I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Despite the many problems and unjust aspects of sex offender registries in the United States, one California legislator wants to replicate the idea internationally, establishing a global sex offender list that could track people from country to country as well as state to state. The Detroit Free Press reports:
While the law now applies to all states, California Republican Rep. Dan Lungren is proposing a worldwide crackdown on high-risk sex offenders and sex trafficking.
Under his bill, convicted sex offenders would have to tell local law enforcement of their travel plans 21 days before leaving their country. That information would then be shared with diplomatic officials in foreign countries, who could keep track of the offenders. Lungren is already working with the Mexican government on the proposal.
“The idea is to notify law enforcement officials in those countries that people are traveling,” said Lungren, who called sex trafficking “a plague on our region and our nation.”
And if it was only sex traffickers and pedophiles that ended up on such a list, that might not be a problem. But as we’ve been documenting over the last few weeks, every state has different criteria for what kinds of crimes qualify for the registry and very few states limit the list only to actual predators.
In many states you can end up being a “registered sex offender” for anything from soliciting a prostitute to mooning someone to having a consensual Romeo and Juliet relationship with another teenager to “sexting” (sending explicit pictures of oneself over a cell phone).
But here’s the real problem with proposals like this:
However, Michael Macleod-Ball, the ACLU’s chief legislative and policy counsel, said he fears the bill will pass because no one in Congress will want to cast a vote that could be interpreted as supporting sex offenders.
“Absolutely, we’re worried about something like this passing because it’s very easy to get a yes vote,” he said. “Maybe we should say the converse: If you vote against something like this, you sort of stick out like a sore thumb.”
Which is exactly why no legislator has the courage to fix the situation. Talk to lawmakers about it and every one of them will tell you, off the record, that they know there is much injustice being done and they think it needs to be changed — but none of them is willing to put their career on the line to do it.
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter