Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to the running-like-a-scalded-dog edition of Freedom Friday! Last night, yours truly cabbed his sweaty, sushi-filled gut to Source for the initial performance of the Capital Fringe Festival‘s Bare Breasted Women Sword Fighting. What a show! It may have changed my perspective on a lot of things, porn included. I’ll post a “hipshot” review of the show over at Fringe&Purge later this morning. Which reminds me: If you haven’t read Washington City Paper‘s Fringe blog, you’re really missing out—like these fellas missed out on every single Sadie Hawkins dance.
Child porn, compulsory abortions, and Obama birthers after the jump.
- David Malakoff, a former science editor at NPR who was found to have downloaded and viewed child pornography on his work computer, was sentenced yesterday to “five years probation, a fine of $5,000, 600 hours of community service, and he will have to register as a sex offender for 25 years,” according to the Examiner. U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle saw something in Malakoff that judges don’t see very often in these cases: A person worthy of her sympathy and mercy. “In explaining the exceptional step of sentencing below the guidelines,” wrote the Examiner’s Scott McCabe, “the judge said Malakoff had already thrown away a successful career and has to live with the stigma of being a sex offender for most of the rest of his life. But the strongest argument for the lesser sentence, Huvelle said, was that Malakoff had been raped as a 9-year-old boy and he had looked at the child pornography over five hours last year to relive his own rape.” Malakoff lucked out; most victims of pedophilia who perpetuate the cycle of molestation and assault as adults—even through a proxy like child pornography—end up behind bars.
- Another good one from the Examiner: David Freddoso reported earlier this week that John Holdren, President Barack Obama’s science czar, “approved of and recommended compulsory sterilization and even abortion in some cases, as part of a government population control regime” in the late 1970s. Freddoso’s proof? Ecoscience, the book that Holdren co-authored with fellow Malthusians Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. If the horrific significance of this is lost on you, dear reader, please surf your uninformed ass over to Wikipedia. Or better yet, search Google using the terms “China” and “one-child policy.”
- In other batshit-crazy news, the Washington Independent‘s Dave Weigel reports that the birthers are at it again: “Six months into Obama’s presidency, after scores of embarrassing legal defeats, and even after tussles between the attoneys who’ve turned frivolous lawsuits about the president’s citizenship into full-time jobs, the cottage industry of conspiracy theories about the president’s birth shows no signs of disappearing…The urban legend has become too pervasive for Republicans to avoid. In February, Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) introduced a much-mocked bill that would require presidential campaigns to provide “a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate.”…As of July 15, nine fellow Republican members of Congress were backing the bill.” The upside folks is the more time spent fighting or promoting a contentious, bither-sponsored bill amounts to less time spent TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS/JOBS!
That’s all for me. See U next week!