Chicken Shit Ruleings

Welcome to the Chicken Shit award area of this site. This is a special area devoted to particularly baseless legislation, rulings, and clams concerning the issue of child sexual abuse.

Please keep in mind that in the U.S. nearly 16,000 children die every year as a result of the following: illegal firearms including suicide (5,000), traffic accidents that usually involve alcohol (9,000), and by their own parents (2,000). This compares to at most 50 due to sexual abuse. That's 1 sexual related death to every 320 needless other causes. Also, for every 1 child that is abused sexually, 14 suffer non-sexual abuse that is usually far more physically damaging. Finally, since only 20% of sex offenders are ever caught, and by far most offenders are family members or someone else close to the child, the laws prohibiting where convicted offenders may live are hopeless to do any good and simply give a false sense of security to those who buy into this as being needed. As strange as it may seem, passing a law that would remove all parents from their own children, would save countless more children from being abused than by outcasting sex offenders -- all of whom have paid their debt to society and most of whom will not reoffend. Lastly, most sex offenders are not predators anyway, and instead just did something silly or stupid to get themselves landed on a sex offender list.

The Chicken Shit Award is Bestowed Upon?	For	Comments
President Bill Clinton	Signing into law "Megan's Law"	Bill Clinton was otherwise a very good and accomplished president. However, a law that is based upon one incident is not statistically justified, and Megan's law brings much much more misery into the world than what it relieves, and is 100% unconstitutional. A law that requires mandatory sex education in schools in a way that engenders respect for women and for sexuality in general would be much better.
the Appellate Court of Illinois	Upholding the 2002 sex offence conviction of Fitzroy Barnaby when all he did was merely grab the arm of a 14 year old girl to chastise her for stepping in front of his car. "'The appellate court agreed it was 'unfair for [Barnaby] to suffer the stigmatization of being labeled a sex offender when his crime was not sexually motivated,' however it sided with the state's attorney who argued it is 'the proclivity of offenders who restrain children to also commit sex acts or other crimes against them.'"	So, even though the court agreed that Barnaby was not guilty of any sexual misconduct or even intent, they just decided to uphold the conviction and sexual registration requirement anyway because real sex offenders often restrain children and Barnaby has to be made an example. He's not guilty, but we don't care. whew! Too much fluoride in the water in Illinois?
The United States Supreme Court	. a 2003 ruling that a broad-brush approach is perfectly legal which does not distinguish between hard-core predators and people who may show little risk for committing future crimes, such as those convicted of a having a relationship with an underage partner.	The U.S. Supreme Court couldn't care less about the severity of the crime. There is no problem with states publicizing low-risk offenders with high-risk offenders, ruining all their lives equally. I guess this is their idea of equal rights.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy	Supporting legislation denying convicted sex-offenders the opportunity to prove they are no longer a threat and petition to have their names removed from registries. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said: "Our system does not treat dissemination of truthful information in furtherance of legitimate governmental objection as punishment." And Kennedy noted, "The purpose and the principal effect of notification are to inform the public for its own safety, not to humiliate the offender."	That fact that it does humiliate and ruin the life of the person is of no concern to Kenney Who cares what the effect is as long as we can claim a good purpose.. As the dissenting opinion written by the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says: "However plain it may be that a former sex offender currently poses no threat of recidivism, he will remain subject to long-term monitoring and inescapable humiliation."
The United States Supreme Court	... upholding the Alaska Sex Offender Registration Act as being nonpunitive, its retroactive application does not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. The Court decided 6-3 that legislature's intent was to create a civil, nonpunitive program to protect the public and that the resulting dissemination of the registration information was not significant enough to declare as debilitating.	The dissenting justices held that the law was punitive and imposed severe deprivations of liberty. "It is also clear beyond peradventure that these unique consequences of conviction of a sex offense are punitive. They share three characteristics, which in the aggregate are not present in any civil sanction. The sanctions (1) constitute a severe deprivation of the offender's liberty, (2) are imposed on everyone who is convicted of a relevant criminal offense, and (3) are imposed only on those criminals. Unlike any of the cases that the Court has cited, a criminal conviction under these statutes provides both a sufficient and a necessary condition for the sanction." Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion

Congressman Bobby Scott: "Once you're on this list, I'm mean you're on the list as a sexual offender and what we've heard is that can be counter productive because once you're on a publically accessible registry your life is pretty much shot." Now is being on a public sex offender registry just regulatory or is it punitive? Mere regulations do not destroy people's lives.