As of tomorrow, sex offenders in Georgia will be subject to a new law that requires them to register their online accounts and passwords with the state government.

From the article:

“State Sen. Cecil Staton, who wrote the bill, said the measure is designed to keep the Internet safe for children. Authorities could use the passwords and other information to make sure offenders aren’t stalking children online or chatting with them about off-limits topics.

Staton said although the measure may violate the privacy of sex offenders, the need to protect children “outweighs a lot of the rights of these individuals.””

What. The. Hell.

For one thing, I continue to be disturbed by the ease with which government and the media manage to conflate “sex offender” with “child molester”. This means that someone with a public urination charge on their record could have their email monitored in order to “protect children”. A minority of sex offenders have a history of child molestation, but so far as the grandstanding buffoons in government are concerned, they all do.

Second, to ask something I know I’ve asked on here before, why are sex offenders the only people who are tracked and vilified like this after they’re paid for their crimes? I’d really like to know if there are any convicted burglars in my neighborhood, but there’s no registry for that. It sure would be handy if I could find out whether my neighbor beat someone to death with a rake twenty years ago, but that would be a violation of his privacy. But if someone across the street got caught having sex in a car, they’d be marked for life and subject to this sort of scarlet letter legislation.

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” – H L Mencken

As we all know, a big slice of the price of gasoline is taxes that are intended to be used to fund the maintenance of roads and highways. As vehicles become more and more fuel-efficient, though, the amount of revenue that each individual motorist is putting into the pot is decreasing. If you’re only buying two thirds as much gas because you bought a car with a smaller engine, then you’re going to pay two thirds as much tax as you did before.

The governor of Oregon has an idea. Rather than using the idea of tax-per-gallon, he wants to work with auto manufacturers so that people have to pay tax-per-mile instead. So, if you trade in your H2 on some pansy little Prius, you’ll use less gas but still pay the same amount in taxes.

The current proposal is a tax of 1.2 cents per mile, rather than 24 cents per gallon. In essence, cars that get more than 20 miles per gallon (which should be almost everything on the road) will pay more.

Excellent. I can’t think of any way that this could go wrong. I wonder if the gov would want me to equip my bicycle with a transponder as well?

Garfield, the comic strip, is one of the least funny items in the newspaper. I’m including the obituaries in that statement.

However, when you remove the titular cat, it’s a brilliant and incisive bit of three-panel angst. Enjoy.