Number of sex offender bills raises questions
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Gaette.net
The push to pass sex offender laws is gathering momentum, but the head of one committee is questioning whether lawmakers have too many proposals before them. "When you're trying to do 16 things on one subject you run the risk of screwing it up," Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chairman Brian E. Frosh said. "Because one thing conflicts with another or makes it unclear. So there is that danger." So why is this the year for such comprehensive legislation? "Because we've got all these bills before us," Frosh said. "Because Sarah Foxwell was murdered in December and because it's an election year. There's just a confluence of circumstances that put it on the front burner," he said. [Ed.: with unusual candor, the politician admits that the number of sex offender bills being considered is largely due to its being an election year.] (03/19/10)

Another FLDS found guilty of sex assault
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
A Tom Green County jury Wednesday found Merril Leroy Jessop, 35, guilty of sexual assault of a child in connection with allegations he illegally married an underage girl. The sentencing phase of his trial continues at 9 a.m. today. Jessop is a member of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He maintained a pleasant expression while 51st District Judge Barbara Walther read the jury statement early Wednesday afternoon and pronounced him guilty. (03/18/10)

Abortion lawsuits proposed in Kansas
Topic: Abortion
Source: Kansas City Star
Anti-abortion legislators in Kansas are pushing a proposal to allow lawsuits against doctors over legally questionable late-term abortions. Three senators and three House members met Thursday to negotiate a new version of legislation that rewrites state laws dealing with late-term abortions. They had been focusing on increasing requirements for doctors to report information to the state about late-term abortions. But the House’s lead negotiator, Rep. Melvin Neufeld, an Ingalls Republican, also proposed reviving provisions to allow a woman — or her family — to sue a doctor if there is evidence that her late-term abortion violated the law. (03/18/10)

Nuns, bishops break on health care
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: USA Today
Catholic nuns are urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama's health care plan, in an unusual public break with bishops who say it would subsidize abortion. Some 60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns Wednesday sent lawmakers a letter urging them to pass the Senate health care bill. It contains restrictions on abortion funding that the bishops say don't go far enough. (03/17/10)

Sexy texts land couple in Dubai jail
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: C News
A string of steamy text messages has resulted in a jail sentence for an Indian couple, local media announced Wednesday, in the latest case of passions clashing with the law in the cosmopolitan, yet occasionally conservative, Gulf city of Dubai.
The conviction said the sexual content of the texts suggested the unnamed pair planned to “commit sin” — a reference to an extramarital affair, which is illegal in the United Arab Emirates. (03/17/10)

Top ten antigay hypocrites
Topic: Gay/Lesbian Issues
Source: The Advocate
Following the coming-out of Roy Ashburn, the Republican state senator from California, website Ranker.com named the "Top 10 Antigay Activists Caught Being Gay." Other politicians to make the list include former U.S. senator Larry Craig and the Reverend Ted Haggard.

20 percent of teens engage in sexting
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Time Daily
A joint study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl reveals that 20 percent of teens and 33 percent of young adults ages 20-26 have shared nude or semi-nude pictures of themselves either by text of posting online. But a sexually explicit photo transmitted to friends has far-reaching consequences that most teens and adults don't realize. Among those consequences is possible prison time. [Ed.: why is the government automatically making 20 % of teenagers into criminals by virtue of this one foolish act. They are creating criminals and destroying lives to no good end.] (03/16/10)

Google appears to drop censorship in China
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: MSNBC
Web sites dealing with subjects such as the Tiananmen Square democracy protests, Tibet and regional independence movements could all be accessed through Google's Chinese search engine Tuesday, after the company said it would no longer abide by Beijing's censorship rules. Despite a report in the China Daily that Google China was still filtering content on its search engine and the firm's own insistence that its policies had not changed, people in Beijing found that it wasn't necessarily the case. NBC News, using the publicly accessible Internet, tried searching for three sensitive topics normally blocked in China. (03/16/10)

PA cops video woman in bathroom
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: Philly.com
A Philadelphia woman arrested on drunken-driving charges said Cherry Hill police went too far when they secretly videotaped her using the bathroom last year. A black bar inserted into the video fails to conceal much and at times hides nothing because it can't keep up with movement, the lawsuit said. "This is outrageous. A person's private bodily functions are just that; they're private. That does not stop just because someone is being held at a police station on a traffic offense," said lawyer Philip Stephen Fuoco, whose Haddonfield firm filed the suit. "It is hard to imagine a more embarrassing and humiliating experience than for strangers - let alone the government - to secretly watch and videotape a person using the toilet," he said. (03/16/10)

UK, Cautious health clubs may be prosecuted
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Staff in sports clubs who warn women not to lift heavy weights could be prosecuted under new equality laws. Legislation set out under Harriet Harman's forthcoming Equality Bill says that insinuating a woman might not be able to lift the same size weights as men could be considered 'unlawful sex discrimination'. A code of practice drawn up by the Equality and Human Rights Commission explaining the legal implications of the Bill lists ways in which women might be unfairly stereotyped. It includes a long list of examples of 'unintentional less favourable treatment' including what might happen to a woman when she joins a gym and begins lifting weights. It states: 'A general stereotype about men and women is that in terms of physique, most men are stronger than most women. 'Nevertheless it is likely to be unlawful sex discrimination for a gym to test every woman's strength but not every man's before allowing them access to weight-lifting facilities.' (03/15/10)

Reporters without Borders warns against Net censorship
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Deutshe Welle
The latest study by Reporters without Borders identified 12 "enemies of the Internet" - especially in Asia and the Arab world. Among them are countries like China, Burma, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Australia is included. "In those countries control and surveillance of the World Wide Web is so strict that the Internet is in fact more of an intranet," says Anja Viohl, spokesperson of Reporters Without Borders, an international organization fighting for press freedom. (03/12/10)

Sheen denies domestic violence
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: The Northern Echo
Sheen - who is charged with menacing, criminal mischief and assault - showed little emotion and said nothing during his brief arraignment in Pitkin County District Court, Colorado. A judge scheduled a jury trial for July 21. Menacing, the most serious charge, carries a possible sentence of one to three years in prison. No new details emerged about the December 25 incident. Sheen is accused of assaulting Brooke Mueller Sheen at an Aspen home while they were on holiday. Charlie Sheen told police they were arguing but denied threatening to kill her. [Ed.: this will be an interesting trial to follow. It may call into question whether mutual violence in a marriage is properly considered DV committed by one person against another.] (03/16/10)

Wankers molehill is newspapers mountain
Topic: Unspecified
Source: Classically Liberal
I do not think it was a good idea for this young man to film himself in a classroom (though I do know of one such incident when I went to university). But neither do I think it was the tormenting disaster that the campus newspaper made it out to be. In one story, now deleted, they compared the young man to a pedophile. That the hysterics manage to drag that into everything and anything having to do with sex, will never cease to amaze me. I am the first to say that the university has the right, within certain boundaries (limited because it is a state university) of regulating actions on campus. And, as long as they treat all students equally, I’m fine with that. But the rules for such things are vague and unevenly enforced. I’m not sure if it were revealed that a female student had masturbated a male student in an empty classroom, that there would have been this call for disinfecting desks and frequent washing of hands. (03/19/10)

How not to prosecute a sexting case
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Slate
Author: Emily Bazelon
George Skumanick should give lessons in how not to respond to teenage sexting if you work in law enforcement. The former district attorney for Wyoming County in rural Pennsylvania did just about everything wrong when, in 2008, local school officials turned over to him photos of teenage girls that boys were trading on their cell phones. Skumanick didn't try to determine whether the girls had been harmed by the sexts. Instead, he called the girls in and threatened to prosecute them for child pornography unless they attended a six-to-nine-month "education and counseling" program of his own devising. (03/18/10)

Wonderland comes to the Georgia Supreme Court
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Classically Liberal
Georgia is one of these theocratic states where the detestable sex offender registry requires people to register as sex offenders, even when they have not committed a sexually based crime. There are two cases where individuals were placed on this odious, useless, counter-productive list where no sex was involved. I previously reported on a young man who accompanied a friend when the friend robbed a Dairy Queen. A teenager was exiting the store as the robber went in. The robber instructed the young man to lie on the ground until they finished the robbery. No physical contact with the youth took place. But the underage accomplice in the case is now listed as a registered sex offender in Georgia. (03/18/10)

Presumption of innocence worth defending
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Sign On San Diego
Author: Logan Jenkins
I think I know what you’re thinking. We’ve been led to loathe Gardner, a registered sex offender. We would like to string him up for what we believe he did to Chelsea King. What makes him worthy of a clever team of government lawyers who’ll try every trick in the law books to get him off? Give me 18 inches of newsprint to say why. [Ed.: I disagree about the use of tax dollars.](03/15/10)

Orwell, Santayana, and me
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Jewish World Review
Arguably the most important novel of the twentieth century, Orwell's classic 1984 depicts how an all-powerful state controlled media has eroded the most basic distinctions between good and evil. Under the authority of Big Brother, the Ministry of Truth rewrites history not only from day to day but from hour to hour. Nothing remains constant, nothing can be believed, nothing has meaning, nothing is worth fighting for. Confusion leads to apathy; apathy leads to compliance; compliance leads to tyranny. This is the world Orwell foresaw if the seductive and fanciful ideals of Soviet-style socialism were allowed to play out to their natural conclusion. And what would Orwell say about what our society has become? Political correctness forbids us from speaking uncomfortable truths. Moral equivalence prohibits us from praising good or condemning evil. (03/10)

Jihad Jane and the politics of fear
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked
Author: Sean Collins
The common assumption is that the American people are afraid, worried about the next explosion, and therefore in need of heavy state protection. And since, therefore, all it takes to traumatise the masses is an isolated bomb, it is taken as a given that any party in office at the time of an attack would be severely damaged in political terms. In this, both parties have agreed to allow the terrorists to define success, and have collaborated in reorganising US life around tiny groups. (03/17/10)

This rape debate is demeaning to women
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: Spiked
Author: Nathalie Rothschild
A new report on rape and the criminal justice system in England and Wales has concluded that the debate around rape has been too much focused on conviction rates. Yet while Baroness Stern, author of the report, recommends that from now on support and care for victims be given as high a priority as the prosecution and conviction of perpetrators, her report is unlikely to change the terms of the debate. The Stern report does not challenge the way in which women today are encouraged to see themselves as victims and how they are regarded as less accountable for their actions than men. And in suggesting that women reporting rape should be believed from the outset, Stern is insisting that, when it comes to alleged crimes of rape, the accused is guilty until proven innocent. (03/17/10)

Warmers strike back
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: WorldNetDaily
Author: Walter Williams
Professor Thomas Sowell's most recent book, "Intellectuals and Society," has a quote from Eric Hoffer: "One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation." Environmentalist professor Ehrlich, who's giving advice to the warmers, is an excellent example of Hoffer's observation. (03/17/10)