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Illinois to Pay for Unconstitutional Gaming Law
adam_sd writes "Those of us in the Video Game Voters Network were emailed a press release today stating that the state of Illinois will have to pay a half-million dollars in attorney's fees to the Entertainment Software Association, Video Software Dealers Association and Illinois Retail Merchants Association. ESA president Douglas Lowenstein is quoted in the press release saying "Judge Kennelly's rulings send two irrefutable messages — not only are efforts to ban the sale of violent video games clearly unconstitutional, they are a waste of taxpayer dollars." The law was declared unconstitutional in December of last year."
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/Speech/news.as px?id=17204
There's your new hero.
asshat.
If I remember rightly this whole thing was our idiot governor's baby. As much as I'd like to say "never vote for such foolery again" it's not that simple here.
In Illinois the only choices we're ever given are literally felonious or criminally incompetent governors from the two parties. Want to run as an "unrecognized" party? Need 25,000 signatures to get on the ballot (and since the parties in power will snow you with objections, you need well more than that.) Independent? The same number. ("Established" parties, resources and all, need 500.)
The two parties like the status quo, and they have the laws written to lock it in astoundingly well. We have the idiots in power and the other guys who pretend to be different (roles switch when there's a change of guard.) Our opinion as electorate matters about as much as it would in China - you just don't get beaten for complaining . . . . . .
I used to have a friend who did volunteer work for La Leche League:
http://www.lalecheleague.org/
One of the cases they were dealing with was the local Child Protection Services placing a child in a foster home because the mother was breast feeding it and "mouth to nipple contact" is sexual abuse.
We can be far worse than idiots.
KFG
They're two different people. One is Matthew S. Kennelly while the other is Matthew F. Kennelly!
. . .after a cursory search for anyone losing a child for breastfeeding on account of it being "sexual abuse," I didn't find anything, so I question your story.
If you thought you would find a public record you do not understand how Child Protective Services work.
That is one of the dangers of a secret police operating without judicial oversight (no charges were ever even filed in this instance) and tribunals held in secret if it ever does come to judicial attention. When people ask you to prove things you have seen with your own eyes, you cannot. You may even risk jail yourself for even talking about them.
For instance in the case where my own wife found the body, where I myself visited the scene after the body was found and in which charges were actually filed, you will, after doing far more than a cursory search on the web, find no evidence of this body having ever existed, let alone the eventual disposition of the case.
In fact, I don't know the eventual disposition of the case myself, although I know most of the interested parties, including one of the lawyers. It "does not exist." You cannot research and prove what "does not exist."
But I was, nonetheless, there.
I used to have relatives in Romania. You'll have to take my word for it or not. After they were eliminated all records that they had ever existed were eliminated as well. Sounds like a tall tale, an urban myth, but I swear it really happened.
Perhaps I'm just over senstive to secret police and secret tribunals, or maybe not.
KFG
Well, I happen to know exactly what was referred to. There was in fact a case in which a child was removed from his mother because of "sexual abuse by breast feeding." It was at least several years back, but it did get quite a bit of coverage in the mainstream news. The boy was 5 years old, which is a bit unusual, but still a private thing in the family and nobody's business, right? The story was probably only major news because breast-feeding activists jumped all over it an pumped it up as an example of backward puritanical prudishness in our society. And I agreed, what kind of ignorant fool of a judge would take a child away from his mother just because she didn't wean him at the typical time? (Fact: children in the US are usually weaned at 6 months while in many other parts of the world it happens around 2.5 years. So there's a wide variation out there.) The activists were particularly incensed over the fact that the judge referenced the woman's statement that she experienced sexual arousal from breast feeding, because that is apparently common and certainly natural and not something she could control. So they trolled the story, with press conferences and statements over and over until it was national news. And I agreed, that this stupid troll of a judge should be impeached for incompetence.
But, see, they left out just one wee little inconvenient fact which I didn't learn until much later. The child didn't want to breast feed any more! The mother was forcing him to continue to do so, long after he wanted to self-wean, for her own emotional and sexual gratification. There were daily fights over this, with the poor kid crying and screaming "no", and the mother screaming at him and literally forcefully holding him to her breast until he complied.
Now that is sexual abuse, clear and unequivocal, to any person who's not blinded by indoctrination to some agenda, and the judge did the obvious right thing, and the feminist activists should be ashamed of themselves.