Stu Blog

>>Signed a Chemical Castration Bill, Authorizing the Castration of Sex Offenders in Louisiana

>>1st conviction: the court may sentence the offender to undergo chemical castration.

>>2nd conviction, the court is required to sentence the offender to undergo chemical castration.

>>This bill also provides that a court may instead order a physical castration instead of the chemical castration.

>>Convicted sex offenders who undergo castration must still serve their full sentence, as their treatment will not affect their sentencing.

>>Under the bill, if a convicted sex offender fails to appear for their chemical castration, they will serve an additional sentence of three to five years.

>>But that's not all…

>>Governor Jindal also supported the passage of SB 143 to prohibit a sex offender from wearing a mask, hood or disguise during holiday events and from distributing candy or other gifts on Halloween to persons under eighteen years of age;

>>AND… SB 517 which provides for the lifetime registration of sex offenders;

>>AND… SB 510 to double the minimum sentence for computer-aided solicitation of a minor;

>>AND… HB 770 to prohibit the use text messaging by sex offenders;

>>AND… SB 514 to increase the minimum sentence for the molestation of a juvenile by five-fold.

>>The obvious lesson here is—if you're going to molest a child—DON'T DO IT IN LOUISIANA. (which is exactly the intended message)

While the supreme court's ruling on the death penalty is completely ridiculous to me, it is–if nothing else–consistent. It is consistent with a long standing national policy of not taking sexual violence towards children seriously. We simply treat it like a minor annoyance, rather than the unforgivable act of a monster. We aren't sending mixed signals here: our country's policy is that raping a child is not worthy of our most severe punishment, because it's not that severe of a crime.

Remember: The average convicted child molester spends three years in prison. Three.

I was re-reading the child molester chapter in An Inconvenient Book to pull that number, because no matter how many times I see it, I can't believe it. But while reading, I found a loose end in the book that we can now tie up:

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Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Georgia, Montana, and Texas have allowed for the use of the death penalty in child rape cases even if there is no charge of murder.

ADD Moment:
It's unclear what the courts will do with these death penalty laws for child rape. The Louisiana Supreme Court recently held up the execution of a 42 year old man for the rape of his companion's eight year old daughter. However, in 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for a rapist claiming the punishment didn't fit the crime. Experts say the Supreme Court may rule on the Louisiana case in 2008.

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Chalk one up for the molesters!

In other molester related news—remember this one?

Patricia Conradt sued NBC last July claiming the network interfered with police duties and then failed to protect her brother's safety. Her brother, Louis William Conradt, Jr. shot himself in November 2006 when officers showed up at his house as part of a 'To Catch a Predator' sting arranged by Dateline.

So what happened?

The LA Times' Matea Gold reveals that the $105M lawsuit filed against NBC over one of its predator stories, has been “amicably resolved.”

Before you chalk another one up for Molesterville because you think NBC actually paid the family of a child molester for uncovering he was a child molester—the details of the settlement aren't public. Let's hope for the best (and the rational.)

Maybe “amicably resolved” means they were sitting around the negotiating table and the molesters family realized what a horrible case they had. Then all parties involved realized that a child molester was dead, instead of alive —so everyone went out for ice cream and laughed about their past disagreements. Chuckle chuckle.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….I get it! Iraq is fixing ITSELF!!! That's so weird!

It seems to me that if they were capable of fixing “themselves”, there wouldn't have been a Saddam Hussein in power for us to remove.

Strange how when things are going wrong in Iraq, I rarely see articles about how Iraqis are doing it to “themselves”. But when things go right, it must be some mystical magical self-healing process.

Amazing, but I guess this is the “good” coverage of the war we've been asking for. Or at least the “as good as it gets” coverage.