Newshoggers Archive: Ridiculous law of the week

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Ridiculous law of the week

By Dave Anderson:

Via Incertus on the Louisiana legal system:

But this story is worse, and it pains me because it comes from a city I love, namely, New Orleans.
New
Orleans city police and the district attorney�s office are using a
state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers
like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, makes
it a crime against nature to engage in �unnatural copulation��a term
New Orleans cops and the district attorney�s office have interpreted to
mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are
charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to
register as sex offenders.

If a city wants to crack down on prostitution, then charge the defendents with prostitution related crimes. Don't up-charge to felony status because the state possesses a preponderance of power over the least empowered individuals in society. Especially when the acts in question are between consenting adults and are common acts in modern culture (please see American Pie or Mall-Rats for evidence on these acts as part of American culture; actually just see them if you need a laugh.)

Incertus gets it right when he says:

the cruelty here is unspeakable. We're talking about people who are at
the bottom of the economic food chain, who are already abused daily,
and the legal system--because I can't call this justice--is crapping on
them even more. We're not even talking about cops being able to consider the number of condoms you're carrying
as evidence when deciding to make an arrest for prostitution--we're
talking about a sex offender tag that gets marked on your driver's
license for 15 years....
if you wonder why some of these people don't challenge their sentences,
well, according to Josh Perry, a former attorney with the Orleans
Public Defenders office, �The way Louisiana�s habitual offender law
works, if you challenge your sentence in court and lose, and it�s a
third offense, the mandatory minimum is 20 years. The maximum is life."
Why would you take the chance, if the system has already crapped on you
like this?

1 comment:

geoffJanuary 19, 2010 at 3:45 PM
Let me see, does this mean Bill Jefferson, aka, BJ, Clinton was sexually molested in the Oval office or there about? No wonder Obama can't get anything right, nor Bush before him, the mojo of working in a major crime scene must be kicking out evil vibs.
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