Background investigation release form

[greymule]

http://www.state.nj.us/njsp/info/reg_sexoffend.html

The link above is for the New Jersey sex offender registry. It gives names and mugshots of 2,173 sex offenders in New Jersey, as well as 41 fugitives. I do not know exactly what criteria get somebody listed, and obviously not every offender is known.

The lists also includes names of people who are incarcerated. However, it does not contain the name of Jesse Timmendequas, who is on death row at the moment. (It was his crime that prompted the politicians to pass Megan's law.) However, I see that a Paul Timmendequas made the list. Since that name is hardly common, I suspect it's a relative.

I looked through a lot of mugshots, but I did not recognize any umpires.

In a strange coincidence, considering what we've been talking about, on Saturday night there was a home invasion a few miles south of me, near the College of New Jersey. Three guys broke into a house, beat up and robbed a 58-year-old wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet, and forced him to call his wife and another woman and have them come home, where the three "sexually attacked" (newspaper's term) the women. When the criminals left, they took one of the women with them and ended up throwing her out of the car onto the street adjacent to the park where I do 30-40 games a summer. (Nobody has yet been apprehended.)

Update: The paper this morning says the police have caught one of the perps. He's a 16-year-old member of the Bloods. The veteran is to be released soon from the hospital after treatment for a "savage beating about the head and face."

[IRISHMAFIA]

Originally Posted by greymule

http://www.state.nj.us/njsp/info/reg_sexoffend.html

The link above is for the New Jersey sex offender registry. It gives names and mugshots of 2,173 sex offenders in New Jersey, as well as 41 fugitives. I do not know exactly what criteria get somebody listed, and obviously not every offender is known.

Not a big fan of Megan's Law, either. It is intrusive, is a complete slap in the face of any correctional system's existing mantra of rehabilitation and, worst of all, make no allowance for exceptions.

Another government-supported, Gestapo-like tactic to placate the unknowing masses. I'll see if I can find it, but there was a blurb in the USAToday a couple months ago where a 12yo boy was convicted on a sex-crime charge because he grabbed a girl of similar age's rear end.

After the conviction, it was noted that, by law, this 12yo was required to register as a sex offender.

HELLO...Hello...hello? IS THERE ANYBODY IN THERE?

[greymule]

make no allowance for exceptions

Government uses a club, not a scalpel. Jeffrey Dahmer? Sex offender. Twelve-year-old who grabs a girl's rear end? Sex offender.

Guy caught with a trunk full of smuggled fully automatic weapons? Firearms violator. Guy has a trigger guard a quarter inch too narrow on the shotgun grandpa gave him 20 years ago? Firearms violator.

Incidentally, if that 12-year-old kid has to register as a sex offender, then so should more than half the male population of the United States, including a significant portion of the Congress and more than one former President.

[Dakota]

Originally Posted by greymule

make no allowance for exceptions

Government uses a club, not a scalpel. Jeffrey Dahmer? Sex offender. Twelve-year-old who grabs a girl's rear end? Sex offender.

Guy caught with a trunk full of smuggled fully automatic weapons? Firearms violator. Guy has a trigger guard a quarter inch too narrow on the shotgun grandpa gave him 20 years ago? Firearms violator.

Incidentally, if that 12-year-old kid has to register as a sex offender, then so should more than half the male population of the United States, including a significant portion of the Congress and more than one former President.

... and the entire male population of Italy

Incidentally, (to mcrowder and others who take the position that signing the form is harmless since it is not actually required to gain access to the same information) there is a big difference (as a matter of principle) between me giving someone permission to discover personal information and them doing it anyway. There is a big difference (as a matter of principle) between something being legal and something being right. There is a big difference (as a matter of principle) between something being declared constitutional by a specific set of 9 members of the black-robed priesthood and something being actually allowed under a plain reading of the constitution. Defending our liberty is not a one-time event but a continuing battle.

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this
ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States or to the people." [10th Amendment]
To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn
around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless
field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."

"Experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms [of
government], those entrusted with power have, in time and by
slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

"In a free country, every power is dangerous which is not bound
up by general rules."

"The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body,
like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming
advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is
engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of
that which feeds them."

"It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it."

--Thomas Jefferson

Obviously we are well beyond the single step Mr. Jefferson feared.

[bigsig]

Jefferson owned slaves didn't he?

[LMan]

Originally Posted by bigsig

Jefferson owned slaves didn't he?

Yes, but not one of them failed a background check.

[Dakota]

Originally Posted by bigsig

Jefferson owned slaves didn't he?

When one resorts to character attacks, one obviously has no response to the actual issue at hand or is conceding the debate on the issues. Most modern politicians are very good at this kind of "debate" and the Clinton Administration raised it to a high art form.

[greymule]

Jefferson owned slaves didn't he?

Yes. There was slavery on the North American continent when Jefferson lived. There was also slavery everywhere else in the world except Europe, which didn't need it since it had a feudal system that accomplished the same thing. Slavery still exists in, among other places, Africa and the Arab world. So it turns out that America actually was among the very least offenders when it came to slavery.

Though the founders of the country had neither the political nor the military power to abolish slavery, Jefferson helped create a Constitution that was instrumental in ending it.

While we're bashing Jefferson, let's remember that he

a. did nothing to advance the cause of gay rights
b. nominated no women, blacks, or Latinos either to his cabinet or to the U.S. Supreme Court
c. did nothing to protect the rain forest or reduce carbon dioxide emissions
d. favored the death penalty
e. saw nothing wrong with prayer in school
f. created no government agency to protect workers from environmental hazards on the job
g. is not on record for ever having supported any labor union
h. believed in God
i. helped found a nation that has become the envy of the world, and crafted the principles that have produced wealth and liberty beyond anything that anyone had dreamed of in his lifetime

Yeah. What a rat.

[bigsig]

Originally Posted by Dakota

When one resorts to character attacks, one obviously has no response to the actual issue at hand or is conceding the debate on the issues. Most modern politicians are very good at this kind of "debate" and the Clinton Administration raised it to a high art form.

Tom,

Perhaps I was being too subtle and that’s what caused you to miss the point. Jefferson, revered and quoted earlier as the person who helped define these great concepts of freedom and privacy in our Constitution, lived in a time when it was perfectly acceptable for him to own slaves. (It’s not character assignation if it’s true). Obviously a despicable and abhorrent concept by today’s standards and clearly interpreted as Unconstitutional. The point is times change, and the interpretation of the Constitution changes based on societies values at the time.

Technology has made it possible to access all kinds of public information today that wasn’t even dreamed of 20 years ago. THAT DOESN’T LESSON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PEOPLE WHO ACCESSS THIS INFORMATION TO DO THE RIGHT THING! But to say no one should have access to that data is like saying we should ban certain books, or not have security cameras, or not xray people’s private luggage. You have the freedom of speech, but it doesn’t give you the right to scream fire in a crowded theatre. You have the right of privacy, but it doesn’t supersede the publics’ right to security or the protection of a child.