Very Interesting... But Stupid !

(To be clear, the stupid part is towards the bottom...)

Well well well... look what I found.

Let's start at the beginning: When Patti Gillman was testifying at SECU (subject of my immediately-previous post [LINK]), she mentioned this blog and recommended it to the members of SECU. [thanks Patti!]

Unfortunately, the dash in my domain name (Excited-Delirium.com) is silent when spoken, and so in the original SECU transcript [LINK] the URL came out as exciteddelirium.com [no dash].

Note: I've already sent in a request to the Clerk of the SECU Committee asking if he could please correct or clarify the website address in the Evidence.

Out of curiosity, I decided to check out the URL-without-the-dash and see where it leads.

Well, guess what...

It redirects to (ahem): "The Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths".

So who the heck are they?

Their mission statement is as follows:

The Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, Inc. (IPICD) is a clearinghouse, resource center, and training provider dedicated to providing interested parties with objective, timely, accurate, qualitative, and quantitative information, training, and operational guidance for the prevention and management of sudden- and in-custody deaths.

Cough cough gag cough - Sorry. Excuse me.

According to the IPICD Sponsors page, the only two sponsors are:
1) US Armor Corporation, and
2) LAAW International, Inc.

Taser is not listed as a sponsor.

But it is not exactly very subtle for someone (?) to register the domain name exciteddelirium.com [no dash], and redirect it to the IPICD home page.

So, who did it?

Is there any connection from exciteddelirium.com [no dash] to Taser? Any at all?

The website registration for exciteddelirium.com [no dash] (as found on Whois.net [LINK]) extracts are as follows:

domain: exciteddelirium.com [no dash]
registrant-firstname: Michael
registrant-lastname: Brave
registrant-organization: LAAW International, Inc.

"...Michael Brave..."?? Oh, now that name sounds familiar.

Do you remember Mr. Alphabet Soup from a previous post? [LINK]

"Michael Brave, Esq., M.S., C.L.S.3, C.L.E.T., C.P.S., C.S.T. National Litigation Counsel, TASER International, Inc."

(Here it is...)

So in summary: The current (or former?) National Litigation Counsel for Taser International, Inc. has apparently registered the domain name exciteddelirium.com [no dash] and redirected it to point to IPICD.


Here's the issue:

It would have been perfectly normal if IPICD had registered an alternate domain name (such as exciteddelirium.com) and linked it to their own IPICD home page if they wished to do so. That's S.O.P. for webpage owners. Nothing abnormal about that. But that's not what happened.

When a 'sponsor' (LAAW/Michael Brave/Taser's Litigator) registers a domain name representing a controversial medical theory being promoted by Taser, and links it to someone else's independent (?) homepage, that's very strange.

Seems a bit clumsy. Cue the gently-indignant press release from IPICD requesting that LAAW remove the unauthorized link from exciteddelirum.com [no dash] to their IPICD home page.

Editorial note: You couldn't even make this stuff up.

[Updated several times: 29 April 2008]