Why Don't We Just Start Branding People?

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?

Obama's Justice Department Quick to Launch Probe on Oil Spill, Slow to Launch Probe on Sestak Job Offer

Is it just me, or does it seem like the Obama administration is moving very fast to launch a Justice Department investigation of the gulf oil spill, but dragging its feet regarding Joe Sestak's claim that the White House offered him a job to drop out of the Senate race against Arlen Specter?

Hmm. The oil spill's been going less than 40 days and it gets an investigation. Joe Sestake first claimed the White House offered him a job in February, yet there's no investigation of what would clearly be a violation of federal law.

Nah, no conflict there, right?

Will the Justice Department Be Prosecuting This One?

Sestak confirms WH job offer to get out of Senate race

If only it were Halliburton offering the job...

The Red Queen Trial of Scooter Libby

Daniel Henninger has an excellent column on the Scooter Libby trial.

The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is the closest version of a Red Queen trial this country has had in a long time. One says that knowing it might start a stampede from past defendants laying claim to the most upside-down prosecution.

Lewis G. Carroll's account of the Knave' s trial before the Red Queen and White Rabbit is famous for the Queen's dictum, "Sentence first, verdict afterward." But read the full transcript of the mock trial and one will see that the real subject is not justice, but the humiliation of the defendant.

The trial of Scooter Libby in Washington, the national capital of illogic, has been exemplary. In December 2003, the prosecutor purports a crime has been committed by revealing a "covert" CIA agent's identity to the press--despite knowing then what the outside world learned nearly three years later--that the revealer of the agent was a State Department official, Richard Armitage. With the "whodunnit" solved on day one, the prosecution follows the Red Queen's script by taking the nation on a useless, joyless ride through the opaque looking-glass of Washington journalism.

The testimony of three of the world's most sophisticated journalists--Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper and Tim Russert--was the trial's closest thing to the White Rabbit reading nonsense verse to the jury: "For this must ever be a secret, kept from all the rest, between yourself and me."

Yes, indeed. Libby is guilty of one thing only: he worked for this administration. That is enough in the moonbatosphere to convict him, even though there was no crime committed.

As Henninger points out, this is what our justice system has been reduced to: we no longer prosecute crimes, we pile innuendo upon innuendo, light the kindling, then torch the reputations of those in the middle. It's a most disgusting way for a legal system to behave.

Sometimes You Run Across the Strangest Things

I was reading this column by Cathy Young, when someone in the comments pointed a link to this forum from Duke University.

The forum is bizarre. Apparently, Farces insulted several of the women in the forum by saying that the evidence seemed to indicate the Duke lacrosse players weren't guilty, and, as such, shouldn't be convicted. At least two of the other commenters made statements that because white males have privilege, it is ok if some of them are falsely convicted of sexual crimes.

This shocking display of ignorance about the way our justice system is designed to work was only half the show in this thread, however. The other show was about the moderator's attempt to limit male voices in the discussion and pacify rabid feminists.

Farces, IMO, tried to be respectful whenever he spoke, but one or two of the female commenters were determined to not simply disagree with him, but castigate him for the sin of being male. Here was my favorite part:

there is an underlying dishonesty to the general tenor of farces postings---he makes certain that they are hard to pinpoint but writer had the idea.
this is why my furr goes up and perhaps why others get annoyed.
we know that the university offered this woman alot of money. one would assume that they had a good reason to believe that their guys weren't behaving well.

we know that globally, men are raping women in huge numbers all the time and going unpunished and usually even unreported.

most women on this site have friends who've been raped or they themselves have been assaulted.

we know that women who are poor, in the sex trade, in a minority group, etc, etc, are in a position of even less power than most women.

it has ever been a male ploy to scream for justice if they think they can weasel out of a conviction---it's done all the time---it has always been difficult to convict a man when it's his word against hers[at least we don't have all male judges and juries anymore] and they well know this.

the history of assault on women by men, the bias in the entire system against women and the almost knee jerk reaction of many men to assume false accusation[in spite of it's rarity] makes the discussion of 'innocent[the guys not the woman, note]until proven guilty seem false and contrived and dishonourable on this thread.

In other words, by virtue of being male and white, the Duke lacrosse players are guilty, regardless of whether they did anything or not. It is amazing how ideology can overrule any normal sense of justice for people.