[extropy-chat] Your children are safe with us...

[kevinfreels.com]

Yes. This is how obsessed the US has become with controlling thought and
playing on fears. Although it's not exactly the same, it reminds me of laws
that prevent people from owning the materials necessary to manufacture meth.
Try it out at Walmart. Go buy the max product with pseudoephedrine they will
allow you to buy (which is less than even the state laws allow), and put it
in your cart with starter fluid, and a couple other items used to make meth.
Then drive home and see if you don;t get pulled over and searched. Every
couple months I hear about such a story but of course the only ones reported
in the news are the one's where they actually bust someone. From what I can
tell, the only charge is "transmitting pornographic material to a minor".
I'm not sure how bad a charge that is. I would think it's similar to
"contributing to the delinquency of a minor" when you give a kid alcohol.
But what will happen next is his computer will be searched and his drive
scanned by experts in restoring lost data. If they find illegal materials,
they will arrest him for posessing them. If not, the story will quietly go
away.


> "Robert Bradbury" <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > MIAMI, April 4 (AP) ? The deputy press secretary for the Department
> > of Homeland Security was arrested on Tuesday and accused of using the
> > Internet to seduce someone he thought was a teenage girl, the
> > authorities said.
>
> This has got me confused.
>
> It seems to be saying that if someone does something which is NOT
> illegal, in the belief that it IS illegal, they can be prosecuted??
>
> This guy tried to seduce someone (over the age of consent) over the
> internet. Which isn't illegal, last i heard. He THOUGHT the 'someone'
> was underage, so despite the fact that they weren't, he was doing wrong?
> So does that mean that if someone shot a tree in the mistaken belief
> that it was a person, they could be prosecuted for murder? Or would it
> be attempted murder? So what was this guy arrested for, 'attempted
> paedophilia'?
>
> When did your beliefs become a target for the law, rather than your
actions?
>
> If anything, i'd have thought it was the 'someone' pretending to be
> underage that was doing something wrong.
>
> I'm not trying to condone paedophilia or anything, i'm just wondering
> how anyone can commit a crime by failing to commit that very crime?
>
> Are we in a society where you can be prosecuted for what you think?
> (yeah, i know about Austria's law against 'holocaust-denial', but i
> think they can be excused that specific insanity, at least for a while).
>
> (btw, the report just said 'teenage girl', not underage girl, which also
> struck me as strange. Is the age of consent in the US absurdly high, or
> something, so that all teenagers are under it? - surely not!)
>
> ben
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