Monday, January 26, 2009
Nominate 2009 Worst News Mutt
Kevin Fischer of Franklin NOW blogs was my personal pick for worst newcaster of 2008, and won hands down with over half the vote. Judging by my recent interactions with this clown, he's well in line for a repeat performance. However, there will be other news hounds willing to strip Fischer of his well-deserved title. After all, sex offender news equal rating, especially those designed to have the little old ladies and helicopter moms trembling in fear and loathing. Who will win the 2009 edition? Or will Kevin Fischer keep his title THIS year?
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7 comments:
Kevin Fischer wants to repeat his 2008 Shiitake Award winning performance:
http://blogs.franklinnow.com/this_just_in/archive/2008/12/28/states-can-t-won-t-comply-with-federal-anti-sex-offender-law.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage
Not a single state thus far has met a July 2009 deadline to comply with the federally mandated Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.
Granted, no funding is included, and granted, states are battling all kinds of fiscal problems.
But it’s amazing what issues suddenly transform politicians into fiscal conservatives.
As I stated previously, sex offender sympathizers writing from other states, in order for your comments to be posted here, you must give their your names and your communities of residence.
Do that, and you can spout off all the pro-pervert nonsense you want.
If you don't, forget it. Your comment will be dust in the wind.
Kevin, you're definitely well on your way to a second Shiitake award!
http://www.760kfmb.com/Global/story.asp?S=9795272
Rick Roberts, talkshow host, and another promoter of vigilante violence. Its one thing to protest a sex offender's release, its another thing to post every personal info up you find and paint a virtual bullseye on the guy
My absolute vote goes to one of the most idiotic "news" hosts ever - Jane Velez Mitchell on CNN.
She spits out all kinds of lies about sex offenders and neglects to mention that many teenagers are now entering the registry for "sexting" on their cellphones, among all the other non-violent offenders overpopulating it.
She also makes the ludicrous assumption that Adam Walsh was murdered by an RSO, say what? Total lie, Adam was NOT murdered by an RSO, nor was their any evidence the boy was molested in the tragedy. Get your facts straight Jane!
Jane just uses sex offender hype to increase her ratings, picking up where ol' Glenn left off. What an assbrain!
She deserves the Worst News Mutt Award this year.
I listened in on Jane talking about Sandra Cantu case and she said, "So when will a bill be named after this girl and what will it do?"
Robin Sax-of-shit!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-sax/did-the-economist-do-sex_b_258282.html
Long story hort, she suggests doing away with the US constitution to make it easier to persecute... oops, "prosecute" the accused. Meaning if someone's trying to NIFONG YOU, then under her suggestions you have NO recourse!
Wendy Murphy rears her ugly head with more bullshit. Take your pick of everything wrong with her editorial. To her credit, at least she admits the registry is "flawed," if for all the wrong resons:
http://www.patriotledger.com/opinions/x1080448945/WENDY-MURPHY-Sex-offender-laws-flawed-but-critical
WENDY MURPHY: Sex offender laws flawed but critical
The Patriot Ledger
Posted Aug 29, 2009 @ 05:00 AM
QUINCY —
When the title of an article about sex crimes laws includes the phrase “unjust and ineffective,” you know the text that follows will be a puff piece about how sex offenders are treated unfairly and sex offender registries are barbaric. A recent article by writer Georgia Harlem in the prestigious Economist did not disappoint.
It begins with a typical extreme example of a 17-year-old prosecuted for committing a sex offense against an underage student in the middle of a classroom while others were watching a film. Nearly a quarter of the article is spent on the details of this one case – while zero ink is dedicated to explaining that the prosecution of teens who engage in consensual (if underage) sex is exceedingly rare.
Indeed, the only types of crimes described in detail in the piece are those involving “technically” criminal conduct – such as sex between a teenage boy and his “high school sweetheart.” The article nowhere describes in similar detail the more typical, brutal sex crime, nor is there a single word about the way sexual violence negatively affects most victims for the rest of their lives.
The United States Supreme Court says rape causes the most severe harm to the self, short of murder, but the Economist chose to focus on teen sex to argue that American laws against sexual violence are “unjust”.
No surprise then that the author misses the most important point of all – that the American legal system has historically perpetuated sexual violence by disproportionately failing to redress violence against women and children.
Part 2 of Wendy's rant:
A study in the 1990s submitted to Congress by then-Sen. Joseph Biden proved that less than 2 percent of rapists spend even one day behind bars and that rapists, on average, receive less punishment than people who commit property crimes. Likewise, a more recent study by Professor Ross Cheit at Brown University proved that sex crimes against children rarely end with the offender being incarcerated.
Embarrassingly, Harlem also claims that recidivism rates for sex offenders are low, citing as definitive proof a widely misused study of 10,000 sex offenders that found only “5 percent were re-arrested for a sex crime within three years.”
Obviously the study tells us nothing about recidivism because it measures only “re-arrest” rates. Where 80-90 percent of sex offenses are never reported – much less lead to arrest – measuring re-arrests to determine recidivism is like measuring nationwide rainfall by looking only at the data from Las Vegas.
Even more arrogantly, Harlem dismisses people who claim that 75-90 percent of sex offenders re-offend, claiming, “it is not clear where they find such numbers.” Too bad Harlem couldn’t locate the wealth of research on recidivism laid out in Dr. Anna Salter’s prize-winning work in which she cites studies finding that the average sex offender assaults more than 100 different victims during a lifetime.
This is why sex offender registries are good, if imperfect, social policy. That some people misuse them is no more an excuse to ban all registries than is the fact that some people are welfare cheats an excuse to cancel welfare altogether.
Harlem claims that registries make it tough for a convicted rapist to get a job. But isn’t the real problem the fact that he committed a horrific act of violence?
Registries don’t create new data – they simply make existing public information easier to access. If the government didn’t create a registry, the public could do so on its own – which would be even more problematic for offenders in terms of maintaining correct data, etc.
Harlem is right about a couple of things. Registries should contain more information so that a teen sex case isn’t misunderstood as a more serious crime. And vigilantism is wrong. But blaming vigilantism on registries is silly.
Vigilantes have emerged in sex-crime matters in response to evidence that the American legal system has failed women and children. When the law doesn’t work as it should, people take matters into their own hands – as blacks did in the aftermath of Rodney King – and at other points in our nation’s history when the legal system failed to redress racist violence.
Criticism of sex offender laws is fine, but it should be based on truthful information. The Economist usually understands the importance of being straight with its readers. Not this time.
Wendy Murphy is a leading victims rights advocate and nationally recognized television legal analyst. She is an adjunct professor at New England Law in Boston. She can be reached at wmurphy@nesl.edu. Read more of her columns at The Daily Beast.
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