Poor Mojo's Newswire

The argument about whether hate speech is protected by the 1st Amendment has been postponed. "A judge declared a mistrial Monday in the case against a New Jersey blogger accused of making death threats against three federal judges in Chicago because they wrote a ruling supporting gun control," the Associated Press reports. "The mistrial came after the jury sent two notes - one during its first day of deliberation on Friday and another on Monday - saying it was hopelessly deadlocked over charges Hal Turner threatened to kill or assault a federal judge," the AP report continues. "A retrial was scheduled for March 1 in Brooklyn, where the case was moved based on a change-of-venue request." "Let me be the first to say this plainly: these Judges deserve to be killed," he wrote on his Web site, according to a June MSNBC report. "He included their pictures, phone numbers, work address and room numbers along with a photo of the courthouse in which they work and a map of its location, the FBI says.". The AP reports today, "The only juror to speak to reporters afterward, truck driver Richard Gardiner, said the jury voted 9 to 3 in favor of acquittal, with the majority seeing the government's case as weak. He said he held out for a conviction because he 'did think it was a threat.'"

"Pulp Fiction" co-screenwriter Roger Avary is behind bars at the Ventura County Jail today -- several days after what is believed to be the writer/director's tweeting revealed that he was serving his sentence for a fatal car crash in a furlough program rather than in jail. In September, Avary was sentenced to a year in jail for causing a car crash in Ojai that killed a passenger and injured Avary's wife. Earlier this week, Times technology blogger Mark Milian discovered some tweets coming from @avary and speculated over whether Avary was tweeting from jail. But Avary wasn't in jail. Rather, he was serving his time in a Ventura County work furlough program, which allows him to go to his job during the day. He reports back to the furlough facility -- a modified former Air Force barracks at Camarillo Airport -- at night and on weekends. It's unclear when officials decided to allow Avary to enter the furlough program, or how that decision was reached. It is also unknown where the screenwriter spent his days, but inmates in the program are not allowed to work at home. Today, however, officials said Avary is in full-time custody. He reported to the Ventura County Jail for incarceration on Thanksgiving Day for "security issues," said Sheriff spokesman Ross Bonfiglio. ... But you wouldn't get that impression from what are believed to be Avary's tweets, which chronicle life inside amid heroin smuggling, lockdowns and strip searches. "#34's new roomie, EZ, takes Yeyo's old bunk, locker, AND number. He regales awesome tales about his former life as an Oxnard gangbanger," @avary tweeted Tuesday at 9:17 a.m. Two weeks earlier @avary tweeted: "'It's your birthday! announcing that #34 is to receive a random strip-down and cavity search to be performed by a leering, rotund officer."

Today, critics like Mr. Parker exert enormous influence. The medals won at the 29 major U.S. wine competitions medals are considered so influential that wineries spend well over $1 million each year in entry fees. According to a 2001 study of Bordeaux wines, a one-point bump in Robert Parker's wine ratings averages equates to a 7% increase in price, and the price difference can be much greater at the high end. Given the high price of wine and the enormous number of choices, a system in which industry experts comb through the forest of wines, judge them, and offer consumers the meaningful shortcut of medals and ratings makes sense. But what if the successive judgments of the same wine, by the same wine expert, vary so widely that the ratings and medals on which wines base their reputations are merely a powerful illusion? That is the conclusion reached in two recent papers in the Journal of Wine Economics.