I’ve done a far more extensive writeup on this over at Pandazing.net, but the basic idea is as follows:

A judge in New Zealand banned the use of the names of two murder suspects online, but allowed their use in the traditional media, causing outrage among bloggers and the online media.

Being an American and living in the US, I can post them as much as I want, so here goes:

In a purposeful and direct violation of a recent court order in New Zealand, I’m proudly posting the names Nathan Tuiti Reo Mutunga Williams and Daniel Bobby Tumata online! And guess what? There is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it!

The two men. Williams is at left and Tumata in the center.

For more of an explanation of this story and of my reasoning for posting the names, please check out my full article at Pandazing.net!

Be on the lookout for infamous pedophile and scourge of the blogosphere Jack McClellan.

Now that this has hit the local media (it was a top story on KATU at 5 o’clock), word is sure to spread fast. But if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to be on the lookout. Report any suspicious activity you may see him engaged in and be sure to keep your children away from this terrible, evil man. If he approaches your children, call 911 and report it. Do not trust him and do everything you can to avoid him.

AP Photo

It is my firm belief that he poses a direct and very real danger to every child in the greater Portland Metro area.

From Warriors for Innocence

Jack just posted again on his favorite pedophile message board. He’s announced that he’s decided to live in Portalnd[sic], Oregon because it’s “the biggest media market in Oregon” and he would feel safer there.

Jack originally wanted to live in Gold Beach. Kudos go to the Gold Beach Police who warned Jack that they’d be keeping a close eye on him. Jack immediately ran off crying and complaining about his “safety”.

Jack’s already up to his old tricks and bragging about it as well. He says he “already attended a big GL event in the area (The Oregon State Fair in Salem), and had a great time with no problems. There are several more GL events coming up this weekend that look promising, and I doubt I’ll be bored living here.”

Freedom of Speech is a great thing, but sometimes is just goes too far. I very much believe that such is the case with McClellan, who claims he’s never actually done anything ‘illegal’ with a child.

Again, if you live in the greater Portland area, be sure to tell all your friends and neighbors - especially those with young children - to be on the lookout for this evil, evil man. If you have a blog, post a warning and a link to Warriors for Innocence. Just do something, anything, to protect local children and to get this man locked up for as long as possible.

Special thanks to KATU, Texas Fred, and especially Warriors for Innocence.

Edit: Added photo

When it comes to viewpoints on major political issues in the United States and around the world, any number of factors – location, gender, income, Party Affiliation, class, education, interest, family, friends, and many others – can influence both how someone thinks and what they believe. That said, most people who visit politically orientated sites are going to be adults who are interested in politics and know what they believe. With a perspective like this, one can easily forget the interesting take that teens can put on issues – especially when they may not be fully aware of the background behind many of these major issues.

That said, I recently came across a selection of responses by a 10th grade American Studies class (not my class, but the same teacher I had) to questions regarding the first amendment and censorship.
I’ve decided to divide this up into three posts, each with a series of responses and my comments. This is a bit of an unusual series, but I was looking for something a little more whimsical than current events commentary.

The question for part one was simple:

Should the government be allowed to censor books, movies, or magazines? If so, what kind and why?

• “Government should have a clue about what is going on in the society, and try to stop it if it is inappropriate. It should not be as bad as it was in the Soviet Union, where the government censored whatever they pleased…”
• “I don’t really think so. They haven’t been doing it [to the] shows or movies I’ve seen, but id they did, I would wonder why.”
• “Yes… because a little innocent child should [not] read or watch explicit content without parental agreement.”
• “Yes… because this [explicit material] could cause societal and other types of problems.”
• “Yes… [but] only the sexual references… violence is OK.”
• “I think that the government should be allowed to prohibit a minor from buying a sexual book, movie, or magazine because it’s inappropriate for them. But I can’t find a really good reason to not let adults buy them and censor them completely.”
• “I think parents have the right and responsibility to censor what their kids see but I also believe that there should be a pre-limit on what is in the book or movie.”
• “The job is too big and too personal for [the] Federal Government, but the state government, as well as local community government, have the responsibility to protect people from obscenity.”
• “I think that they shouldn’t. I think this because kids are eventually going to see or hear explicit things. It’s that parent’s job to protect their kids from this type of material until their child is at a mature age? And with pornography, kids are required to go through a health class where you see all of that stuff anyway, just in a different form.”
• “No, because we’ve done fine up to this point and if someone doesn’t want to see pornography, then they don’t have to. People have their own ethics and views on what is too far, so the government doesn’t need to take action.”
• “The government should not be able to censor any type of media because it would be denying the first amendment. Our first amendment should be protected no matter what.”
• “No, the government shouldn’t. If someone is putting their time into making something and for an individual audience then the people who find something inappropriate shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

All in all, I’m happy with the responses and I think it shows that – for the most part – even tenth graders in my area are fairly well informed and ready to make sound political decisions in the future. There are a few responses, however, that I find just a bit amusing.

“Yes… because this [explicit material] could cause societal and other types of problems.”

This is perhaps the most dangerous of all the comments, simply because of the doors such a policy would open up. If we were to censor something simply because it might cause societal ‘problems,’ we’d hardly have any media left to enjoy – just about everything is going to cause some sort of problem, even if it’s so small as upsetting a person for something that is said.

“The government should not be able to censor any type of media because it would be denying the first amendment. Our first amendment should be protected no matter what.”

Perhaps a bit extreme, but definitely on the right track. In my opinion, only material which poses a real danger should be subject to any type of mandatory censorship. It is irresponsible to create a book with detailed steps and explanations on how to build an atomic bomb, but it is also irresponsible to censor a documentary about the history of such a weapon.

“I think that they shouldn’t. I think this because kids are eventually going to see or hear explicit things. It’s that parent’s job to protect their kids from this type of material until their child is at a mature age?”

This one hits my position almost spot on, placing the responsibility for protecting children from explicit content in the hands of parents, where it belongs. Although some (illegal) material must be censored, using the guise of ‘protecting our children,’ to censor disgusting and morally unacceptable materials is a violation of the First Amendment plain and clear.

Check back in the coming days for part two, dealing with what should be considered obscene and who should decide.

A bloodbath just south of the Mexican border has alarmed neighboring Arizona towns that have nervously monitored a rise in violence in the Mexican state of Sonora the past two months.

Mexican police killed 15 armed assailants in a fierce gun battle Wednesday after tracking a group that killed four policemen, leading to fears this morning that an armed outlaw convoy was headed to the U.S. border.

About 40 assailants apparently related to Mexico’s powerful drug gangs, drove in a convoy of up to 15 vehicles into the town of Cananea, 20 miles south of the U.S. border, to seize the policemen Wednesday. Mexican state police confronted the gunmen in the mountains 60 miles south of Cananea and reportedly killed 15 of the gunmen.

Source: WorldNetDaily

I’m really not sure what to say of this, but I guess it just goes to show further reasons that we need to be as careful as possible when it comes to border security and drug law enforcement. It seems to me that the best way to deal with these Mexican Drug Gangs would be to increase enforcement of our own laws and to more severely prosecute those who are caught smuggling drugs - or anything for that matter - across the border. Is that really too much to ask?

Then again, especially with Thursday’s travesty of an amnesty bill, I’m really not sure I have much faith left in our national leadership to make this happen. Even as Bush was pushing for immigration ‘reform’, I had confidence that the Republican congress would be smart enough to avoid it. When the Democrats took over, I was just about ready to start praying that they would never agree with Bush enough to get a bill through. Now that they all seem to agree, I guess the only option left is for public opinion to squash the bill - something I don’t see us having the power to do.

Yes, the proposed bill includes many security and enforcement procedures, but I refuse to accept any form on amnesty until every inch of the border is walled off with high fencing, barbed wire, and under video surveillance. Until every vehicle legally crossing is inspected and the cargo x-rayed, and until every police officer in the country is required to check immigration status when making an arrest. If all of this was done, then I’d be willing to discuss amnesty.

At the same time, I have to give props to the Senators for working out such a difficult agreement and, despite my many dislikes, making a number of important and needed reforms. Taking a look at the White House Fact Sheet, some of it actually looks decent.

• The plan establishes a merit based system for immigration, granting priority to the best of the best
• New English requirements and a push for greater assimilation
• An end to extended family (uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.) family migration benefits, which apparently account for nearly 2/3 of green cards issued
• Temporary worker program - although I don’t really support it, it seems like a good way to reduce future illegal immigration or at least track people - if we enforce the laws
• Increased sanctions on companies who hire illegal workers

Despite the good aspects, there are a few major things I still really want to see

• Recognition of English as the official language of the United States
• An end to the ‘birth right’ citizenship of the 14th amendment - you should be born a citizen if and only if one or both of your parents is a citizen
• Severe increases in the penalties for future illegal immigrants, including no-questions-asked deportation and a permanent bar from gaining a green card once that occurs, for both those who sneak in and those who overstay visas

If someone had a bill which included all that, I’d be ecstatic. Until then, down with amnesty and immigration ‘reform!’ Congress and President Bush, please give the American People what we want, don’t give in to illegals and huge corporations.

I’m a big fan of the approach that Lou Dobbs has taken to covering Illegal Immigration over the past few months and years - in fact I strongly believe he provides the most balanced coverage of the issue of any major news program - and I truly appreciate that fact. Now that he’s extensively criticizing the way most mainstream media handles the issue, I think he’s finally raising some issues that need to be raised. I’m not one to make predictions, but I hope others listen to him and stop the excessive appeasement of Illegal Aliens, the ACLU, and the Illegal Immigration Lobby.

That said, he has offered similar views in the past, but to see it in a concise and through segment is very pleasing. Among my favorite points:

“They’re selling an agenda. And they’re not applying critical judgment. And critical judgment and skepticism is our job as journalists. We’re talking about comprehensive immigration legislation as reform. We’re using the word ‘reform’ as if it were true. There’s no skepticism.”

Exactly. Calling what they want to reform is like calling a major heart attack or a ruptured cerebral aneurysm a ‘minor medical problem’ - it’s simply idiotic and everyone knows it.

And the fact that the president of the United States, the fact that the Congress of the United States, and the Democratic leadership, particularly in the Senate, could put this legislation before the American people — the Flake-Gutierrez bill, 700 pages of utter nonsense that, frankly, no one in Congress has read. But it’s an absurdity. It’s amnesty. It would cost this country a fortune. And for what? The issue is secure borders. The issue is not 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in this country. The issue is enforcing the law.

Any bill that needs 700 pages cannot be anything but nonsense. I bet more than half is pork and amnesty. Why can’t we have a bill to secure the border without amnesty or faulty funding?

We need immigrants in this country. That’s why we bring in more than two million. Has anybody over the past hour on this broadcast or this network reported, or any other network, reported that we bring in more than two million immigrants into this country lawfully each and every year? Has anybody on this broadcast, any news organization in the country, said, wait a minute, why in the world are we worrying about illegal immigration into this country and their — and their situation, before we’re worrying about how long it takes to become a lawful immigrant in to this country and what we’re doing with people who are playing by the rules? This is upside down. It’s wrongheaded. And it is simply, to me, a travesty that mainstream media journalists are not focusing on the facts.

I agree, we are a nation of immigrants and a healthy stream of immigrants is needed to maintain our status as the greatest nation on the planet. On that note, however, we don’t need millions of illegal aliens coming here and picking our fruit ro cooking our burgers - we need engineers and PhDs.

Check out the rest of the transcript (and a video clip) over at NewsBusters.org

A 76-year-old Jewish-Romanian lecturer was hailed a hero after blocking his classroom door long enough for many of his students to escape the Virginia Tech gunman, before being shot dead.

Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, pressed himself against the door of the classroom while shots were fired in the corridor and surrounding rooms. He stood firm, attempting to barricade the door, while his students clambered out of the windows.

His son, Joe Librescu, said in an interview from Tel Aviv that the professor e-mailed his wife to say that he had prevented the gunman getting into the classroom. However, the next e-mails received by the family were from students in the class informing them that Mr Librescu had not survived the shootings.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk

This article really got to me. The fact that a college professor was willing to risk - and as it unfortunately turned out, sacrifice - his life to help buy his students more time to escape is probably the most touching story to come out of this terrible tragedy.

In a world where ever so many college professors seem to be soulless monsters set on indoctrinating the youth of America, it’s truly amazing to see one who clearly cared for his students and was willing to take such risks to help protect them.

May God bless Liviu Librescu, all the victims, and their families.

Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, sacrificed his life to save his students

I honestly don’t know what to say about this one. The very idea that someone can have the heartless contempt for humanity and human life to engage in such a terrible act. At this point I’m not going to offer any analysis or try and politicize anything.

Thirty-two and the gunman dead. The worst single shooting, school or otherwise, in US history.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. May God bless.

Links:
Multiple Associated Press Articles
Virginia Tech Website
Wikipedia Article with many sources

It’s been yet another week and I’m again behind on my posting. I’ve decided to try something new this week, I’m offering a ‘news roundup’ of things I found interesting, important, and insightful. They are presented in no particular order.

Wisconsin Police Chief Writes Himself a Ticket

KEWASKUM, Wis. - Police Chief Richard Knoebel says he wasn’t about to take the easy way out when he accidentally drove past a stopped school bus with its emergency lights flashing.

For violating traffic laws, Knoebel wrote himself a ticket for $235, docked himself four points on his driving record and paid the fine the next day.

Yahoo! News

I applaud Mr. Knoebel and his actions. I’m sure that police are more honest and trustworthy than the general American population (not everyone, though, I’m making generalizations), but it’s still amazingly reassuring to see that he had the honesty and integrity to do what was right. I’m sure that he could just as easily have ignored his violation and gone on without a second thought. I wish I could say that this is indicative of a new moral and social direction in America, but I’m afraid it remains an outlier in the continuous decay that surrounds us.

Switzerland May Allow Assisted Suicide for the Mentally Ill

LAUSANNE, Switzerland: A ruling by Switzerland’s highest court has opened the possibility that people with serious mental illnesses could be helped by doctors to take their own lives.

Switzerland already allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients under certain circumstances but the Federal Tribunal’s decision, which was released on Friday, puts mental illnesses on the same level as physical ones.

International Herald Tribune

I see real problems with this on two fronts, one being the continuing decay of the importance and sanctity of human life, and the other being the fact that mentally ill patients are being allowed to make such decisions. If many mentally ill patients cannot even make decisions about their treatments, what position are they in to decide to end their lives?

Frankly, I just don’t get the idea of assisted suicide laws in the first place, and I find physician assisted suicide especially troubling - it is the role of doctors to work to protect and save their patients, not end their lives. I don’t really care if people decide that there lives are so terrible that they need to commit suicide, but at the point that there are laws that allow doctors to ‘help’ is just insane. And what is there to stop the slippery slip from assisted suicide (which is apparently now expanding) to mandatory euthanasia for seriously ill or elderly patients. I don’t like it one bit.

China to Censor Year of the Pig Commercials

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese state television will censor advertisements featuring pigs in order not to offend Muslims in the Year of the Pig, a media company said on Friday.

“Originally they didn’t want pig images in ads on TV, because they worry about conflicting issues with Muslims in China,” said Lisa Wei, managing director of media investment firm GroupM China Trading.

Yahoo! News

Personally, I find this terribly surprising and a sad reflection of the world we live in. While I can’t say that I care for the Chinese government or their rampant censorship policies, this just seems to be going off the deep end. I’m not even going to pretend to be an expert on China, but I’ve always had the impression that they at least ignore religion and often seem to actively suppress it - it seems very strange to me that they would thus censor for such a purpose. The other aspect that gets to me is the fact that the Chinese have a rich culture dating back 1000s of years. For a great many of these years, the zodiac system and lunar calendar have been essential - that they are censoring their own traditions to pacify Muslims is silly at best and cultural suicide at worst.

More than 120 People Killed in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with a ton of explosives hidden beneath cooking oil, canned food and bags of flour obliterated a Baghdad food market on Saturday, killing at least 121 people in one of the most fearsome attacks in the capital since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

It was the fifth major bombing in less than a month targeting predominantly Shiite districts in Baghdad and one provincial city to the south. This one leveled about 30 shops and 40 houses, witnesses said.

Yahoo! News

What is it with these terrorists?! When are they going to learn that killing innocent civilians (and your own people at that) is no way to get the support you need to make real change. I’m going to refrain from offering many comments on this, mainly because I just can’t understand why the terrorists perform such heinous acts and I have no ‘advice’ to offer. I just know that there is someone out there who can stop this, some way that it can be done, I’m just not sure who or how.

Teacher Fired over Suicide Bomber Comment

Andrew McLuskey was sacked from Bayliss Court Secondary School in Slough after a Religious Education lesson discussing the pros and cons of religion.

Pupils at the predominantly Muslim school claimed Mr McLuskey said most suicide bombers were Muslim.

BBC News

I’m not going to bother finding statistics for this one, but I’m confident enough to say that his comments were 100% accurate (that most suicide bombers are Muslim). I understand that the fact he teaches ar a mainly Muslim school (talk about the Islamification of Europe), but if the facts do support the statement, I see no justifiable grounds for letting the teacher go. I understand that the school likely wanted to create a ’safe’ environment free of ‘prejudice,’ but to fire a teacher over (seemingly) factual comments is insane and incomprehensible in my mind.

Again on a bit of a tangent, this situation highlights an interesting difference between British and American schools. In the United States even teachers of accused terrible crimes will almost always be put on ‘administrative leave’ for weeks or months before the school can even consider firing said teacher. In England, it seems, a few complaints about a teacher’s comments (even if they are seemingly truthful) and the teacher’s out the door faster than you can ask, ‘huh?’

German Preteen Gets Sex Change

A 12-year-old German boy who insisted he was a girl trapped in a boy’s body convinced his parents that something had to be done, so they agreed to allow him to receive a series of hormone injections, making him the youngest sex-change patient in the world, according to published reports Monday.

[…] Her treatment, which has cost more than $40,000, is being funded by German taxpayers.

FoxNews

This story comes straight from the ‘what in the world were they thinking’ department on multiple levels. I’m really not even sure where to begin, so I’ll go ahead with the most obvious to me.

What in the heck were they thinking. There is no way in the world that a twelve year old has the maturity, intelligence, and common sense to make such a life-altering decision. The very idea that this was ever allowed even makes me a bit nauseous. People are born with a specific gender for a reason, and to do something so disgusting and self-mutilating as ‘gender reassignment’ is a complete travesty to the moral and ethical values that lie at the basis of our society and culture. I am also appalled at the doctors for taking any part in such a disgusting act.

I realize that much of the scientific literature does not support my following contention, but I still firmly believe that virtually all of the diseases that deal with gender identity and sexuality are entirely psychological in nature and can be treated with the right combination of therepy and neurological medications. Until I see solid and repeated scientific evidence, I also refuse to believe that any of it is genetic.

In the whole scheme of things, some random Tim becoming Kim is not going to have any impact on me at all (beyond, perhaps, spawning a rant like this). But this is different, and if I was German, I’d be fuming mad and protesting the government right about now. Why? The $40,000 cost of Tim’s mutilation is being paid for by the German people, through their national health plan, and ultimately through their taxes. I’ve always thought that socialized medicine is nonsense, but this takes it to a new low. In some countries (Canada comes to mind), people have to wait days, weeks, or months for the medical care they need (perhaps to save their lives). Yet, at the same time, government funded health care is permanently disfiguring a young boy in Germany. Does anyone care to explain why this is a good thing? I guess that’s one more reason to avoid the Democrats in 2008.

Boston Bomb Scare

BOSTON — The CEO of a New York City-based marketing firm apologized for a publicity stunt that caused a bomb scare, saying the firm had acted quickly to try to resolve the problem.

[…] More than three dozen of the devices were installed around Boston weeks before authorities responded Wednesday. Authorities shut down highways, bridges and river traffic as bomb squads checked out the devices. There was barely a stir in nine other cities across the country where similar devices were placed.

NewsDay

I fully understand that authorities across the United States (and the entire world) have been very uptight and perhaps a bit jittery in recent years, but I just don’t see how LED signs can be confused for bombs. I understand that some of the locations they were placed could be considered targets for terrorist attacks, to nearly shut down the city over it was certainly an overreaction.

When it comes to punishment, I’m really not sure what should be done. Yes, the men placed very odd, clearly either littering or vandalizing signs around the city, but I believe them in that they had no criminal intentions and certainly did not intend to create a bomb scare. At the same time, I think that they (or the advertising agency) should be held somehow responsible for their actions, most likely in a financial manner (reimburse the police and other public safety costs) or perhaps community service, but not through prison time - we have bigger things to worry about. I also hope that this incident sends a message for any person or company considering an unusual or ‘creative’ marketing campaign, please try to avoid possible bomb scares.

I most definitely believe that there is a strong liberal bias in most of the major media, with Reuters and the AP really being no different than the television sources. On the other hand, I feel that many conservative bloggers will sometimes go a bit far when trying to make an established media outlet look bad.

Case in point, the following photograph from the Associated Press which is making its rounds on the web and being criticized along the way:
Read the rest of this entry »

News:
According to a report by Britain’s TimesOnline, officials from the Scotland Yard have come to the conclusion that the Polonium used to kill former KGB Agent Alexander Litvinenko cost more than $10,000,000. This staggering amount was actually more than ten times the lethal dose, and make it look more and more like the Russian Government was either involved or at least had some knowledge of the plot.

While the $10 million price tag could easily be footed by a unscrupulous businessman or organized terrorist organization, it would be very difficult for any entity not connected to, or at least allied with, a government or government official to obtain. As one British source put it: “You can?t buy this much off the internet or steal it from a laboratory without raising an alarm so the only two plausible explanations for the source are that it was obtained from a nuclear reactor or very well connected black market smugglers.”

Although little information is being released, mostly for diplomatic reasons, it also seems that there are heavy suspicions on two Russian businessmen, Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun, who met with Litvinenko in the weeks leading up to his death. Perhaps most incriminating of all, traces of Polonium have been found in places that they visited as early as October 16th, before the poisoning ever occurred.

Views:
If I were Vladimir Putin, I’d be sweating bullets right about now. I don’t care what the official explanations turn out to be: there is some connection to wither thew Russian Government or high ranking Russian officials, and perhaps the Russian President himself.

With the KGB being as scary, ominous, and corrupt an organization as it was back in the days of the Soviet Union, I am truly amazed that someone like Putin - former head of the KGB - could have ever been elected in the first place. Russia is a corrupt country, no doubt, but when you have former spy and secret police officials in positions of great power, problems are bound to occur - whether they mean to or not.

Surely, SOMEONE in the Russian administration must have known about or supported the plot. I simply don’t see how someone or some group acting without the help of an official could have pulled of such a dangerous.

The other question that this whole incident raises in my mind is just how safe and secure the United Kingdom’s borders are. I want to know how the Polonium was smuggled in and why nothing was done to stop it. Could this be the beginning of truly extensive use of radiation detectors? I don’t know, only time will tell.

What I really think this comes down to is the fact that there are going to have to be some major shakeups in Moscow. I’m not expecting Putin to step down or anything like that, but I have a gut feeling that someone is going to loose either his or his life over this whole fiasco. If it turns out to be the former, we’re going to get real answers; if its the later, than I’m not sure there’s ever going to be an answer.

Common Sense:
If you’re a Government official or prosperous businessman, stay out of assassinations and other terrorist-like operations: there is no good that can come out of it. If you’re a former spy for a corrupt former superpower, be extremely careful with what you say and do if you value your life.