We have yet another child criminally charged for something that at one time would have been treated as a mere conduct issue warranting a note to a parent. In Pikesville, Maryland, a 13-year-old will be charged with second-degree assault for kissing a 14-year-old girl on a dare. This absurd case began with school officials calling police who pursued the minor on criminal assault charges.
The child is now facing a second-degree assault charge as a juvenile.
There is no question that this warrants discipline but a criminal charge?
What do you think?
“A 10th undercover (and shocking) abortion video comes out and we get *CRICKETS*, A 13 year old boy smooches a 14 year old girl on a dare and he’s brought up on charges of assault. THAT right there tells me our culture is completely OUT OF BALANCE!”
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/13/ben-carson-no-apologies-for-1992-fetal-tissue-research/
“Ben Carson defended the use of fetal tissue for medical research Thursday, after a blog published excerpts of a 1992 paper describing work the neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate carried out using aborted fetuses.”
“United we stand, divided we fall”, I don’t know why that is so difficult for slightly less than half of all Americans.
Ninian
You hit the nail on the head. The resistance to creating a strong union with collective powers and oversight is almost religious among most Americans. The more intelligent ones relax into an admission of the impossibility of taking the paradigms of most of the other more advanced countries as a starting place to reform. The woeful state of the public education system, the parasitical state of the health care insurance industry, and other luxuries stand as testament to the dysfunction of the government(s) of this country. The question is, how bad does it need to get before enough Americans twig onto the fact that Daniel Boone and John Wayne are dead, as are the times wherein they lived?
Isaac: You have to remember that the United States is not yet 300 years old. Other countries have had parliamnets for a millennium and this has resulted in the development of political systems. The USA has only just started to walk this road. In another 200years time it will be unrecognisable, if indeed it survives in its present form. I think the issue i will the USA eveolve into a country or will it remain fragmented within a theoretical Union. I have always believed in strength through coorperation and for that reason I am pro European Union, which has by enlarge kept the peace and brought individual States to account within the context of human rights abuse. But like the USA the EU is a new concept and has significant teething problems. If these can be addressed the EU will survive. It is good to have a system which brings individual parliaments to account.
Americans are starting to question the Status Quo and this can only be healthy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs
I think that this clip shows real insight and if Congress was full of people like this it would be an end to rhetoric.
Isaac: I saw the case of the boy with the clock. And I understand the points you are making.
The real problem is that the United States is not a real country but almost a country and this is an inherrant problem of the concept of Federalism.
The issue underlying all these sorts of cases pertains to te generation National Paronia. Whilst this may be recognised in certain Countries, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China and North Korea, it is more difficult to acknowledge when it is nearer to home?
If such paranoia in ingrained into the personna of some of the United States this does not bode well for the future, if we see how other States have developed within these parameters.
The “loose” Federation and “confused” concepts of individual freedom vs collective freedom add gasoline to the flames of intolerance and this is the Road to Anarchy. I suppose that the sanctity of the Union is being sorely tested and there does seem to be a dichotomy still existing between North and South.
What is odd and rather disturbing Southern Comfort seems to embrace a truculence centred on an inward looking agenda.
I have always believed that the Strength of the United States was in its Union. But such a Union appears to be Spin, and methinks the Civil War never really ended.
Ninian
This is the country where, in some states, you can kill someone with a gun or whatever, merely if you feel threatened. It’s called the ‘Stand your ground.’ law and enough people believe that this is OK that it is actually a law. If this and some of the other stuff that goes on in this country were to be written into the script for a movie or TV show, the producers wouldn’t accept it on the basis is that it is so unbelievable that it wouldn’t work. Even in the movies there has to be some intelligent foundation for a story. However, not in real life America.
In Texas the teacher and the rest of the staff of a High School are so stupid that they had to call the police when a student built a digital clock and brought it in to show his teacher. The police, on the other hand, eclipsed this stupidity by arresting, handcuffing, and finger printing the ‘suspect’. They broke the law by interrogating the kid without having his parents present.
For the most part America is a fairly well balanced country. But, there are places one should simply not visit, Texas for instance.
A 10th undercover (and shocking) abortion video comes out and we get *CRICKETS*, A 13 year old boy smooches a 14 year old girl on a dare and he’s brought up on charges of assault. THAT right there tells me our culture is completely OUT OF BALANCE!
Someone needs to commit the schools administrators and prosecute the prosecutor and the police for lack of good judgment and common sense. No one in authority seems to be able to think.
The case of a child mad hatter.
Watch Amazon Indian boy work things out with American missionary team. Indian boy gives Jesus guys twice his size a hard time.
After signaling he wants a hat, he raids their boat and takes the hat. Done deal. Missionary team made the illegal contact.
“This freakish society is badly out of balance.”
Nailed it.raise much anger
Ever since 9/11 authorities at every level have taken on a totalitarian level of idiocy. It’s reaching the point where society can’t even get angry about it, because we’re just…tired. Tired of people that are supposed to educate, guide, protect, and help doing the exact opposite because they traded in their common sense and humanity for a little bit of authority.
Mr Turley in Ur heading, “Dare” not “Data”?
http://www.kingofhits.co.uk/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=65&func=view&catid=2&id=136988
I “clicked on” the photo of the article above thinking that something more of the story would come out. But there was nothing there. The so called story is vacant or vacuous.
Where the white women at? {Blazing Saddles movie).
This is asinine and it began with the school officials calling the police.
Here is the Maryland law referenced:
§ 3-203. Assault in the second degree.
(a) Prohibited.- A person may not commit an assault.
(b) Penalty.- Except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, a person who violates subsection (a) of this section is guilty of the misdemeanor of assault in the second degree and on conviction is subject to imprisonment not exceeding 10 years or a fine not exceeding $2,500 or both.
(c) Law enforcement officer.-
(1) In this subsection, “physical injury” means any impairment of physical condition, excluding minor injuries.
(2) A person may not intentionally cause physical injury to another if the person knows or has reason to know that the other is:
~+~
I fail to see how the elements were satisfied in this alleged crime. This at best is a de minimis assault that is not criminally actionable in my view. In my opinion this is evident of the zero tolerance approach morphing into the inane.
The officer called to this school should have told the administrators this was not a criminal matter and a waste of time then turned around and left. I fail to see any evidence of a physical injury. No evidence, no conviction. End of case.
An incredible story
The science geek
http://www.thesciencegeek.org
I believe the Law should act in the Public Interest and this does not always seem to happen in the United States.
I found this definition: “You are guilty of Assault in the Second Degree if you have the intent to cause serious physical injury to someone and actually cause serious physical to that person or another person”.
If you gave the victim a common cold is this a serious injury? Or what about influenza? Possibly? A cold sore? Maybe, as this is a life long affliction.
But assault implies intent. So force would be required….. but under normal circumstances a kiss does not produce an injury.
Unless it breaks a heart.
Here’s another one:
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/maker-kid-busted-clock-handcuffed-wearing-nasa-t-shirt/
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece
Irving 9th-grader arrested after taking homemade clock to school: ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’
IRVING — Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High on Monday.
Instead, the school phoned police about Ahmed’s circuit-stuffed pencil case.
So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.
In the meantime, Ahmed’s been suspended, his father is upset and the Council on American-Islamic Relations is once again eyeing claims of Islamophobia in Irving.
Box of circuit boards
A box full of circuit boards sits at the foot of Ahmed’s small bed in central Irving. His door marks the border where the Mohamed family’s cramped but lavishly decorated house begins to look like the back room at RadioShack.
“Here in high school, none of the teachers know what I can do,” Ahmed said, fiddling with a cable while a soldering iron dangled from the shelf behind him.
He loved robotics club in middle school and was searching for a similar niche in his first few weeks of high school.
Related, I think, is John Oliver discussing how overcrowded, underfunded, under resourced, public defenders are to the extent that many are only given seven minutes total to represent their clients.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USkEzLuzmZ4
Not only is this kid over charged, but unless his family can afford their own attorney, he will probably be railroaded into a guilty plea.
I literally do not understand how any lawyer can work in such an arena either as defender, prosecutor or judge. Defenders should be marching on Washington or their state capitols. Judges should be tossing out charges for the accused who are not defended adequately.
If this was going on, people would be screaming at any DA who charged this kid with assault for a stolen kiss.
The charges are out of line.
This freakish society is badly out of balance.
Unknown is the student’s disciplinary history or the nature of the kiss. But one wonders if the school is irrationally in fear of sexual harassment liability.
this is sick… child abuse