Sealing whacks

Just to be clear: I have absolutely no authority over anything. Nada, none, zilch. Who the hell am I? Nobody, that's who.

In case you missed it, it seems the FBI sent Wikipedia a demand that they remove their illustration of the Bureau's seal from the online encyclopedia's "FBI" entry. That seal that you can see on this page over on the right. See? Neat, huh? Anyway, yeah, so the FBI apparently tried to broadly misconstrue a Federal statute designed to keep people from flashing fake FBI badges or using FBI insignia fraudulently to claim that displaying the seal (reproduced there, to your right) for illustrative or educational purposes was also taboo.

Hey, don't give this page that look. I couldn't make up crap like this if I wanted to.

Wikipedia's counsel sent back a great letter in response (PDF link) that's worth a look and giggle. In layman's terms, you can pretty much sum it up as, "Uhm, no."

Exactly what the FBI (whose seal is reproduced, above, earlier in this post, in the upper right-hand part of the posting) was thinking, who can say? Regardless: dumb, dumb, dumb.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what the Federal Bureau Of Investigation's seal looks like--upper right-hand... well, I guess you got it, already.