Next Advance: Child Molester Rights?

So here are the facts for today's problem:

An 18-year old dates a 14-year girl.  The child's parents confront the adult about the relationship with the minor, but the adult – who can not only drive lethal motor vehicles and serve in the armed forces, but also vote and sit on a jury competent to decide whether people should be put to death – ignores the parents.  One day, the minor's mother enters her little girl's bedroom only to find her missing.  She panics: where could she be? Who has her?

Of course, it's her adult lover who has her.

Do you have any doubt what happens to the person who is having sex with the child?

Normal Consequences Are Harsh:
Not if you've been awake any time in the last century. If you have, you've noticed that 13-year-old and 14-year-old children's "consent" is of no consequence at all as a defense against sexual offenses that require legal consent to make non-offensive.  You recall that when adults have sex with teens in school, they end up in the news.  While it sometimes involves an unwilling child, but as often it involves repeated contact with a willing victim.  Even victims aged 17 years create fact situations supporting felony prosecutions, sex offender registrations, and so forth.  Even if the two later marry.  We are totally unsurprised at the prosecutions:  we don't expect adults to be using our children for sexual gratification

This isn't a new policy, and it's directed against male adults and female adults – both of which make the news and both of which appear in the links above. It seems a fairly gender-indiscriminate law, and it seems to be applied to either gender when sex-crime prosecutors discover a case.

So, what should we do with the facts of today's little lesson?

Weird Discrimination Claims
If you're Change.org, you apparently host a petition in support of the defendant, claiming that felony prosecutions of the type that are absolutely routine in the criminal justice system are somehow a private beef against the perpetrator because of the perpetrator's gender or gender-preferences.

Say what?

Oh, and "the online global hacker collective" Anonymous will demand law enforcement officials' resignations.

Prosecutors offered the offender an opportunity to plead to felony less severe than the sexual assault charges ordinarily supported by repeated sex with a child of 14.  The defendant rejected the offer of a 2-year in-home "incarceration" that left open a possibility of avoiding sex-offender registration. Where I come from, hetero perpetrators would kill for a plea deal like that.  This case is supposed to somehow represent anti-gay discrimination?

CNN's reporter says, "This may have been a consensual relationship in high school ..."
But that description completely misses the fundamental issue underpinning the criminal case: a 14-year-old cannot legally consent to sex with an 18-year-old.  And after the parental communication with the defendant that the conduct must stop, it's pretty clear that the defendant acted with complete knowledge that the child's guardians believed the adult was behaving improperly toward their daughter.  (And guess what? There's a statute making the conduct a felony – so the parents were on to something.)  When the minor disappeared, what was her mother supposed to do, if not seek aid from law enforcement?

Now, imagine the opposite occurred. "No, ma'am, we won't prosecute the adult's seduction of your minor daughter, because we think lesbian relationships are not as serious as heterosexual relationships, or we think pairs of girls are cute and that only sex involving males can be a punishable offense. If your minor daughter goes missing, but we think she's smooching a girl, we won't try to return her, either."  We'd be howling, no?

Some reporters, learning the facts, are backing off of initial support for the perpetrator.  Apparently, the perpetrator's family lied about things that mattered – like whether the perpetrator was a minor or not at the time of the charged conduct.

If you want an example of idiots discriminating against women for being women, look at school dress code enforcement (even regarding hair; video here, gives a better view of the hair).  Now, that's discrimination.

American Drones Kill 4 Americans On Purpose

The Attorney General says that four Americans were killed by drones, of which one was specifically targeted.

The good news? They're not in the U.S. (so you're still safe?) and they were at least allegedly working with the enemy (though they were never formally accused and never tried and will never be allowed to mount a defense to anything they might possibly have been accused of doing).

We'll keep following this.

Property Rights in China

A few years ago, China amended its constitution to provide an express right to private property. Presumably, this was intended to reassure foreigners that their investments would be safe from seizure by government officials.

But what does it mean for individual Chinese? Apparently, very little. When police showed up at the home of Shen Jianzhong after it was beset by a mob of 50 thugs bent on running him off the property to facilitate a developer's plans, the policy told him to sign their contract.

The Jaded Consumer has covered China's official oppression over supposedly-protected property before.

Rebels Plea For Aid: Send Forks?

A Syrian rebel appears on a video eating the heart and liver of a felled government soldier.  Questioned by outraged observers of the video, the rebel – whose identity is not masked – defended his snack as revenge for atrocities committed by Assad's vicious regime.  This raises a whole new question regarding the form that should be taken by international aid requested against the oppressive government regime.

The religious overtones of Middle Eastern conflict can't be escaped, even in a civil war as obviously about freedom from government oppression as the conflict in Syria has been. On the video, off-camera supporters are heard shouting "Allahu Akbar!"  I didn't think that meal was Kosher in Islam. Anybody have authority to offer on the matter?

Japanese Politician: Sex Slavery "Necessary" to War Effort

He may not actually represent the official position of the Japanese diplomatic corps, but the sitting Mayor of Osaka (Japan's third-largest city after Tokyo and Yokohama) says sex-slaves captured and systematically raped across the Pacific theater during the Second World War were a "necessary" result of the needs of Japanese soldiers who risked their lives for their country.

During the War, hundreds of thousand females were enslaved as "comfort women", a Japanese euphemism referring to military-governed sex slaves.  Japan's official support and funding for the maintenance of "comfort women" battalions was in direct opposition to the nation's purported position on slavery taken when it ratified the International Labor Organization Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labor in 1932. Unlike consumer protection statutes in Texas, which have teeth because they provide individuals with a civil remedy for damages upon proven violation, the Convention Concerning Forced Labor asked all signatories to enact criminal statutes – so that the government would protect rights enshrined in the Convention. Since Japan enacted no criminal statutes to punish violations of the Convention, the nation's officials were free not only to violate it with impunity, but to profit in human trafficking designed to fill the ranks of the "comfort women" battalions.

National leaders continue to take absurd positions on the records of their own countries.  The gulf between law and justice is vast.

Butcher Announces Next Dresden Files Title

At Jim Butcher's web site, the title of his next book in the Dresden Files.  There's a reason this series' main character is in the sidebar on the right, and if you look at some of the reviews I've written here about buy the first of his books you'll get an idea why.

The next title is Skin Game.  At the time of this posting, there's no content there other than the title announcement. When Ghost Story ended, we knew what was happening next and it was easy to interpret the next-announced title Cold Days.  (The first time I read the title announcement on that one, I was sure it was Cold Day, which I liked even better. I wonder whether I was mistaken, or why it changed. Alas.) But the end of Cold Days left enough to happen next that it wasn't evident where it'd pick up, making the interpretation of the title more of an adventure.

But I'm keeping my theories to myself.  I wouldn't want to spoil anything for an unsuspecting reader. But you can always email to share theories about Dresden :-)

I especially won't spoil things in previous books, like what Butcher must be teasing regarding the name of the oldest queens of Summer and Winter. Muhuhahaha! And so we wait for the publication of the next Dresden book – let the suffering begin!

Siri Can't Find Asia Café

In the Heights area of Houston is a restaurant with the not-very-innovative name "Asia Café".  Ask for it by name, and Siri says"I can't find things in Asia. Can you be more specific?"

If you get more specific by explaining that you are looking for a restaurant called Asia Café, it tells you about a Jade something-or-another, which is an Asian restaurant.

Ask Siri how to get to the intersection of I-10 and Bingle, , and she says, "Got it." But Siri doesn't get it. And as Steve Jobs once said of Microsoft's lack of taste ... I mean that in a really big way: