One nation under God

Liberty and Justice for All

2006-04-27

Children Tried as Adults

More and more often, the American criminal bears the face of a child; charged with crimes such as rape, assault, robbery, and in some cases, murder.

While in the past decade or so the overall violent crime rate has leveled off, the number of  young people arrested for committing violent crimes has skyrocketed. And there are no racial, class or geographic boundaries.

The shock over the age of the criminal offenders and the brutality of their crimes has given way to public outrage and demands that more juvenile cases be tried in adult courts where the sentences are harsher. Before the Supreme Court outlawed execution of child offenders in March of 2005, more than a dozen child offenders have been executed.

What do we expect? Children are victims of violence in their homes, in their communities, on the streets and in their schools. There's not a school in the country that teaches morals, determination, perseverance or self-reliance. Our schools are breeding grounds for child criminals and failure.

Is stiffer sentencing the solution? Granted, juveniles must be held accountable or by the time they reach adulthood, prison will not serve as a deterrent. The goal of sentencing should be to help child offenders get back on their feet, and to break the habits such as drug addiction that got them into trouble in the first place. We need to provide alternatives to incarceration.

Society seems to have more faith in locking up children than building them up. We need to consider what is in the youth's best interest. Throwing young offenders in prison with hardened criminals is more than likely to produce chronic offenders who repeatedly resort to violence.

Many child offenders have never been taught the Ten Commandments or what we know as moral values. They don't do well in school and have never had jobs. For them, jail is a step up. Once in jail, they're free from drive-by shootings, it's warm in the winter and cool in the summer, there's organized recreation, adult supervision, and quality medical care.

What do we do to help keep kids from falling into this trap? We need to invest in rehabilitation, education, and support for families instead of prisons.  We need to be more involved with prevention and ask what we can do to stop them from committing crimes. We have to bear responsibility. We've got to keep society safe, and we can't have young people out there who endanger the community.

But we cannot build enough prisons to house our failures.

Gina Weiss

2006-04-15

The Fodder of Fascism, America (Part 2)

As in China, the government will continue to develop very sophisticated technology for intercepting and censoring Internet content, blocking many topics it considers sensitive or controversial and punish those who try to get around those bans.

State agencies will control the Internet and censor content transmitted through web pages, blogs, forums, bulletin boards and e-mail. We'll most likely have media regulation, state secrets laws, and cybercafé regulations.

Controls over service and content providers are already designed to support filtering. Government has a good start on keeping a close eye on communication tools such as e-mail, already filtered by service providers using the method based on the same technology that blocks spam. Body text and subject lines will be scanned and blocked if anything objectionable is found.

Much like China, there may be a Central Propaganda Department to make sure content providers stick with material that is consistent with government ideology, blocking websites of any groups it deems politically or socially harmful. Any group that can organize large numbers of people will be considered threatening.

Sound far-fetched? Hardly.

Consider the censorship of Taxgate, the fleecing of Irwin Schiff, Dick Simkanin, and Larken Rose, and the recent government demand for Google records. Consider also the ongoing battle of Bob Schulz and Joe Banister for truth in taxation and President Bush's domestic spying policy, with the blatant disregard of  the FISA; just a few that come to mind.

Have you been to an airport lately? Some resemble more a military environment than an airport; indicative of a police state. Putting fear in the hearts of The People in the guise of protecting them is an extreme, unconstitutional abuse of power which will lead to unprecedented government control in America.

Mark my words - before they are banned.

Gina Weiss

2006-04-03

The Fodder of Fascism, America (Part 1)

The product is the most profitable industry in the world, said to be patronized by tens of millions of Americans, through assorted media venues, and more often than not, the Internet. It's an attraction like no other.... pornography.

Estimated worth of $12 billion a year and visited by approximately 40% of Internet users in the United States each month, it's said to cause sexual dysfunction and ruin healthy relationships and marriages. If you're a consumer, some claim it will damage your brain.

It's use has given birth to treatment programs, hundreds of support groups, and websites where heartbroken spouses trade stories of their mates' obsessions; great fodder for those in opposition and are either ignorant or have a wont for the strides our servant government is making toward fascism and government control.

Make no mistake, I stand on neither side of these claims. Personally, I find the product  repulsive, and choose not to participate, but let us not forget that we Americans were divined with unalienable rights and individual liberties, and not the precepts of fascism.

Censorship being a common ingredient of fascism, the concern lies with the anti-porn activists who are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases in the hope it will fuel lawsuits against high-profit porn giants. And recently, the FBI has formed an anti-obscenity squad with a prosecution task force. The Justice Department has indicted dozens of people on obscenity charges and suggests these cases will increase...more fodder for the attorneys-at-law and the censorship of fascism.
 
In the guise of promoting the public good, once again, just as the fascist takeover of the tobacco industry, we will have a new multi-billion dollar industry takeover, leading America further into the abyss of government control and fascism.

Gina Weiss

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