NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is making the protection of children from exploitation over the Internet a top priority in the Justice Department, saying it’s time to “deliver a wakeup call about the true nature and scope of this criminal activity — the depth of the depravity and the harm being inflicted upon innocent children.”
During a news conference at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va., April 20, Gonzales cited a study that indicates one child in every five is solicited online and said the television program “Dateline” estimated that, at any given time, 50,000 predators are on the Internet prowling for children.
“I think many people still don’t appreciate the scope, the nature and the import of this criminal activity and the threat it poses to our kids,” Gonzales said. “To educate people about this threat, I am going to describe some of the criminal evidence we have seized. It is graphic, but if we do not talk candidly, then it is easy for people to turn away and worry about other matters.”
After describing some of the photos, Gonzales said viewing them “was shocking and it makes my stomach turn.” Most of the child pornography pictures the Justice Department encounters these days depict actual sexual abuse of real children, Gonzales said, and each image literally documents a crime scene.
President Bush, Gonzales said, is “absolutely committed to this cause” of fighting the exploitation of children with renewed vengeance. Bush has said that anyone who targets a child for harm will be a primary target of law enforcement, and during his tenure as president, funding for the Internet Crimes Against Children program has more than doubled to more than $14 million in 2006.
In February, Gonzales announced Project Safe Childhood, an initiative aimed at combating the online exploitation and victimization of children by making law enforcement at all levels more coordinated, better trained and more involved in fighting the rapidly growing problem.
Gonzales called on Internet service providers to retain records long enough for investigators to catch criminals taking advantage of children online.
“I’m also proud to announce today that the administration will send to Congress a new piece of legislation, the Child Pornography and Obscenity Prevention Amendments of 2006,” the attorney general said at the news conference. “This legislation will help ensure that communications providers report the presence of child pornography on their systems by strengthening criminal penalties for failing to report it. It will also prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet. I hope Congress will take up this legislation promptly.”
Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, told Family News in Focus he is disappointed that Gonzales appears to be ignoring the real problem.
“You cannot separate child pornography and hardcore, sexually explicit pornography,” Burress said. “That’s where our children are being harmed, that’s where these pedophiles start. They start with hardcore pornography.”
SUPREME COURT ALLOWS ‘JESUS POSTER’ RULING TO STAND — The U.S. Supreme Court decided April 24 to let stand a ruling by a federal court of appeals that said public schools cannot censor the religious viewpoints of students in class assignments.
The case began nearly seven years ago when a kindergarten student in central New York State drew a poster depicting children holding hands circling the globe while picking up garbage and recycling trash, in response to his teacher’s request to draw his understanding of ways to save the environment. Also on the poster was a drawing of Jesus with one knee to the ground and two hands stretched toward the sky, though Jesus was not labeled, according to Liberty Counsel, which represented the child in the case.
The poster was displayed in the school cafeteria for half a day while students and parents strolled through to examine the artwork, but school officials folded the poster in half to censor Jesus from the picture and avoid accusations of church-state violations.
In October 2005, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 in favor of the child’s right to express his religious views on a school poster. The school district then asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, but the justices refused.
The New York Times noted April 25 that the Supreme Court has not directly addressed the issue of students’ rights to free speech in elementary school. Cases from high schools and universities have been examined, though.
“We are pleased the Supreme Court allowed this decision to stand,” Mathew Staver, president and general counsel for Liberty Counsel, said in a statement. “The school district sent a terrible message to Antonio that his faith is not welcome, when officials persisted in censoring his artwork.
“At the pinnacle of the Bill of Rights is the First Amendment, which enshrines our first liberty,” Staver added. “It’s about time that school officials learn a simple lesson — private religious speech when expressed on public property is constitutionally protected.”
ARE LIBERALS OR CONSERVATIVES HAPPIER? — Michael Medved, a syndicated film critic and member of USA Today’s board of contributors, wonders who is happier in life — liberals or conservatives. Armed with results from two significant studies, Medved broached the topic in a column published by USA Today April 26.
“In our bitterly polarized society, liberals and conservatives not only argue over the right approaches for public policy but also do battle over which ideology more reliably produces private happiness,” he wrote. “The left recently embraced an academic study that says right-wingers were whiny kids who grew into insecure adults, while conservatives trumpeted surveys showing that it’s self-identified liberals who count as self-pitying and pessimistic.”
Medved cited a study published last year from the University of California at Berkeley, where researchers studied the attributes of preschool children and their political affiliation later in life by tracking them for a 20-year period.
“Preschool children who 20 years later were relatively liberal were characterized as: developing close relationships, self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled, and resilient,” the study found. “Preschool children subsequently relatively conservative at age 23 were described as: feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable.”
But a report by the Pew Research Center released in February said 45 percent of Republicans consider themselves very happy, compared to 30 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of independents. Pew said Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey began taking measurements in 1972, and the current 16 percentage point gap is among the largest Pew has found since it began tracking in 1991.
“The best explanation for this Republican/conservative advantage involves the ‘Crisis of the Month’ mentality of contemporary liberalism,” Medved posited. “Whether facing global warming or AIDS, homelessness or impending theocracy in the USA, today’s left maximizes dire aspects of every situation and demands sweeping governmental responses. Those who want dramatic social change view the present more pessimistically.
“Poor conservatives might feel happier than poor liberals because they’re more confident they’ll make their way to the middle class, while rich conservatives report greater happiness than rich liberals because they feel less guilty about the wealth they’ve earned,” he added.
–30–
