Bigotry and Fear. Two items.
+
Anti-Catholic Bias. The Associated Press reports that:

A federal judge in Texas ruled Thursday that Pope Benedict XVI enjoys immunity as a head of state and removed him from a civil lawsuit accusing him of conspiracy to cover up the sexual abuse of minors by a seminarian.

America Online's version of the story included a poll of readers' reactions:

Should the Pope be immune from a trial alleging sex-abuse and a subsequent cover-up?
No: 64%
Yes: 28%
Unsure: 8%
Total Votes: 29,422

This pretty closely matches the proportion of non-Catholics (mainly Protestants) to Catholics in the United States today and suggests that anti-Catholic bigotry is alive and well in the United States. (The CIA World Factbook 2005 gives the religious breakdown of the U.S. as "Protestant 52%, Roman Catholic 24%, Mormon 2%, Jewish 1%, Muslim 1%, other 10%, none 10% (2002 est.)".)
+
Anti-"papist" Protestants assert a right to sue a man 6,000 miles away, across an ocean, in a separate country, for supposed sexual wrongdoing of some individual in Texas whom the Pope knew nothing about. Craziness.
+
There is also a lot of self-righteous idiocy about "victims" of "molestation" and other forms of sex in this country. The United States retains a public puritanism that causes most people in the industrialized world to look down upon Americans as prudish, hypocritical bumpkins. Our media are filled with sex, but our laws and public pronouncements on sex are priggish. Can you say "hy-poc-ri-sy"?

The three boys [in the Houston case], identified in court documents as John Does I, II and III, allege that a Colombian-born seminarian on assignment at St. Francis de Sales church in Houston, Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, molested them during counseling sessions in the church in the mid-1990s.

The mid-1990s. They didn't complain about it then, it seems, but only now, when thousands of long-silent "victims", some of them involved in years-long consensual affairs with priests and teaching brothers, have dollar signs dancing in their eyes. They not only get to have had sex — which public pronouncements in this society seem to think is a horrible, horrible thing everyone would rather die than do, but which essentially all men and boys crave desperately and pursue aggressively — but they also get to be paid for it! What do you call someone who has sex for money, again? Oh, yes: prostitutes. Unlike the case with your typical street hooker, however, the identity of these "victims" is hidden from public view, while the name of the alleged "criminal" is exposed to the entire Nation.
+
I recently served on a grand jury that once a month heard cases brought forward by the Sex Crimes Unit of the county prosecutor's office — an office that is apparently far too large and has much too much time on its hands. It brought some ridiculous cases before us, but the hypocritical, puritanical jurors indicted on every single one of them, including the most preposterous: a young woman known to like group sex downed six shots of Hennessy cognac and six Corona beers in order to get herself drunk enuf to lower her inhibitions about group sex, then went off to a motel with three guys and gladly participated in an orgy. One of the male participants at one point took her cellphone camera and took a video — which we had to view! yuch! — of some of this activity and left the camera with her as a souvenir. They offered to take her home right after, but she wanted to sleep in. The next day she saw the video and decided a while later to mention the videotaping incident to her father, who insisted she file charges against the men.
+
The young men, when contacted by the police, openly admitted to the acts but said they were completely consensual. Advised by the police that they were entitled to have an attorney present, they said they didn't need one because this was absolutely consensual; the girl was known to like group sex; they had done it with her before; and the only difference this time is that someone videotaped it. The video was shown to no one outside the group, so her 'reputation', such as it is, was not adversely impacted and she was not thereby subjected to public disapproval. (Quite the contrary, it is only her insistence (or her father's insistence) on pressing charges that caused that video to be seen by strangers.)
+
In preparing the evidence for prosecution, the police tested her (two days after the event) for alcohol and drugs, to try to make a case that she was incapable of consent. They found no residual alcohol, but did find traces of marijuana!
+
In the grand-jury discussion after the evidence was presented, I said that the 'victim' was obviously a wild child who was fully a participant in a consensual group activity. But the stupid, shocked-little-girl jurors said "They took advantage of her" and voted an indictment.
+
I am so tired of whores posing as innocents, of women asserting a right to change their mind even after they have completed a consensual sexual encounter, charge their partners as "attackers", and prosecute. Now, men are to understand — which of course no one knows — that not only does "No mean no" but "Yes also means no"! We really need a men's-rights movement to blast this conspiracy of hypocritical lies out of the water. Men admit that they do things from lust. Why can't women?
+
It would seem the only legally safe sex men can have nowadays is with other men. Any woman can turn on any male partner and accuse him of sexual assault at any time, and police with nothing better to do will investigate, district attorneys with time on their hands will prosecute, and stupid, hypocritical losers on grand juries will indict. Let's hope judges and petit juries will show more honesty and integrity, and end the persecution of men by acquittal.
+
"Terrorism" Nonsense. I have been trying to get permission to take photos inside the distinguished Old Essex County Courthouse here in Newark, and have been hassled by police for trying to take pictures of buildings on public streets, privately owned as well as publicly owned. One reply, from the City of Newark, denied my request with this rationalization:

Unfortunately, after Newark was put on "alert" the taking of photographs of government and private office buildings has been restricted.

To obtain pictures of the buildings you mention below, you might find photos online at government and private websites such as: www.gonewark.com. [My photos are better than theirs, and in any event, I have the right to take my own photos.]

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Make that 'sorry for taking away long-established, traditional rights of citizens to take photographs in public'. What a bunch of useless, worthless cowards Americans are. The Government claims that the-bogeyman-will-get-us-if-we-don't-watch-out, and Americans will buy it. They will lay down all their rights to be "safe", even if they were never in danger to begin with.
+
There has been no — repeat, no — terrorist attack in Newark, New Jersey, ever. Not ever, in its 339-year history. Not one. But tourists and website developers are to be restricted as to the photos they can take on our public streets. What inexcusable nonsense.
+
It's time to strike the phrase "the home of the brave" from our national anthem.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,163.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:56 AM