Really.

Apparently a few states are reacting to some high profile incidents in which convicted sex offenders were found driving ice cream trucks. In one case a man named Eduardo Grau ended up molesting a 9-year-old girl while using his ice cream truck as a rolling child lure. To prevent such crimes in the future people are attempting to use common sense and keep pedophiles and rapists from working in what is essentially a child service industry. The A.C.L.U. is not on-board:

Efforts to keep predators out of ice cream trucks gained momentum in 2004, when Eduardo Grau of Troy, N.Y., 56, was arrested after police said he offered rides in his ice cream truck to children and abused a 9-year-old girl.

The case spurred the 2005 New York state law. Grau eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual abuse in 2006, according to District Attorney Patricia DeAngelis. Since then, cities including San Antonio and Tucson have passed similar measures. New York appears to have the only statewide restriction, said Sarah Hammond of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Florida Assistant State Attorney Harmon Massey prosecuted a 2005 case involving the driver of an ice cream truck who was eventually convicted of battery against a teenager.

Massey said Florida should consider an ice cream vendor law. “Can you think of a better kid magnet, if you were a sex offender?”

Amanda Burnham of Perris, Calif., said that for a sex offender, “there are a bazillion things you could do for a living that don’t involve children. It just seems like a very, very odd choice.”

Burnham learned last summer that a man who drove an ice cream truck down her street is a registered sex offender. She and her neighbors put notices “on every single house” to warn residents, she said. The effort helped inspire the proposal in San Bernardino County.

Such laws can go too far, said Jennifer Ring, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the Dakotas.

“If you’re throwing everyone in the same bucket, you’re really restricting these people who have paid their debt to society to go on and be productive citizens,” Ring said.

Is anyone really surprised by this?

h/t Crime Scene KC.

Andrew Malcolm was displaying some wishful thinking on his blog, or perhaps channeling his inner Paulnut, when he wrote this piece which implies that Paul’s cult of Communist/Libertarian/Pacifist/Minute Men would be embarrassing anyone but themselves at the R.N.C. convention with an attempt to hijack the G.O.P. and turn it into a less coherent version of the Libertarian Party:

But in the meantime, quietly, largely under the radar of most people the forces of Rep. Ron Paul and his libertarian-minded GOP backers are collecting delegates at the local level and planning a revolt against Sen. John McCain at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September

Paul’s presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire.

But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated a month ago in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

Nevermind Ralph Nader, Republican and Democratic parties both face….

…potentially damaging internal splits that could cripple their chances for victory in a narrow vote on Nov. 4.

Just take a look at recent Republican primary results, largely overlooked because McCain locked up the necessary 1,191 delegates long ago. In Indiana, McCain got 77% of the recent Republican primary vote, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who’ve each long ago quit and endorsed McCain, still got 10% and 5% respectively, while Paul took 8%.

On the same May 6 in North Carolina, McCain received less than three-quarters of Republican votes (74%), while Huckabee got 12%, Paul 7% and Alan Keyes and No Preference took a total of 7%.

Pennsylvania was even slightly worse for the GOP’s presumptive nominee, who got only 73% to a combined 27% for Paul (16%) and Huckabee (11%).

Paul did reasonably well in one state where if it was two person race he still would have been trounced, in other primaries his best showing is to average 7% (including Libertarians and “independents” who registered to vote for him) and he and his cult are going to embarrass the G.O.P. establishment?

It’s they who should be embarrassed, not given more credit than they deserve. Alan Keyes has run a much more successful campaign to challenge Republicans to examine their values and he did it without getting the morons from Digg to donate all their money to him. What Ron Paul has done is cobbled together a coalition of fringe groups from all parts of the political spectrum, including neo-Nazis and Anarchists, and milked those suckers for all they’re worth.

Malcolm goes on to lay out the movie villain-like aspirations Paul has for his army of pot-smoking web nerds:

They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who’s running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a longterm revolution for control of the Republican Party.

Who wouldn’t want a party controlled by rape loving racists, sex tourists, gangs of stalkers, Communists pretending to be Libertarians, Islamists pretending to be Libertarians and of course Andrew Sullivan.

At Hot Air Allahpundit puts the Ron Paul “revolution” in focus for those duped by the small but vocal Paulites:

One look at the delegate count should make the scope of the nascent revolution clear. Paul has won all of 26 delegates. Even if he wangled a few dozen more through manipulations in caucus states like Nevada, at best he’ll come up with 100 delegates in a 2,200-delegate convention. That’s not a revolution, it’s a lunatic fringe.

Hey, if you’re a Libertarian that’s fine. Vote Libertarian. But Ron Paul has hooked you marks into helping him with his doomed plan to seize control of the G.O.P. and become the Conservative version of Lyndon Larouche.

Paul will never convince Republicans that Isolationism and rolling back the military will make us safe. Isolationism didn’t keep us safe from a militarized Japan in WW II and it won’t keep us safe from Militarized communist and Islamist regimes who are even now dreaming of rolling their tanks into Times Square. And thankfully the “revolution” will never convince Republicans or the rest of America that our best defense is to rely on fighting spirit of effeminate, immature drug abusers, sorry I meant Libertarians, to turn back the tide of an invading army.

7% of people on the right (and it this case that number includes people so far left they just seem to be on the right) agree with Paul’s fevered fantasy of a new revolution. I think I speak for the other 93% when I say count us out.

I’m paraphrasing of course, but that is the essence of his verdict. From The Sun:

A PAEDOPHILE who groomed a girl of 11 on the internet before abusing her during a school lunch break walked free from court yesterday.

Jon Dixon, 20, admitted sexually assaulting and attempting to rape the youngster.

But a judge refused to jail him because the girl at first pretended to be 20 and sent explicit texts which “would make many twice her age blush.”

The girl’s mum cried and her dad said he was “not happy” as they left Manchester Crown Court.

Dixon pursued the girl even after she said she was 12 and asked her for pornographic pictures. They had met on a chat website in February last year.

He was assessed as “manipulative and predatory” and a “high risk” to children. But Judge Robert Atherton rejected the probation service assessment and said the girl “welcomed” sexual activity.

The British become more vile with every passing day. I say it’s about time we shut our borders to these pedophile-coddling Communists and replace them with Columbia.

Meanwhile the new Mayor of London has asked Bill Bratton to come help him put the house “Red” Ken Livingstone destroyed back in order. I’m thinking Bratton’s first bit of advice will be to start holding judges responsible for outrageous attacks on the fabric of society like this.

Well, technically they aren’t suspected of necrophilia per se but we all know these things happen in baby steps. From The Chon:

Two men and a juvenile are accused of digging up a corpse, decapitating the body and using the head to smoke marijuana, according to court documents.

Matthew Gonzalez and Kevin Jones have been charged with the misdemeanor offense of abuse of a corpse, said Scott Durfee, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorneys Office.

According to documents filed in the case, Gonzalez, Jones and an unnamed juvenile on March 15 went to an Humble cemetery, dug up a man’s grave, left with the head and turned it into a “bong.”

Gonzalez told authorities about the incident Wednesday, and showed officers the defaced grave, including a 4-foot hole. Because of a heavy rain, officers were unable to determine whether the casket or the body had been disturbed.

Just good clean fun right tokers? But don’t worry, this has nothing to do with pot. After all Brian77008 says in the comments:

This is disgusting. But make no mistake. Pot did not make these guys go out and dig up a corpse and do this. They did it because they are inherently bad people.

Of course. I recall hundreds of cases where “bad people” dug up graves and stole skulls to drink beer out of or eat their cereal from. Getting high has absolutely nothing to do with what police suspect to be up to four people stealing a skull to smoke pot from. Nothing.

The Chron has a longer article on the story detailing how this ring of petty thieves ended up getting caught. Police believe the person who originally admitted tot the desecration, Kevin Wade Jones, thought it would distract police from questioning him about car break-ins. Really:

The Kingwood teenager’s story of decapitating a corpse and using the head to smoke marijuana was so outlandish that at first Houston Police Department senior police officer Jim Adkins did not believe it.

Yet, Kevin Wade Jones Jr., 17, appeared almost indifferent as he relayed the bizarre description of his and two friends’ activities at an Humble area graveyard, Adkins said.

“I just doubted it because it’s very morbid, and I couldn’t see anybody doing something like this,” Adkins said Thursday.

Not until police went to the home of another Kingwood 17-year-old, Matthew Richard Gonzalez, did the officer believe the tale.

“He regurgitated in his plate of food when I asked him about it,” Adkins said. “So I knew there was some truth to the story.”

Now, Jones, Gonzalez and a juvenile whose name has not been released are each charged with abuse of a corpse, a misdemeanor. All three were arrested Wednesday night.

Police said a fourth suspect is wanted for questioning.

[…]

The teens first came to police’s attention during a vehicle burglary investigation. While being questioned, Jones told of desecrating the gravesite a month or two ago. Adkins said he believes the tale was intended to distract police from the vehicle break-in.

Jones claimed he and his friends used shovels to dig up the body and removed the corpse’s head with a garden tool, Adkins said. Jones also revealed he and the other two boys took the severed head to the juvenile’s home, where they used the skull as a “bong” to smoke marijuana, the officer said.

Read the rest. The grave the cops found disturbed belonged to an 11-year-old boy named Willie Simms who died in 1921 and the graveyard may or may not be set aside for Black WWI and WWII veterans who died. No one seems to know much about it.

Hmmm. Desecrating the grave of a child in a mysterious cemetery no one maintains or knows anything about. Sounds like a great idea unless you believe in vengeful spirits haunting the living.

I’ve had teachers like this before, luckily none of them ever thought to sue me for not believing their nonsense. From The Wall Street journal:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will “name names.”

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful,” she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. “They’d argue with your ideas.” This caused “subversiveness,” a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan’s scholarly specialty is “science studies,” which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, “teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth.” She continues: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan’s seminar, then, was to “problematize” technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the “problems” owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was “intolerant of ideas” and “questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways.” Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on “ecofeminism,” which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But “these weren’t thoughtful statements,” Ms. Venkatesan protests. “They were irrational.” The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student’s “diatribe,” several of his classmates applauded.

Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was “fascist demagoguery.” Then, after consulting a physician about “intellectual distress,” she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

Venkatesan’s insistence on her students’ acceptance of her fevered post-modernism reminds me a little of a class I took with in Narrative Non-Fiction with Lisa Jarnot, who is a very pleasant woman and an excellent poet but who literally spent a week of the class trying to convince us that there was no such thing as fixed gender. Not fixed gender roles mind you, which it can be reasonably argued by any rational person, but no fixed sex. It was an odd experience but actually not one that was as bad as many teachers would have made it and I actually quite enjoyed the class and my conversations with Lisa.

For her part though she no doubt sensed my skepticism of some of her ideas she graded me fairly and we parted amicably. I in fact did some of my best writing in that class.

The main difference between a Priya Venkatesan and a Lisa Jarnot is class. I’m sorry to say that on many a university campus there are students and faculty alike who are spoiled, thin skinned, and so utterly classless that the mere suggestion of criticism becomes ground for legal action, or at the very least a childish tantrum.

Stories like the one in the Journal would be amusing if it didn’t have such a deleterious effect on the academic environment:

That said, even at – or especially at – putatively superior schools, students are spoiled for choice when it comes to professors who share ideologies like Ms. Venkatesan’s. The main result is to make coursework pathetically easy. Like filling in a Mad Libs, just patch something together about “interrogating heteronormativity,” or whatever, and wait for the returns to start rolling in.

I once wrote a term paper for a lit-crit course where I “deconstructed” the MTV program “Pimp My Ride.” A typical passage: “Each episode is a text of inescapable complexity . . . Our received notions of what constitutes a ride are constantly subverted and undermined.” It received an A.

Where the standards are always minimum, most kids simply float along with the academic drafts, avoid as much work as possible and accept the inflated grade. Why not? It’s effortless, and there are better ways to spend time than thinking deeply about ecofeminism.

Indeed. And it is painfully obvious that the college student of today isn’t learning critical thinking, the scientific method or Gods forbid, to be an expert in a subject. Today’s students are learning that college is largely an exercise in irrelevance, boredom and hackery and we owe them much more than that.

h/t Don’t tase Me Bro!