North Carolina Attorney General Handing Out “Rights” Like They Were Candy Through A Schoolyard Fence
It was supposed to be all rainbows and unicorns from here on out, but no.
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Because (and you should really be sitting down for this) there are more than 9 sex offenders on MySpace. No rilly:
RALEIGH, N.C. - MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking Web site — more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago, North Carolina officials said Tuesday.
And how is North Carolina’s Attorney General going to stop sex offenders from creating MySpace accounts?
Cooper is pushing for a state law that would require children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles, and require the Web sites to verify the parents’ identity and age.
Sweet Jesus on a Spectral Tiger!1 This is worse than I thought. North Carolina is not only filled with sex offenders, but it’s filled with sex offenders who are also children.
And who can question Cooper’s sincerity?
“All we’re doing is giving parents the right to make a choice whether their children can go online,” Cooper told a state House committee considering the bill on parental involvement and verification. He said the measure would lead to “fewer children at risk, because there will be fewer children on those Web sites.”
Let me see if I understand this correctly. The law, requiring “children to receive parental permission before creating social networking profiles” is actually giving parents “the right to make a choice.” I guess it’s sort of like the Patriot Act, which gives you the right to be ass-raped in Guantanamo if you don’t support the troops. And we are, after all, a nation of rights.
Details are sketchy on just how exactly MySpace is identifying sexual predators, but my sources indicate that most of these sick bastards are easy to spot by the lack of Chris Hansen in their Top 8. They really hate Chris Hansen.
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1 Duuude, how cool would that be?
July 26th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Shit, now I can’t stop picturing Jesus riding on a spectral tiger.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
See? I know, it’s just too cool for words!
July 26th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
This is why the sex offender list is among the biggest mockeries of our justice system we’ve yet conceived of.
If you want to put actual real sex offenders, like rapists and child molesters, away for life, go ahead. Pass that law, I’ll vote for it. But LOTS of people end up on the sex offender list for things like peeing in public when drunk or 19 year olds having sex with their 17 year old girlfriend.
And then you’re on the list for life. There’s no “do your time, pay your debt, and back on your feet”. Rest of your life, have fun getting jobs, living near a school, buying a house in a new neighborhood, or apparently using freaking MySpace. It’s cruel and unusual punishment, and it gets applied to people who aren’t actually “sex offenders”. If we want to punish people for life for stuff like this, then we should stop pretending we aren’t.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:11 am
I actually received my first sex-offender notification a couple days ago when someone who commited a crime back in 98′ moved in 2 houses down. It was for “Criminal Restraint” and didnt go into much detail as to the actual crime this guy did.
On one hand as a parent of a 2 year old, I immediately thought of my son. On the other hand, it was exactly like you said Josh. The guy is pretty young and it had to have happened in his teens. I kind of felt bad for the guy. We live right down the street from a school, literally three houses and I know there are some people who are going crazy about this guy.
Its really a tough line to walk. I think it would be important to get notices about certain things and certain crimes, but the sex offender list should be revised. If a guy did something in his teens, and he is 30 now, some leniency should be given taking into account the severity of his crime. Albeit I don’t know a ton about the registry, but I think Id rather be getting notices about my neighbors buying guns.
-brackish
July 28th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
If that law passes, kids will have to get their parent’s permission to create an account? Hmm… My first instinct would be to lie, but I guess that’s out of the question since they’d have an age verification along with it.
I guess it sounds pretty solid. It’s nice to see that the time, effort, and tax money that went into this is all starting to pay off.
July 29th, 2007 at 5:10 am
Okay, Jesus on aforementioned tiger would be pretty gosh-darned cool. Anyway, as for the law, well…yeah. The sad thing is, he genuinely believes this is the right thing to do, and isn’t aware of the inconsistencies or ramifications.
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As for the treatment of child sex offenders…if the gov’ment is going to tell everyone in the area when one moves in, they may as announce publicly ‘Well, we don’t actually believe in rehabilitation. Jail isn’t a system to make people better, it’s just the standard political response to crime to make the public think we’re doing something. Never mind that it is proven to increase the re-offender rate.”
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Shit like this is why I’m glad I live in Australia, where we only have problems with uncomfortable stereotypes and droughts. Bleh.