Thursday Reads

Posted: June 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Banksters, child sexual abuse, children, Crime, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Good Morning!

Wall Street Royal Jamie Dimon deigned to appear before a Senate Committee yesterday, and the Senators mostly sucked up to him. I’m surprised they didn’t ask if he needed a pillow for his chair. MSNBC: Senate treats JPMorgan CEO Dimon with kid gloves

Dimon was expected to receive a frosty reception in his first congressional appearance since he announced the bank sustained a trading loss some analysts now estimate is at least $3 billion. It was a massive loss for the nation’s biggest financial institution.

Instead, Dimon, who has won praise for bringing JPMorgan (JPM) through the financial crisis relatively unscathed, was treated cordially by most of members of the Senate Banking Committee. They peppered him with questions about regulation and risky practices at the bank, but did not press him to give an update on the losses resulting from the trade. JPMorgan is expected to give an update to shareholders when it reports its second-quarter earnings July 13.

“I think it was a pretty favorable day,” David Konrad, a Keefe, Bruyette & Woods banking analyst, told CNBC. Konrad said he was surprised that the questioning of Dimon by lawmakers was so “professional.”

Excuse me, “professional” for a Senator would have been sending this man to the woodshed. NPR’s Marketplace called the treatment of Dimon “a wake for Dodd-Frank.”

Yahoo has named the winner of the “Most Tepid Endorsement of Mitt Romney” contest: it’s a bumper sticker that reads “At least he’s not a communist.”

Until recently, it appeared that no one could unseat Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels as the champion of the tepid Romney endorsement. Since Yahoo News started conducting reader polls on the politicians who supported Mitt Romney in the least enthusiastic terms, Daniels has defeated original champ George Pataki and defended the crown against Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and George W. Bush. (The former president came the closest to unseating Daniels.)

We thought the book was closed on the tepid endorsement bracket until Yahoo News reporter Chris Moody spotted a bumper sticker at last weekend’s regional CPAC conference in Chicago bearing these words of praise: “At least he’s not a communist.”

You can read the other tepid endorsements at the link.

First Romney made fun of Obama for wanting to help cities and states pay for cops, teachers, and firefighters. Then he went on Fox News and said it was a “strange accusation” for anyone to say he didn’t want to hire teachers and first responders.

After an extended skewering of President Obama for a gaffe about the private sector last week, ending with the charge that it was proof the president was “out of touch” Romney was asked by Fox and Friends’ Brian Kilmeade for his response to Obama saying it was Romney who was clueless (Romney’s comment comes at about the 1:40 mark) :

[BRIAN] KILMEADE: He says that you’re out of touch. He says you want to cut firefighters and teachers, that you don’t understand what’s going on in these communities. What do you say to that, Governor?

ROMNEY: Well, that’s a very strange accusation. Of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen. So, obviously that’s completely absurd.

But of course the federal government does subsidize states and they often use the money to pay for these public employees. In fact, the reason so many teachers, firefighters and cops are getting laid off now is because stimulus money has run out.

Yesterday Greg Sargent pointed out that Romney’s plan would indeed cut billions from cops, firefighters and teachers

Yesterday Mitt Romney claimed that it was “ completely absurd” of the Obama campaign to argue that he favors cutbacks in cops, firefighters and teachers. “The federal government doesn’t pay for teachers, firefighters or policemen,” Romney said, adding that they were paid by states and localities.

What’s getting lost in the back and forth here is that Romney’s actual economic plan would, in fact, cut billions of dollars in federal money that goes to cops, firefighters, and teachers — perhaps more than $10 billion a year, in fact.

This is the conclusion of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which analyzed Romney’s plan through the prism of the debate over public workers at my request.

As Michael McAuliff reported yesterday, despite Romney’s claim, the federal government does give billions of dollars to states and localities through programs like Title 1, the COPS program, FEMA and others — which pay for first responders and teachers.

This is amazing. Romney finally broke down and decided to talk to a media source that isn’t Fox News! He will be on Face The Nation on Sunday morning.

A full year into his presidential campaign, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney will venture out of his Fox comfort zone this Sunday to make his first appearance on a rival network’s political talk show.

Romney has been interviewed several times on ”Fox News Sunday” this campaign cycle, but has declined repeated invitations to appear on any of the other Sunday shows, occasionally drawing scorn from veteran anchors accustomed to interviewing presidential candidates.

Let’s hope Shieffer asks a few tough questions. One thing Shieffer will probably ask about is Romney’s choice of Vice President. One of the leading contenders, Marco Rubio, announced yesterday that he supports the illegal Florida voter purge.

“How can you argue against a state identifying people who are not rightfully on the voter rolls?” he said at a Bloomberg event, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Rubio’s comments put him in line with Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) who on Tuesday declared the debate on the merits of the purge “over,” because the probe had supposedly turned up more than 50 non-citizen voters who had cast ballots.

The Department of Justice didn’t agree. Later Tuesday, it announced it was launching a federal lawsuit against Florida over complaints that the purge was taking place within 90 days of its August 14 primary election, as well as over its alleged violation of a voting rights law meant to prevent states from suppressing voters.

That might not help Romney win over Latino voters.

John Avlon has a piece at CNN on Jeb Bush and other “moderate” Republicans who are starting to fight back against Grover Norquist:

This is what happens when politics starts looking like a cult: Jeb Bush gets attacked for being a traitor to the conservative cause.

The former Florida governor has been speaking with the freedom of someone not running for office, saying that both his father and Ronald Reagan would have had a hard time in today’s hard-right GOP and questioning the wisdom of Grover Norquist’s absolutist anti-tax pledge.

That set off a fascinating public fight between Bush and Norquist, two faces of competing factions within Republican Party. It is the latest evidence of a growing GOP backlash against the ideological straitjacket Norquist has attempted to impose on governing in the United States.

And Jeb is not alone.

As it turns out, Norquist has reason to be concerned. It’s not just Jeb Bush. A growing number of Republicans are rejecting his pledge. Oklahoma conservative Sen. Tom Coburn called the pledge’s effective veto of deficit reduction plans “ridiculous” when talking with Erin Burnett on “OutFront.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Tuesday declared his independence from the pledge, saying, “We’re so far in debt, that if you don’t give up some ideological ground, the country sinks.”

Add to those voices seven other Republican U.S. senators — from Maine’s Susan Collins to Iowa’s Chuck Grassley to Wyoming’s John Barrasso — and 11 Republican House members, ranging from centrist New Yorker Richard Hanna to tea party Floridian Allen West.

In pedophile news, Jerry Sandusky had another bad day in court yesterday with three victims testifying that he manipulated and threatened them into putting up with his sick sexual behavior.

The trio of young men who testified against Jerry Sandusky on the third day of his sexual-abuse trial couldn’t have been more different in personality and temperament. Yet each of their testimonies was sexually graphic and disturbing—and midway through the prosecution’s fast-tracked arguments, a clear pattern has emerged in their allegations.

I’m not going to quote all of the sordid details–there are too many of them anyway. You can read it all at the link. I’ll just give you one excerpt that shows what Sandusky is all about:

Then, the witness told the jury of a time he visited the Sandusky home.

“We were in the basement. We were wrestling,” he said in a monotone frequently heard from abuse victims who have had to tell their stories multiple times. “The defendant pinned me to the floor, pulled down my gym shorts, and started to perform oral sex on me.” Asked by prosecutor Joe McGettigan what his reaction was at the time, the witness said, “I freaked out.”

“Did he ever say anything to you about it?” McGettigan asked.

“He told me if I ever told anyone I’d never see my family again,” the young man replied. “Later he apologized and said he didn’t mean it, that he loved me.”

I hope Sandusky goes to prison for life, and I want to see prosecutions of his enablers at Penn State. It’s an outrage that he was allowed to go on abusing children for years after many at the school knew about his behavior.

And then there’s the Catholic Church: U.S. Catholics still suspect priests sexually abuse children: Report

The National Review Board said that, a decade after the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a child protection charter, there has been a “striking improvement” in the way the Church deals with the abuse of minors by clergy.

“Children are safer now because of the creation of safe environments, and action has been taken to permanently remove offenders from ministry,” said the report, released as the Conference began its annual spring meeting in Atlanta.

But it acknowledged: “Despite solid evidence (to the contrary), many of the faithful believe that sexual abuse by clergy is occurring at high levels and is still being covered up by bishops.”

Well, what did they expect? I’m certainly not surprised. In fact I’d be surprised if there aren’t still pedophile priests abusing children.

Forest boy

I’ll end with the strange story of “Forest Boy.”

Berlin police on Wednesday released photos an English-speaking teenage boy who wandered into the city nine months ago saying he had been living for the last five years in the forest with his father.
Police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf said all attempts to identify the boy since he emerged in the German capital on Sept. 5 have been unsuccessful, and they are now hoping the release of his photo may produce some leads.

“We have checked his DNA against all missing person reports, sent the data to Interpol so that they could check it internationally, but unfortunately without any success,” Neuendorf said.
The boy has told authorities his father called him “Ray” and that he was born June 20, 1994, but claims not to know his last name or where he’s from.

He said his mother, Doreen, died in a car accident when he was 12 and after that he and his father, Ryan, took to the forest. He said they wandered using maps and a compass, staying in tents or caves overnight.

He told authorities that after his father died in August, 2011, he buried him in the forest and then walked five days north before ending up in Berlin, and showed up at city hall.

As of last night, the identity of the boy was still a mystery even after release of the photos.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads

Posted: November 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , | 58 Comments

Good Morning!

SuperPacs are going to play a central role in this coming year’s elections. The Supreme Court has basically opened free speech to the point that political free speech will go to the highest, unaccountable bidder. Rick Santorum is the only current presidential contender without one.  Here’s some background from ABC.

Super PACs, or “independent-expenditure only committees,” as they are officially known, are a relatively new kind of political action committee (PAC) that can raise unlimited amounts of money for a candidate or cause from corporations, unions, individuals, etc. The rise of the super PAC started in the most recent midterm cycle, after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case lifted federal and state campaign spending regulations dating back to the 1970s.

Super PACs have since become ubiquitous. Seven of the eight leading GOP candidates have at least one that is raising money in their behalf; a couple of the candidates have more than one. Earlier this month, a group calling itself “Texas Aggies for Rick Perry” filed papers with the Federal Election Commission. The name refers to Perry’s alma mater, Texas A&M University, and the group is the second super PAC operating in Perry’s behalf, in addition to his “Make Us Great Again” PAC, which formed in July.

The candidates are prohibited from having any connection to the super PACs, meaning they can also distance themselves from any negative campaign ads against their opponents that are funded by the super PACs. The groups can also pay for polling, mailing materials, social media efforts and research, among other things.

There are already legal questions on Perry’s use of SuperPacs according to Politico.

The Perry campaign’s borrowing of three clips from a SuperPAC ad for use in a campaign video was a novel foray into the gray area of campaign finance law, and so I asked the experts on Rick Hasen’s excellent and disputatious election law listserv for their views on it. They were not unanimous on the question, but Perry is clearly treading in some uncharted legal waters.

“With virtually all fundraising limits and prohibitions hanging on the necessity of independence between the super PAC and the Perry campaign, using super PAC footage for a campaign ad pushes the concept of independence to new boundaries,” emailed Ken Gross, an election lawyer at Skadden Arps.

David Mason, vice president at the political data firm Aristotle International, wrote that “whatever is going on in terms of the Perry campaign using Super PAC footage, it is simply not addressed by the coordination regulation.”

“That is not to say there are no FECA implications to a candidate using Super PAC footage. If a campaign is given footage for no charge, the footage could be an in-kind contribution to the campaign. A campaign could pay for the footage (raw footage typically costs way less than the cost of finishing and broadcasting), or, in this case, according to the spokesman you quote, gotten it from a public source,” he wrote.

Since the GOP couldn’t force its agenda on the Supercommittee, it will try to change the rules according to The Hill. They are trying to change the configuration of the automatic cuts to favor defense and their spending priorities.

Supercommittee member Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said Sunday that Republicans will seek to “change the configuration” of the automatic spending cuts triggered by the committee’s failure to present a deficit-reduction deal.

“I think it’s important that we change the configuration [of the cuts]. I think there’s a broad consensus that too much of the cuts are weighted on [our national defense],” Toomey said on ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour.”

Toomey said he is “terribly disappointed” the committee failed to reach a deal but called the automatic cuts built into the committee’s mandate a “silver lining.”

The failure of the supercommittee to reach an agreement last week triggered $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts set to hit the Defense department and other programs in 2013.

Due to FOIA requests and the perseverance of some in congress, we are beginning to see the kinds of loans the Fed gave to banks that have not been disclosed before. There were $13 billion dollars of such loans.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has called for “Zero tolerance’ for violence against women as the UN celebrated November 25th as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

According to the UN, 70% of women experience violence in their lifetime, and one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. A number of global surveys have shown that half of all women murder victims are killed by current or former husbands or partners.

November 25 is designated as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and in South Africa kicks of 16 days of activism, which ends on Human Rights Day.

In a statement to mark the occasion, Ban said young men and boys must be encouraged to become advocates for the elimination of violence against women. “We need to promote healthy models of masculinity. Too many young men still grow up surrounded by outmoded male stereotypes,” he said. “By talking to friends and peers about violence against women and girls, and by taking action to end it, they can help break the ingrained behaviour of generations.”

The wife of a charismatic christian youth minister and dentist who was found to be guilty of horrific crimes involving pedophilia tells her tale and speculates that Dorothy Sandusky may be as in the dark as she was.  Her story is at the Daily Beast.

Just shy of seven years ago, my life and the lives of my two children were turned upside down. The man I had been married to for more than a decade had been arrested as a part of an FBI sting to bring down NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, an advocacy group for pedophiles that supports an “end to the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships.” I was a well-educated, philanthropic, 39-year-old mother who, until recently, was living a charmed Dallas life, married to a well-liked dentist who had been living a lie for our entire relationship.

A former youth-ministry volunteer at a local church, an energetic volunteer at our kids’ elementary school, and a favorite at their Y-Guides outings, my ex-husband, Todd, turned out to be a criminal who brought tremendous harm, both physically and emotionally, to prepubescent boys. He was an “inner circle” member of NAMBLA—a member of its board of directors—wanted by the feds. Throughout our marriage, which ended in a confusing divorce shortly before the FBI swept in, I believed him when he said he was traveling to dental conventions—when in fact, he was attending pedophile conferences. He kept a secret mailbox at the local post office, where he received his pedophilia newsletters and other suspicious mail. We never found any proof of illegal Internet activities—his hard drive had been cleaned—except for a printed-out receipt for a porn video of young boys. Often, as I eventually learned, these predators are masters of deceit, creating a façade of the “ideal family” to protect their image, or perhaps convince themselves that they’re not a deviant to society, all the while acting on their sick desire to engage in sexual acts with kids.

OOh, baby, it’s a wild world.So, what’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: November 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, Surreality, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 48 Comments

Good Morning!! It is just me, or is the news getting weirder with each passing day?

Last night Jerry Sandusky who, with a little help from his friends, has destroyed the reputation of a large university and created the worst scandal in sports history, appeared on the new NBC show Rock Center. Sandusky told Bob Costas he didn’t sexually abuse little boys–he just “horsed around” with them in the showers.

When asked by Costas, “Are you a pedophile,” Sandusky responded “No.”

Joe Paterno’s one time defensive coordinator was charged earlier this month with 40 counts of sexually abusing eight boys. He is currently free on a $100,000 bond and has denied any wrongdoing. The allegations date back to 1994, according to a grand jury report. A grand jury report detailed claims of alleged sexual encounters with young boys in Sandusky’s home, hotels and Penn State locker rooms.

“I could say that I have done some of those things. I have horsed around with kids I have showered after workouts. I have hugged them and I have touched their legs without intent of sexual contact,” said Sandusky.

When pressed by Costas about what Sandusky was willing to concede that he’d done was wrong, Sandusky said, “I shouldn’t have showered with those kids.”

He touched their legs? Talk about a non sequitur. Sandusky’s lawyer should have told him not to talk to the media.

NPR’s Morning Edition is running a three-part series on Ayn Rand’s influence on U.S. politics. The first episode was on yesterday. They reported on an interview that Mike Wallace did with Rand in 1959.

Wallace is in a chair, on a stark set, holding his notes and a cigarette. Across from him sits Rand, a native Russian, small and sharp and a little nervous. Wallace asks her to outline the idea she calls “objectivism.”

It is, she says, a system of morality “not based on faith” or emotion, “but on reason.”

Rand wholly rejected religion. She called it a weakness, even a parasite — one that convinces people their purpose is to work for the betterment of others. In fact, she says, for man, the truth is just the opposite.

“His highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness,” she says.

Wallace asks Rand about politics and about government programs and regulations that have improved many people’s lives.

“I feel that it is terrible that you see destruction all around you, and that you are moving toward disaster until and unless all those welfare state conceptions have been reversed and rejected,” Rand answers.

These programs are destroying individual liberties, Rand says, especially the freedom of producers, entrepreneurs, businessmen. The government has no right to take their property, she says….

“I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy.”

I still don’t understand how Republicans can buy into Rand’s philosophy and then claim the right to control women’s lives based on their fundamentalist nonsensical religious beliefs. If you really think about it, what they’ve done is taken Rand’s gospel of selfishness and pretended that was Jesus’ message too.

Yesterday, President Obama went golfing with a friend who was recently caught in a prostitution sting.

“The president’s fourball at the Mamala Bay Golf Course includes his long-time friend Robert “Bobby” Titcomb who was arrested and plead no contest in May to soliciting a prostitute, Marvin Nicholson, and White House advance man Pete Selfridge,” the report read.

In April, Titcomb was arrested in Honolulu and charged with a misdemeanor for soliciting a prostitute after he approached an undercover police officer. Titcomb’s attorney, William Harrison, said at the time that Titcomb did not fully agree with the facts of the case, but plead no contest because he wanted to take responsibility.

He was fined $500 and the conviction was expunged from his record in October, following six months without further incident.

Obama and Titcomb have been friends since attending the Punahou School together in Honolulu, according to Hawaii News Now.

That should give the Republican candidates something to be outraged about in the next debate. Why are there so many of those debates, anyway?

King Abdullah II of Jordan has called on Syria’s President Bashar Assad to resign.

Syrian President Bashar Assad faced heightened economic and political pressures Monday, as Europe imposed a new round of financial sanctions and King Abdullah II of Jordan called on the embattled autocrat to step down.

Meanwhile, the Arab League, which on Saturday moved to suspend Syria because of its failure to implement a league-brokered peace deal, said it was preparing to send a delegation of up to 500 observers into Syria. Details were still being worked out with Damascus, the league’s secretary-general, Nabil Elaraby, told reporters in Cairo.

Syria has said it would welcome Arab League observers, but the Assad regime has remained defiant in the face of Arab demands that it halt violence against civilian protesters.

[….]

The Syrian uprising began in March near the Jordanian border in the southwestern provincial city of Dara. Opposition activists reported that at least 28 people were killed Monday in that area, some in clashes between armed rebels and security forces at the city’s northern entrance. The official government news agency said at least two law enforcement officers were killed and an unspecified number wounded in clashes with a “terrorist group” in the vicinity of Dara.

The opposition reported at least 50 killed nationwide Monday. The death toll could not be independently confirmed.

Herman Cain had a serious case of brain freeze yesterday when he was asked if he agreed with President Obama’s position on Libya. From the NY Daily News:

The GOP presidential hopeful looked hungry for a cheat sheet when the editorial board of the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel asked him if he supported Obama’s backing of the revolution that toppled Moammar Khadafy.

“Okay … Libya,” Cain responded haltingly, according to a video of the interview.

He stared at the ceiling, fiddled with his blazer, blinked a bunch of times and pushed his water bottle away from him on the table.

Eleven seconds later, he spoke:

“President Obama supported the uprising, correct?” said the normally chatty former head of the Godfather’s Pizza chain.

“President Obama called for the removal of Khadafy — just wanted to make sure we are talking about the same thing,” he added, as if trying to goad his interviewers into confirming what he said was true.

More staring at the ceiling. “Nope, that’s a different one,” he blurted out, waving his hand, adjusting his chair and crossing his legs.

And so on. There’s lots more. Watch it:

What a dope!!

That’s it for me. What are you reading and blogging about today?

Boy Scouts covered up sexual abuse of boys for decades, according to “perversion files.”

Posted: October 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: child sexual abuse, children | Tags: , , , , , | 10 Comments

Beginning at least in the 1920s, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) kept records of incidents and accusations of child sexual abuse which they referred to as the “perversion files,” according to the LA Times. Every effort was made to cover up these incidents, which were not reported to law enforcement.

Those records have surfaced in recent years in lawsuits by former Scouts, accusing the group of failing to exclude known pedophiles, detect abuses or turn in offenders to the police.

The Oregon Supreme Court is now weighing a request by newspapers, a wire service and broadcasters to open about 1,200 more files in the wake of a nearly $20-million judgment in a Portland sex abuse case last year.

The Scouts’ handling of sex-abuse allegations echoes that of the Catholic Church in the face of accusations against its priests, some attorneys say.

“It’s the same institutional reaction: scandal prevention,” said Seattle attorney Timothy Kosnoff, who has filed seven suits in the last year by former Scouts but was not involved in the Oregon case.

The article focuses in detail on the exploits of one abuser, Rick Turley, who began insinuating himself into scout groups when he was just 18 years old. He learned that scouts provided a ready source of young boys to take advantage of. He actually told the interviewer that “it was easy.” He managed to bounce around to troops in California and British Columbia over nearly two decades.

Turley said one call to police by Scouting officials in 1979 “probably would have put a stop to me years and years and years ago.” Instead, he “went back to the Scouts again and again as a leader and offended against the boys,” said Turley, who said he has learned to control his impulses.

“That person who was Rick Turley was a monster,” he said.

Turley is now 58. Maybe he can control his impulses, maybe not. But I wouldn’t leave him alone with a little boy.

It looks like this could blow up into a huge scandal. I hope the press can get their hands on those files.

Late Night: Pedophiles, Parks, and Playgrounds

Posted: July 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: child sexual abuse, children | Tags: , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Kids playing in Central Park, NYC

A few years ago I was at a children’s playground with my sister-in-law and my two nephews. The younger boy was about 3 years old. My sister-in-law usually reads while the kids are playing, but being a doting aunt, I like to hang out with them as much as I can.

This day that I’m talking about, a small man, probably in his 50s, was hanging around by himself, watching the kids. He was carrying what looked like a very expensive camera. He started following my 3-year-old nephew around, snapping numerous pictures of him. He even asked me how old my nephew was and said, “he’s such a beautiful boy.”

Right away I had a bad feeling about the guy, so I asked him what he was doing. He gave me a hokey story about wanting to try out his new camera. So why do that in a kids playground? I asked if one of the kids was his, and he said no. From that point on, I didn’t leave my nephew’s side, and eventually the guy moved on.

I tried to talk to my sister-in-law about this incident, but she kind of blew me off. She seemed to think it was no big deal that this older man was hanging around a kid’s playground taking pictures.

Tonight I read a blog post that validated the thoughts I was having that day–that the man taking pictures was a pedophile who could very well be trading his photos with other pedophiles on-line. Most people don’t realize that child pornography is big business–especially now that photos can be shared on the internet.

If you wish, you can read the post via a link at The Hinky Meter. When you click on the link, you’ll get a warning that the material in the post could be disturbing. I didn’t find it all that surprising, but as a psychologist I may be more familiar with the behavior of pedophiles than many other people are.

In case you choose not to read the post, I’ll just say that it describes an outing by young schoolchildren in New York’s Central Park and the efforts of several fathers to chase off men trying to photograph the kids. The solution I learned from the post is to take photos of these guys and let them know that you’re hanging onto pictures of their faces for future reference.

The man who confessed to murdering Leiby Kletzky had been observed staring at neighborhood children and hanging around schoolyards and playgrounds. Now, it is being reported that he previously tried to abduct other boys. I’m not sure what can be done about people like this. It’s not against the law to take pictures of children, so I guess parents and other caregivers need to be on the lookout for these sickos.

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