A new Texas law proposal would require people convicted of animal cruelty register with the state like sex offenders must.
"A predator is a predator, if it's against a human or it's against an animal," said Alexander, who in 2007 put muscle behind toughening Texas' animal-cruelty law.
I'm not advocating animal cruelty or sexual deviancy, but where does this sort of thing end? We've already had people placed on sex offender lists for hugging students and talking to children in public places, not to mention people placed on sex offender registries because of data processing errors. And being convicted of a sexual offense could be as simple as urinating in public. Will the same thing follow with animal cruelty offenders?
Americans are shocked at the barbarity of certain Middle Eastern regimes when it comes to crime. But once you start registering people for peeing in public, barring them from certain professions and living in certain places, how far-fetched does physical punishment sound?
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