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• This is it, folks, the beginning of the end for AHF's quixote crusade to jam their agenda down our throats. In the process they stuck their fat fist down some throats with much larger teeth. The Medicaid fraud case will now go forward and you can anticipate a quick bounce down the courthouse steps for AHF's minions as wannabe "intervenors" in the federal court challenge to Measure B.

  Right now, though he'll never admit it, Mr. Weinstein is undoubtedly pondering whether or not choosing this battle was a wise thing to do. It wasn't. He's sacrificed his organization's credibility, impaired its primary mission of providing patient care, alienated his staff and provoked the most powerful political figures in L.A. county.

  And the worst is yet to come.

  • I sure hope that Ernest is right about AHF. I get depressed reading Mike South's website because it makes me worried that Weinstein is going to win. Ernest was wrong about porn performers being considered independent contractors and therefore not falling under Cal/OSHA's jurisdiction. I wish the x-rated industry, from early on, had taken Weinstein as a very serious threat. I believe that Weinstein is the Fredric Wertham of porn.

    • You get depressed because South never has anything positive to say about the adult industry, its always about how stupid they are, or how the end is near..its funny after awhile.. South wants condoms, why? Because he shoots NON condom...Hes not regulated in anyway..He will snitch out someone shooting without condoms in heartbeat, but 30 mins later hes at motel 6 shooting facials...

  • No, I was not wrong about porn performers being considered independent contractors under the law, merely by the interpretation of an appointed committee with a political agenda of its own. That principle has never been tested directly in any court with broad jurisdiction and the ruling of an agency body in a single case does not constitute a legal precedent. In fact, performers do not fall under Cal-OSHA jurisdiction and that too will be litigated out in front of a real judge who must rule according to the law, not to further an attempt at social engineering by a small cadre of fanatics in control of an appointed state regulatory agency.

    I always took Weinstein as a threat. I was chairman of the board of AIM when he set out to destroy us, which he later crowed about in emails to his since-resigned legal counsel Brian Chase. I did my best to alert the FSC and several major production company owners to step up to this threat before a few easy victories convinced Weinstein and his pals at UCLA that they could rewrite The Constitution (think that's an exaggeration - read Dr. Peter Kerndt's rambling monograph on Plos Medicine on the subject of condoms in porn and how they must be required to model proper behavior for the general public) and make a few more bucks for AHF on the side. Measure B should never have gotten on the ballot, as the whole petitioning process was utterly corrupt and misleading, and the industry's failure to challenge that process was a huge strategic blunder on the order of The Kassarine Pass.

    However, as with The Kassarine Pass, the defeat of an overconfident, underprepared force operating on obsolete intelligence didn't tilt WW2 in favor of The Axis Powers. On the contrary, it's been described as the defeat that won the war because after that everybody started taking the little guy with the mustache seriously. Clearly, by now a lot of people take Weinstein seriously with much the same intent. If you look at the forces now arrayed against him, he comes across more and more like an isolated head case spouting threats from an underground bunker.

    As for Mike South, he doesn't depress me. I rarely read his swill and when I do it makes me laugh. The only thing that makes me laugh harder is the notion that anyone would would believe a single word he says.

    The issues at hand will not be decided by internet bloggers, self-aggrandizing charity barons or anti-porn fanatics who seize on the whole dispute as a means of attacking a form of expression they don't like. They will instead be decided by federal court judges who have exactly zero patience with any of the above, as we have just seen demonstrated with chilling effectiveness. Those emails didn't have to be attached to the court's decision but they were anyway. And there's a lot more ugly where that ugly came from. The longer this whole business drags on in court, the more of it will come to light and the preview we've been given of how federal judges regard the kind of malicious, politically driven litigation for which AHF is justly infamous is but a curtain-raiser for the drama to follow, at the end of which I'm pretty sure Michael Weinstein will be looking for a new job - that is if he's still at large.

    Liked the Fredric Wertham reference, BTW. A fascinating but now obscure figure from an earlier era when comic books were the menace to the youth of America. Wertham's dead and gone and the comic books put out today must have him spinning in his grave. And he had the support of Estes Kefauver and the federal government overall. Not so Mr. Weinstein. He's made an enemy of virtually everyone who could possibly cause him trouble and they're obviously doing so with growing effectiveness.

    It's one thing to crush a tiny, non-profit community clinic supported by a marginalized population. Taking on the entire political establishment of Southern California is a rather more daunting proposition, as we see.

    This does not, BTW, acquit the industry of its own blindness and lack of political acuity. We've failed utterly to confront what has become an existential threat back when it could have been beaten back with a broom. Now it looks as if our asses will be saved by the judicial system that under other circumstances would be delighted to throw us all in jail. Ironic, isn't it?

    I'd like to hope some lessons have been learned from this whole costly and needless conflict but I'm not betting on that.

• Jamie Gardner and TRPWL-Sean, whoa! Back-up boys. Yall might be thinkin I'm negative alla the time but that's just not true son. I got a check, I mean Christmas card from a very nice non-profit in California that even reckoned I tolded the truth. I say whatever they told me. I'd holler at yall some more but it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a pool table here.

• Derp!

  So whose articles should I cut and paste, Mike's or Sean's? I don't want any comments on LIB so whoever is the least thought provoking.

  I just pooted and it smells like broccoli, but I didn't eat broccoli today. Can someone explain that to me too?

  Derp. *poot* There it is again.