Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Attention Dayton haters: According to this article from Fox News, John McCain will be announcing his Vice Presidential nominee tomorrow at the Nutter Center, just a few hundred yards from where I’ll be. This is the second time I know of that a Presidential candidate has introduced his running mate in Dayton, Ohio, the first time being when James M. Cox announced his Democrat running mate at the Montgomery Country Fairgrounds, the Nutter Center of its day, in 1920. That running mate was Franklin D. Roosevelt. I’m no McCainiac, but I do like the idea that Dayton, allegedly a dying city, is involved in this year’s Presidential contest.

I know I’ve been on a jag about sex crimes as of late, which is a departure from the technical and semi-personal nature this blog had when I started it. However, of all the issues that occupy our minds at this moment, I find this one to be especially galling because of the hysteria that surrounds it, and my own determination not to let myself or others I care about get snared in the sex crimes dragnet, especially when we’re not criminals.

Today’s indignity is brought to you by Chuck Goolsbee, who points out this article, from which I quote:

At a Harlan, Kentucky, grocery store last week, perennial gubernatorial candidate Otis “Bullman” Hensley encountered a woman with her two nieces, ages 11 and 13. He offered to trade a “fattening hog” for the girls, a variation on an old Appalachian joke meant as a compliment. The woman evidently didn’t get it. A.P. reports that “the family obtained a warrant for Hensley’s arrest from the local prosecutor, claiming the comment was intended to entice the children into illegal sexual activity.”

Huh? I have read this a dozen times and for the life of me, I cannot figure out how trading a fat hog for your kids is sexually perverse. Maybe not funny, maybe not exactly a compliment, maybe not what you want to hear, and certainly not sexual.

“In Kentucky, … citizens can obtain arrest warrants simply by filing a complaint with local prosecutors,” and ”no investigation is necessary for police to make an arrest when the charge involves an alleged sexual offense.” 

Yep. No criminal investigation necessary, no explicit sexual comment necessary. All you have to do is say something that someone insane interprets as sexual, independent of whether it actually is sexual, have them complain, and you’re charged with a sex crime. Charged is different than convicted, but it is still a gross perversion of justice and only serves to prevent legitimate speech without substantively preventing sex crimes.

Had enough yet?