I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as cynical as I am about government, I can’t possibly keep up with reality. Last week an appeals court says the government can seize your property without even charging you with a crime, and this week Ohio has a law that allows people to be declared sex offenders without being charged with a crime. Read that again: without even being charged with a crime. And now they want to add people to the public sex offender registry based on that law as well:
An Ohio legislative panel yesterday rubber-stamped an unprecedented process that would allow sex offenders to be publicly identified and tracked even if they’ve never been charged with a crime.
No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro’s office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate.
Not one legislator opposed it. And it was already bad enough in Ohio. Get this:
A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit.
And here’s now the new rule would take that even further:
The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio’s so-called Megan’s Law.
The person’s name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where he could live.
A civilly declared offender, however, could petition the court to have the person’s name removed from the new list after six years if there have been no new problems and the judge believes the person is unlikely to abuse again.
I’m just dumbfounded. How could this pass without one single legislator saying no? This is absolutely outrageous. I’m so incensed that I can’t even attempt to be reasonable or eloquent about this. They should impeach every legislator who voted for that law, and I mean now. And after they’re impeached, the state should start a public Fucking Idiot Registry and put their names on it, then broadcast it every hour on the hour on every TV channel for the rest of their lives. In fact, they should pay someone to follow them around everywhere they go, holding a big sign above their head declaring:
Tried to destroy lives without due process.