As Rush Limbaugh likes to say, "Words mean things"

[thatcrazycajun]

...but they don't always mean the same things to everybody. Witness TurnLeft.com's list of conservative terms and their meanings, which I got to remembering after reading this column by my local newspaper's resident right-wing columnist, Jim Wooten, decrying the state Supreme Court's decision to cut Genarlow Wilson some long-deserved slack as "judicial activism." (Bad enough I had to read it once, when shelleybear linked to it; then I got hit with it again in yesterday's dead-tree edition when I opened the op-ed section.) I'm sorry, but I don't believe any otherwise good kid should have to do 10 years' hard time for getting stupid with another teenager in a consensual situation where no one got hurt.

I could swear I posted about this sort of thing here awhile back, noting that a conservative's "judicial activist" is usually a liberal's "sage, courageous jurist"...and that the two designations precisely reverse when the judge in question rules in alignment with the conservative worldview. (A conservative will often use both to describe the exact same judge, based on two different decisions, one of which the conservative loves and another s/he loathes.)

Comments

[zsero.livejournal.com]

I try had not to respond to your political posts, but this is too much. Your description of Wilson as an "otherwise good kid" who "[got] stupid with another teenager in a consensual situation where no one got hurt", bears no resemblance whatsoever to the facts. On balance I agree with the GA Supreme Court decision in this case, even though it defies the explicit command of the legislature, but Wilson is not a sympathetic character, and I feel no joy at his release. It's the right thing to do, but I wonder how long it will be before he's back in trouble, and how these judges will regard the suffering of his future victims.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Zev, I'm sorry you feel compelled to avoid responding to my political posts, but nobody's holding a gun to your head making you read them, are they? If my rants are so offensive to you, I'm sorry; never thought I'd have the same effect on a friend that listening to Limbaugh or reading Wooten has on me...

In any case, I am quite familiar with the facts of the case--a good deal more so than you, I'd venture, since it's been a lead story in our Atlanta paper and radio/TV newscasts for months, being a local story. The ONLY reason Wilson was in prison was that the girl's parents, NOT the girl herself, pressed statutory rape charges in outrage at what had happened. And Wilson was, by every report I've seen, while not a saint, certainly a young man with prospects and no priors before his arrest.

And in any case, my statement about "otherwise good kids" was mainly referring to the others besides Wilson who have been unfairly made to suffer by Georgia's ridiculously broad laws governing sex offenders and underage sexual conduct (see ajc.com for stories here (http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2007/10/19/offended_1021.html) and here (http://www.ajc.com/shared-gen/content/shared-gen/ap/National/Teen_Sex_Laws.html?cxntlid=inform)). I'm sorry for not having made that clear.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

The ONLY reason Wilson was in prison was that the girl's parents, NOT the girl herself, pressed statutory rape charges in outrage at what had happened.

Well now, that's not quite true, is it? He was on trial because a 17-year-old girl charged him with rape, and the investigation turned up the video with the stat-"rape" of the 15-year-old on it as well. He was also on trial because he turned down the plea bargain that the other five boys agreed to.

Faced with two charges, the jury split the difference and convicted him of only one. Had they been presented with only the rape and not the stat-rape we don't know that they would have acquitted him. Legally, that doesn't matter; he was convicted of only one offense, so he can only be punished for that, and the time he's already served for it is more than sufficient. But morally? He and his friends got two girls drunk and drugged, and had their way with them; I wouldn't call that exactly a "consensual situation", or him an "otherwise good kid" who deserves his freedom. I think the public is less safe with him on the streets. But nevertheless the court did the right thing in letting him go.

But your post was about calling this decision "activist", and that's a very fair term to use. The legislature explicitly said that the change in the law should not be applied retroactively and when all's said and done the court did exactly that. Not technically, but in fact. Its reasons in this case seem compelling, and I think it was legally correct. Had I been on the court I would have done the same thing. But it's certainly not something courts should be doing in general.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

PS: On the general subject of "ridiculously broad laws governing sex offenders and underage sexual conduct" I think we're in complete agreement.

ahem

[a-phoenix-afire.livejournal.com]

-In any case, I am quite familiar with the facts of the case--a good deal more so than you, I'd venture, since it's been a lead story in our Atlanta paper and radio/TV newscasts for months, being a local story.-

Oddly enough, a simple google search is all that's necessary to bring one up to speed on both sides of the matter.

That's the kind of wet-mop-in-the-face moment you get for blindly believing and parroting the liberal press, and you should stop the nasty habit of painting the opposition with a five inch siding brush, when a one and a half inch cut brush is what's called for.

This post is the kind of biased or uninformed (or both) reportage that makes it so difficult to trust what is said in political discourse without thoroughly researching it for oneself.
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What zsero said.