A month ago, I used the above photo of Mr. Patrick Burns (Burns is the ugly one in the middle) to illustrate a rejoinder to one of his postings defending the intimidation of their owner and the confiscation and imprisonment of eleven hounds belonging to a Philadelphia basset pack.

Last night (talk about l’espirt d’escalier!), Patrick sent me an email with a link to his blog, where, in a fashion worthy of 3rd grade, he accuses me of theft, for using his photo. Burns, by way of retaliation, it seems, also “stole” my Twitter photo (colored green like that of many conservatives on Twitter as an expression of support of the recent pro-democracy insurgency in Iran) using it on his original posting, and even as the basis for an extra web-page demonstrating just how crazy he really is.

In that posting of his, Patrick claims to have sent me some kind of previous demand about that photo, but I never received any such thing.

I wrote Mr. Burns back last night, offering him NYM’s (generous) standard photo use fee. If he declines to accept payment and continues to insist on my removing his photo, I suppose we’ll just have to do without it.