I stand for crushing like a rabid rat any person, nation, or organization that attempts to harm our country or any person that lives here.

I'm a liberal. Liberal drives from the Latin liber, which means free. That, ultimately, is what America is all about - the right to be free, to do what one chooses, so long as that choice doesn't interfere with the freedom of others.

Free to choose what to do for a living, how to spend or invest the money I earn doing so, and to read, watch, consume, say, fuck, and play as I wish.

I'm a conservative. Conservative meaning to aim to conserve those rights and responsibilities held by the people, and not hand them over to the government. To keep that government on an austere fiscal diet, and only lend to it those few tasks that cannot be reasonably accomplished by private organizations.

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A bit back, my friend Ceridwen and I had a discussion about teen sex. This discussion morphed into a story here on this blog.

Today, the University of Minnesota released a report on the influence mothers have on the age at which kids have sex for the first time. You can read the highlights in the press release, or, if you're a stickler for punishment, go whole hog and read the monograph, or worse, the the journal article.

Or, you can take the easy way out, and just read my digested hightlights here. :-)

Points that I found of interest:

1. They had to limit the study to mothers, as only 1.8% of the questionaires were completed by fathers. Does this mean that dads are absent in the sex ed process?

2. 15.8% of the 14-15 year old girls (about one in six) who were virgins initiated vaginal sex during the year of the study. This excludes those girls who were not virgins at the outset of the study.

3. Kids consistently underestimate their parent's opposition to them having sex.

4. While discussing or recommending birth does affect a teen's perception of the mother's approval of sex to a slight degree, it has no affect on early sexual debut.

5. From the the monograph - "When mothers spoke with their teens about the negative consequences of sex, such as problems that come from early pregnancy and the cost to a teen’s reputation, it had no impact on initiating initiating intercourse for either boys or girls." Expressing your disapproval has an effect, trying to scare them with consequences does not.

6. The vast majority (~86%) of parents are uncomfortable discussing sex with their kids. This impacts the argument that many folks have about sex ed in schools, and "leaving it to the parents."

7. A close maternal relationship delays the debut of sex for daughters, but has no affect on boys.

8. Even this close maternal relationship ceases to matter by the time the daughter reaches the 10th grade.

9. Parent's education matters. The kids of more highly educated parents tend to delay sexual debut. I personally suspect that this is due not to the education itself, but the affect of the parents' education on socio-economic status, family stability, etc. but that's just me talking out my patootie.

10. Parents' religious beliefs and practices do not affect sexual debut. So much for setting the example and dragging them off to church. Again, my patootie talking here, but my personal experience is that it may be a negative correlation. Teens are to a greater of lesser extent rebel against their parents' values in the process of "finding themselves," and I think the more you beat on them with the Forbidden Fruit, the more they want to taste it. I certainly didn't have too hard a time leaving pecker tracks all over the good Catholic school girls, and later in life met plenty of wanton preacher's daughters.

11. Final weird factoid - the mothers of daughters were three times as likely to "strongly approve" of their children having sex as the mothers of sons, though both groups are tiny percentages. (1.4% to .3 %, respectively)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, half of the kids that are having sex have their parents fooled.

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It has often been remarked that the line between those that break the law and those that enforce it is a fine one. Studies have shown that similar personality types are attracted to both vocations.

So I suppose we should not be surprised when we read news reports such as this one being reported by a local TV station.

It seems that a HPD sergeant has been arrested and charged with kidnapping another policeman's girlfriend and holding her for $300,000 ransom. What makes this a bit more bizarre is that this man is a member of HPD's Internal Affairs Unit, the outfit tasked with investigating wrongdoing by the force at large.

Presumably, (at least one would hope) the members of this unit are recruited from the ranks of experienced officers with reputations for integrity and immaculate service records.

However, having been in the past witness to the workings of Internal Affairs, it does not surprise me. The unit seems to be as effective in defending officers against the consequences of abuse of power as it is in prosecting them.

While I am willing to stipulate for the sake of argument that there must be exceptions, I believe that many who choose a career in law enforcement do so because that career gives them relative immunity from the laws they are tasked to enforce. I've seen policemen violate laws ranging from relatively harmless traffic violations to felonies as serious as tax evasion, perjury, extortion, and assault, all with a cavalier attitude that the laws in this case should not apply to them.

To be fair, this is not unique to them. Others in the judicial system (I cannot bring myself to call it the justice system) manifest this behavior also. Judges, prosecuting attorneys, even lower level administrative personnel such as court clerks and legal secretaries often take hypocritical advantage of their informal networks to disregard the law without fear of the the consequences.

Such is human nature in any institution, and we are not likely to be able to change it.

So, my question becomes this - should those tasked to enforce the law be held to heavier sentences when they are found guilty of breaking it?

Codified law already makes a distinction with respect to persons crimes are committed against. For example, slaying a policeman automatically qualifies as a capital crime in most, if not all, states. (I've not done an exhaustive search) Killing of a private citizen does not.

So, if they enjoy an enhanced degree of protection, should they not also be held to a more rigorous code of obedience to the law, and not more freedom from it?

To be given what we call in the Marines the "special trust and confidence" of the people, only to abuse that trust, seems to me to be in and of itself a crime meriting the strongest possible punishments.

Perhaps then we will see a decrease in criminal behavior by those we pay to stop it.

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