GOP Brain-Trust University’s Law School Dean Pleads Guilty to Child Sex Abuse

I was going to make a witty remark and then I read this:

This piece of shit apparently sexually abused girls at the Hope Haven Childrens’ Home, an alleged shelter in Norfolk, VA for kids from disrupted families, between August 1996 and August 2000, when he and his wife were engaged as ‘house parents’ in the facility.

and then I couldn’t read any further.

Cut his fucking dick off and then, while it’s still bleeding out, cover his balls in honey and set a swarm of bees and wasps on him. After they’re done with him, drown what’s left in vinegar and let the kids finish him off with aluminum bats weighted down with rusty nails.

If Dickface W. can conduct DOJ purges, so can Unicorn. It is time for the ritual cleansing of the DOJ of every unclean Regent University grad. Ever.

I’m too disgusted to even give a rating on the Vitter/Craig scale. What a piece of shit.

And I’m hoping all the Regent grads have been purged or soon will be.

Generally, I don’t like tasers, the idea of them, or their use, much.

That said….attach the electrodes to his bits and let ‘er rip.

Let’s hope that this is the epitaph for Regent (I suspect not.)

It’s looking more and more that being a Regent edumak8td lawya is akin to defending yourself in court with added Pedophilia.

“I pitied the one who had no lawyer till I met the one who PAID for a lawya from Regent.”

@Signal to Noise: @Jamie Sommers: A chair, a roll of duct tape, a baseball bat. God will smile when his teeth stick the wall behind him. Let’s hope they put him in a nice big supermax filled with neonazi serial killers.

A fundie could always argue he didn’t do it–the demons that possessed him did it. A good exorcism and a hefty payout to the kids’ families should take care of it. In any case, when a child raper like him goes to prison he should check straight into protective cusody. Stay out of the general population or else he’ll find out exactly what sexual penetration really is. Repeatedly.

For his guilty plea to four felonies the prosecution withdrew NINE more felony charges. The administration of Regent University seems absolutely certain that everything they do is by divine guidance. I’d definitely have to bet on this criminal to be the first to break down crying on his first night in prison since he really believes that God dumped him there.

I wouldn’t paint every alum of dear old Regent U with the same sickening brush as this guy. That said, I think every management-level person in federal service, specifically including the military, should be required to take a polygraph test that asks if the well-being of this nation is a higher priority than advancing any religious belief. That is after all the point of the oath every federal employee has sworn. Anybody who can’t pass the test is free to become a missionary for the religious organization of their choice but can no longer work for the taxpayers of this country.

There should be an immediate probe into every one of these Regent asswipes who were given career positions by the criminals formerly in charge of Justice.

PS — what’s with the sudden proliferation of red-headed birds in people’s gravatars? Does this have something to do with sport?

I don’t fucking know what the fuck to say

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/28/wall-street-wives-and-gir_n_161573.html

@Pedonator:

Those are cardinals, and I understand that they are the mascot for a baseball team or something. Maybe basketball, I’m not sure. They don’t do it in skin-tight outfits like gymnastics or diving so I never watch.

@Dave H:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

-United States Constitution, Article VI, section 3

I like your idea, but if I were a civil rights lawyer I would jump all over it using the part of the constitution quoted above. Unfortunately, if we want freedom to believe what we believe, then we have to give it to fascist asshats as well.

@ManchuCandidate:

“Free from the scrutiny of feminists…”

I love that. IT”S A BLOG, YOU IDIOTS! THEY DON”T CALL IT THE WORLD-WIDE WEB FOR NOTHING!

TJ: In other GOP pervert news, “the Justice Department is investigating the CIA station chief in Algeria for allegedly slipping drugs into two Muslim women’s drinks and then raping them, ABC News reports. Officials have discovered more than a dozen secretly recorded videotapes of the CIA officer engaging in sex with various women, including one in which an alleged victim appears to be “semi-conscious.” Investigators are concerned that the station chief may have committed similar crimes while stationed in Egypt, as well.”

@ManchuCandidate: I say “slap on Supreme Beings of Leisure doing “Golddigger”!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA_kEVq8VwU

“what’s with the sudden proliferation of red-headed birds in people’s gravatars?”

So who’s gonna do the “I got my red-headed bird right here to show you” blast?

@Mistress Cynica: including one in which an alleged victim appears to be “semi-conscious.”

One was “semi-conscious”? Implying the others were out cold? Is this CIA station chief a necrophiliac as well as a rapist?

I’m gonna tentatively give this one seven diapers, which includes a special diaper for engaging in the type of behavior most guaranteed to enrage Muslims and inspire jihadi Terrrists.

TJ: Ted Haggard is on Oprah.

@FlyingChainSaw: sounds delightful.

@Pedonator: @Mistress Cynica:

I don’t get it. What is sexy about having to drug somebody to sleep with you? How do you even get off on that? It’s like paying someone for sex…how is that hot? I would just be embarrassed.

Incidentally, we should automatically assume that someone in the CIA is a Republica…oh, ok, I couldn’t get through that with a straight face. Of course he is.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: There are some surprisingly liberal folks in the Agency, or at least were. Google “Ray McGovern”, he’s the bomb.

ADD: Oh, and this fundie asswipe? Bundle him off with all the ex-Gitmo hardcores on Alcatraz

@Signal to Noise:

Also, Blago is on Rachel’s radio program. Apperently he’s the “Anti-Nixon”. Huffpo has the full video.

@Signal to Noise: If he wants to prove he is a regular guy, he needs to tit-fuck Oprah and give her a pearl necklace. Then bury his face in her snatch while the credits roll and the camera crew puts a macro lens close up on her nips to see if she is enjoying it.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Actually, if he plays it along the lines of ‘prove I took a dime, asshole! Fuck you!’ he may just survive this. They haven’t proven he profited yet. Best he be as obnoxious as possible and give press conferences every day in which he shouts, ‘Hey, Fitz, suck my fucking dick, asshole. Prove a took a fucking dime to place an asshole in Obama’s worthless fucking seat. Fuck you!’ He could have his own reality show.

@FlyingChainSaw:

He does have his own reality show. They call it “Mainstream Media”.

@FlyingChainSaw: he almost went in for what I thought was a motorboat, but it turned out to be a handshake. Disappointing.

@Signal to Noise: Wazza motorboat?

Raping children –> death penalty
Raping at-risk children –> death penalty by rotisserie
While I am usually across-the-board opposed to the death penalty because I don’t believe the state should have the power to kill its citizens, there are times that I fantasize about people like this bastard being put down in the most inhumane way possible.

Regent Story: So, there’s this corporation (or criminal enterprise) called the LSDAS that administers the LSAT and acts as a clearing house for undergrad transcripts and letters of recommendation, and they charge you to take the LSAT and to send out results, said letters and transcripts to the law schools you’d like to attend. Several times a year, all over the country, they have these big events where law school applicants and admissions representatives and alums from law schools get together to learn a little more about each other. And the LSDAS people give talks about financing a legal education and shit like that.

The year before I applied to law school, the local shingdig was held at the Mayflower hotel in DC, and I had my dad come along with me for the day. It was a good thing he was there, too, because the schools give you a shitload of materials about why you should send your $50 or $75 with your application to their school — I’m sure the whole admissions thing is a big money maker for the schools.

So, we’re in this ballroom where all the schools have tables lined up upon which they’re displaying their shit, and my dad is following me around carrying all the stuff I pick up, kind of like a good boyfriend totes your bags at the mall.

At this point of my life, I was in a Kaplan course to try to rock out the LSAT, my undergrad GPA was pretty good, and my practice exam scores were making it look like I might actually be considered by a Fancy Pants law school. It was unnerving. I mean, whether it’s right or wrong, whether school rankings merit the attention they receive or not, whether the system is rigged to favor wealthier schools are all important questions and there are many great arguments as to why people should just ignore the US News and World Report and other rankings. But the reality is that in the legal field, maybe more than any in other, your law school follows you, and its rank is important to many key decision makers, even if all the evidence points to the fact that it shouldn’t.

So (yes, again with the so), I’d been consumed by the rankings, much to my embarrassment then and now, and more than knowing where I wanted to go, I knew where I didn’t. While I was chatting up the admissions people at some school, Dad did some scouting of his own and came back with an armful of stuff from Regent.

Dad: JNOV, I really think you need to check this Regent place out.

Me: It’s not on my list, Dad. I’m really not interested in them.

Dad: But JNOV, the people are really nice, and I told them about your practice exam scores and your GPA, and they really want to talk to you. I think you should swing by their table.

Me: Dad, I’m really not interested in Regent. Let’s go over here.

Dad: But JNOV, I told them I’d bring you by, and they’re in Virginia Beach — I’d love to come visit you in Virginia Beach.

Me: Dad. Please. I’d rather not go. There are plenty of other people I’d like to talk to, and they’re not on my list. I know you love VA Beach, but really, Daddy, is that any reason to choose a school?

fin

Then there’s the mind fuck he laid down on me when I found out I got into Boalt (basically he didn’t believe the dean of admissions had called me personally to give me the news and thought a friend of mine was playing a joke on me. Had me second-guessing myself until I got the actual letter in the mail. Bastard. Oh, and then there’s the, “Wouldn’t you rather be first in your class at Widener rather than last in your class at Stanford?” Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad!). I have self-esteem issues for a reason, People.

TJ: US Attorney in L.A. is investigating our own Cardinal Mahoney for his actions during the church child sex abuse scandal. I don’t think the theory is that he was diddling children, but that he sort of orchestrated the diddling by others and then covered it up. WWJD?

@Dodgerblue: Pope Pimp Mahoney?

@JNOV: I wouldn’t mock you, but is it OK if I mock Stanford football and basketball?

@FlyingChainSaw: Well, if you keep moving the pieces around the board, it’s harder for the victims to find the perps. He paid $660 million to settle 500 or so abuse claims, not that that’s an admission of any kind of guilt or remorse or anything. In my view, this is orders of magnitude worse than a single sicko abusing little girls. It was systemic.

@Dodgerblue: White Punks on Dope by the Stanford Band is a modern classic. Who cares about the sports when you have charts like that.

@FlyingChainSaw: yeah, love the band. They can stay.

@Dodgerblue: Same thing happened in the east. The church had a ‘treatment center’ of some sort in Baltimore for guys who were ass raping little boys. They knew. The planned for it. They budgeted for it. They moved the guys around to acquire fresh victims. If that is not a continuing criminal enterprise, I don’t know what the fuck is.

@Dodgerblue: Mock away!

How many Stanford grads does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, because the rest of the world revolves around her.

@FlyingChainSaw: Yeah, imagine if some kiddie porn collectors arranged something like that. They’d be in the federal pen in a month. But an 1900 year-0ld church, well, OK.

@JNOV: What you said.

Ok, the kiddie-diddling is a major down-er.

/off topic/

Here’s the answer to a question no one’s ever asked: Are there Russian LOLcats (that’s ROLcats, comrades) with appropriately horrifying and hilarious English translated captions?

Answer: Of course!!

http://rolcats.wordpress.com/

For example: “Where re-education has failed my comrade, the hangman’s noose will succeed…”

and

“Bask in your Western accoutrement, Romanov harlot…

I prepare your final resting place, as your overfed corpse will make a fine fertilizer for my potato crops.”

and also:

“My iodine rations are depleted!

Come nightfall I will leave Pripyat forever and make for the verdant hills of Dnipropetrovsk!”

(smacks forehead)

That’s just what I was thinking!

@FlyingChainSaw: put your face between the tits and and shake. Should sound like a….well….motorboat.

@Dodgerblue: trouble at the Taj Mahony!

@JNOV: My grandfather went to Boalt. Tiny world.

@IanJ: Boalt is a kickass school, and it was a big deal to get in because it was the first year the CA Regents were legally obliged to stop using affirmative action considerations in admissions. I’m not going to lie — when I showed up at schools’ tables with my brown face, they practically orgasmed. But I had great ambivalence about checking any boxes on my applications. In the end, I did, and I’m certain that affirmative action played a role in me getting into some of the places that admitted me. But I also had other things going for me that helped them make up their minds that this hood rat from a bad part of Philly should get a chance.

@Dodgerblue: Are those twins still playing ball for Stanford? The Rodriguez (?) twins? Or did they go pro?

@nabisco: They were gone by the end of Reagan’s second term. You ever read UnClassified, edited by David MacMichael?

@JNOV: YAHOOOO! Your not just back, You are BACK! I am so happy!

@JNOV: the Lopez boys are long gone from Palo Alto. One plays in Jersey, the other in Phoenix.

@FlyingChainSaw: I cannot do this justice, this topic. You see, a law firm that I might have theoretically worked for, was defending a church that some say was harboring pedophile priests, and I got to read the transcripts of the depositions of several Bishops, and also, I got to read some materials which were discovered, which consisted of correspondence, snail mail, between several priests.

Deeply conflicting emotions. First, the correspondence between these pedo priests, they wrote letters to each other, about alter boys they were screwing, and about prospects they hoped to screw, how they planned to get this or that boy away on a retreat, about their tactics to entice, to seduce, the boys. It starts with “counseling” them about their new and strange feelings of sexuality, masturbation, etc. Then the trick was to get them alone, and the line was that these feelings were normal. “You are feeling strange feelings when you look at girls, thats normal, do you touch yourself when you think of these things? Here’s a playboy, look at that, is that making you feel these things?” Then you give them alcohol, and continue, “wanna watch a movie, to see what this sex thing is about?” Then encourage them to masturbate, tell them its alright, everyone does it, they leave out that most don’t do it with their priest.

And I actually read a letter from one priest to another in which the first priest was promising to bring along a boy to a retreat the second priest was going to be at, and the first priest was bragging about how well he had the boy trained, offering to share him, telling the other guy how good the boy was in the sack. Oh yes.

On the other side, I read what were basically the church’s “employee files” on these priests. Memos written after counseling sessions, performance reviews which specifically mentioned that they had problems with fucking little boys. The people writing these memos were seriously, I believe, well-meaning, and they were amazingly intelligent, aware, and well-versed in psychology and everything about what was going on, they understood, they were not callous, it was not that they condoned it, they thought, I think, that they were doing all they could to stop it. Their perception was that it was a mental health issue, that these pedophiles were sick. They sent them off to pedophile rehab, they got reports from psychologists, and they did put them in positions where they would not have access, at least they tried. On the moral, spiritual side, they were, well, I will put it this way, the church has all these sexual morality rules, but really, in the catholic church, sexual transgressions are not considered serious mortal sins, its considered part of the fallen state of man, sin is unavoidable, and always forgiven. In some way, it was an enlightened view, forgiveness, and hope that people would reform.

The crime was, of course, not reporting the crimes.

Those files blew my mind, completely. I can still hardly believe what I read, its worse than has been reported, there is a reason they settle, the testimony in this case, if it ever went to trial, would have been so explosive.

The people dealing with the issue, they knew what the problem was, they knew, the celibacy doctrine had made it impossible to recruit priests, no american catholics wanted to become a priest anymore, as opposed to 60 years ago, when having a child become a priest was the ultimate for a catholic family. They knew that they were dealing with damaged goods, and that if they threw them all out, there would be noone left.

It was all so strange.

@Promnight:
The World Wide Church learned from the mess in Newfoundland and other places in Canada City where the stories exploded in the mid 80s when the Church opted to fight it in court.

@ManchuCandidate: In any bureaucracy, the middle managers aren’t going to go running up and screaming to their bosses, “Hey, I have this huge problem in my Diocese,” the bureaucratic response is always to contain the damage and try to prevent knowledge of it from going higher. I don’t know what they knew and what they didn’t. I do know from the transcripts of the Bishops, that they were not stupid, nor were they callous, they were really amazingly perceptive about much of it, but they had a worldview completely different from that of you or I.

A large part of it, I will say this fearing a reaction, is that they kinda hid behind a very liberal view of sexual “perversions,” a purely medical view, that considered these things to be not criminal acts, but cases of a mental illness that needed treatment. And they sent them for treatment, it just never worked. But to read what the Bishops said, they discussed it all clinically, the same way Kinsey would have discussed it, the same way Kinsey, for example, discussed the prevalence of bestiality among the red (pigfucking” states.

Seriously, their response was very scientific, clinical, and completely rooted in a very progressive view that these behaviors are the product of mental illness, that they were medical and psychological issues, not criminal issues.

@Promnight: I read awful stuff every day – not nearly as awful as that, but pretty bad. Isn’t it amazing what people will write down? Even more amazing that they’ll use their company email to do it.

@blogenfreude: There is a single important item of DEEP TRUTH in the movie “Risky Business.” It is when the actor I only remember as “Booger” from “Revenge of the Nerds,” says to Tom Cruise, “If you can’t say it, you can’t do it, Joel.”

Its a powerful, true, and important fact that should be seriously taken into account more often than it is.

If you can’t say it, you can’t do it. So, if they are doing it, they have no problem saying it, thats why the suprise we feel reading what they wrote. We would nevber write those things because we would never do them.

The military knows it, you get young men talking about killing people all the time, during an intense indoctrination program, and then when they have to kill people, they can do it, they have been saying it so long.

And what, I wonder, are movies and video games with glorified murder and crime, rape and violence, are doing , in that they encourage people to “say it.”

@FlyingChainSaw: I think Ray was doing PDBs for Poppy, but I get your point. The old guard are royally pissed with the Bush leaguers.

@nabisco: Old Guard in the agency, in State, let me into your code, please?

@Promnight: They send any of those assholes out to Jemez Springs, New Mexico? They had a “treatment center” there called “the Servants of the Paraclete”. A women’s religious community there was called “the Handmaidens of the Precious Blood”. I think they worked at the home for dirty priests.

@JNOV: I applied to one law school, New Mexico, because there was good trout fishing 45 minutes from town. Seriously.

@redmanlaw: I don’t remember the name, but I swear I do remember that the main perp was sent somewhere in New Mexico for 6 months for “treatment.”

@Original Andrew: Dnipropetrovsk’s verdant hills are totally my next vacation destination.

Also, intrepid investigators should check out the links between Mädchen-raper Steve-O and Michele Bachmann. They share more than krazy-eyes: Michele’s husband is a graduate of…Regent University. And he runs a Christian counseling center. I wonder if any of the traumatized young girls, after being violated, were shunted off to the Bachmann Christian Home for Wayward Youth for “rehabilitation”?

@Promnight: That’s us. We were a dumping ground and way station for them kid rapers.

To continue on my train of wild unfounded speculation:

Does the main doctrinal difference between Catholic and Evangelical flavors of crazy Sky-Bully worship turn out to be the way they deal with their kid-touching tendencies?

Could it be that, while the Papists prefer to cover their tracks by shuffling their pederast priests among different parishes, the chingacabra faction of the Protestant elite prefer to rid themselves of touched kids by consigning them to faith-based purveyors of Christian Charity?

@Pedonator:
I’ll bring back Baby Ewalda if you bring back Pedonator On The Hunt.
I really loved that one and expect to see it whenever I see your moniker.

@Ewalda:
Oh, and the difference between the One True Church and those Protestant heretics is that crazy old geezer in Rome who thinks someone actually gives a fuck about what he says.
Yes, I was an altar boy. Why do you ask?

@Pedonator: Nah. The evengelicals have no ruling structure at all. Its purely entrepenuerial, any pastor who attracts a congregation is his own entity. There is no institutional response. They cannot transfer people because there is no legal or institutional relationship between individual churches.

The Catholic church, on the other hand, is the oldest bureaucracy on earth, and very authoritarian and top-down. They had the option of “reassignment,” but mind you, they also had this “treatment” program that they placed perhaps naive faith in, they did have these people undergo serious psychological treatment, its just that it was useless. There sin was not reporting the crimes.

The catholics were very clear-eyed and really, their response may seem callous because they are less shocked by sexual moral transgressions than protestants are.

This is a serious misperception of the Catholic church. Yes, it has strict sexual moral rules. But violation of the rules is less shocking to catholics than to the evangelicals. The evangelicals somehow believe that once they have been “saved,” they are perfect, they cannot accept that a “good christian” can sin. They are therefore much given to major denial, pathological denial. Thats why they can be so oblivious to such obvious shit.

The Catholic church, in its general view of human nature, expects all people to be imperfect and to sin, and sexual sins are expected; there really is less shock, among higher levels of the catholic hierarchy, at sexual sins. The catholics believe that all are fallen and prone to sin, they really do not expect perfect behavior, only repentence and faith.

Its a strange thing to try to communicate, I was raised a catholic, and its not what people think.

If it means anything at all, I would suggest that the Cathjolic church would have treated any congregant who did the same thing the same way. They did not forgive the pedo priests because they were priests, they would forgive anyone, even more readily.

I will flat out say it. The fundies, their basic religious beleif is “I’m so great, God loves me.” The basic catholic belief is “God is so great, he loves me, despite the fact that I suck.”

Oh, the catholic church has enormous, ridiculous flaws, the worst of them , misogyny, I actually believe that the catholic church is so down on sex not because they think sex is bad per se, but because it leads to fraternization with women, who are evil per se.

But there is a greater stream of “forgiveness” in catholicism, whereas protestants sometimes seem to think that forgiveness is no longer necessary once you are one of the elect. Catholic theology expects sin, accepts sin, and readily forgives even the worst sins. Evangelical theology expects perfection, and as I said, because sin is so unthinkable, there is denial.

So yes, they let the pedos go out of genuine, christian forgiveness. Would christ kill the pedos?

@Promnight:
Would christ kill the pedos?
Clearly a question of whose arse is being gored.

@Ewalda: I don’t remember what the “on the hunt” version was…will try to come up with something in the near future. But…I Love Trash!

@Promnight: I understand what you’re saying and pretty much agree with it, at least the psychoanalysis of it (because I’m such an expert in that kind of thing). But the fact remains that they repeatedly re-assigned known kid-touching priests to distant parishes, where said priests practiced, as priests, not only the Holy Rites (or whatever), but continued kid-touching.

They repeatedly refused to report clearly heinous, destructive, criminal rapes of young children. Their view, as with all fundamentalist Sky-Bully-worshipping fucktards, is that there is some Higher Law that only they can discern and answer to. Secular society is of no concern.

It’s great that these Catholic higher-ups tried to understand the pathology of their pederast underlings. Your inadvertent privileged (?) view of the proceedings is exceedingly interesting.

My take-away goes somewhat like this: while there are intrinsically good people of all persuasions and occupations, most fail to resist corruption when they are embedded in deeply corrupt institutions. Like the Catholic church (or pretty much any church), Congress, the DoD, the White House, etc. The Good Guys in the Evil institution will never win, nice guys finish last, all that. See: the last eight years (to start).

@Promnight: There is a corollary in evangelicalism in that, you can be forgiven if you are “born again”. And from my understanding of their twisted ethos, you can be born again right up until the moment you die. Not much different from a last confession, such as.

Long rifle or trusty dog. That’s Pedonator, to me.

@FlyingChainSaw: Has anyone gone after them under RICO?

@Pedonator: Sister Carmelita told us that no matter how much sin you had going against you, if your last thoughts were of Jesus, you would be forgiven. I asked her why we would bother to try not to sin if that was the case. She hit me on the side of the head so hard that my ear was ringing for two days.

@Promnight: Did anyone, in all their perceptiveness and forgiveness of the pedophiles’ mental health issues, give any fucking thought whatsoever to what these children had suffered and what kind of treatment they would need? Anything? If not, they can burn in hell, the path to which is paved with good intentions.

@Ewalda: Hey, I grew up among predestination-believing Presbyterians who couldn’t give me one good reason why I should try to be good if god had already decided whether I was going to heaven or hell.

@Ewalda: I’m not sure what that means, but I’m gonna take it as a compliment.

@Mistress Cynica: Um, wasn’t RICO meant for, like, Mafia prosecutions? Oh.

@Ewalda: Sister Carmelita sounds like the embodiment of the might-makes-right reasoning of both Church and State.

@Mistress Cynica: Did they approve of black-clad Furies smacking you, or twisting your ears, or hitting your knuckles with a ruler whenever they felt like it? That’s what builds character, not pious pronouncements from the pulpit, I was told.

‘Night, all.

I can’t even snark about this. It makes me so upset. Hurting any child is horrible, but I think there is a special place in hell for the people who hurt and prey on already hurt foster children.

Pedo and JNOV, glad to see both of you back in style.

Would post more but I’m exhausted from traveling and my insane chronic insomnia that I’ve been experiencing for the past few weeks. And I have to be up in a few hours for meetings that start at 8:30 am EST.

Can I have a shout-out to atheism here? I don’t mean to denigrate truly good people who still “cling to religion”, but one small bright spot I’ve latched onto in the transition to a new White-House-Occupant is that the Unicorn has actually acknowledged us in not one but at least two speeches, as “non-believers”, implying that we are actually citizens who have a stake in the planet’s future, as entitled as every other primitive superstitious good-ole-boy, even if we are recognized backhandedly, as if we were ghey (like many of us but not by any measure all “non-believers” are).

I don’t have statistics, and I’m sure someone can google up a few harrowing anecdotes, but I suspect that atheists are less likely than Republicans to be kid-touchers.

@SanFranLefty: My only real-life emotional comparison is those who hurt animals, but I think the empathy conveys. It’s unfathomable for me to believe someone would take in a foster child, or an adopted child, or any child, and then do that kind of thing.

If anyone tried to do harm to my doggy I believe I would summon heretofore-unknown levels of violence to thwart them. I know for most people it’s not comparable, but for me it is, completely. Don’t harm my doggy if you want to live. That’s all.

@Pedonator: I think you’d find that kid-touchers are whatever percentage of the population, in any population big enough to be worth the statistics. What’s so galling about the religious kid-touchers, or more specifically the priests who are kid-touchers (and there we’re into a population too small to make for useful statistics), is that they’re so goddamn hypocritical about it.

Kid-touching is bad. That’s not what I’m arguing. I’m just saying it’s even worse when you spend most of your time telling everyone how super-bad it is, then turn around and do it when no one’s looking. I would be equally offended to find that an athiest from CPS was abusing their power, for instance.

@Promnight: Interesting to read your posts about this.

I’ve thought for some time that the theology of the Catholic Church encourages this sort of behavior because moral authority rests in the Church, which is perfect, not the priest, who is not. One of the early schisms that almost tore the Church apart was the fight against Donatism which asserted that moral authority rests in the priest. It was a long bitter struggle that would, had it been successful, have undermined the whole structure of the Church. The point of protestantism is that one enters into a direct and personal relationship with god which is not mediated by a priest. Let’s not forget that the Church did not allow anyone to read the Bible apart from priests. Given the nonsense the fundies have imposed upon it you can sort of see the point.

I simply cannot understand the Calvinist idea of the Elect and of predestination. It seems completely antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.

But very interesting. Thanks.

BTW. I find it… don’t know what the word is… the priest in Boston who actually went to jail was convicted via ‘recovered memory’. I think that is always boloney. The priest (what the hell is his name?) was undoubtedly guilty just not guilty of the particular crimes for which he went to jail.

@ManchuCandidate: Don’t even get me started on those bitches who just got a book deal because they can’t go to the Bahamas for the weekend. I sit here and sweat over every word I write for my underpaying clients as well as my own shit, and I WROTE a book already, and can’t get a fucking book deal. Fuck them.

@RomeGirl:
I’m not surprised considering the publishing industry is filled with similar Muffy and Buffy types.

Of course, I’m not speaking as a embittered amateur writer with a couple of unsold manuscripts or anything.

@ManchuCandidate: RIGHT?? I hate them with the fury of a thousand suns.

I so loved the Grimes character in Decline and Fall; he had to keep changing schools, because wherever he taught he would soon wind up “in the soup.” But he says at one point, that when he taught in Ireland, “try as you might, you can’t get in the soup in Ireland.” I never understood the joke, does it mean the Irish boys resist his advances, or is there some suggestion that they are so used to such shennanigans, perhaps from the priests, that noone cares?

@RomeGirl: It gets better. The books will be written by ghosts, the cost of which will be written into the contract. They’ll list their complains on the phone to the ghost for a few weeks, who’ll fashion it into a well structured, epic whine.

@Signal to Noise: Nobody would take them as a matched set, huh? I wonder if they suffer some sort of twin separation anxiety.

@Promnight: Hey, hey! Yeah, things are so much better. I’m not out of the woods completely, but like my next husband Bear Grylls says on “Man vs. Wild,” you just have to keep moving to find rescue, and even minor things like a small fire in your makeshift camp can do wonders to boost your morale, and you need to keep positive to save your ass when find yourself stuck in a Florida swamp with alligators or whatever. Not to belabor the already belabored point, but Bear Grylls is a non-cheesy motivational speaker, even if the filming of some of his survivor skills are staged. (And yes, I love Survivorman, too, and I am not on Team Bear vs Team Les.) Anyhoo…it absofuckinlutely KILLS me when I’m at work and not able to comment, then I come home, take my meds and am rendered comatose within 45 minutes and miss the later comments. It’s like I keep missing a train. Everyday. I get to the station just in time to see that damned train pull out. Everyday!

@redmanlaw: And that was a totally reasonable and rational decision. My whole thing was:

1. Are the local public schools good? I asked the admissions officers where the professors sent their kids to school — public or private.

2. Is there housing for students with kids?

3. Are you gonna help me pay my tuition?

4. Will I be able to find a job when I get outta here?

5. Is the campus nice?

6. How’s the year-round weather?

@Benedick: One of the most shocking moments in my life was when I learned that presbyterians and that side of protestantism actually have a doctrine, related to predestination, that says that wealth and success is a sign of holiness, that you have been chosen for salvation. Thats right, wealth equals holiness. Holy fucking shit, it boggles my mind that this is a “religion,” that could believe such a thing.

My first wife was a presbyterian, and I attended some services, and I was struck by this intangible mood, that was a major difference from catholic masses I remember from my childhood. The difference was that the overall message was “we are great, thats why God loves us.” Stark contrast from the catholic message, “you suck, you are inherently sinful, you should be grateful God loves you despite all that.” Many catholics only take from this a message of guilt, but I never did, it was more like, “hey, we are all sinners, don’t beat up on yourself, just try to do better.”

As a cynic I am more in agreement with the view people have to constantly fight against the default position of being a selfish asshole.

I don’t really think this is a TJ, because it’s just indicative of how fucked up people are:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090130/ap_on_re_us/father_infant_deaths;_ylt=Ap.xMjV6RJTRbYxJ8JA7ax6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJmMW01cWVuBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwMTMwL2ZhdGhlcl9pbmZhbnRfZGVhdGhzBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNtb2dpcmxpd2FzdGk-
This guy got his daughter pregnant at least 4 times, and that’s not all. Read the article.

@Ewalda: Honest to God, in the presence of that level of evil, I am humbled and saddened. I cannot feel righteous rage, its beyond that.

That there is a man with no conscience whatsoever, someone completely lacking in one of the most important ingredients in what makes one a human being. You cannot choose to be this evil, this person lacks something vital.

He should be put in a museum. He is worse than Hitler. Seriously. There are millions of Hitlers out there, its just that most of them never achieve enough power to put their evil in motion. But Hitler loved children and doggies. He didn’t systematically rape, torture, and murder, his own children, over a period of years, this is an evil, a personal evil of unbelievable magntitude.

But I cannot feel righteous rage, I am never, ever one who indulges revenge fantasies and says “I am usually against the death penalty, but they should torture the guy to death.” In the face of this example of the depths of human, or I should say, inhuman, depravity, that response is cheap and easy.

This calls for serious thought. Its mind-jarring, really is, makes me start rethinking lots of things, about good and evil, and such. This is evil. I never really beleived in evil, you see, I always thought that there was disease, mistake, misperception, mental illness, stupid but good intentions run amock, momentary rages, stupidity, but I never really believed in EVIL. Was this that kind of evil, where you have to start re-thinking your very definitions of good and evil?

@Mistress Cynica: No, although it has been discussed a number of times as these cases came to light all over the US in the past several years. It would take a really elder statesman of Justice to bring the case and withstand the heat. I think the problem in using RICO and CCE is that the churches were not specifically organized to pimp altar boys. My sense is that the prosecutors looked at the opportunities in the law to chase the American archdiocese, and thought about what was going on with the civil suits already in motion and decided to leave it to the civil courts. Here’s what may have been their rationale if the RICO/CCE option had legs: If Justice won under CCE or RICO it could trigger punitive forfeiture – and vacuum out any money that the victims would receive in a civil settlement. Still, passing on the RICO/CCE option, if it were potent, would not foreclose putting the pederast priests in the slammer under other statutes. @Pedonator: Yes, it was. RICO and the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Act were aimed at conventional racketeering to give prosecutors tools to use instead of just whomping on these guys for tax evasion.

@Promnight: Maybe the fact that I can’t accept any higher “evil” or “good” is a key to my worldview. I think that pervasive dualism is one of the symptoms of the current gestalt sickness. The world is not a linear equation, it’s circular.
I cannot condone harmful acts against others, but I just don’t think the good/evil dichotomy is or ever was valid. There are questions of scale or scope of harmful acts that are valid, but “evil” or “good” entails a belief in inherent and immutable “laws” that I cannot accept.
That being said, the sick fucks who do horrific things to children under their control need to have the unpleasant consequences of their crimes forced directly in front of their noses every waking minute for the rest of their lives. I think letting them be part of the general prison population every other week would be a proper way to do that. It would allow them to partially recuperate during their “week off” while keeping the knowledge that they will be returned to their torments next Monday uppermost in their minds.

@Ewalda:
Oh, I see that I forgot to explain that the “week off” would be spent in solitary confinement.
For life.