic... go away, Donald. And take your hair with you when you leave. 

The Tuber and The Turpitude.

The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association invokes the moral turpitude clause in its contract with Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton, recently outed as a prostitute.

Dana Loesch sues to escape from the "indentured servitude" that is Breitbart.com.

"The internal disputes roiling the website founded by the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart broke out into the open Friday, when a star blogger sued to be freed from her contractual obligations to the site."

Loesch is seeking her freedom from the company and at least $75,000 in damages.

Breitbart.com is "binding Loesch to what amounts to an indentured servitude in limbo," she charges in the suit....

Mixed metaphor: Limbo is a place you can never get out of. Indentured servitude is marked by a specific period of time. Come on, lawsuit drafters. Sharpen up.

Is "the whole tea party movement... in a state of disarray"? The story of FreedomWorks and Dick Armey.

Armey (the chairman) just got an $8 million buyout after questioning Matt Kibbe (the president) over the deal Kibbe made for his book “Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government’s Stranglehold on America.”

Armey was concerned that Kibbe structured the deal to personally profit from the book despite relying on FreedomWorks staff and resources to research, help write and promote it — an arrangement he and others at the group believed could jeopardize its tax-exempt status. (In 2010, Kibbe and Armey co-authored a book through HarperCollins, “Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto,” that was written with significant help from FreedomWorks staff and all proceeds had gone to the organization.)

So Armey declined to sign a memorandum presented to him in his capacity as a member of the board of trustees stating that the book was written without significant FreedomWorks resources and clearing the way for Kibbe to personally own the rights to the book and any royalties from it...

Armey says he was being asked to lie "and it was a lie that I thought brought the organization in harm’s way."

To what extent does FreedomWorks = the tea party? Where did all that money come from?

The eight-year-old group has seen its influence and membership skyrocket since affiliating with the anti-establishment tea party. Its fundraising nearly doubled from 2009 to 2010 (the most recent year for which it would provide tax filings to POLITICO), when it raised $13.7 million, according to those filings with the IRS and the FEC, and played major roles in boosting tea partiers to upset GOP primary victories over establishment favorites.

If you gave them money, how do you like $8 million of it going to Armey because Armey didn't want to lie about Kibbe's supposed tapping of the organization's resources? Maybe Armey was sad that the book he co-authored with Kibbe didn't have an equivalent benefit.

“I wrote this book and it is my property,” [Kibbe] said, adding that he wrote the 416-page book entirely “on my Christmas vacation” last year. Indeed, in the book’s acknowledgements, he thanked his wife, Terry, for letting him “work through the Christmas holiday to meet overly ambitious deadlines without sacrificing the demands of my day job.”

How long is a "Christmas vacation"? Let's be generous and say 2 weeks. He only had to write 30 pages a day. Ever seen anybody write 30 pages a day?

[M]ultiple sources who worked with FreedomWorks and had knowledge of the situation said that several staffers were asked to help research and write the book as part of their work duties. The sources contend that FreedomWorks staff time and resources spent promoting the book detracted from the organization’s ability to mobilize conservative activists ahead of the election...

“The fear is the organization will become a 5 million-member marketing organization that simply sells books and movies and T-shirts and raises money,” one source said. “And that’s not what the organization used to do,” said the source, who predicted more controversy around the organization. “It’s going to get nasty.”

Armey's deal for the $8 million entailed an agreement not to leave until after the election, and Armey himself admits that, saying he was concerned the media would write "that the whole tea party movement was in a state of disarray."

"The moderator will not... intervene in the debate except to acknowledge the questioners from the audience or enforce the time limits, and invite candidate comments during the 2 minute response period."

That was the contractual term that Candy Crowley agreed to and blatantly violated in the debate tonight. She let us know in advance that she wasn't going to follow it:

"They will call on 'Alice,' and 'Alice' will stand up and ask a question. Both candidates will answer. Then there's time for a follow-up question, facilitating a discussion, whatever you want to call it," Crowley said. "So if Alice asks oranges, and someone answers apples, there's the time to go, 'But Alice asked oranges? What's the answer to that?" Or, 'Well, you say this, but what about that?'"

But she went way beyond her own statement of how much she was going to violate it.

"Ban all performative weddings, ban all crazy expenditures... Ban the marriage pages in The New York Times."

"Ban those things that turn otherwise sensible people to start buying into that fantasy," says Virginia Rutter — great name — a professor of — take a guess — sociology, quoted in a NYT "Fashion and Style" piece, written by Matt Richtel, who's mostly airing his own "whimsical" notion that marriage could be a 20-year renewable contract.

Richtel quotes another a professor of — take a guess — sociology, Pepper Schwartz — great name — saying, “We’re remarkably not innovative about marriage even though almost all the environmental conditions, writ large, have changed... We haven’t scrutinized it. We’ve been picking at it like a scab, and it’s not going to heal that way.”

But wouldn't being innovative be picking at it? What's Pepper planning to do to this scab? Sociology professors... can we just pick at them?

As to Professor Rutter and her objection to "performative weddings"... well, I'm more concerned about her attraction to the word "ban"... she decries emotionality while sounding utterly emotional. And who are these "otherwise sensible people"? Human beings get involved in all sorts of ideas and practices entailing love and beauty and religion and hope and sex and money. There's no stripping away of all that. It is humanity itself, not a fantasy (or a scab!).

"Oops — could Penguin be S.O.L., thanks to the S.O.L.?"

"This is why you shouldn’t sue a Yale-trained litigatrix who used to work at Boies Schiller."

"Important fact: This letter was to his first wife."

Key comment in a comments thread about a contract Kurt Vonnegut made with his pregnant wife in January 1947.

The contract comes from this collection of Vonnegut's letters, which will be released in October.

If you're looking for something to read now, here's that book "Mortality," which Christopher Hitchens wrote as he was dying.

And here's a biography of David Foster Wallace — "Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story" — which just came out today.

Thaddeus McCotter — after "nightmarish month and a half" — resigns from Congress.

He says:

The recent event’s totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family. Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth of home amongst the ruins of their U.S. House office, for the sake of my loved ones I must ‘strike another match, go start anew’ by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen.”

The quote about the match is from Bob Dylan.

And what will he do now? He says he faces "diminishing prospects" and is "both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby," but I think it's pretty obvious he's got a cool personal style and a way with words. And he's made a TV pilot:

"Bumper Sticker: Made On Motown" starred McCotter hosting a crude variety show cast with characters bearing the nicknames of his congressional staffers, his brother and a drunk, perverted "Black Santa." They take pot shots about McCotter's ill-fated bid for the White House while spewing banter about drinking, sex, race, flatulence, puking and women's anatomy....



Asked who would find the humor in the script funny, McCotter said... the show was "deliberately designed to be a train wreck" to further assault the dignity of the central character — McCotter the host, who is already humiliated from the presidential run....

S.E. Cupp appears in the pilot episode:

McCotter tries to ask serious questions of the columnist, while his sidekicks chime in by asking how she "keeps that great stripper bod?" and whether "D-Cupp" is dating anyone. In the script, Cupp is disgusted by the "train wreck" of the show.

It's unclear whether Cupp knew of her role in the pilot. Reached by e-mail, she didn't want to talk about McCotter.

McCotter also casts Stephen K. Bannon, the conservative filmmaker, as the reluctant producer of "Bumper Sticker." In the show, Bannon is not amused McCotter doesn't have a second guest lined up and McCotter has to interview Bannon instead.

Reached by phone, Bannon, who now runs Breitbart's media enterprise, said he didn't realize McCotter cast him in the script. He recalls McCotter emailing him an earlier version, but he chalked it up to "musings" McCotter would send periodically to Breitbart and himself after his presidential run failed.

This sounds like a fact pattern for a law school exam. Spot the legal issues.

... Bannon said he didn't take McCotter's scripts seriously, but rather as cathartic musings to burn off the anger and hurt from his book and presidential campaign flopping.

I hope McCotter is artistic and not crazy. If he's both, I hope he manages to channel the crazy into the art in a way that works somehow. I really liked him back when he was running for president (but failing to get enough of a percentage in the polls to qualify for the debates). The fake-talk-show format for a comedy series has been done many times, and it can be an easy way to crank out material. It's actively wrong to trick people into appearing in the show, especially when using your status as a member of Congress to lure journalists into sitting down for what they think is an interview. Sacha Baron Cohen tricks people into his comic sketches, but he gets them to sign a release before he uses them, and he doesn't use an actual real-life position of power as the leverage.

***

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

Unpaid bloggers lose their lawsuit against Huffington Post.

"The principles of equity and good conscience do not justify giving the plaintiffs a piece of the purchase price when they never expected to be paid, repeatedly agreed to the same bargain, and went into the arrangement with eyes wide open."

"This is the electronic equivalent of someone writing a letter to the editor," John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School, said in an interview. "You are rewarded by publication, not by payment."

You want to get paid for your writing? Bargain for it. And quit whining. No one wants to read things written by whiners, so you're only digging yourselves a deeper hole.

Olbermann falls further.

Fired by Al Gore's Current TV, less than a year after getting fired by MSNBC. Ouch.

We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet. We are more committed to those goals today than ever before. Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.

Yeouch. Olbermann reacts:

... [Al] Gore and [Joel] Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract.

It goes almost without saying that the claims against me implied in Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently....

In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out....

Oh! The ethics of Al Gore, exposed in a lawsuit brought by Keith Olbermann. I can almost hear the Gore-haters of the world salivating.

Release the chakras!

Kevin Costner vs. a sculptor who devoted 9 years of her life to making 17 larger-than-life bronze bison/horses/Indians for him.

It's a contracts dispute:

Mr. Costner promised to either build the [$100 million luxury] resort by 2010, place the sculpture in a mutually agreeable location elsewhere, or sell the multimillion-dollar work and split the profit....

Mr. Costner's lawyers argued in court that he met the terms of the 2000 agreement by displaying the work at a $6 million visitor center on part of the land intended for the resort....

To meet Mr. Costner's tight budget, [Peggy Detmers] agreed to do the work for $250,000, one-fourth of what she calls her "wholesale" rate. Mr. Costner confirmed in his testimony that he promised to market copies of the works aggressively in a gallery at the resort....

She worked for $27,000 a year. Obviously, she expected a bigger boost from the project that fizzled. To be fair, Costner's career fizzled too. He was flying high after "Dances With Wolves" — which was what the luxury resort was supposed to be about.

"You might be interested in letting your readers know that a restaurant meal is a 'sale of goods' under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code."

"The code provides that where the buyer and seller have agreed to a contract but have not agreed on the price, the price is not what the seller subsequently demands. It’s a reasonable price for the goods at issue. Thus a customer has no obligation to pay for anything more than the reasonable price of a pasta meal at a trendy restaurant."

Lawprof weighing in on a story about a customer who ordered the pasta with white truffles and was shocked to get the bill and see the price: $275.

Here's the $65 worth of white truffles 'n' pasta I had last fall. I knew the price in advance. Cheap, apparently... compared to New York.

"I leave it in your capable hands to do whatever you want..."

"... and please write back saying how much money you want."

Question for normal readers: The idealized working relationship?

Question for first year law students: Is that a contract?

ADDED: Compare the story about Steve Jobs dealing with the master of the corporate logo, Paul Rand:

The [Next] computer would be a cube, Jobs pronounced. He loved that shape. It was perfect and simple. So Rand decided that the logo should be a cube as well, one that was tilted at a 28° angle. When Jobs asked for a number of options to consider, Rand declared that he did not create different options for clients. “I will solve your problem, and you will pay me,” he told Jobs. “You can use what I produce, or not, but I will not do options, and either way you will pay me.” 

Jobs admired that kind of thinking, so he made what was quite a gamble. The company would pay an astonishing $100,000 flat fee to get one design. “There was a clarity in our relationship,” Jobs said. “He had a purity as an artist, but he was astute at solving business problems. He had a tough exterior, and had perfected the image of a curmudgeon, but he was a teddy bear inside.” It was one of Jobs’s highest praises: purity as an artist.

"Steve Jobs," by Walter Isaacson (Kindle Location 3941).

"Our children aren't there to be subjects of teachers and teachers unions."

"But the decisions that have been made in the Madison Metropolitan School District for a mighty long time have been determined by adults getting what they need first before kids."

Said Kaleem Caire, president of the Urban League of Greater Madison, who has been trying to get approval for the Madison Preparatory Academy, a charter school aimed at low-income, minority students.

At one point, Madison Prep agreed to hire union teachers, and the union agreed to remain neutral on the proposal. When that plan proved too expensive, Madison Prep revised its plan to use nonunion teachers....

The union contract, which expires in 2013, doesn't allow Madison to hire nonunion teachers. Exceptions have been made previously through negotiated agreements between the union and the district.

There's some disagreement about whether, under under the state's new collective bargaining law, such an agreement would nullify the whole contract.

Model Caroline Louise Forsling sues Estée Lauder for branding her as old.

She wants $2 million after a test picture of her was used in an ad campaign that she didn't know about (for a product she didn't use). It's one of those before and after pictures, where the before and after sides were shot at the same time.

Obviously, she signed a contract. What did it say? Is there some understanding that the test shot photo will not be used, that she retained some control over which products her image could be used to promote, or that her image could only represent youth and beauty? What went on before the lawsuit was filed? She's damaging both herself and the product by going public with the dispute, because we're all invited to stare at her aged face, in the unflattering photograph we might otherwise never have seen or noticed. Meanwhile, the company suffers from having their ad revealed as a fraud. I'm thinking Forsling tried to get more money when she saw how the photo was used, and threatened to file the lawsuit, which we're seeing now, because the company called her bluff. So, great, everybody loses. Except us, the consumers who might have believed a little too much in Plantscription serum by Origins.

(Personally, I never buy a product called "serum." It sounds spookily medical.)

"The Liver Mush Wager."

"Be it known that the undersigned (Mary Byrnes and Nate Kreuter) have agreed that liver mush is the most disgusting food product imaginable, and have placed the offensive frozen pork product at the center of a similarly agreed-upon wager.  Mary Byrnes and Nate Kreuter have wagered to each write five (5) scholarly articles during the 2010-2011 academic year...."

Via 3X3 via Inside Higher Ed.

Jeff Probst accuses 2 contestants of breaching the implied "Survivor" contract.

Okay... but, of course, there is a written contract. What's in it? The idea of an implied contract is nothing but a figure of speech for Jeff here as he's exacting what is probably the only power he has to impose a penalty: bad-mouthing the quitters.

I'm shocked, shocked to learn that semi-clad models are writhing in the law library!

"... Brooklyn Law School officials rented Diesel its library expecting a tasteful photo shoot for a jeans ad -- but what they got was a steamy display of writhing young models in skimpy lingerie grinding against books and computers."

Wait. Why did they expect a tasteful photo shoot?

"It's gross. I work on those computers every day!" fumed a female student, referring to a shot showing two bra- and panty-clad women climbing over the machines toward an open-mouthed man....

The frisky photos, shot last spring, show off the hot bodies of male and female models as they prowl around the library's floors, tables and bookshelves -- while wearing tight-fitting panties bearing various seductive messages.

If the law school — I emphasize law school — did not impose restrictions when it took Diesel's money then it has nothing to complain about.

"We are as shocked and mortified as you must be by these photographs," interim dean Michael Gerber wrote in an e-mail yesterday to students, faculty and staff.

"When the school gave its permission to do the shoot, the school was assured that the photos would be in good taste. They are not."

"Assured" "good taste" — that's not specific enough to make me believe Diesel violated a contractual term. The school took Diesel's money and had to know that any advertising for clothing for young adults is likely to involve some display of sexuality. Especially if the scene is a library. That's what I'd expect.

What exactly was the school assured of? The models aren't naked. They've got on underwear. And what is even so gross and shocking about this? Man, Diesel is getting way more great publicity than its stupid underpants deserve. Where did this controversy really start? I'm inclined to suspect that the administration is only shocked* after the fact and only because some students have managed to create the impression that the school might be accused of contributing to a "hostile environment" form of sexual harassment.

As for the young woman who is grossed out that a model in panties writhed in the vicinity of a computer she uses... do you realize how many people type on those things with hands they didn't wash after they went to the bathroom?

----------------------------------------------

*Shocked!

"This Is It."

Posthumous Michael Jackson, streamable at the official site.

My observations — sorry, Michael:

1. The words are like one of those awful finale songs the write for "American Idol."

2. The singing is not up to your standard. Presumably, if you'd lived, you'd have rerecorded it with more of a feeling of style, varying between urgency and effortlessness, instead of continuing throughout at a medium level of strain.

ADDED: "Based on a tape Mr. Jackson left behind containing only his piano and vocals, a full arrangement was built, complete with swelling strings and his brothers’ backup vocals... It is not clear when the song was written or recorded... and Sony originally believed that the tape was made around the time of Mr. Jackson’s 1991 album 'Dangerous.' But it could have been much earlier, perhaps even as early as the album 'Off the Wall,' from 1979. 'We just found the song... It was titled ‘This Is It.’ It was in a box, and we listened to it.'"

So he didn't think it was good enough even to work on, let alone release. There are terrible penalties attached to dying suddenly, without putting your affairs in order. Artists, destroy the things you don't want to see the light of day:

Sony has rights to release any music Mr. Jackson recorded while under contract....

Oh, no....