June 19, 2021 by Maggie McNeill
To what extent the prosecution will twist the law to its ends remains to be seen. - Stephen Lemons
Whore Madonnas (#808)More from Juniper Fitzgerald:
The Punitive Mindset (#880)...my children's book, How Mamas Love Their Babies...is the only children's book- to my knowledge- to include a sex-working mother: "Some mamas dance all night long in special shoes. It's hard work!"...You would never suspect that such a modest inclusion of sex workers in a picture book about how parents provide for their children by any means necessary would provoke the bowels of the internet so profoundly. Claims that I-along with Hilary Clinton, mind you-am sex-trafficking my own child grace my timeline even three years after publication. My inbox still tells me that I am a literal witch and devil worshipper-whatever the fuck that means. Or, my favorite, that I am "communist whore filth." It's easy to dismiss Q-anon and #PizzaGate believers as a handful of rabid, marginal cultists. But these...exist on the same continuum with wine-sipping white ladies who think sex workers are a threat to their children...
"Drugs" are a popular pretext for petty vindictiveness in US prisons:
A Moral Cancer (#1000)Billy Steffey...is a former federal inmate...still trying to fight the BOP for stripping him of good behavior credits and throwing him in solitary confinement for five months based on... an unverified [drug] test with a well-established track record of leading to wrongful arrests ...[such] tests...[a]re not admissible...in court; and the manufacturers explicitly warn that all tests should be sent to crime labs to be verified...Yet the federal Bureau of Prisons relies solely on such tests to pu[nish prisoners]...and strip them of...rights...with virtually no avenue for recourse...The issues with these tests have been known for decades and are easily verifiable...In December [2017] a [screw] opened a package...legal...papers [that he claimed] felt "unusually thick" and gritty and looked discolored...many...prisons have...bann[ed] physical mail and used book donations...[under the pretext that] they...are [used]...to...s[muggle] drugs...[screws] tested the...papers...[and claimed they saw evidence of] amphetamines...[then] linked the package to Steffey after [rooting in his] email...threw him in...solitary...for five months...and...stripped him of 41 days of "good time" credit...
Because obviously prohibition doesn't ruin enough lives yet:
Micromanagement (#1012)[Oregon governor] Kate Brown...[approved] a bill banning the online sale of nicotine-containing vaping products to state residents...despite convincing evidence that limiting access to e-cigarettes drives users, especially young people, to traditional cigarettes that pose greater health risks...as politicians eternally pretend to not understand, banning things doesn't mean that people give up on them. Instead, it drives them to legal substitutes that may pose different or greater risks, or else to black market suppliers who offer products of unknown quality and safety. [When] San Francisco banned the sale of flavored tobacco products in 2018...92 percent of [users] continued their habits after the ban...[but] high school students' odds of smoking conventional cigarettes doubled...The conclusion that prodding youthful users from vaping to cigarettes is a bad idea is not [even] controversial...
This would be better news if judges didn't simply rubber-stamp cops' warrant requests:
Devil's Advocate (#1114)Maryland and Montana have become the first states to pass laws...requir[ing] police to have court authorization...[and] probable cause...[Maryland further requires that] the crime being probed must be a murder, a rape, a felony sexual offense, or a "criminal act involving circumstances presenting a substantial and ongoing threat to public safety or national security"... AncestryDNA and 23andMe both prohibit such investigations using an ordinary user profile. But other companies, such as FamilyTreeDNA and GEDMatch...allow police to [root in] their databases...[at will]...
Your periodic reminder that a child-shaped toaster is still a toaster:
[Creepy weirdos] assigned to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's [Sympathetic Magic] Unit have arrested and charged a...man accused of possessing child[-shapd toasters]...in October 2020, [intrusive and unconstitutional surveillance revealed] that William Crowder...ordered a child[-shaped toaster] to be shipped to his home. TBI agents subsequently [roo]ted...at Crowder's residence and found at least six [toasters (it's difficult to be sure because Tennessee cops can't count that high)], several of them dressed in children's clothing...Crowder [was charged] with six counts of [making toast in a way that upsets redneck busybodies]...
Stalkers in Blue (#1138)
Another cop demonstrating exactly what he is:
Minnesota State [pig] Albert Kuehne sat in his [pigmobile] in March 2020 and [rooted] through a phone belonging to a 25-year-old woman he'd just...[accused] of drunken driving...he [had no permission to even touch the phone, but] clicked through her photos [anyway]. Hours later, the woman's boyfriend noticed something alarming on her MacBook, which was synced to her phone: Outgoing text...messages to an unknown phone number with nude and partly clothed pictures of the woman attached. When they called that unfamiliar number, Kuehne answered...Kuehne...[has finally] admitted that he sent himself three explicit photos of the woman, and then deleted the outgoing messages on the woman's phone to try to cover his tracks. Kuehne pleaded guilty...to a misdemeanor...
US "authorities" keep pretending "because sex" is an excuse for any tyranny:
During a June 7 status conference...in the Lacey/Larkin case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Rapp...objected to the phrase "escort services" in a survey question about whether jurors had "strong feelings" concerning...the "legal adult entertainment industry"...Rapp [claimed] that the phrase is "a misnomer" for "prostitution services...[that] suggests that escort services [are] somewhat legal"...Whitney Bernstein, an attorney for Jim Larkin, [correctly responded] that escort services are...legal...in...many...states...[Judge] Brnovich...overruled Rapp, allowing the question to remain...