FMJRA 2.0: The Labor Day Weekend Show

So-called “sexting” is such a disastrously bad idea that I shouldn’t even have to explain why it’s a bad idea. Here is the thing: The “sexting” participant provides his or her partner with evidence — a permanent digital record of text messages and images — that the partner can then use as he or she pleases. Any young woman who sends nude selfies to a guy can just presume that he will immediately show the photos to all his friends. They always do. That’s why guys ask for nude photos from girls, in order to display them to their buddies as trophies. Any guy who asks for a nude photo is a creep, and any girl who sends a nude photo is a fool. The fact that we now have laws against so-called “revenge porn” (i.e., the unauthorized distribution of nude photos and/or videos, typically as revenge against an ex-girlfriend) does not change the reality that only a fool would ever send a nude photo of herself to a guy, and it is not “victim-blaming” to say so, no matter what any feminist tries to tell you.

“But Stacy, all the kids are doing it!”

No, they are not, and that kind of peer-pressure excuse is part of the problem. Responsible adults do not endorse foolish behavior simply because it is common behavior, and “sexting” is foolish behavior. Even if you did want to engage in reckless promiscuity, it would be foolish to create a permanent digital record of such behavior. Trust me when I say that my kids have been sternly warned to avoid doing this, and to avoid associating with anyone who does it, because nothing good can ever result from it. (See also, “Hit-It-and-Quit-It on Tinder.”) Unfortunately, other parents have not perceived this danger and have not warned their children, thus leading young people into predictably disastrous results:

Later this month, a North Carolina high school student will appear in a state court and face five child pornography-related charges for engaging in consensual sexting with his girlfriend.
What’s strange is that of the five charges he faces, four of them are for taking and possessing nude photos of himself on his own phone — the final charge is for possessing one nude photo his girlfriend took for him. There is no evidence of coercion or further distribution of the images anywhere beyond the two teenagers’ phones.
Similarly, the young woman was originally charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor — but was listed on her warrant for arrest as both perpetrator and victim. The case illustrates a bizarre legal quandry that has resulted in state law being far behind technology and unable to distinguish between predatory child pornography and innocent (if ill-advised) behavior of teenagers.
On July 21, 2015, the young woman took a plea deal whereby the felony charges were dropped, but she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, which will be expunged after she completes a year of probation. Over the next 11 months, she is not allowed to possess a cell phone, among other restrictions.

Professor Glenn Reynolds comments: “They’re too young to consent to naked pictures, but not too young to have their lives ruined for doing so.” Such is the libertarian reaction, but this is one of those instances (like the Kaitlyn Hunt case) where my social conservative impulse overrides every other concern. At first glance, the prosecution of teenagers for such behavior may seem unnecessarily draconian, yet we have to consider the alternative. What would be the consequences of a libertarian laissez-faire attitude toward minors producing what is, as a matter of law, illegal child pornography?

The laws against child pornography proscribe it in every manner — production, distribution, possession — and therefore, under existing law, the minor who takes nude selfies must be regarded as having committed a crime (production). Another crime (distribution) is committed when the minor transmits the nude selfies to anyone else, and the recipient of such a photo commits a crime (possession) the minute he or she views or downloads the illegal image.

In an age where digital photographic technology is ubiquitous, should minors themselves be exempt from prosecution under these laws? If you answer “yes” to that question, then you are saying that illegal images of your young son or daughter could be circulating online — every kid in school could see this stuff — and no crime has been committed unless an adult gains access to these images. No. We don’t want that.

A pornographic image of anyone under 18 is forever illegal. We may call this the “Traci Lords Rule,” in honor of a once-famous porn performer who lied about her age and started doing nude modeling when she was only 15, appearing in her first porn video at 16:

After being featured in the September 1984 issue of Penthouse magazine, Lords appeared in dozens of illegal videos between 1984 and 1986, and became one of the most sought-after pornstars of the era. In May 1986, when authorities discovered she had been underage while making all but one of her pornographic films, distributors were ordered to remove all her material to avoid the risk of prosecution for trafficking in child pornography. The withdrawal of her films cost millions of dollars and her case became the biggest scandal to affect the adult film industry.

No one at Penthouse knew Traci Lords was a minor, a student at Redondo Beach High School, when that pictorial launched her to porn stardom. Yet anyone today could conceivably be prosecuted for possession of child pornography if they have a copy of that 1984 magazine or an old VHS tape of any of the films Traci Lords made as a minor. It is contraband, like heroin, and no one can legally possess contraband. We return, then, to the case in North Carolina, where 16-year-olds are prosecuted as adults for having exchanged illegal images while “sexting.” Certainly, we may agree that these teenagers are “too young to have their lives ruined,” as Professor Reynolds says, but what is the alternative? What would be the consequences if law enforcement took a laissez-faire stance toward such behavior?

Any responsible adult must shudder to think of the conditions that might prevail if this behavior became normalized among high-school kids, because we know it would not stop there. If you give 16-year-olds a get-out-of-jail-free card for this stuff, how will you draw the line when the 15- and 14-year-olds do it? Next thing you know, the middle-school kids will be sending each other pornographic selfies, and there will be no feasible way to draw the line at all.

“But Stacy, all the kids are doing it!”

No, they are not — but even if it were that common, the law is still the law, crime is still crime, and evidence is still evidence.

Adults who grew up before this kind of digital technology existed may be tempted to think of stuff they did as teenagers that was illegal (or simply embarrassing in hindsight) and thus, in their mind, deserving of leniency. Be that as it may, there is no evidence of how much dope you smoked in 1976 or what you did with your girlfriend in 1986. Until quite recently, people didn’t have access to the kind of technology to produce digital evidence of everything they did, yet now such technology is everywhere, including your kid’s cellphone or laptop or tablet. Consider how these two North Carolina teenagers came to the attention of law enforcement:

The Fayetteville girl, Brianna Denson, was sexting with her boyfriend, Cormega Zyon Copening, the Sheriff’s Office said. The agency hit Copening with five sexual exploitation of a minor charges — four for making and possessing two sexually explicit pictures of himself and the last for possessing a copy of the picture that Denson made for him. . . .
The charges have already forced [Copening] off the football team at Jack Britt High School. He had been the quarterback. . . .
The Sheriff’s Office investigates sexting incidents several times a month, [Cumberland County Sheriff Ronnie] Mitchell estimated. “More frequently than we would like,” he said.
The investigations usually are into instances in which photos are shared among a group instead of just within a couple, he said. To his knowledge, Denson’s and Copening’s pictures weren’t shared with anyone else. He said they were discovered during an investigation of other explicit photos that were being shared among teens without the consent of the person or persons pictured.

It would appear that Copening and his high-school buddies were sharing around whatever nude photos of girls they had obtained and, when this activity came to the attention of authorities, the investigation led police to search Copening’s phone, a search that led to the discovery of Denson’s photos — illegal images, which any adult would be imprisoned for possessing — as well as “sexually explicit pictures of himself,” which are likewise illegal. District Attorney Billy West told the Fayetteville Observer that “in cases where the defendants and victims were willing participants and close in age, his office typically lets them plead guilty to a misdemeanor with a deferred prosecution.” Denson took the plea, and thus avoided “the life-ruining requirement that she register as a sex offender,” whereas it seems Copening is willing to risk a jury trial.

TAKE THE PLEA DEAL, BOY!

It’s for your own good. Yeah, I know, it seems unfair. “Everybody’s doing it” and “boys will be boys,” but this does not negate the evidence — the unmistakable digital proof — right there on your cell phone, evidence you were too foolish to think of as evidence, and you are the one responsible for that foolishness.

Stupid is as stupid does. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

Category: Crime

Our Supreme Dark Lord’s New Book,
And Other Stories

Posted on | September 5, 2015 | 25 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

By now, everyone who’s been paying attention to GamerGate (happy first anniversary!) or the Sad Puppies movement with regard to the Hugos should be familiar with, or at least recognize the name of, Vox Day, Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil League of Evil. I doubt that anyone since George W. Bush has caused so many on the Left to completely lose their shit, and W was nowhere near as successful at getting his hapless enemies to do EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED. So it was with great interest that I ordered his new book, SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, a book that is currently #1 in Politics on Amazon, further irritating the kind of people who need irritating. The book is an excellent tract on what kind of people SJWs are, what they do, and how to fight back – effectively. Vox chronicles the recent public shaming of people like Brendan Eich and Tim Hunt as examples how not to do it. He also chronicles in a brief but thorough manner the ongoing successful grind of GamerGate and the two-front war on the Hugos as illustrations of how to do it on a macro scale, and also includes helpful tips on how to take on and defeat SJWs in the workplace or in other organizations where one encounters these human cockroaches. Adding to the value of the book are not just a foreword but an afterword by Gandalf the Gay himself, Breitbart reporter Milo Yiannopoulos, who is almost always entertaining. Highly recommended; I don’t often say this, but this is a book you absolutely ought to read, especially in these wretched times when we’re beset by these deranged killjoys on every side.

Our favorite little arsonist applies the Broken Window Theory.

I also picked up an older work of his, The Return of the Great Depression, which while a bit dated -it was published in October 2009- gives an interesting perspective into where we’re going, why we’re in this handbasket, and how we got there to start with. Vox is a fan of the Austrian School of economics, so if you also subscribe to that view, there’s a lot in here you’ll find familiar. If, on the other hand, you’re more of a monetarist or (God forbid) a Keynesian, you’re in for some rude shocks. Clearly written, well-sourced, and measured in its judgments, this book is one hell of a bargain at $1.99, and I also recommend it.

As I mentioned in my previous book post, I’ve been renewing acquaintance with some old favorites that I haven’t seen in, oh, almost three years now; some of them, it’s been longer, since I never did unpack all my books when I was living in Alexandria. Anyhow, this week I reread Robert Frezza’s A Small Colonial War and Fire in a Faraway Place, the first two novels of his Suid-Afrika trilogy. These are the tale of a colonial world under an interstellar Japanese empire, settled by (mostly) Afrikaners and “cowboys” and dominated by a Japanese corporation, United Steel-Standard, which has let things get out of hand to the point where an Imperial task force is sent to restore order. One of the units in the task force is the 1/35 Rifle Battalion, originally from Finland and commanded by an unorthodox Russian officer, LTC Anton Vereshchagin. In the first book, Vereshchagin must find a way to defeat the Afrikaner Bund and its shadowy Order after they’ve successfully nuked most of the task force and its ships in the sky. In the second, set six years after the first, a new Imperial task force has arrived to put USS back in the saddle, and our plucky little band of Finns, Russians, “cakes” and Afrikaners are forced into rebellion. One of the reviewers made the claim that Frezza writes better than John Ringo, which I don’t think I agree with, but like Ringo, Frezza is not afraid to kill off characters when the plot requires it, even important characters. I found both books tragic, stirring, and very thought-provoking, and have a hard time believing that Del Rey has let them go out of print.

You may or may not remember the War World anthologies, set on the world of Haven in Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium universe. They were very uneven in quality, written by authors ranging from Larry Niven and S.M. Stirling to Harry Turtledove and lesser-known folks like Susan Shwartz and Judith Tarr, and are currently being reissued by Pequod Press and Baen in a more coherent series arranged in chronological order, and with new stories added. But I digress; after the original anthologies, some of the stories written by Stirling, Turtledove et al were put into a pair of fixup novels, Blood Feuds and Blood Vengeance, which melded the ancient tale of Oedipus Rex with the state of affairs on Haven three centuries after a shipload of Saurons arrived to take possession, climaxing in an apocalyptic assault by a massive army of tribesmen, Bandari, and the rebelling “cattle” of the Saurons themselves on the Citadel, center of Sauron power on Haven. Half the fun is watching various characters, Sauron and others, go through their paces and fall prey to mistakes they can’t avoid making by their very nature, while other characters are trying and failing to warn them off. The plotline involving the Sauron cyborg Sigrid is particularly amusing, in its own twisted way. Not Hugo material, but excellent brain candy, highly entertaining.

Category: Books

In The Mailbox, 09.03.15

Posted on | September 4, 2015 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Failure Theater?
Doug Powers: While Obama Was In Alaska Staring Down Glaciers…
Twitchy: Former Obama Adviser Dan Pfeiffer’s Attempt To Mock Mitt Romney Backfires
Red State: A Nation Of Laws No More (h/t Loyal Reader Brian E.)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Refugee Shelter In Germany Firebombed
American Thinker: A Brief History Of White Privilege
Conservatives4Palin: Gov. Palin – What The President Didn’t See From Alaska
Don Surber: How To Protect A Weapon From Falling Into A Muslim Terrorist’s Hands
Jammie Wearing Fools: Clown Trump Exposed As Foreign-Policy Know-Nothing By “Third-Rate Radio Announcer”
Joe For America: Obama Surrogates Spearheading “War On Cops” – What’s Their Real Agenda?
JustOneMinute: The Future Of 9-1-1
Pamela Geller: Hungarian PM Warns Of Islam’s History, The “Ottoman Experience”
Protein Wisdom: RIP Dean Jones
Shot In The Dark: Food For Thought
STUMP: Happy September! Around The Internet, Plus The 80% Funding Club!
The Gateway Pundit: Just Like The Good Old Days – Democrats Dress As KKK To Protest Donald Trump
The Jawa Report: Jawas Versus TriCk 35-14 Final!
The Lonely Conservative: Foreign Policy Victory! Iran Promises To “Set Fire” To US Interests
This Ain’t Hell: Easley HS Student Gets Ticket For Flying POW/MIA Flag
Weasel Zippers: Mr. De Blasio’s Neighborhood – Thousands Sleeping On NYC Streets, Homeless Encampments Springing Up Everywhere
Megan McArdle: Why A Woman Can’t Be More Like A Man
Mark Steyn: Ice Follies Of 2035

Lord of Janissaries

Category: Linkagery

The Privilege of the Oppressed

Posted on | September 4, 2015 | 296 Comments

A court clerk in Kentucky want to jail because she would not issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple. Keep in mind that, in 2004, an amendment to the Kentucky state constitution defining marriage as one man and one woman was approved by 75% of the voters. To this fact, our nation’s liberal elite answer: Damn the voters, damn Kentucky and damn Kim Davis for thinking that her religious beliefs should be respected. The liberal elite — in particular, Justice Anthony Kennedy and four of his Supreme Court colleagues — have decided that Christian belief must be forcibly eradicated, and that the voters of Kentucky are not fit to govern themselves. Therefore, Kim Davis is a criminal.

This is what our nation’s liberal elite demands in 2015, because the liberal elite believes in a radical egalitarian ideology in which only those who are deemed “oppressed” have any influence or protection in American society. The law must judge every conflict according to a simple question: “Who is the greater ‘victim of society’ here?” The victims always win, and therefore the only way to “win” is to present yourself as a helpless loser, in order to demand that “society” give you whatever you want as compensation for your oppressed condition. That this kind of “social justice” mentality incentivizes failure and inspires fraudulent claims of victimhood (everything is rape now) is bad enough. Yet it also serves to destroy society’s ability to protect itself against real harms, as evidenced by a recent federal court ruling:

A federal appeals court has ruled that an illegal immigrant and convicted felon can’t be deported back to Mexico because he identifies as a transgender woman, which leaves him vulnerable to torture back in his home country.
Edin Carey Avendano-Hernandez was born male in Mexico, and claims to have been raped by his brothers and suffered other torments. In 2000, he illegally entered the U.S. and took up residence in Fresno, California. Avendano-Hernandez also started taking female hormones and began living openly as a woman in 2005. In 2006, he committed two separate drunk driving offenses, the second of which injured two people and resulted in a felony conviction. After serving a year in jail, he was deported back to Mexico in 2007.
Back in Mexico, Avendano-Hernandez claims to have been subjected to more harassment from family and neighbors and to have been raped by members of the Mexican army. He illegally entered the U.S. again and, after being arrested, petitioned for sanctuary in the U.S. under the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT), arguing that deporting him would violate the CAT because he would more likely than not experience torture at the hands of Mexican authorities. . . .
Now, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals says Avendano-Hernandez must be allowed to stay in the U.S., because he “more likely than not” will be tortured if returned to Mexico.
Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, an Obama appointee, chastised immigration officials for improperly handling Avandano-Hernandez’s gender identity. . . .
The belief that Avendano-Hernandez was raped and tortured in Mexico appears to be based entirely on his own claims, which were deemed to be “credible” by his immigration judge.

Read the whole thing at The Daily Caller. You see the court has decided that this convicted criminal, who otherwise would be ineligible for residency in the United States, now must be granted residency, merely because his/her “gender identity” would make him/her a victim of Mexican society if he/she were to be deported. The United States therefore must accept every foreign transsexual who can make it across the border, because “social justice” requires it.

Christians in Kentucky have zero rights, so Kim Davis goes to jail, while a Mexican criminal pervert has a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

Category: Gays

Video Claims to Prove Pedophilia Accusation Against #GamerGate Critic UPDATE: Yiannopoulos Says Girl’s Parents Will Contact Law Enforcement

Posted on | September 4, 2015 | 32 Comments

A shocking new video released this week has brought new attention to claims of pedophilia made against a longtime critic of the #GamerGate movement. The video quotes Internet chat logs attributed to Sarah Nyberg expressing sexual interest in preteen girls, including a relative.

The 15-minute Youtube video got more than 40,000 views in the first two days after its release Tuesday. It highlights chat logs dating to 2006 in which Nyberg, who was 20 years old at the time, apparently defends pedophilia, admits collecting photos of preteen girls, and repeatedly mentions a female cousin named Dana who was 8 years old at the time.

In one of the online chats shown in the video, the person identified as Nyberg says: “I’m a submissive male to female transsexual pedophile . . . that really misses dana. . . . I’ll see her in about a month.” The chats also appear to show Nyberg saying, “I think I might want to make a pedophile activism-type site” and expressing sexual attraction to Dana: “I’ve said I’m a pedophile and that I’m attracted to her. Why is that surprising?”

Critics of #GamerGate have continued defending Nyberg, asserting on Twitter that the chat logs could be fabricated. However, journalist Milo Yiannopoulos said he is working on a news article:

I spoke to the parents [of Dana]. I wanted to let them know what was happening before they potentially got any other phone calls from interested third parties, and to share the worst of the chat logs so they knew what was out there and could prepare themselves for any questions.
I made it clear to them that we will protect their daughter’s identity by obscuring her name and precise relationship to Nyberg in any story we publish and I’ve given them the option to comment on the record. So far they have not.
The girl’s father told me that he made sure they were never left alone together at the time the chats were happening — a comment he has repeated elsewhere online. Make of that what you will.
The story is currently working its way through Breitbart’s legal process. I hope to be able to share it with you all soon.

On Twitter, Yiannopoulos called it “a serious story with real victims.”

In fall 2014, after #GamerGate began as a criticism of unethical behavior in the videogame industry, Nyberg joined the critics of #GamerGate. Nyberg subsequently tried to shut down funding for the website 8chan.net, which had supported #GamerGate, by falsely accusing them of hosting child pornography. This resulted in the exposure of Nyberg’s past, and in March, Nyberg published a column at a feminist website with the headline, “I Set Out To Expose A Hate Movement In Gaming — So They Set Out To Destroy My Life,” denouncing the accusations of pedophilia as “heinous lies” and “defamation.”

Nyberg has been accused of retaliating against her critics, including games blogger The Ralph Report, who expressed pleasure at a hint by Yiannopoulos that Nyberg could go to prison.

A timely reminder: SJWs Always Lie http://t.co/6rIluT8uPT #GamerGate #IStandWithDana @voxday @TheRalphRetort @theLEOpirate

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 4, 2015

#GamerGate supporters have started the #IStandWithDana hashtag.

“God gave them up unto vile affections . . . God gave them over to a reprobate mind . . .”
— Romans 1:26-28 (KJV)

UPDATE: One of the venues that published Sarah Nyberg was the BoingBoing gaming site OffWorld. In an e-mail to OffWorld editor Leigh Alexander, Milo Yiannopoulos wrote that he had “contacted the parents of the 8-year-old girl” mentioned in the chat logs attributed to Nyberg, and the parents “will be approaching local and federal law enforcement” about the case, once Yiannopoulos’s story is published. (Hat-tip: KotakuInAction on Reddit.)

PREVIOUSLY:

March 18: Fake #GamerGate Victims
August 8: Why I Got Suspended
August 10: The Creepy Freaks of ‘Social Justice’

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Category: Scandal

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge

Posted on | September 4, 2015 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

She was hot. Figuratively and literally, as she’d been jogging at least a quarter hour.
The bush was thick, but not really that close to the path, so the rapist had to sprint to get at her. He counted on panic to freeze her, as he was frankly not in that great of shape.
She was well aware of the news concerning the park, but that was not the sort of thing that bothered her. She lashed out as she had been taught, with the heel of her hand connecting perfectly with his nose cartilage, ending the string of rapes.