His Name is Genarlow Wilson

Like practically anybody blessed with a modicum of self-awareness, twenty-year-old Genarlow Wilson of Douglas, Georgia is ashamed of many things he did when he was younger. In his case that sorry assortment includes abuse of recreational drugs, chiefly alcohol and marijuana, and early promiscuity.

But unlike most people whose mistakes were limited to moral lapses of that kind, Wilson is in prison, where he may remain for eight more years. His “crime” was to engage in a consensual sex act at the age of 17 with a girl two years his junior who had taken the initiative. The act at issue was the same one made infamous by Bill and Monica; it didn't involve intercourse, and so Georgia's statutory rape law didn't apply.

If he and his “partner” (I despise that term) had committed full-on fornication, Wilson would have been charged with a misdemeanor, and been liable for no more than a sentence of eighteen months. He would not have been required to register as a sex offender. The same penalties would be the most Wilson would face were he to commit the same act today, rather than three years ago.

But due to an eccentricity of Georgia state law at that time, the act was defined as “aggravated child molestation,” a felony for which the mandatory minimum sentence included ten years in prison and sex offender registration.

Wilson was one of six young men arrested after a December 2003 New Year's celebration at a Day's Inn off Interstate 20. The “Douglas Six,” as they immediately became known, had been involved in what I would call, had I no discipline at all, a "Bourbon, Buds, and Booty Bash": They rented a couple of rooms and invited some female schoolmates to spend the night.

One of the girls arrived at the Day's Inn with an overnight bag. She got thoroughly drunk, and was just as thoroughly used. The other girl, a friend of Wilson's from the track team, apparently remained sober the entire time. She was the one who, by her own account, initiated the sexual act with Wilson.

While not minimizing the magnitude of the moral offense committed here, I find myself asking: Where were the fathers of those two girls? This episode splendidly illustrates why my wife and I have no intention of sending our children to a government-run High School.

When the first girl awoke the next morning wearing nothing but socks, her first thought was that she had been raped. A call to her mother resulted in a police investigation that turned up a videotape of the previous night's activities. Soon Wilson and his friends were arrested at school and dragged away in handcuffs.

All five of Wilson's associates had criminal records; his own background was clean. He was an honor roll student and football standout who had been recruited by colleges throughout the region. Unfortunately, he had no father in the home to teach and discipline him, which meant that the State – in the form of the local school system – served as a surrogate step-father.

The results of this relationship are in some ways quite predictable to anybody who studies our State-run school system, the petri dish in which our degenerate culture has grown and flourished. And the depraved behavior of Wilson and his buddies is hardly the only – or the most lurid – example one can find in Georgia's recent history.

A little more than a decade ago, the residents of Conyers – a relatively up-scale and nearly all-white exurb of Atlanta and host of some events in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics – were shocked to learn of a syphilis epidemic among local High School and Junior High School students. Seventeen tested positive for the venereal disease; more than 200 students believed to have been exposed to the disease were treated as well. Of that group, 50 admitted to have engaged in exotic sexual behavior that might have seemed excessive to the proprietors of a brothel in Pompeii.

“It was not uncommon, when all these young people would get together, to engage in group sex,” recalled Claire Sterk, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health, in an interview from the 1999 PBS Frontline documentary “The Lost Children of Rockdale County.” “There was group sex going on in terms of one guy having sex with one of the girls, and then the next guy having sex with the same girl. There was group sex going on in terms of one girl having sex with multiple male partners at the same time, multiple females having sex with each other at the same time. I would say that the only type of group sex that I did not hear about in this overall context was group sex between just guys.”

Some of those involved were as young as 12-13 years of age.

"The parents were off and gone," observed middle school guidance counselor Peggy Cooper. "And they said they were watching the Playboy Channel in the girl’s bedroom. And there would be, like, 10 or 12 of them up there." One young boy described to Cooper the "game" their group had devised in which "you have to imitate what the Playboy people are doing." Another boy told her that "there may be three or four of us at one time. And it doesn’t matter if you’re two guys or two girls or a girl and a guy. It doesn’t matter. You just have to do what they’re doing."

One girl recalled a party at which another girl, equipped with "the bag of condoms we got from the health department," undertook to have sex with every boy in the room. The boys at the party were "lined up … it was like they were from the [bedroom] door to the front door.... And then she came out. She … thought it was the coolest thing."

Health officials learned of at least one 14-year-old Conyers girl who had sexual liaisons with up to 100 different “partners.” Other students attested on-camera for PBS that “a lot of people” they knew from school were involved in group sex.

How many of the acts carried out by these teenagers could have led to prosecutions like the one that landed Genarlow Wilson in prison? We'll never know, because Rockdale County prosecutors -- unlike Douglas District Attorney David McDade and prosecutor Eddie Barker – had a sufficient sense of proportion not to pursue the matter.

Behold my mighty jowls of justice! Douglas DA David McDade, the Pecksniffian prosecutor behind Genarlow Wilson's needless imprisonment.

Each of the “Douglas Six” was offered a plea bargain in which the “mandatory” ten-year sentences would be radically reduced if they agreed to register as sex offenders. All but Wilson – the only one who had never actually committed a crime – accepted the deal.

Being a registered sex offender is a life sentence of sorts. Wilson points out that had he accepted the deal, he would have been forbidden to share a home with his young sister, and that he wouldn't be permitted to take part in church or school activities involving children. So he stood trial on charges of false imprisonment, statutory rape, and aggravated child molestation.

The jury acquitted him of everything but the last charge, which – according to the prosecution – was the only legally valid description of the consensual acts documented in the videotape. Not aware that a guilty verdict meant ten years in prison, the jury found Wilson guilty of molestation.

DA McDade insists that Wilson “put himself in [his] predicament,” that the young man craves the status of a “martyr,” and that his hands were tied by state statute – which has since been changed. But he chose to ignore several opportunities to exercise reasonable discretion that would have avoided prison time for a young man whose actions, while morally repulsive, did not involve a crime of violence or seduction (remember – the girl who serviced him admitted that she had been the aggressor).

McDade could have followed the example of Rockdale County prosecutors and simply not prosecuted Wilson's “offense.” That course of action would have been compatible with a similar (but not identical) case involving Marcus Dixon, an 18-year-old Georgian who had sex with a 15-year-old. Dixon's ten-year prison sentence was overturned on appeal.

McDade could have urged the trial judge to grant First Offender status to Wilson, which would have been appropriate in the case of a young man with a bright future and no criminal record. McDade insists that he doesn't “believe” in offering First Offender status in sex cases as a matter of “office policy.” But this didn't prevent his office from offering that status to 26-year-old George Tsimpides, who lured a 15-year-old girl to a shopping mall for the purpose of having sex with her.

Tsimpides, an actual sexual predator, served 20 days in jail.

At the same time Wilson's trial was underway, a local high school teacher who enticed a student more than a decade her junior was found guilty of sex crimes. She served a total of 90 days in jail.

Genarlow Wilson, who engaged in consensual immoral behavior with a peer, has thus far served two years in prison.

McDade's office could set aside Wilson's sentence. In fact, the Georgia legislature changed the law under which Wilson was prosecuted, although for reasons that defy understanding it didn't make the changes retroactive. So as things stand right now, there is no legal, practical, or moral reason for Genarlow Wilson to remain in prison – where before there had merely been no practical or moral reason to send him there.

The only impediment to Wilson's freedom is the omnivorous vanity and malodorous arrogance of McDade and Barker, who insist that the young man has to submit to their will by admitting that he is a child molester.

Displaying the cruel, perversely distorted paternalism we'd expect from a particularly depraved antebellum plantation owner, both McDade and Barker insist that Wilson has to be punished for not “taking his medicine” like the five other defendants who were successfully intimidated into accepting sex offender status.

As a report from ESPN summarizes the matter: “If Wilson would only admit to being a child molester, he could stop receiving the punishment of one. Maybe.”

“The one person who can change things at this point is Genarlow,” smirks Barker. “The ball's in his court.”

To which the appropriate reply would be this:

Wipe that smirk off your overfed, tax-fattened face, Eddie. His name is Mister Wilson. For all of his admittedly loathsome behavior, the character he's displayed by refusing to submit to your extortion makes him more of a man than you will ever be.

It shouldn't be necessary to say so, but I'll say it anyway: Wilson's behavior was horrifying and inexcusable. But the State isn't in the business of redemption, and it shouldn't be in the business of abetting, facilitating, and subsidizing sexual depravity, and then selectively prosecuting some of those who behave more or less as they're been encouraged to by their government-approved tutors.

For more about the Genarlo Wilson case, go here.

Please visit our freedom-focused news site, The Right Source.

Attention, Rep. Walter Jones: The Constitution is Calling

I desperately want to support HJ Res. 14, a bill sponsored by Representative Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) that is intended to pre-empt the Bush regime's plans for war with Iran.

The resolution consists of two brief clauses:

“No provision of law enacted before the date of the enactment of this joint resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of military force by the United States against Iran.”

This statement is obviously true, and should thus be unnecessary. However, various representatives of the Regime – including but not limited to Commissarina for External Affairs Condoleeza Rice – have brazenly and repeatedly claimed that Bush has the innate authority to order a military attack on Iran, or any other nation, at his discretion.

In fact, as Republican Senator Charles Hagel pointed out in a recent interview with GQ magazine, in late 2002, when the Bush Regime was maneuvering the nation into war with Iraq, it submitted a draft resolution to Congress that would have authorized a war against the entire Middle East.

The White House's proposed resolution, Hagel recalled, would have permitted them to “go anywhere in the region.... They could go into Greece or anywhere. Is central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything. It was literally anything. No Boundaries. No restrictions.”

The Regime has never permitted something as trivial as the Constitution or the law to impede its objectives, and it has proceeded -- in its demented, power-enraptured, reality-aversive way – as if its original resolution had been passed.

How do we know this?

The Regime has said as much in congressional testimony.

In an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October 2005, Ms. Rice was asked whether the Bushling would circumvent congress in ordering a military strike against Iran or Syria.

“I will not say anything that constrains his authority as commander-in-chief,” replied Rice, a non-responsive answer that assumes the president has the authority to launch a war against either country without a congressional declaration. When pressed by Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) as to whether congressional authorization would be sought before military action was ordered, Rice continued in the same vein: “The president never takes any option off the table, and he shouldn’t.”

In a tidy phrase, the Busheviks assume that all power resides in the executive, including the unilateral power to expand the war into Iran.

(For a stunning illustration of how widespread this doctrine is in the totalitarian death cult that was once the Republican Party, watch this clip of Virginia Representative Eric Cantor insisting – with a dutiful subservience one usually sees in Pyongyang – that the president didn't need congressional authorization to attack Iraq, and needs none to expand the war to Iran. It's understandable if you entertain the fleeting thought that Cantor is another of Stephen Colbert's satirical creations.)

Rep. Jones' amendment restates the obvious: Bush has never been authorized to prosecute a war against Iran. We have reached the stage in our nation's descent into full-orbed despotism that stating the obvious about such matters is not only necessary, but courageous.

It is in its second clause that Rep. Jones' resolution breaks down:

“Absent a national emergency created by an attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran, upon the United States, its territories or possessions or its armed forces, the President shall consult with Congress.”

Well ... no.

Trying to arrest the Regime's drive to war with Iran with this language is a bit like trying to lasso a locomotive with linguini. This formulation leaves the initiative with The Great And Glorious Decider and his handlers. It is that pack of felons who would determine whether Iran poses the threat of a “demonstrably imminent attack.” And as presently written (read it carefully), this provision would permit Bush and his handlers to start a war without so much as consulting with Congress if they can contrive a suitable rationale.

Only Congress can declare war. It's not a matter of the president “consulting” with Congress, or Congress issuing some anodyne resolution allowing the president to make the call. That power is vested in Congress by the Constitution, and anything other than a formal, explicit declaration of war by that body is inadequate and improper.

This is certainly not to say that all wars declared by Congress are morally defensible, since most of the declared wars in our nation's history were not. It is to say that an undeclared war is facially unconstitutional, illegal, and morally impermissible.

The fatal problem with Rep. Jones' resolution is this: As things stand right now, the Busheviks are already claiming that Iran has attacked our occupation forces in Iraq.

That was the point of last weekend's highly classified, double-secret-probation, one step removed from the Cone of Silence briefing by anonymous officials who offered an “assessment” that Iran has been smuggling “explosively formed penetrators” to Iraqi insurgents for use against U.S. Personnel. Without adducing anything resembling, you know, evidence or proof or stuff, the “official” insisted that this plot involves officials at the “highest levels” of the Iranian regime.

As Patrick Cockburn points out, what this mystery-enshrouded guy was describing are improvised explosive devices of a sort that have been used by every guerrilla army for the past century. And it seems a touch unlikely, at least to rational people, that Iran's Shiite regime, which has been handed Iraq on a platter thanks to the U.S. Invasion, would undermine that achievement by supporting a largely Sunni insurgency.

The purpose behind the Bush Regime's “revelation” is utterly transparent, its evidence just as palpably false – so why was the charade of secrecy necessary? My guess is that this was a requirement imposed by whatever “official” was used as the aperture for the Regime's disinformation cloaca. The last fellow who was used thus was Colin Powell, and his reputation has never recovered.

Freedom-obsessed information junkies are invited to visit The Right Source for news, commentary, and Kevin Shannon's radio program.

My Amerika (first in an occasional series)

"America's Sheriff," Mike Carona, poses with America's Feliks Dzerzhinsky -- Tom Ridge, founder of our Cheka, the Department of Homeland Security.

Several decades ago, Latvian filmmaker Albert Jekste produced a documentary entitled “My Latvia” depicting the Soviet conquest and occupation of the Baltic States. The most memorable sequence in that film presented, in deadpan, roll-call style, a roster of Soviet-appointed civic officials and their previous occupations.

Without exception, each had been a career criminal, generally in the same field as his new “legitimate” profession: The new head of the central bank had been an armed robber, the police chief had been the local underworld boss, and so on.

A similar amalgamation of the criminal underworld and political “over-world” is taking place as America descends into an abyss of Soviet-style corruption and tyranny in the name of Homeland Security. But we have to take note of a very important distinction: We're doing it to ourselves.

As occasion warrants, I'll present case studies illustrating what we could call the “My Latvia Syndrome.” I suspect that we'll suffer from a crisis of abundance rather than one of scarcity in this respect.

Today's example focuses on Mike Carona, a self-professed Christian Republican from Orange County – the Mecca of modern conservatism – who has been designated “America's Sheriff” by Larry King. (Here is a gallery of photos, letters, and other keepsakes from King and other celebrities from the "I Love Me" page of Carona's re-election campaign website.)

A balding man in his early 50s with a swimmer's build and the earnest, buck-toothed demeanor of the world's oldest Boy Scout, Carona is a key homeland security adviser to George W. Bush and California Governor Schwarzenegger. He is also a serial adulterer (click here and scroll down to see a photo of Carona during a Russian junket cradling his, ahem, interpreter, who is depicted in another photo wearing the Sheriff's uniform). To this can be added the fact that he's a bosom chum of at least one significant Mafia figure.

The official certificate naming Carona a "senior adviser" on homeland security affairs.

Several years ago Carona filled his campaign war chest was filled with illegal contributions from a felonious businessman as part of a kickback scheme involving a proposed system called High-speed Avoidance Laser Technology (HALT), which could be used by police to disable automobiles by remote control.

HALT is described in the patent (number 6411217) as “a remotely operable vehicle disabling system where a remote command transmitter transmits a command to a receiver capable of terminating vehicle operation and situated within a vehicle to be so disabled.... The system comprises, first of all, a remotely operable transmit unit for transmitting a command shutdown message which may preferably be an infrared beam. Second, the system comprises a command-receiver vehicle unit capable of responding to the command and physically situated at a site of the vehicle such that a shutdown message from the transmit unit can reach the vehicle unit.”

HALT was to be produced by CHG Safety Technologies, whose founder and CEO, Charles H. Gabbard, had applied to become a California police officer in the late 1950s. After being found unsuitable for such service, Gabbard embarked on a career on the other side of the law, building a criminal resume that included armed robbery, attempted robbery, embezzlement, sundry parole violations, and a murder charge.

In 2000, after “going straight,” Gabbard met Sheriff Carona (who was a little more than a year into his first term) by way of a mutual friend: Lobbyist Bob Levy, a retired U.S. Marshal hard-wired into California's vast network of law enforcement unions and pressure groups.

Gabbard enlisted Levy, Carona, and other influential figures in a scheme to give HALT a monopoly by having the legislature mandate its installation in all automobiles state-wide. The felon-turned-police state profiteer handed out tens of thousands of dollars in bribes (in the form of illegal campaign donations) to then-Governor Gray Davis and various state legislators. His most generous gifts were bestowed on Sheriff Carona.

In February 2000, Carona, Levy, and Gabbard worked out an arrangement through which the Sheriff would promote Gabbard's technology in exchange for campaign cash. In fulfillment of his end of the deal, Carona “spent untold thousands of taxpayer dollars to hold a HALT demonstration at El Toro [a former Marine Corps base] on March 16, 2000, and six days later sent a glowing product-endorsement letter to state officials considering a plan, Senate Bill 2004, to mandate Gabbard's products on all California vehicles,” reported the Orange County Weekly (which has produced Pulitzer-caliber exposes of the myriad law enforcement scandals afflicting that community).

Even more shocking was Carona's offer to provide “certain inmates” at the County Jail to help Gabbard manufacture his product.

On May 18 of that year Gabbard came through with the quo for the Sheriff's quid, in the form of $40,000 in donations from CHG executives during a “birthday party” for Carona at Villa Nova restaurant in Newport Beach.

When the dirty deal became public knowledge, Carona reacted by blaming the entire affair on his second-hand man, Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo.

Both Jaramillo and his wife received tens of thousands of dollars in “consulting fees” from Gabbard to promote the HALT technology. On January 30 Jaramillo was given a year in jail and three years of probation as part of a plea agreement. He had faced the prospect of 13 years in prison on bribery, misuse of county property, and lying to a grand jury.

Carona insists that he was deceived by Jaramillo, a one-time close friend whom he was grooming as a successor. ("He is not only like a brother to me, he is my brother," Carona once insisted.) But there is a solid evidentiary trail connecting Carona himself to the kickback scheme, and besides, as Sheriff he should bear much of the blame for a scandal involving his second-in-command.

But Carona – or “Calamity Mike,” as the OC Weekly refers to him – appears to be immune to accountability in any form.

*A few years ago, “America's Sheriff” was photographed (wearing his uniform) in a boozy embrace with Rick Rizzolo, a Las Vegas “adult entertainment” mogul who has been identified by the FBI as a Mob associate.

*In September 2003, Carona issued a memo granting Joseph M. Medawar, a con man-cum-filmmaker, access to Orange County's Emergency Operations Center (EOC), a high-tech crisis headquarters center intended for use in the event of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. The EOC hosts classified training exercises involving most federal and state law enforcement and emergency response agencies.

The Lebanese-born Medawar, who has close ties to Saudi Arabia, claimed that he was filming a pilot for a television series to be called DHS, which would “celebrate federal agents and President Bush.” (He had paid Orange County Congressman Dana Rohrabacher $23,000 for an old script.) A federal indictment described Medawar's enterprise as a scam that defrauded investors of more than $5.5 million.

Thumbs up for evil! Carona poses with demented GOP presidential aspirant John McCain (left), and with McCain's rival Mitt Romney (right).

It's tempting to perceive Carona as a reality-based version of Chief Wiggum, the spectacularly corrupt and heroically inept Police Chief from The Simpsons. As Greg Hall can testify, Carona is more commissar than clown.

Hall, a 40-year-old businessman, was involved in a fender-bender on July 17, 2005. Upon their arrival the police gave him two Breathalyzer tests, both of which revealed a blood alcohol level of 0.00. Hall was cooperative, telling the officer that he had consumed a single beer and was taking Paxil, a prescription antidepressant. For no particular reason, Hall was arrested on suspicion of DUI and taken to the Orange County Jail.

Following a drug test, Hall was left to stew for what he was told would be no longer than an hour. When a group of Carona's deputies appeared on the scene, Hall politely complained that his handcuffs were too tight.

This mild complaint provoked the knot of deputies – a five-man gang referred to in Carona's department as the “Psycho Crew” -- to treat Hall “like a pinata.”

The handcuffed businessman, who had done nothing wrong and wasn't suspected of a violent offense, was subjected to a three-minute beating. He was dragged down a corridor, had his face repeatedly shoved into cell bars and slammed into the concrete floor, and received countless punches and kicks to his ribs.

Hall was left with “a concussion, broken ribs, a gash in his leg, an eye contusion, broken veins in his feet, a shattered front tooth, lacerations and bruises over his body, contusions to the knee, neck pain, a fractured right wrist and nerve damage to his left hand,” recounts OC Weekly, citing medical records. “The handcuffs were locked so tightly that the steel sliced his hands and caused dangerous swelling. An imprint of a deputy's boot could be seen on the back of his leg for days.”

The intensity of the assault made the terrified businessman lose control of his bowels, causing him to evacuate in his pants; his assailants, taking sadistic glee in their handiwork, derisive calling their victim a “sh*t monkey,” and left him in a cell to bleed. Some of them returned later to tie a black mesh hood over his head – a fitting coda to a performance straight out of Abu Ghraib.

Hall was left bleeding, with his hands cuffed behind his back, sitting in his own feces, for more than twelve hours. Deputies denied him food and water or access to a telephone. Eventually his leg wound was stitched up – without anesthetic – and he was permitted to stagger out of the jail without apology or explanation for the treatment he'd received.

This isn't the first time Carona's goon squad has tortured a jail inmate. In December 1999, four deputies assaulted a 20-year-old inmate in an isolated corner of the facility, torturing him by crushing his testicles. Prosecutors conceded that the torture had occurred, but insisted that they were stymied by a “code of silence” within the Sheriff's Department.

A class-action lawsuit brought against Carona's department was dismissed in April 2005 by now-retired federal judge Gary L. Taylor, who was appointed by the George Bush (the elder). Taylor stipulated to the abuses, and acknowledged that there was “room for improvement” -- and then offered the written equivalent of a shrug by saying that “the county and the sheriff show every indication they will perform that high duty.”

Sheriff Carona, predictably, described Taylor's ruling as a “great victory.”

Just a few weeks later, his deputies, entrusted with the “high duty” to maintain professional standards of inmate safety literally beat the sh*t out of an innocent businessman, just because they could.

For maintaining standards of conduct worthy of a Soviet satrap, Mike Carona, “America's Sheriff” and senior national security adviser to George W. Bush, has earned the distinction of being the first figure profiled in our “My Amerika” series.

For news and commentary from a freedom-focused perspective -- as well as Kevin Shannon's no-holds-barred radio program -- please visit The Right Source.