US gov't full of itself

[Morfos]

http://www.post-gazette.com/breaking/20040329pornp6.asp

State police have charged a 15-year-old Latrobe girl with child pornography for taking photos of herself and posting them on the Internet.
Police said the girl, whose identity they withheld, photographed herself in various states of undress and performing a variety of sexual acts. She then sent the photos to people she met in chat rooms.
A police report did not say how police learned about the girl. They found dozens of pictures of her on her computer.
She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.
Police said they are trying to identify all the people who receive photos from the girl.

This is rediculous. She took those photos of herself. She is 15 years old, she has a mind of her own. Its her body she should be allowed to do what she wants with it. Stupid Conservative dominated government wants to punish her for it. And not only that, she is being charged with sexual abuse of children, when she is doing it to herself! Why does the government think it has the right to tell people what they can do with their bodies anyway? Stupid Conservatives.

http://www.pcplayground.com/article205.html

How rediculous, she was simply breat feeding her child! And they took a picture of it. Big deal, leave them alone! Yet, they were put in jail for it. Stupid Religous Conservatives are getting worse and worse everyday. This country is too stupid to even live in. They make anarchy look better and better. And remember, these are the people who say they are for "smaller government."

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/05/r.kelly/

OMG! They want to give this guy 15 years! You can get less than that for murder! And authorities are telling people to dump his DVDs and VHDs since they are "possesions of child porn." Stupid Americans thing child porn is terrible that we have to get bloody revenge on harmless people, which demages our economy by the way.

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/stories/020904/new_020904025.shtml

15 years is an oversentence. Give them community service for crying outloud, don't need to give them 15 years!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115511,00.html

You can get 5 years for simply having child porn! But what if some ******* were to send it through your email and then you were caught having it there? Stupid government!

I think its rediculous how people are so damn worried about child porn when it is no threat to society (as disturbing as it may be). We are putting harmless people in jail for this(they may be bad, but they are still harmless). Not that I like porn, I don't. But is not a threat to anybody as long as they don't look at it.

 

[den4]

full of itself? You mean it was never empty upstairs?
that's news to me

 

[Morfos]

The ultimate point Im trying to make is not to defend these people specifically, a lot of these people should be forced to take community service. But proves the police state. I can go to jail for even saying what I did in my first post, did you know that? There are many examples of our police state. There was a french guy who went to jail for saying "its not like I have a bomb or anything" on an American plane. There is also a woman who served 11 years for stealing a toolbox.

 

[Morfos]

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/stor...020904025.shtml

Ok nevermind what I said about this. The girl ran away, meaning they forced her. They were bad guys. I can see why the government would want to give them 15 years. That is abuse. 4-8 years behind bars sounds resonable for what they did.

 

[Mandylion]

I'm a bit confused - except for a little bit of creative prosecution in a case or two, I don't think the articles are good examples of a police state. Not saying the US is or is not a police state - in all honesty I don't spend my time trying to find out. But in all of the articles, someone or a group of people we abusing themselves or others (society must set some limits on what its members are allowed to do - apoligies to the younger members here, but at 15 we are all full of hormones and don't think clearly all the time. I agree with your implied view that the police probably don't need to throw her in jail, but they can't just turn a blind eye...) I should sure as heck hope that the police go after them!

If you really do get thrown in jail for what you posted above, I'll be the first to start a legal defense fund to get you out (I'm not trying to be glib here). Fact is, IMHO, the US gov. has enough problems to deal with than to be trying to go after dissenting opinions and throwing their authors in jail - you should rather be looking over your shoulder for Bush campaign staffers with clubs

If your main beef is with the sentencing process, we will just have to agree to disagree - indeed, jail might not be the best punishment (other, more horrible fates come to mind), but in my book, if you aid or abet the abuse of children, you deserve far worse than a few years behind bars.

 

[Morfos]

I don't think the articles are good examples of a police state.

There are certaintly far better examples, such as Muslim dissenters being contained. And that one woman, but since I found these I posted them to show how extreme the sentences are and that police states always have extreme sentences.

indeed, jail might not be the best punishment (other, more horrible fates come to mind), but in my book, if you aid or abet the abuse of children, you deserve far worse than a few years behind bars.

I agree with you here, jail is not the best punishment, others should be used. If people do aid abuse of children howver,then they are dangerous and deserve a few years in prison.

 

[Mandylion]

Hmmm, I don't know - I'm trying to come up with less police oriented states to see what their criminal justice systems are like, but none come to mind. Can you point me towards any?

But, just for fun, how do we get rid of this police state? If we as a society feel strongly enough that we need strong police powers to protect us for, well, ourselves, doesn't the burden of change lie with us - not with the thin blue line? Is it the police states that causes the problems and decides the terms of punishment, or is it us - as members of the society that spawned it - and our own inabilities to find the root cause of crime.

That is, unless we take the view that crime is causless, in which case we are all up the creek and are perhaps all better off with a sidearm or two, because there ain't nothin' anyone can do about it....

 

[Morfos]

Here is something that proves how much bs our law system pulls off.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/03/27/freed.prisoner/

After 5 years for simply stealing a toolbox they want to put her back in jail for another 65 days! California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to excuse her.

Martinez, who lives in Vista, California, north of San Diego, went to prison under California's three-strikes law in 1996 for stealing a toolbox. After serving five years, she was released and says she has turned her life around.

Oh common, even if it was 3 strikes, five years is still far too long! They should let her out, she already served more than enough.

PS: Just to inform you, Vista is an ultra-Conservative Right-Wing evangelical city, I live so close to that city, people there are terribly stupid.

 

[Lina Inverse]

Yes, the American law system is in a very sad state indeed. Giving exorbitantly exaggerated punishments for very harmless stuff such as the sole possession of child porn is probably due to the large amount of braindead purists and puritans in the US. There should rather be laws to protect people from them :relief:
The police state the US has set up is another sad story, going hand in hand with the first and often holding completely harmless people captured just because they happen to be of arabic or similar descent (to name an actual example).
They're just blindly firing with huge cannons at little birds all the time, while the truly bad people most times manage to get away unharmed.
Someone is just owning a little child porn? Oh the horror! Next thing we know, he'll run amok and start mass murdering people! Send him to prison for a long time!
Someone is drilling for oil in a nature preservation area, threatening the life of countless endangered species? So what? Who gives a damn? Heck, let's give this brave guy even a medal, and make it legal what he does, so he can continue doing it and doesn't need to worry.

 

[Ewok85]

http://www.pcplayground.com/article205.html

How rediculous, she was simply breat feeding her child! And they took a picture of it. Big deal, leave them alone! Yet, they were put in jail for it. Stupid Religous Conservatives are getting worse and worse everyday. This country is too stupid to even live in. They make anarchy look better and better. And remember, these are the people who say they are for "smaller government."

Right, that is just messed up. I've got a pile of photos of me naked when I was a kid. Look, here me in the bath, me and my sister in the bath, me running around naked in the rain, me in a pool with my bathers on my head. Great 21st material this. HOW IS IT WRONG!?

And thats a joke, 15 years for posession of child pornography. How much does a murderer get? A drug dealer? A rapist? The Australian system is equally messed up (horribly short terms for people doing terrible crimes)

 

[Foxtrot Uniform]

Its quiete simple. The people who commit the little crimes are punished severly for what they did, while the people who steal money from their employees and force their companies into bankrupcy or commint any major crimes that hurt many other people are pardoned or they get away with this. This is because the people who commit the little crimes are poor and always end up being punished whle the people who commit huge crimes that impact many people are rich, and they always seem to get away. My point? If a peasant steals a loaf of bread, he will be executed, while the nobles get away with murder.