The Yard-without-a-dog-in-it Argument

I have a story that's like this instapundit argument mentioned in this Whiskeyfire post of the video of the teapartiers yelling but not using the relevant epithet. When I was in college one of my philosophy professors claimed to have seen an episode of one of those People's Court shows in which the dispute was over whether the defendant's dog had been going into the plaintiff's yard and digging up the garden. The defendant brought in a picture of the plaintiff's yard without the dog in it. So, whenever I hear of an argument such as this one I think of it as a Yard-without-a-dog-in-it argument.