Covers the entire nation and beyond:
"Teenage sexting tests laws on child porn" by Erik Eckholm New York Times November 14, 2015
The high school sweethearts were 16 when they traded nude cellphone pictures. There was no evidence of coercion or harassment. But under a literal interpretation of North Carolina law, each had distributed child pornography.
Beyond this, one is left to wonder what kind of value system is it that has fostered such things? What kind of upbringing regarding the institutions of ma$$ media and ejewkhazion? Why are kids so exhibitionist these days?
Of course, all the stuff is collected and sent over to the NSA, kids. I'm sure it's good entertainment for the tons of perverts that staff the government.
In February, prosecutors in Fayetteville charged the two teenagers with the felony of “exploiting a minor,” which could have brought them years in prison and decades on the sex offender registry — for privately sharing images of themselves.
After an outcry, both were eventually allowed to plead, instead, to misdemeanors. They were put on a year’s probation.
Whether and how to charge teenage sexters has become a quandary for prosecutors nationwide, forcing them to weigh when to muster the harsh force of criminal justice, often with ill-fitting laws from a pre-Internet era, and when to back off and let schools and families deal with youthful indiscretions.
Facing those choices on a large scale now, in the glare of national attention, is Thom LeDoux, the district attorney in the county that includes Cañon City, Colo., where more than 100 students at the high school were apparently exchanging nude pictures.
Not here. I don't want to see them or read anymore of this shallow and superficial swill.
LeDoux said in a telephone interview that he does not plan to file charges against those who simply passed around pictures. But felony charges could be in store for some, he added — if an adult is involved; if there is evidence of coercion, illegal sexual activity, or bullying; or if pictures were posted on public websites.
Erotically charged cellphone pictures or videos passed around by teenagers often meet the legal definition of child pornography, making them the subject of felony laws that were written with true predators in mind. So when a 16-year-old girl e-mails a raunchy picture of herself to a boy, she has in theory created and distributed child pornography. If the boy sends the picture to 20 others, he has distributed, and they all have possessed, child pornography.
Yet few prosecutors want to ruin the lives of teenagers for one-time displays of immaturity. Across the country, district attorneys are forced to decide: When are youthful actions so malicious or harmful that they should be prosecuted? When are serious felony charges and perhaps lifetime branding as a sex offender called for, and when is probation and, perhaps, community service or counseling enough?
About 20 states have adopted new laws intended to address juvenile sexting by providing a less severe range of legal responses to personal photo-sharing, including misdemeanor charges that may be expunged, and required community service or counseling. But even with these more subtle tools, the prosecutors have to make delicate calls.
“Who do you charge, how far out do you charge?” asked Bill Harding, chief of the Internet crimes unit of Macomb County in Michigan, who sees new sexting cases weekly. Well aware that the penalties can be life-altering, he and most other prosecutors do not pursue charges in some cases and find ways to impose misdemeanors, not creating a permanent criminal record, in others.
Although most juvenile court proceedings are private, it appears that, in practice, severe punishments are rarely meted out for merely trading nude photos.
“A 15-year-old boy shares a risqué photo of his girlfriend with his buddies: Under the strictest definition of the law, you have a felony,” said William Fitzpatrick, district attorney of Onondaga County in New York, which includes Syracuse. “But we would never prosecute a case like that.”
Fitzpatrick, as president of the National District Attorneys Association, has urged prosecutors across the country to approach teenage sexting with a light hand, avoiding criminal charges in many cases and finding ways to impose less severe and lasting punishments in others.
But each case is different, prosecutors say, and in deciding whether and what to charge they must, as LeDoux in Colorado indicated, see if there are aggravating circumstances.
Fitzpatrick and many legal scholars have called for more states to join those that have adopted the new laws.
“My advice to my colleagues is to lobby legislatures to get a statute appropriate to the conduct involved,” Fitzpatrick said. “If the motivation is immaturity and teenage imbecility, there ought to be alternatives available in all 50 states.”
Jesse Weins, an expert in criminal justice at Dakota Wesleyan University, said the legal system had simply not kept up with technology. “The law is behind the times,” he said.
For decades, he noted, officials and the public have endorsed harsh penalties for trading in sexual images of children.
“And now, with a completely different scenario, those laws are there,” he said.
Statutory change has been halting, he added, because people fear creating possible loopholes in the battle against child pornography. Everything is framed with the context of war in my agenda-pushing paper.
This component smells like censorship of the Internet -- if for no other reason than to protect the children from themselves.
--more--"
Related:
Sandusky to get pension back
That is not only sickening but gets confusing when you understand how deep such evil runs.
Mormon LGBT rules trigger a backlash
It's okay if you have been baptized.
Utah judge stays foster child order
Utah to appeal foster ruling
Four more women join defamation suit against Bill Cosby
New Hampshire woman files defamation suit against Bill Cosby
Coz says she lied.
Supreme Court accepts Texas abortion law case
Globe did that with this (never appeared in print):
"Secret Service officer accused of soliciting minor" Associated Press November 13, 2015
DOVER, Del. — Federal and state authorities have charged a uniformed Secret Service officer from Maryland with sending obscene images and texts to someone he thought was a young Delaware girl, sometimes sending online communications while on duty at the White House.
Unbeknownst to Lee Robert Moore, 37, the person he thought was a 14-year-old girl was actually an undercover Delaware police officer.
According to a complaint unsealed Thursday in federal court, Moore surrendered to Maryland State Police on Monday after being placed on administrative leave last week.
Moore is charged with attempted transfer of obscene material to a minor. He also faces a state court preliminary hearing Friday on two counts of sexual solicitation of a child under 18 and one count of providing obscene material to a person under 18.
According to the federal complaint, Moore often engaged in chats while on duty, once asking the undercover officer to send him something exciting when he was checking IDs for building entrance.
--more--"
Some stunt, huh?
"Quincy man pleads guilty to extortion against former Sharon rabbi in sex scandal" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff November 14, 2015
A 31-year-old Quincy man has admitted to extorting a former rabbi in Sharon who was ensnared in a sex scandal, prosecutors say.
Nicholas Zemeitus, pleaded guilty Thursday in Norfolk Superior Court to extortion and larceny charges in a scheme to blackmail Barry Starr, the longtime rabbi of Temple Israel in Sharon.
Starr, 65, resigned his position last year as the scandal came to light.
Prosecutors said he probably paid Zemeitus $458,300 between 2012 and 2014, including more than $360,000 from a rabbi discretionary fund that supported good deeds in the community, after Zemeitus threatened to publicize allegations that Starr had a sexual relationship with an underage boy.
Zemeitus told investigators that he first encountered Starr when he went to Starr’s home after responding to an online listing for a sexual encounter with an older woman. When Zemeitus arrived, he was greeted by Starr, who answered the door in woman’s clothing, Zemeitus told authorities.
He said he became upset and that Starr gave him $100 to keep quiet, court records show.
Later, in December 2011, Zemeitus e-mailed Starr and threatened to go public with the underage sex allegations, which Starr repeatedly denied while conceding that he made mistakes in his life, court records show.
Authorities found no evidence that Starr had sex with minors, but investigators learned that he viewed online postings for transsexual escorts and apparently cheated on his wife with men, District Attorney Michael W. Morrissey’s office wrote in a court filing Thursday.
In the filing, prosecutors recommended a six-to-eight-year prison term for Zemeitus, whose sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 3.
Starr, prosecutors wrote, has divorced and is no longer a rabbi.
“There is no way to restore Starr,” the filing said. “His secret life has been exposed.”
Yeah, his Starr has dimmed, you might say.
And yet it is the Catholics that get flogged by the Zionist media.
In addition, the government said, members of Temple Israel were also victims, since checks they had given to the discretionary fund were altered from their original sums and deposited at much higher amounts to accounts belonging to Zemeitus and his wife, Alexa Anderson. She faces related charges in the case.
Banking information from some of the checks was used to pay the couple’s personal expenses and to wire additional funds to their accounts, prosecutors said.
Zemeitus’s lawyer could not be reached for comment Friday.
“The Temple Israel community was devastated by the actions of [Zemeitus] and Starr,” prosecutors wrote. “Not only was it shocked by the fall of their spiritual leader, its congregants were the victims of thefts and the entire congregation was forced to examine their accounts” and temple security.
In a victim impact statement, one member of the congregation wrote that she was a cash-strapped single mother who donated to the fund, only to learn she had been fleeced in the scheme.
“Like many victims, I want justice,” she wrote. “Money was stolen from me and from the needy within my community to whom the donation was supposed to go.”
Perpetual victims, or claim to be. The whining gets old.
Starr also faces criminal charges in the case.
He pleaded not guilty in June to larceny and embezzlement charges for allegedly raiding the discretionary fund to pay Zemeitus. Prosecutors say Starr replenished the fund with money he received from performing funerals and other services, but still owed $67,000 to the discretionary account when the alleged blackmail stopped in April 2014.
In a recent letter to prosecutors, Starr’s lawyer, Scott P. Lopez, asked the government to dismiss the indictment against the former rabbi, so he can provide “necessary testimony” against Zemeitus as a crime victim, without incriminating himself.
“Solely as a result of the deplorable conduct of Mr. Zemeitus . . . Rabbi Starr’s life has been wholly devastated,” Lopez wrote.
That's chutzpah!!
He said that despite the government’s recognition that Zemeitus’s claims of sexually inappropriate behavior with underage victims were unfounded, Starr “continues to be falsely portrayed as both a child predator and a thief” rather than a victim of Zemeitus’s crimes.
Poor pervert!
Prosecutors, however, are “not inclined” to dismiss the indictment pending against Starr, said Morrissey’s spokesman, David Traub.
A hearing in Starr’s case is scheduled for Thursday. He could not be located for comment.
--more--"
Related: Reform Jews approve far-reaching transgender resolution
Starr light, Starr bright.....
"Woman allowed to wear spaghetti strainer in Mass. license photo" by Steve Annear Globe Staff November 13, 2015
A woman who identifies herself as a Pastafarian, a follower of a religion that teaches that an airborne “spaghetti monster” could have created the universe, has succeeded in her bid to wear a colander on her head in her driver’s license photo.
Good thing she didn't demand to wear a veil.
Lindsay Miller claims the spaghetti strainer is a sign of her devotion to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
In August, the Lowell resident was denied a renewed license by the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, she said, for wearing the metal cookware.
“They were kind of laughing at me,” Miller said. “I thought of other religions and women and thought that this was not fair. I thought, ‘Just because you haven’t heard of this belief system, [the RMV] should not be denying me a license.’ ”
According to the RMV’s website, drivers are barred from wearing hats or head covers in their photos, unless the clothing items are “for medical or religious reasons.”
Miller filed for an appeal immediately after the August incident. Through a friend, she enlisted the help of Patty DeJuneas, a member of the Secular Legal Society, a network of lawyers that assist the American Humanist Association.
DeJuneas said in a telephone interview that every religion deserves protection under the First Amendment, even if others think a certain sect may be “ridiculous.”
“I’m not a Pastafarian. But my understanding, and my view of it, is that it’s a secular religion that uses parody to make certain points about a belief system,” DeJuneas said.
Mine has been shattered seeing as it was based on the foundation that every event reported in the paper was real, even if what surrounded it was all crap lies. Now I have found not even that is true.
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, according to its website, first “came into the mainstream” in 2005. The international movement, which has its own gospel, says it’s not making an anti-religious statement by advancing a set of outlandish beliefs.
My gospel is Sunday morning basketball, and they have tongue-in-cheek there, right?
The group, which subscribes to the idea that an invisible creature made from cooked noodles could be responsible for gravity, sells itself as all-inclusive, which attracted Miller in the first place.
“It’s a religion that uses parody. We accept all dogma, but we reject all dogma at the same time,” Miller said. “That’s what is so great about Pastafarianism. It accepts everyone.”
I'm reading dogma.
The church says it highlights the need to make a distinction between the beliefs espoused by various religions and the value that people get from them.
I'm about to make one.
“The fact that millions of people get something positive out of a religion — even if it is based in superstition — does mean something. But that’s not to say it’s True, only that it has Value,” said the church’s website, which veers from the silly to the serious....
Of which this article is not.
--more--"
No laughing matter this:
False Flag Attacks in France
UPDATE:
Utah judge removes himself from gay foster parent case
