Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Sowing Salt
I’m going against form on this one. Normally when when someone screeches about the “societal dangers” being created by “vigilante justice,” by the time the fearmongering reaches my ears it somehow gets translated to “I’m a limp-wristed liberal pansy and I want to release as many bad guys from jail as I possibly can.” No, I’m not a vigilante. No, I don’t want to be a vigilante. Yeah, I see vigilantes as a threat…I just see them as a low-ranking threat.
Put it this way. How do you go about being a sniper victim? Just go about your business. How do you go about being a victim of a cop-killer? Go through training, take an oath, and then do your job. How do you go about being a rape victim? Be a woman, and do some stuff at night which you rightfully ought to be able to do. How do you go about being a vigilante victim? You have to be a bad guy. Real bad. So, no, unless you want to talk about cases of mistaken-identity, we’re not talking about something that endangers “the societal contract,” we’re talking about something endangering people who have already refused to honor that contract. We don’t all have the same rights as a provision of that contract…not if there are some who refuse to sign it.
Now having said that — this guy is bad, and I’ll tell you why. Early in the morning of Saturday, August 27, James Russell returned to his home at 2825 Northwest Ave. in Bellingham, Washington, and found the bodies of Hank Eisses and Victor Vasquez. Russell and Vasquez had been renting this unit from Eisses. All three men were registered Level III sex offenders.
According to the various news sources which in turn appear to rely on eyewitness accounts from the mens’ neighbors, Eisses and Vasquez were visited for perhaps over two hours by a man claiming to be from the FBI. It would appear the man came in person to warn the sex offenders of some vigilantes who had downloaded their home address from a web site, and were going to do something about them. Presumably, sometime during the interview it was revealed that the “man from the FBI” was the vigilante. Eisses and Vasquez ate bullets. The suspect is still at large.
Link, link, link, link, link, link, link, link.
There is a huge cadre of activists and politicians who, for reasons that entirely escape me, treat this kind of stuff as a “something absolutely has gotta be done to guarantee this never happens again in a bazillion-and-one years” whereas, on the other hand, the crimes committed by the sex offenders fall into the category of something resembling an “oopsie.” Nobody can really explain why this is, even the “ordinary” people who echo the sentiment. Bad things happening to bad people, why, that’s bad. We should turn all the furniture upside down to stop it from happening. Bad things happening to good people…well, that’s just life, isn’t it?
So the mission has already been undertaken to educate us about how this looks from the point-of-view of other sex offenders who are afraid the bad guy is after them. And yeah there is something wrong with that; things shouldn’t be that way. Just like the victims of these sex offenders should never have become victims. You know what’s going to happen now? They’re going to start locking down those offender lists. Maybe you’ll have to register yourself, in order to find out where they live. Maybe pay a fee. Or maybe you won’t be able to find out where the tree-jumpers live, no matter what you do. Maybe you’ll be fined and prosecuted for disclosing the addresses, just like you would be for disclosing private medical information. Who knows, before it’s over maybe you’ll be subject to prosection for even learning the addresses. Maybe they’ll stop compiling the information altogether.
All these things are possible, and even become likely if this guy gets to off many more perverts on his list — especially if he can work his way through it without giving the police any leads.
All of this puts kids in danger. We get to learn the addresses of these registered sex offenders, so that if one of them is living right where our children walk home from school everyday, we can learn about it and do something about it. Why do I care? Because I walked to school. In Bellingham. I grew up there. And I walked past some rented housing units that were, well — let’s just say if I was somehow still doing it, I’d want a peak at that list.
The sex offender registry process has been a powerful weapon in the war of keeping the innocent among us, protected from harm. Now it has a real chance of being taken away from us…and what’s worse, is if this comes to happen, the powerful advocacy groups would stand guard to make sure the information on registered sex offenders never becomes available ever again — never, never, not ever. There is a real potential here that salt can be sown into the ground.
Somehow, when the “normal” public, which is assumed to be law-abiding, gets a new freedom, that freedom is regarded as a privilege which is subject to nullification if one headstrong weirdo sees fit to abuse it. Practically never does the general “public have a right” that is actually treat as a right. Truly inalienable rights, are reserved for the scummy layer. The sex offenders don’t have privileges. They get real live “rights” which are left intact, whether they are convenient to others, or not. The disparity is obvious, contrary to common sense, just plain ridiculous, and it’s easy to argue persuasively against it. Or, at least, it would be easy to argue against it, if some trigger-happy asshole wasn’t running around snuffing people out.
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