Centerfield

Unfortunately, in both cases, the invasion of Iraq, and preventing the spread of HIV, Mr. Savage has simply lost his mental balance and sent his brains out to lunch.

No one with their head screwed on straight would contend that what we are doing in Iraq will "ensure emphaticly that all terrorists are dead", however much it may do or have done other good things.

Committed, monogamous relationships don't spread HIV, multiple sexual partners are what spread it. Marriage and paternity can both be proved definitively in court, the one by official records, the other by DNA test. STD infection cannot be so definitively proved if the infected party has had multiple partners, as he or she are likely to have had. Moreover, the knowledge and intention of the infecter would have to be addressed.

One of the pestilences of our time are "liberals" who have conservative conversion experiences on one selected issue or another. The blogosphere is full of them. The cognitive dissonance of operating from two different and incompatible sets of ideological principles is almost always fatal to their common sense,as in the above cases.

And it is common sense that ultimately is the basis of the political compromises most "centrists" wish we could achieve.

arguing that the only way to prevent September 11th-like attacks on American soil is to ensure emphatically that all terrorists are dead.

To describe that line of "logic" as intellectually vapid would an act of extreme generosity.

His treatment of child support is equally vapid, IMHO. And I say that as a single father who hasn't received a thin dime in child support, although I paid out many thousands of dimes in child support before I gained custody.

For one thing his proposed 50/50 split isn't at all analogous to the child support system. It simply doesn't work that way. Nor has it ever worked that way. Secondly, the existing system already taxes the resources of District Attorneys. Adding another layer would represent another burden. This in a climite of fiscal belt-tightening. It simply isn't tenable.

Kevin,

I don't think he actually means that we can kill them all, but nevermind, that is not what the post was about.

I also don't think he was comparing the 50/50 split to child support either, but rather stating that if you get an STD it is just as much your fault for having unprotected sex as it is of the person who gave it to you. I don't condone ignoring any proposal based on the taxing of local District Attorney resources, especially since if we legalized Marijuana we would decrease their workload by half.

Joseph,

By your logic we should ignore women when they have been raped if it cannot be definetively proved, which is the case a large portion of the time.

I don't condone ignoring any proposal based on the taxing of local District Attorney resources, especially since if we legalized Marijuana we would decrease their workload by half.

Ah... some good ol' fashioned horsetrading? I'll admit you've got me interested now. Although I still see some fundamental flaws with Savage's suggestion. Joseph addressed them above.

Frankly I don't see how your trite response to Joseph addresses his points. To really address them you would have to focus on the rapist, not the raped.

Or are you suggesting mob justice where the possibility of an innocent person being unjustly convicted of a crime he didn't commit is an acceptable collateral damage so long as someone is forced to take financial responsibility?

I am not considering any of the above. First of all, we prosecute criminals based on he said/ she said all of the time, their is often not empirical evidence. My question to Joseph is simply should we stop doing that? If a women was raped fifteen years ago as a child, and chooses to bring it forward later in life should that crime be prosecuted? What about all of those Catholic Priests? I don't think that is trite at all, I do think you over thinking it just a bit.

Second of all, we already track down sexual partners who are possibly at risk of STD's. If the doctor where to tell me tomorrow that I was HIV positive, the second thing he would do is ask who I have had sex with. If I name seven people and only one of them had HIV, than it is pretty clear where it came from. Is there a gray area... in most cases "yes," but I don't see it as an impossibility that guilt can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Besides, I don't think what Savage was saying is that we should make it a goal to prosecute eveyone who has unprotected sex, we certainly do not collect payments from all deadbeat dads... I think what he was saying was that we need to create incentives for those who would do such a thing to think twice about it? It's not a cure, but I don't think it was intended to be.

My only point about the burden of local DA's was that you where in the right church, but the wrong pew. There is a burden on local government law enforcement, but that doesn't mean we should stop looking into meaningful laws that will curb irresponsible activity. I think we need to be looking at some of the laws we have on the books now that really do nothing but protect people from themselves, for instance, seatbelt laws.

The "three strikes your out" punishment paradigm has created a problem with prisons being overcrowded in large part by inmates who don't belong. IMO, chief among that group of inmates are those who where arrested as non-violent drug offenders. When I worked in King County we concluded this made up over half of or prison population with the majority of those cases involving the use of Marijuana, which has led to political reforms such as the Drug Court system. The focus of our justice system should be crime towards other people, not crime toward ourselves.

I can agree that something needs to be done to provide deterrence. Not sure support payment would work, but could definately go for making knowingly passing on an STD a punishable crime. And if that overburdens the system, I'm all about reprioritizing so that acts that only harm oneself are not a crime.

A couple of points:

I'm not sure what the difference actually is between knowingly spreading a fatal disease and knowingly using a knife except that, in the former, the other person involved is tricked into participating in the crime. Logically there should be no difference in assault with a weapon laws and assault with a disease, right?

To not criminalize something that should be based on the ability to prosecute is distasteful in the least.