Our friend Matt Osborne has written a delicious takedown of William Hoge, who has convinced his readers that he will succeed in jailing Bill Schmalfeldt at a hearing in Carroll County next Monday. You should go read the whole thing at Matt’s website, but we especially enjoyed his reaction to Mr. Hoge’s ridiculous email policy page. We have asked Mr. Hoge about it on Twitter, but he has never replied.

I have developed a friendship with Bill Schmalfeldt by way of blogging on the same topics. We have become friends, so when on Monday he asked me to convey a legal communication to Mr. Hoge, I copied his text verbatim and forwarded it. Hoge replied by posting the entire email in his blog. Needless to say, his friends instantly determined that I had made some sort of subliminal threat with Schmalfeldt’s words.

Yesterday, I wrote Mr. Hoge a second email of my own — one which he found “alarming” enough to reply with a demand that I never contact him again, even by using the @ sign function on Twitter, on pain of criminal charges, citing Alabama law. But Hoge’s “alarm” is at being mocked, not threatened.

Which brings me to the most unintentionally hilarious website email policy I have ever read:

1. In consideration of the payments which are outlined herein and which you and we mutually agree are good and sufficient, we offer to receive unsolicited commercial email from you on the terms set out below. By “we” we mean the owners and users of the wjjhoge.net domain. By “you” we mean any person or entity who might send commercial email to an address at our domain. If you send any solicitation by email to any address at our domain without the express prior written consent of the Webwrangler of the wjjhoge.net domain, this will be taken as your acceptance of this offer. 

2. For the purposes of points 3, 4, and 5, you will be taken to have sent any spam email sent by any person or entity apparently associated with you for the purpose of sending email solicitations. By “spam” we mean any commercial email sent by you to us without prior express written permission from the Webwrangler of the wjjhoge.net domain. 

3. You must pay the owner of the wjjhoge.net domain ten US dollars for each such item of spam email that you send to an address at our domain. 

4. If you or any associated entity are on our email blacklist, you must pay the owner of the wjjhoge.net domain fifty US dollars for each such item of spam email that you send to an address at our domain. Our email blacklist is posted on our web site. 

5. If you or any associated entity use a false or misleading reply-to address on any spam email sent to an address at our domain, you must pay the owner of the wjjhoge.net domain five-hundred US dollars for each such item of spam email. This is the statutory rate per section 14-2901 et. seq. of the Annotated Code of Maryland. 

6. Your payment must arrive at our business address within ten business days of your transmission of each spam email. Your spam may be archived on our system until all fees are paid. An additional fee of one US dollar per day per message will be due for messages archived longer than ten days. 

That’s not all of it, but it’s enough for you to get an idea of just how much thought Hoge puts into ways to vex people who cross him. It is fair to say that Mr. Hoge is a vexatious litigant, and this leads him to systematically dehumanize the objects of his wrath. Hoge is especially dismissive of Schmalfeldt’s deteriorating Parkinson’s, which has been aggravated by all the “lawfare”-induced stress, because he thinks Schmalfeldt is exaggerating his condition for sympathy.

Hoge considers himself a Christian, by the way.

You can read Matt’s post here, and you really should. Mr. Osborne has also created another Downfall parody video that you really must watch.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/UV0OVZJS4vk[/youtube]

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