“Oh my god, we’re going to be soft on sex offenders”

By Dan Brooks in Ethical Dilemmas 2 Comments
Zachery Anderson, registered sex offender

Zachery Anderson, registered sex offender

Last December, when he was 19 years old, Zachery Anderson met a girl on Hot or Not who told him she was 17. After the two had sex, Anderson learned from her mother that the girl was actually 14. He subsequently turned himself in to police, pled guilty to fourth-degree criminal sexual misconduct, and spent 90 days in jail. But under Indiana law, he will remain a registered sex offender for the rest of his life. Anderson was studying computer science, but now he is forbidden from having an email address or accessing the internet. He cannot live near a school or park, including the boat launch 1000 feet from his parents’ house. And as he looks for a home and a job, he will have to tell prospective employers and landlords that he is a sex offender.

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Wednesday is for stern self-reflection

By Dan Brooks in Hangovers 1 Comment
The brain and nerves and everything in the stupid body

The brain and nerves and everything in the stupid body

I went out to see The Menzingers last night, and now I am dead. My evening began with vodka and ended with sausage gravy—yet somehow now it all begins again, horribly, in the twilight of undeath. I don’t even have bacon in the house. I could go to Albertson’s and get it, but the people in the store would be taken aback by my grisly appearance. “There is a sad man,” they would say, “hung over on Wednesday morning.” I guess I’d have to get there pretty soon for them to say that, since it is almost noon.

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The curious case of Alvin Greene

By Dan Brooks in Public Discourse 4 Comments

Perhaps you’ve heard of him—the 32 year-old unemployed Air Force and Army veteran who lives with his father, doesn’t own a cell phone or a computer, and is now the South Carolina Democratic Party nominee for the US Senate. In the primary, he beat Vic Rawl—a former state representative who had the support of the SC Democratic apparatus—despite having no website, holding no fundraisers, running no ads and hiring no staff. The next day, the Associated Press revealed that he was facing felony obscenity charges. Green allegedly showed pornography to a female student in a University of South Carolina computer lab, then said “Let’s go to your room now.” Vic Rawl, understandably surprised to have lost by 20 points to such a tactician, called for an investigation into voting irregularities. The South Carolina Democrats upheld the results, while simultaneously asking Greene to withdraw. But Alvin Greene has not withdrawn, and in November he will face Jim DeMint in the general election.

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