Tapping Our Toes … Waiting for a Scandal

Blogenfreude, kudos for effort, but the connections are so tangential and the prurient content so vanilla it’s hard to muster up half a diaper.

But keep those toes tapping, my friend, you don’t catch the fish without the, uh, worm.

meh. This, on the other hand, is what I call a Republican sex scandal!

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=729435

Hope linky-clickey thingy works. Never had any luck before.

@Lyndon LaDouche: email me the link, and I’ll get it working.

Clearly, I’m on a different wavelength right now. I saw this story, and all I could think was, Damn! I’d kill for $150k on the show I’m working on right now! I think our budget is around $2k, maybe not even that much.

Any Seattle-based Stinquers, the one and only reason I haven’t been around here very much:

HP Lovecraft Necronomicon

Come on down starting Saturday. Should be a rickety-wagon-ride-of-horror style of good time! And now, we have booze.

(Of course, this has nearly nothing to do with the story, sex scandals, money, or diaper ratings. Still, hi everyone!)

@IanJ: You might like my buddy braak’s blog posts about Lovecraft. http://threatquality.com/

My kid is reading The Rats in the Walls, and he has taken issue with the name of the main character’s cat (N-Man). Lovecraft was a piece of work.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Now that’s more like it. It’s amazing how evil can be not just banal, but so fucking stupid. Did this creep never hear of To Catch a Predator?

See, Virgil could have avoided all this if he had sworn his oath of office on a Koran. But he didn’t. Thus: tangential link to gay sex film is GO.

@Pedonator: See now, there you go. I think the imaginary children and police entrapment are especially attractive features.

Pedonator: But he wasn’t invited to an inviting kitchen — with brand new granite countertops — so he thought the coast was clear.

Added bonus: the guy was on the State Parole Board. Beeee-youtiful. Comstock is going to be a barrel of laughs for this guy.

@IanJ: Ia Cthulhu! Sounds awesome, I’ll have to check it out! Great location, too, you’re right by the Lava and Shorty’s, the heart or maybe liver of Belltown.

Um, North Dakota just broke the blue/red fire wall with one poll in Fargo having Obama up by 2. WTF?! FTW!!! Don’t talk me down off this high. I know it’s just one poll, but… just… let me have a moment.

@RomeGirl: singing…
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
There’ll be sun.
Just thinkin’ about tomorrow
Drives away the cobwebs and the sorrow
Till there’s none!
Tomorrow
Tomorrow
I love ya
Tomorrow.
You’re always a day away!

@Lyndon LaDouche: One day we should figure out how to do a voice post, and I’ll serenade you all!

NORTH DAKOTA.

(still having a moment, please to not burst the bubble)

Do not tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing, RomeGirl. Just repeat to yourself: outlier… outlier… outlier…..

@chicago bureau: It’s even more tangential, because the film isn’t a gay sex film, just a film that happens to have a little bit of gay sex in it. Still, anything that, uh, gets a rise out of Virgil’s chingacabra constituents is ok by me.

@Lyndon LaDouche, @chicago bureau: It’s especially creepy that he thought he was arranging all this with a Mom who was all set to pimp out her little girls.

@chicago bureau: The wrath of the whatever is firmly ensconced high atop the thing, have no worries. I know it’s an outlier. I’ve already gone outside and spit and cursed and turned around three times.

(I’m just sayin’. NORTH DAKOTA.)

Is outlier going to become the hanging chad of 2008? The term we all walk around saying like we’ve all known there was a word for it all along?

Try this: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=729435

@blogenfreude: Holy SHIT!

@RomeGirl: Outlier? Maybe. Harginer? I’m Hopey™

@Lyndon LaDouche:

Some day I’ll land in the nut house
With all the nuts and the squirrels
There I’ll stay
Until the prohibition of
Little girls.

Oops. Overshot the Hooverville song.

@JNOV: Ahem. HarbinGer. My life is rife with typos.

This, to me, is the most shocking part:

The undercover cop met with Ortloff in person, and they communicated by phone and on the Yahoo, Gmail and America Online Web sites.

AOL still exists? WTF!

@drinkyclown: Come on down. I’ll be the guy dressed in black looking stressed as hell.

@flippin eck: I think AOL exists solely as a hookup facilitator these days.

@blogenfreude: @Lyndon LaDouche:

Close to 8 diapers, that.

@Pedonator:

People still do that on AOL? Eesh. What luddites…have they never heard of Manhunt?

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: It’s just a guess, I haven’t actually been on AOL since before the Web, you know, practically pre-history. But I still see lots of people with AOL email addresses, especially among the more mature set.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again:
Creepy. Sisters. Way underaged. Tubez and Lube. I’d give it 9 diapers.

@Lyndon LaDouche:
dear god darling, WHAT have you done to yourself?
it happened so fast to that bush floozie.
it’s almost over…almost over, go back in the nice cellar now..

when you’re having a day, that gray and lonely,
just stick out your chinnnn and grinnnn and saaaaaaaaay!!!!!
the sun will come up………”

@Pedonator: Re: the film – indeed. It looks to be your typical Bad Gay Indie. Nubile but limited actors staring into the camera attempting to look convincingly soulful between spates of stilted dialog and the occasional hystrionic outburst, and not nearly enough nudity.

And of course, we have this:

Among other issues he championed, Ortloff pushed for the toughening of Megan’s Law, the law that created the state’s sex offender registry.

“Our government” Ortloff told the Plattsburgh Press-Republican in January 2006, “must do more to keep dangerous, sexually violent predators away from children and women.”

Way to bring it to our attention, Lyndon. With the hypocrisy, the angle that he was probably denying parole left and right to sexual offenders, the age, and the use of AOL, I’m giving this 8.75 diapers.

Eleven- and twelve-year-old sisters pimped out by their mother? This one is off the charts. 11 Spinal Tap diapers.

@JNOV: Well, he thought they were 11 and 12-year-old sisters being pimped out by their mother. Their mother was a NY State Trooper.

@SanFranLefty: Yes, and the fact that he thought that was okay is why I give him 11, or maybe 23, the combined age of those he wished to rape.

@JNOV: 23, as in the number of hours a day he’ll have to be locked down in solitary confinement at Attica, with the one hour a day for outdoor “recreation.”

@JNOV:

I dunno. If it was real, maybe, but these were imaginary kids. High up there, of course, but not off the charts for me. I’m uncomfortable prosecuting thoughtcrime, even gross, thoroughly evil thoughtcrime like this.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Dude was naked waiting for these kids in a hotel with lube and sex toys on hand. That’s more than a thought crime for me.

@SanFranLefty: Very good.

@SanFranLefty: I’m so proud this all went down (as they say) just up the road. If by ‘road’ you mean the NY State Thruway. But still. I could have been sqeezing the same plums as this creep at PriceChopper.

@JNOV: I’m with you. It’s off the charts. What makes it even more astounding is that it is all phantasy! Cops’ phantasy, legislator’s phantasy…! He’s guilty of criminal desire. Imaginary sex crimes against non-existent children. The only real erotic encounter is between Republican legislator and cops. Which is as it should be. He’s naked on the bed as they break in to cuff him. “Ooh, officer. You’re not going to… hurt me, are you?”

@baked: My new avatar is so awesome I can’t stop posting.

@JNOV:

Well, I get into this discussion a lot, so let me know if you don’t want to go into it- I realize it is fraught with uncomfortable issues- but lube and sex toys are not illegal. Neither is being naked. It is icky, and the guy should be investigated to see if he possesses child porn, etc., but I’m real uncomfortable with the state prosecuting someone for a crime which literally has no victim- and therefore no possibility of ever being committed.

@Lyndon LaDouche: He’s a predator, a dumbass and a hypocrite. Working to strengthen Megan’s Law? Pfft. And know that I am very conflicted about the continued punishment of people who have served their sentences. On the one hand, their sentence is complete and Megan’s Law is just further punishment. On the other hand, NIMBY — I don’t want a sex-offender with their high rates of recidivism living next door. Maybe longer, tougher sentences are the answer.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: It’s been the classic weapon against gay men for the past two hundred years. Its has ruined many many lives. Including people I knew back in the land of Lime. I can’t help but feel gleeful to see it turned back on those who wielded it like a club. Let’s not forget, among many other things, the Larry Craig case was entrapment.

There’s no proof that because a man acts out online he’ll do it in life. The cops might spend their time more wisely by helping children who really are being abused. Or beaten and starved by their parents.

Was this crime committed by legislator or cops?

@JNOV: I’m not talking about the real thing. That’s an entirely different matter.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: We’re allowed to protect ourselves from imminent harm. If not, the concept of self-defense would not exist. Here he made a decision to seek out what he most likely thought were prepubescent girls for sex. No one forced him to seek them out, and no one forced him to make a decision to meet them in a hotel with all of the sexy accoutrement a pedophile might need. He had the intent to commit a crime. If I have the intent to hit you upside the head with a baseball bat, and you have reason to believe that I’m about to do so, you can hit me first.

It just so happens that instead of finding a real woman ready to pimp out her kids he found a fake one. And I’m glad he did. All of his actions (since June!) were leading up to a crime. If he didn’t want to rape little girls, he shouldn’t have been trawling for them. He just happened to catch a cop.

His buck nakedness at the meeting place with the necessary tools qualifies as an overt act in my opinion and satisfies the guilty mind component of a crime. The act of trying to procure little girls to rape is the guilty act. He shouldn’t have to actually rape the girls to be stopped.

@Lyndon LaDouche:

It’s a quick, easy hit for Police and Procecutors, and what really bothers me about it is just that- While the police are out helping people that may not have considered raping an 11-year-old discover that they are bent that way, or massaging some poor slob’s latent, shameful desire into a full-blown bad choice, there are kids being raped IRL by priests, family friends, what have you. But why do the hard police work when you can just set up a pretend molestation?

@Lyndon LaDouche: I understand what you and Tommcatt are saying, and I understand the wariness of this type of police action.

But here you have a guy who is looking for the means to rape little girls. There’s no consensual sex aspect to this. Apples and oranges, even if the tactics put you in mind of past police abuses.

@Pedonator:

If I may quote from Mad Magazine:

“We’ve lost all contact with America Online yet their billing continues!”

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I support them doing both. Arrest those who have committed the act and arrest those one hair’s breadth away from doing so. The internet has made it much more easy for people to abuse children. It should also be used to protect children.

ADD: Arrest those one hair’s breadth away when all signs point toward the crime being imminent.

@Original Andrew: Heh.

@JNOV:

I think he should be investigated, yes. I promise you, this guy has some pretty sick stuff on his hard drive, and they can get him for that.

Our lawyer friends can help us with this, I think, but in my opinion there actually has to be an imminent threat TO someone, and in this case, those persons were pretend. They didn’t exist…and therefore, there should be no crime.

Look, violent rapists rape again more often than not. By your logic because they are a threat to women in general, a rape conviction should mean a life-sentence- or perhaps rape should even be considered a capitol crime.

@JNOV: Yes but he didn’t do anything.

Perhaps he’s a man who’s always phantasised about it but never acted it out. Till he happened on a woman who seemed willing to hand over her daughters? Of course it’s disgusting. But left to his own devices he might never have acted on his impulses. He was chatting on AOL.

I don’t see how you can have a crime unless something was done. The sex wasn’t real. I sound like I’m defending him. I’m really not. However, I do think these laws and prosecutions are political and have nothing to do with protecting children. I’m reminded of the recovered memory panic of the 80s. Or the current drug laws. It’s social control.

And can we really have a category of crime for which there can be no end to the sentence? Bear in mind how loosely ‘sex offender’ is defined.

@JNOV:

If the crime were murder, then, and someone was a hair’s breath from committing it- but did not- or, more to the point, if the person they were going to murder did not exist, you would support full prosecution of a murder charge for this person? Or is societal disgust with and hatred for pedophiles enough of a reason to treat this as a crime greater than that of murder?

I think people like this are terrible too, don’t get me wrong. But we’ve had something of a moral panic regarding pedophilia going on in this country for a while, and a moral panic always ends up hurting more people than it helps.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Well, I am a lawyer, but that doesn’t mean that all lawyers agree.

Things work differently with children. If a child is being abused in a household, it’s SOP for all of the children to be removed from the house. You don’t take away Jimmy and leave Tommy behind, even if Tommy was not being abused because under those circumstances, it would be wrong to take that chance.

Here you have a guy who actively sought out children online and actively showed up at the rendezvous point who actively brought lube and sex toys who actively took off his clothes and actively awaited someone’s arrival. Whose arrival? Oh, yes, the little girls’.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Driving around trying to lure kids into your car so you can abduct them is a crime — the intent coupled with the action is a crime. Even if you don’t get any kids in your car. Intent coupled with action is enough.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: It happens all the time. It’s called transferred intent. Using your murder example, if I intend to shoot you but instead I shoot someone else by mistake, I don’t get off based on that mistake. It’s still considered an intentional act even if the victim is the wrong person.

@JNOV:

Again, in your example, both Tommy and Jimmy represent real, live, children. This guy was waiting for children that didn’t exist.

As for the guy driving around trolling for kids, how would one know what his intent was before he actually did something?

@JNOV:

But a real person got shot in that example. If I shoot an imaginary person, or intend to, should I be prosecuted for murder?

@JNOV:

I lurves you anyways, by the way, even though we don’t agree on this. I didn’t realize you were a lawyer- didn’t mean to slight you .

What’s this? A serious discussion? Freaks.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Conspiracy is a similar concept where you don’t actually have to the final crime to come to fruition. Say you, Lyndon and I decide we’re going to steal nojo’s server, and I go out and by a screwdriver from Home Depot. The act of me going out and buying that screwdriver is enough to sink us all for conspiracy.

I’m not a criminal lawyer, and what I’m drawing on here comes from Crim class years ago, but in order to commit a crime you need intent and an act. That’s it. Sometimes the act is just going into a store with the intent to steal. Even if you leave without taking anything, you could be found guilty.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: If Person A meticulously planned to kill Person B (let’s say Person A thinks Person B is diddling his husband), and got together killing equipment (which is legal to possess), went over to where he thought Person B was supposed to be, but Person B had wind of it and wasn’t there and the cops were waiting, Person A could still be charged with attempted murder. Intent plus action (or mens rea plus actus rea to use the legalese).

All of the “attempted” criminal charges, as well as the “conspiracy to commit ___” charges, can be fraught with danger, including entrapment, and that’s a reason for having defense attorneys – to keep the cops and the prosecutors to stick to the law.

But under the law, what that douchebag did is a crime. And not just under some sort of knee-jerk “What about the children” sort of law (I am so not a fan of registries for a variety of reasons we can discuss later) but what he did is a crime.

Doesn’t matter that the kids don’t exist except in the ether. He thought they did, he thought they would be at the motel, he intended to rape them, and he took deliberate actions to go to the motel and rape them. Ending up with blue balls doesn’t get him free.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: I love you, too — very much. And the intent that transfers is intentional homicide (or murder, murder in the 1st degree), even if you didn’t intend to kill that person. (Every jurisdiction has different definitions of murder, murder in the first degree, reckless endangerment and stuff like that. There’s a list of rules called The Model Penal Code that tries to unify the states, and some states have adopted those definitions.) If you simply accidentally shoot someone, you can be charged with reckless endangerment, but if you accidentally shoot someone while aiming for someone else, you can be found guilty of intentional homicide.

No offense taken.

@JNOV: Jinx.

Meanwhile, it appears our DINO friend Mahoney from the other day was demanding sexual favors in exchange for hurricane relief $$.

@JNOV:

Woo, we could go round and round on this. For me it always comes back to the same thing….if you and Lyndon were involved in a conspiracy to steal Nojo’s server, you could be procecuted because Nojo’s server is a real thing that actually exists. If I intend to steal the Gold-and-Diamond Crusted Crown of King Schmoo, there isn’t a court on earth that would prosecute me for anything because King Schmoo and his crown are not real. Those two little girls might as well live under King Schmoos bed, because they are just as imaginary.

@SanFranLefty: Much better than what I was writing.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: But it doesn’t matter that the girls don’t exist. If the cops had used photos of decoys (i.e. random 11 and 12 year old girls) would that make all the difference in your head as to whether it’s a crime?

He thought they existed, he intended to rape them, he took action to rape them.

@SanFranLefty:

I guess I just don’t agree that it should be a crime. Like I say, investigate the guy – I bet you’d find something pretty incriminating. But if you don’t, well, who exactly did he hurt?

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: But if we go there and nojo’s server is in the shop, we’re still guilty of attempt. SFL explained it a lot better than I did.

@SanFranLefty:

If the cops had used photos of decoy girls, couldn’t we prosecute them for pandering using this same logic?

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: He hurt the girls that he got away with raping before he tried to rape these girls. Not to be a smart ass about it, but in a lot of these cases, once you start digging down, it’s not the first time the person has done this. It’s the first time they’ve been caught.

@nojo: We have designs on your server, Bucko.

@JNOV:

@SanFranLefty:

See, round and round. You should know I’m only slightly more stubborn than, say, a 4-ton block of iron or a football field full of angry goats.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Prosecute the cops?

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: The cops use decoys all the time – whether it’s busting johns, busting 7-11 owners for selling booze to underage kids, or busting people for blowing through crosswalks filled with pedestrians. The cops aren’t guilty of pandering/pimping, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or endangering the pedestrians’ lives when they use real decoys. And they use underage decoys. That seems to be the main purpose of the Police Explorer clubs for teens – a supply of decoys.

@Jnov:

Just pointing out the logical inconsistency there….

@SanFranLefty: @Jnov:

I can let the argument lie there, because we at least agree that he should be investigated and that it is likely there is something in his past of more concrete relevance that could be procecuted.

But the ‘Perverted Justice” scenario…I’m not comfortable with it. Too Minority Report for me.

@nojo:

All your servers are belong to us, dude.

they didn’t exist, this poor shmuck.
the word is IMMINENT. how they gonna get around that?
the laws will change when kids can vote and we ever have an honest election again.
abduction is a whole different thing. intent is a lot easier to prove.

god, i hate people. the pedophiles, and the system that allows it.
children have no real protection under the law, it’s a lot of happy horseshit like none are left behind either.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: No you’re not. You bring up legitimate concerns, and entrapment is a legitimate concern. And the history of baiting people based on their sexual preference to commit what should not be a crime in the first place is a legitimate concern. No one ever enters these types of discussions with a blank slate.

You’re looking at this through a slightly different lens. I’m looking at this through my own lens that includes not only having mens rea and actus rea beat into me, but I’m also also looking at this as a molestation survivor.

That said, I do have reservations about Megan’s Lawish type laws and many police practices, but in this case, if the report is accurate, this guy had every intention of raping those girls had they actually shown up. And that’s enough for me and for the legal system.

@SanFranLefty: My brother was an Explorer (ugh) and he went and bought cigarettes for them all the damn time. (As an underage decoy.)

@Original Andrew:
i’m the one that noticed you were missing when we were rounding up stragglers because besdes being handsome and charming, you quote MAD MAGAZINE!

fun fact: other than this blog, the only other recreational writing of mine to appear publicaly, was a letter to MAD when i was 10.

@baked: I mixed up legal arguments when I wrote imminent. Imminency (is that a word?) isn’t an element of this crime.

Do we know exactly what he was charged with and the elements of the crime? If so, we can break it down piece by piece.

@baked: I wrote a letter to the local version of TV Guide complaining that channel 48 was cutting off the end of the Beverly Hillbillies. I signed it “Anonymous,” but they got my name off the return address and PRINTED IT. Which led to much teasing in middle school. And I wrote Newsweek when I was 14 — something about interracial marriage. They were going to publish my letter, but I got bumped at the last minute.

@JNOV:

See, and that’s the other thing that bothers me about it. This guys’ life is over no matter what crime they charge him with- he is fucked-even if they decide not to prosecute, even, frankly, if he is somehow innocent. He will never recover from this.

I don’t want to diminish your pain at all, nor soft pedal the cruelty and violence of all rape, but if this crime is all they could find- no child rapes, no kiddie porn, no nothing- does he really deserve to be ruined over it? Child molestation is a terrible, terrible crime- but does our disgust at and fear of it mean that we should suppress our nobler sentiments toward punishments that are truly just? We destroy people over this type of crime, we really do, more completely and in a crueler fashion than we destroy some murderers.

@JNOV:

Stephanie Miller read my letter on the air three years ago.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Thank FSM! I thought I’d killed the discussion. I didn’t mean to use my experience as some sort of trump card to stop discourse, and I’m sorry I shared that. I’ve had a very strange life, and I have a very strange background — almost fantastic in the not fun kind of fantastic way.

I agree with SFL that this is most likely the first time he got caught, but we can’t prosecute him based on what he probably did in the past without proof.

What they do have as proof, however, is a naked man awaiting the arrival of two young girls he bargained for over the internet. That’s enough for attempt. Like SFL wrote, decoys are used all the time. And in certain situations where you don’t want to put ordinary people at risk, the use of decoys is warranted.

@JNOV:

Not at all. I’m too stubborn to accept trump cards in discussions anyways.

Now I have the image of a 60-year-old pedophile on a bed with sex toys. Bleh, I’d rather think about Larry Craig.

@baked:

Oh stop, my ears are burning : ) Sorry I’m so late to the Stinque.

I thought I’d lost you all for awhile. Went to CP and heard the crickets chirping. Haven’t had a chance to read previous posts yet; was there another insurrection?

Things were actually relatively calm for me at work, then the Lehman bankruptcy caused a run on money market funds (of all things!) and one of the companies my firm works with went under as part of the chain reaction. We’re still trying to sort out that clusterfuck.

Needless to say, I’ve felt like a crash-test dummy without the airbags for the last few weeks. It’s good to be talking about the more important stuff, like pervy politicians and how NUMBNUTS! is probs gonna go all Springer on the Unicorn tonight (I’m praying for some bleeped out expletives and air-slapping).

@Original Andrew: Hi, OA.

I’m so proud my humble linkey-clickey-thingy caused debate to occur. Praps I should be moderating tonight.

As I wrote in my somewhat embarrassing, in retrospect, post on Teh Great Schism, I am always so interested/grateful for the informed and diverse (in the real meaning of the word) POVs here. Fascinating to read lawyers’ opinions.

I can’t help but feel this whole intent thing leads to Guantanomo. But then, my life experience and my own work leads me to adopt an emotional POV unsupported by facts. Surprisingly, I’m not a Republican. Thanks for the instructive posts JNOV and Leftishness.

Is my avatar teh awesome or whut?

@Lyndon LaDouche: Yes, yes it is! That other Tony leered in a way I didn’t appreciate (it did make me laugh). This one looks batshit and a little too full of himself. And it makes me laugh, too.

@Original Andrew:

Or Grampie yipping and slapping his own face like Moe Howard.

@Tommmcatt Yet Again: Ha!

@Lyndon LaDouche: Was he in the sauce?

@JNOV: I think he’s just.. a Limey. They get like that for no apparent reason. They leer and squivel and prong. They gyre and greebe and no one knows why. Unless tis grimbel. But this is the Limey male (sic) in its natural habitat: poncing about. Licking Yankee bum.

@Lyndon LaDouche: Glee! (Back to my vow of silence.)

@JNOV: Vow of silence? Well, just stop reading all the posts aloud, problem solved! You’re welcome.

@Lyndon LaDouche: And I bet you’re just as good as your Gravatardoppelgaenger was at Caligutard’s. If not better.

@drinkyclown: Ha ha! I must be a little manicy, hence the rapid-fire commenting.

@JNOV:That’s much easier to read than those giant chunks of text being thrown around here earlier, EVERYONE PANDER TO MY SHORT ATTENTION SPAN PLZ, or I swear I’ll find a way to make my all-caps even.. capsier?

@rptrcub: Mmm… Yankee bum… Must lick… Yankee bum…!