If you thought social conservatives were out of power....

... check the offices of your local prosecutors, where a new cottage industry seems to be ginning up non-existent sex crimes.

From Classically Liberal:

This means that sex offender laws are one through which third-rate politicians can make a name for themselves. Consider the case of Greg Soucia. Greg is clearly a bad boy. The 21-year-old was a thief. But his theft also made him a “sex offender” once the local prosecutor got hold of him....

Mr. Soucia was a thief: more precisely he stole a credit card. And, as a result, he was prosecuted “under the ‘Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act’.” How’s that!!

What gave the low-life prosecutor, aptly named James Conboy, the excuse was that the young man used the stolen credit to hire some strippers. In the logical world of Mr. Conboy: “If you commit a burglary and your goal is because of your own sexual gratification, it’s a sexually motivated felony.”

I sincerely doubt that Soucia broke into a house to rob it just to get his jollies. I doubt that the reason he robbed the house was so he could hire a stripper. And, even if he wanted to hire a stripper, to call this sort of theft a “sex offense” is absolutely ridiculous. Either Mr. Conboy is incredibly moronic or incredibly power-hungry. Either way he is a threat to the decent people in his county.

Conboy admitted that by pretending that common theft was now a sex crime he could get a longer sentence for the offense. In addition the young thief will have to register as a dangerous sex offender. And how will the offender’s registry, or what vigilantes call “the hit list”, describe Mr. Soucia? When he is released from prison his picture, along with his home address, will be published on a sex offender’s web site. He will be listed as having been convicted of a “sexually motivated felony”. That sounds really bad. No doubt the morons who troll the lists will see this as proof that Soucia was out raping children at the local church nursery. Instead, he broke in a house and stole a credit card. And when he got the card he used it to hire a couple of strippers....

Consider the ramifications of this theory. If you are the mother of a randy teenage boy beware. If Junior slips a few bucks out of your wallet, when you aren’t looking, and spends the money to buy a Playboy or some condoms he apparently is now a sex offender. If he borrows, without permission, the car so he can have a back seat romp with his date, he is now a sex offender -- even if both of them are legally considered adults in sexual matters. The kid who shoplifts a dirty magazine from the corner store can be labelled a “sex offender” instead of a shoplifter.

This is where an increasingly paternalistic legal code gets us....

But Libertarians are just paranoid freaks, right?

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point: Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo: Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1. Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...

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