Seduction is not Rape, Part 2

In my August 30, 2013 post, “Seduction is not Rape,” I reviewed a case in which a 49-year-old male teacher who seduced his 14-year-old student was convicted of rape.

“Now, make no mistake about it; what he did was clearly wrong; a crime; a disgusting, unethical despicable act deserving substantial punishment,” I wrote, “but it was not rape. Those who call it rape are disingenuously engaged in redefining a word in the English language which means something entirely different than what happened to that girl. In doing so, they commit a disservice to women and girls who have actually been raped. This is a case of seduction and seduction is not rape. Rape requires the necessary element of force or coercion. It is the crime of forcing another person against their will to submit to sex acts.”

In that case the “victim” consented to the sexual acts. The teacher seduced her. There was no force involved. But the law arbitrarily specified that a minor does not have the mental capacity to consent to sex. So the force necessary to make the act a crime was implied from the arbitrary designation of a lack of consent – a legal fiction. The law provided that she couldn’t consent under any circumstances. If she couldn’t consent then she didn’t consent, and if she didn’t consent then it follows that she had to have been forced.  

He didn’t rape that girl. Rape is the crime of forcing another person to submit to sexual acts. He seduced her. Calling seduction rape is like calling negligent homicide murder. Murder requires, among other things, the element of intent to kill, an element that is totally lacking in the crime of negligent homicide. To arbitrarily infer the element of intent to kill from negligence serves only to pervert the definition of murder.

The definition of rape is perverted by inferring the necessary element of force from the fact that the victim is a minor. The crime of seduction of a minor is far less serious than the crime of rape, but by calling seduction rape the law employs a fiction for the purpose of making the two crimes seem to be of equal import.

Today, a New Jersey lawmaker wants to take the legal fiction a step further down the road to absurdity by criminalizing what he calls the act of “rape by fraud.”  Sex by fraud is already defined as a crime in at least five states, including California and Tennessee.

That’s right. If a grown man lies to a grown woman in order to talk her into having sex, he’s a rapist according to New Jersey Assemblyman Troy Singleton, D-Burlington. In short, he thinks that the fraud amounts to the force necessary for the commission of the crime of rape.

“I truly believe that we have to look at the issue of rape as more than sexual contact without consent,” Singleton explains. “Fraud invalidates any semblance of consent, just as forcible sexual contact does. This legislation is designed to provide our state's judiciary with another tool to assess situations where this occurs and potentially provide a legal remedy to those circumstances.”

It happens all the time. A guy tells a woman he loves her. He lies. He really doesn’t love her; he just wants to get in her pants and it works. If lawmaker Singleton has his way with the legislature, the guy will be convicted as a rapist.

That is absurd. Why? ... Because seduction is not rape. 

What do the facts and reality have to do with it?

The headline for the lead news story in RRND today reads: “MO: Grand jury gives cop killer a pass.” Obviously, the author of that headline thinks that the cop who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri on August 9, 2014 is a murderer who got off scot free for the crime.

Sadly, that’s also the inevitable conclusion of a lot of folks, many of whom took to the streets yesterday after the grand jury decision was announced to burn buildings and loot businesses.

Officer Wilson is a murderer, they insist. He shot to death in the street an innocent unarmed black teenager for no good reason. There is no justice. That cop deserved to be prosecuted and convicted no matter what the evidence.

What do the facts and reality have to do with it, they reckon?

Facts, evidence, reason, logic, truth -- the entire reality of existence go flying out the window in situations like this when otherwise intelligent human beings experience a knee jerk emotional reaction to an event. White cop shoots black teenager equals murder no matter what the reality.

Well, that simple equation just doesn’t add up in this case. Because now the world knows what really happened in Ferguson on that fateful day. Now we know the facts. We know why the grand jury, which included three blacks, decided unanimously after carefully considering all the facts that there was insufficient evidence to charge Officer Wilson with any crime.

First off, the whole world knew even long before the grand jury was convened, that Michael Brown was no innocent teenager. Just moments before his death, this kid did a strong armed robbery at a convenience store. It’s all on video tape for everyone to see. 

I saw it. He brazenly walked into the store, grabbed a handful of cigars, turned to leave without paying for them, and used physical force to intimidate the clerk on his way out the door. Michael Brown was a criminal, a thug, a thief, and a robber beyond any doubt.

As Brown and a companion were walking down the middle of the street just seconds after committing the crime, he was confronted by Officer Wilson in his police car. Wilson was aware that Brown fit the description of the robber. He told Brown to stop, called for backup, and attempted to detain Brown while waiting for assistance to make an arrest.

Brown walked up to the car and started a physical altercation, punching Wilson several times in the face and grabbing for his gun. Wilson fired two shots, one of them striking Brown’s hand. Brown then ran off. Wilson exited his car and ordered Brown to stop. That is when Brown – all six feet four inches and nearly 300 pounds of him -- turned around and charged Wilson like a raging bull. Wilson, by now in mortal fear of his life shot Brown dead.

The physical evidence gathered and reviewed in scrupulous detail by the forensic scientists and experts backed up Officer Wilson’s account of the event. Several other eye witnesses also corroborated the forensic evidence. Brown was not just an innocent black teenager shot down dead in the street for no good reason. Brown was a thug and Wilson shot him in self defense after he resisted arrest and tried to assault him.

Those are the facts. That is the reality. It’s why Michael Brown is dead. Officer Wilson committed no crime.

But to some people Officer Wilson should be fried; the facts and reality have nothing to do with it.  

What the Government Giveth...

A number of people who were ineligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) aid but were nevertheless mistakenly given money by the government after Hurricane Sandy are now complaining about being asked to repay it to the taxpayers on the grounds that they are poor, elderly or disabled.

The money, several millions of dollars of it, was supposed to cover the costs of temporary housing but these folks admittedly spent it on other stuff. They were ineligible for the government assistance in the first place, either because of errors, misunderstandings of the rules or outright fraud.

Now they claim they were told by FEMA officials initially that the aid was a “gift from Obama.” We're on a fixed income. I don't have that kind of money!" explained one disabled recipient of a FEMA check in the amount of $2,486 he was not entitled to.  

Let’s see if I understand this issue correctly. The federal government is simply giving away bundles of taxpayer money to lots of people it deems are “eligible” that sustained damage after a big storm but perhaps didn’t take the precaution of buying insurance. They aren’t expected to pay it back. The rest of us saps who suffer the same kind of damage from storms or other disasters are expected to fend for ourselves.

Some of the free money recipients that were not entitled to the cash even under the generous rules of the government program are now complaining that, even though they were ineligible to get the cash, they nevertheless shouldn’t be expected to pay the money back because they are poor, disabled or old.

Poor, disabled and elderly folks should not be obligated to pay back money they admittedly weren’t entitled to in the first instance goes the argument. If the taxpayers give them money by mistake it’s finder’s keeper’s loser’s weepers, they say. Young able bodied recipients though, must re-pay the money. It’s a new concept in commercial law.

The bottom line, however, is that what the government giveth, the government can take away.   

Up in Smoke

As a libertarian I think that people ought to have the right to do whatever they want with their own body so long as in doing so they aren’t interfering with the rights of others. That’s what most libertarians believe. Do what you will with your body and your life but don’t interfere with mine.

We all have a right to breathe the free air, for example, but no one should have the right to pollute the air with smoke thereby subjecting others to breathing the foul stench. That’s why as a libertarian I’m OK with laws prohibiting smoking in public places.

I think that smoking should be prohibited in public for the same good reasons why urinating, defecating or other activities which disturb the peace in public are prohibited.  Such activities interfere adversely with the rights of others to enjoy public places.  The laws are fair and just.  

The town of Westminster Massachusetts is presently considering the prohibition of all tobacco sales within the community. Their reasoning is simple and logical. Tobacco products such as cigarettes when used as directed by the seller are dangerous. Tobacco smoking makes people sick and too often makes them sick to death. In short, tobacco smoking constitutes a public health hazard.

 "If we can prevent children from having access and exposure to tobacco and nicotine products and reduce the chances of them smoking or using them, then we’ve essentially saved lives," said a spokesperson for the local board of health.  If it is fair and just to prohibit the activity of smoking in a public place it stands to reason that prohibiting the sale of tobacco in a public place is equally fair and just.

Naturally, convenience store owners and other retailers in the town are up in arms about the idea of prohibiting the sale of dangerous products in their stores.

"Most people that buy tobacco will grab a cold drink for the road, maybe scratch tickets, a bag of chips. So it’s not just an $8 sale, it’s a $20 to $30 dollar sale," complains the owner of Vincent’s Country Store. "We're just going to be sending all these sales five minutes down the road to another town where these customers will spend money on gas out of town, food out of town and before you know it, the gas stations are going under in Westminster and other businesses.”

Another store owner warned that the prohibition would result in some his employees losing their jobs. "It becomes very personal--these people are important to me. Lisa has been with me for 18 years. Denise… for 12 to 13 years; For Lisa, I am her entire income. She in fact will lose her house if" this job doesn't exist,” said the owner of Depot General Store.

While I sympathize with these people, the fact remains that the smoking of tobacco products is a public health hazard; tobacco is a dangerous product when used as intended by the seller.  Tobacco addicts have a right to smoke it if they can do so without subjecting others to the hazards, but no one should have the unrestricted right to smoke or sell dangerous products in a public convenience store. 

Many smokers – who have the manners of pigs -- don’t care about interfering with the lives of others. It’s fine with them if their hazardous addiction results in the rights of others going up in smoke. 

Deception: It’s Their Job

They think the common people are stupid. We’re easy to deceive. Most of us aren’t paying attention. So they make fools of the sheep time and time again. They’re the politicians, the bureaucrats, and agents of the government. Deception is their job.

When they want to do something to us that they know we won’t like, e.g. steal our property or diminish our liberty, they simply flat out lie about their intentions, disguise the facts, and hide the truth until it’s too late, they’ve had their way and the damage is done. And after the damage has been done the deceivers like to gloat about their deception.

That’s what they did to us back in 2009, for example, with the so-called Affordable Care Act -- ObamaCare.  It was billed as the greatest benefit to Americans since Social Security.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Speaker of the House at the time told us it was wonderful and that we needed to pass the ObamaCare bill in Congress so that we could finally find out what was in it. Few people knew what was in it then. If they’d known they surely wouldn’t have liked it. If they’d known, it never would have become law.

One of the deceiver’s who did know what was in it was Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Jonathan Gruber, a health economist who was paid $400,000 by the Obama administration to consult the government on ObamaCare. He was one of the primary architects of the law. And now he’s been gloating about how the law got passed and just how stupid the American sheep were to allow the deception.  

"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes," said Gruber. "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the 'stupidity of the American voter' or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

Referring to the so-called "Cadillac tax" on high-end health plans, he admitted it was designed to deceive the people into thinking that the insurance companies would be paying the tax, not the policy holders. "They proposed it and that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference," said Gruber, admitting that the idea of taxing individuals would have been politically unpalatable, but taxing the companies worked because Americans didn't understand the difference.

As to whether ObamaCare is actually “affordable” and will save Americans money as its supporters touted from the beginning, professor Gruber now admits: “... covering people with health insurance doesn't save money,... That was sometimes a misleading motivator for the Affordable Care Act. The law isn't designed to save money. It's designed to improve health, and that's going to cost money."

Today the Obama administration is arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the ObamaCare law provides tax subsidies to insured’s enrolled in federally created health care exchanges; not just exchanges created by the states as the text of the law plainly provides. It’s just another deception. Now they’re trying to deceive SCOTUS.  

Once again, professor Gruber blurts out the truth:  “I think what’s important to remember politically about this, is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying to your citizens, you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they’ll do it. But you know, once again, the politics can get ugly around this.”

Now he’s saying that he misspoke. So the deception goes on and on.

Deception: it’s their job. 

Screw the Constitution Declares 6th Circuit

We think that the people ought to decide by vote whether you should enjoy equal protection of the law under the 5^th and 14^th Amendments of the United States Constitution declared the federal 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals last week.

The Court, in a 2 to 1 decision, gutted well reasoned lower court rulings in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky holding that statutes in those states which ban same sex marriage are unconstitutional violations of equal protection of the law. They upheld the statutes saying that social issues such as whether gays have the right to marry should be up to the voters through the democratic process, not the courts.

It’s the first federal appeals court to uphold state bans against gay marriage since the Supreme Court struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.

“When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, a favorite of the ultra right wing legal establishment nominated to the bench by George W. Bush, 

“Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.”

Heroes; He’s concerned about who is the hero? Screw the Constitution he reasons. If majorities of the people vote to ban interracial marriage, they’re heroes and that’s OK with this court.  He ignored the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court, 47 years ago in 1967, struck down state laws banning interracial marriage as unconstitutional.

Voting to segregate the public schools? That’s fine by Justice Sutton. Why should the courts give a shit about equal protection of the law when it comes to social issues? That should be left up the people, the voters – the heroes. We don’t need the Constitution; we don’t need the Bill of Rights; let’s just leave all those contentious social issues to the democratic process.

Lone dissenting Senior Judge, Martha Craig Daughtrey, (the only judicial hero on the Court), noted that Sutton’s opinion “would make an engrossing TED Talk or, possibly, an introductory lecture in Political Philosophy.” But federal judges are required to protect the constitutional rights of the minority.

 “If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the she electorate,” she wrote, “our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams.”

Justice Sutton doesn’t give much thought to oaths. He’s far more concerned about who will be the hero.

Statist Style Democracy

The committed statists of this world, i.e. the vast majority of people occupying planet Earth, all fervently believe that applying the force of government Authority! upon everyone all the time is the answer to every societal “problem.”

Statists create imaginary “problems” and then try to “solve” them by using force.

The mid-term elections mania in the U.S. has finally and mercifully concluded, but not for long. Now the frenzied statists will turn their hysterical attention to the next presidential election two years from now in 2016.

It never ends.

Democracy as a social activity in America today has become a lot like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This week the Republicans prevailed but it’s highly unlikely that they’ll be able to save the ship of state from sinking. Instead, the new guys, just like the old guys, will continue to imagine more and more “problems” to be “solved” by force while the nation flounders.

The statists lately are imagining that low voter turn-out in the election process is a societal “problem,” and just like every other societal “problem” the answer to “solving” it should be by the application of government force.

CNN published an article entitled “Should Americans be forced to vote?” and invited several so-called political “experts” to opine on the question. Not surprisingly, most of them were enthusiastic about the prospect of mandatory voting laws for Americans. Many nations are presently forcing their citizens to vote, so why shouldn’t we, they reason?  

William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in its governance studies program imagines that founding father, James Madison would “be smiling” over the idea. “Reforming institutions to change incentives is always the most effective course,” declares Galston. Obviously, this “expert” thinks that incentives for Americans should be determined by government force.

Gretchen Helmke, associate professor and chairwoman of the political science department at the University of Rochester, thinks that American politicians would favor mandatory voting laws only if they thought such laws would benefit them politically. “Only governing parties with relatively under-mobilized electorates and a growing opposition find compulsory voting an attractive option,” she opines. “In other words, the politicians that will likely determine the rules of the game have no incentive to change them.”

Haydon Manning, associate professor at Flinders University's School of Social and Policy Studies in Adelaide, South Australia, admits that Australians “are required to attend a polling station, and upon receipt of their ballot, decide to vote or discard it.” Failure to attend one’s "democratic duty" may incur a small fine if insufficient excuse is offered. “Surveys consistently indicate that about 70% say they favor compulsory voting,” he adds, demonstrating that there is no shortage of statists in the Land Down Under.

“The arguments for compulsory voting seem persuasive.” opines Ari Ratner, a fellow at New America Foundation. “Yet, mandatory voting is ill-suited to America's current realities… Mandatory voting would be a bureaucratic and legal nightmare. Not to mention that refusing to vote itself can be an important form of protest.”

That’s right Mr. Ratner, but I think the better answer is that forcing Americans to vote is simply unconstitutional. None of the “experts” thought of that. What about the concept of liberty?

“You have to pay taxes, so why not have to vote? reasons Donna Brazile, CNN contributor, Democratic strategist, nationally syndicated columnist, and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. “I've come to favor mandatory voting… voting is the essential, central and indispensable feature of democracy. We require jury attendance, paying taxes, and public education attendance because those are also essential functions. Is voting less important?

Yes, the United Statists of America have succeeded in forcing a lot of unconstitutional obligations upon “free” Americans; why not just one more?

That’s statist style democracy. 

IRS: Infernal Robbery Specialists

Did you know that the Gestapo thugs at the IRS think they can confiscate, i.e. rob your bank accounts without bothering to afford you due process of law and without any evidence that you have committed a crime?

That’s right. The IRS actually believes it has the legal authority based upon mere “suspicions” to deem you guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. They literally rob you of your property in the process. These infernal robbery specialists are not just targeting conservative political groups to deny them tax exempt status these days; they’re also committing highway robbery of innocent people in broad daylight.

Last time I checked, the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in the Bill of Rights says that “No person… shall… be deprived of… property without due process of law…” Due process of law requires, among other things, proper notice that you are being charged with a crime, a hearing in a court of law and ultimately a trial.

But as I’ve noted here many times, the federal government doesn’t give a damn about your Fifth Amendment constitutional rights or for that matter any of the Bill of Rights provisions set forth in the United States Constitution.

Federal IRS agents might confiscate your bank account, for example, if you are in the habit like I am of making regular deposits of under $10,000 at a time. Doing so might prompt the thieving government thugs into thinking that you are attempting to avoid triggering government reports revealing the sources of your cash.

That’s exactly what happened to small restaurant owner Carole Hinders who routinely deposited her business receipts at a local branch bank. Two tax agent thugs paid her a visit to tell her they’d seized her checking account containing more than $30,000.

She wasn’t charged with any crime. There was no evidence of any crime. They robbed her solely because of her habit of making deposits of less than $10,000 at a time. She has yet to prove herself innocent. Her business was ruined. “How can this happen?” she wondered. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

The IRS does; the Infernal Robbery Specialists.