May 18, 2009
You there! Put down the Internet and slowly back away!

Hair Balls tries to make sense of a Senate criminal justice bill that is currently in committee in the House.


[The bill,] authored by Republican State Senator Florence Shapiro of Plano seems remarkably straightforward: It prohibits registered sex offenders from "using the Internet to access pornographic material."

It would also establish a means for "a commercial social networking site or Internet service provider" to be provided with a list of said perverts, so such businesses can alert authorities if they're using those sites to prey on kids.

But what got Hair Balls was that first part -- about not allowing these pervs to look at any pornography, or as stated later in the bill, anything deemed "obscene." (The bill refers to the obscenity section of the penal code, which offers different definitions of obscenity, which include simulated sex.) Even though, as everyone knows, there is hardly any sex stuff on the Interweb, how would something like that even be enforced?


What follows is a confused, albeit amusing, exchange between the Press' Craig Malisow and Sen. Shapiro. I couldn't make sense of it, either, but I could find this:



I suppose if you're a registered sex offender, you shouldn't have watched that. Sorry about that.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on May 18, 2009 to Crime and Punishment
Comments

I can see it now. A dude on a road trip across West Texas grabs a Sonic Route 44 Diet Cherry Limeade in Sweetwater. Somewhere between Lamesa and Seminole he needs to relieve the pressure on his bladder and pulls off on the sid of th road andgets busted mid-whizz and charged with indecent exposure. Name gets added to the sex offender list.

After fulfilling his minor sentence he is out on parole when his parole officer visits his home only to find that he is receiving Victoria's Secret or Abercrombie and Fitch catalogs. The bat signal to Senator Shapiro goes off and our poor roadside whizzer is suddenly "White Power" Bill's cellblock C boy toy in Huntsville.

Posted by: Patrick on May 19, 2009 7:15 AM
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