Weblog Sin Pies

By Charley Daniels

CNN: Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy raises legal questions

Yes, she’s pregnant, she’s 16, her boyfriend is 18, and there’s a bunch of hubbub. Depending on where they got down, it could be illegal. Blah blah blah, who cares. What’s really at issue is the unfortunate choice of phrasing used by the law professor whom CNN interviewed:

“You have a disturbing disparity in how these laws are enforced,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “I have no problem at all with nailing adults who sleep with children, but I have a problem with the prosecution of teenagers in consensual relationships.”

You get ‘em, Turley!

By Charley Daniels

Lost Remote: For me, Google News + AP = frustration

Good thoughts from Don Day about Google’s deal with the Associated Press:

I get that the Google algorithm puts more weight on “The Associated Press” than it does on KTVB. But the fact that it puts SO much weight on AP over a story that has about three times the depth … and includes photos bugs me. TV sites like ours benefit greatly from the AP — but NONE of that benefit comes from Google.

Think about it.

Charley Daniels

Frsno Bee: SoCal court reinstates ‘men only’ sex charge against woman

An appeals court reinstated a charge of indecent exposure against a woman who disrobed in front of a 14-year-old boy.

The three-member panel overturned a ruling by Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert W. Armstrong, who had dismissed charges against Alexis Luz Garcia last year, ruling that the law making it a misdemeanor for someone to expose “his person” didn’t apply to women.

The gist is the kid was being noisy, the neighbor punished him by exposing herself. There are a lot of great things happening here. Interestingly, the funniest part to me isn’t that she considers the sight of her naked body a punishment. That’s actually quite sad. What I’m most curious about is that there’s a person somewhere whom we have entrusted to uphold the law of the land, and the dude thinks indecent exposure applies only to men.

Prosecutors said the boy’s parents called police after the woman threatened to disrobe every time the boy played basketball.

And Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert W. Armstrong dismissed the case. Why? No penises involved. Makes sense, right? Considerations: Is this his way of protesting the lack of a gender-neutral third-person pronoun in English? Is he one of these straight-as-an-arrow dudes who finds female nudity beautiful but male nudity immoral? Is he some sort of smart ass?

Luckily the appeals court has more sense. Well, maybe not, but at least they read the whole law before issuing a decision:

In a ruling issued Aug. 28, the appeals panel noted that another section of state law says that “words used in the masculine gender include the feminine and neuter.”

“We can find no logical or reasonable basis for concluding women are incapable of committing the crime of indecent exposure,” the panel wrote in its 13-page decision.

Judge Armstrong must have skimmed over that section.

By Charley Daniels

Reuters: Congress watchdog says violence still high in Iraq

A U.S. Congressional report on Tuesday said “violence remains high” in Iraq, with little political progress and mixed results on security a day after President George W. Bush visited Anbar province and struck an upbeat tone.

Also in this issue: Water is quite wet, most dirt is dirty, and oranges are often orange.

By Mike Bijon

A Texas woman and her neighbors believe they may have found the bodies of three chupacabras near their ranches in the town of Cuero. Their discovery is getting large amounts of national news coverage this weekend because A) nothing new happened in Iraq, Iran, or with any US economic report that the American public wouldn’t be bored to tears by, and B) the woman, Phylis, can’t be easily dismissed as a normal crazy American because she hacked the head off one of the alleged chupacabra bodies and stashed it in her freezer to proove what she found.

The real story, however, is that global warming has pushed a creature normally sighted in South America so far north (according to Wikipedia the chupacabra is normally sighted in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, Brazil, and Mexico). At long last environmentalists and Texas ranchers have a common enemy to rally around. Once it’s gene-tested and identified it still won’t matter what the Creature of Cuero turns out to be descended from.

Chupacabra or not, it’s eating ranchers’ animals and is real enough that they’ll be looking to hunt them down and kill them all. Environmentalists already up in arms about the population of feral cats killing small, endangered animals throughout Texas will also be looking for the chupacabra’s head. As history (and the US occupation of Iraq) has shown, there’s nothing that will settle disagreements like the blood thirst for a common enemy.