First of all, and I only bring this up because it is relevant to the societal circumstances under which this all happened, the victim and the perpetrators are all African American, no doubt poor/working class and uneducated.

Like the above poster, I too will stipulate that the quote from the individual is incredibly callous, however things like this happen all over the world in all those dark corners of underdeveloped countries--and industrialised countries, apparently.

Let's examine what most likely happened here. An abused child, either sexually and/or physically, criminally exposed to sexual gratification at an early age (maybe even since 7 or 8) on a lark or through peer pressure, or because this is what she grew up expecting men to want, was put into a situation where she was sexually gratifying some people.

These men being horny ignorant bastards, without regard to her welfare or well-being, decided sure why not. Maybe there even might have been money involved.

Obviously all sexual abuse is tragic, however in this case you must acknowledge that there were societal faults that allowed this to happen. The environment this girl was raised in was not all jellybeans and ponies. Crack whores were once 11 years old themselves. They didn't decide one day whilst attending Wellesley to become crack addicts.

Now how is this different from a case wherein the victim might have been forcibly kidnapped, tortured, and raped. First it's hard to know if there was direct violence or coercion used in this case, but apparently other than intercourse or sodomy, there wasn't. Also, as the person in the article stated, she might have known that what she was going to do in there wasn't to play checkers, which means she wasn't being held against her will.

I'll leave it up to you to decide if there is moral equivalency in sexual assault cases. But I must say that society failed this girl. Apparently such activity was not uncommon in her community. Why is that? and if the sentences meted out do in fact reflect the crime then what about the 13 year-old runaway who's turning tricks for her pimp in the inner city. Do those johns get 25 year prison sentences, of course not. Should they?

Because, of course it would be better for him to stand on principal and let John McCain be president, than to do the popular thing and lose the support of the 1% of people who've even heard of FISA.

From the New Yorker (the terrorist cover one):

"Obama, it turns out, is a politician. In this respect he resembles the forty-three Presidents he hopes to succeed, from the Father of His Country to the wayward son, Alpha George to Omega George."

It's like that lady in the New York Times article who said she was going back to the Green Party after Obama voted for FISA.

I mean she might as well have said that she was joining the Let's-make-everyone-marry-cows Party, with all its attendant hopes of winning elections.

I mean I'm all for idealism, but at some point you have to realize that in the world you live in the idealist will be butt-raped and tortured by the popular trust-fund jock kids and guess whose fault it's going to be. And frankly nobody wants to hang out with someone who got butt-fucked and tortured, figuratively speaking.

Look at it this way: Frank Rich recently wrote a piece where he talked about how Bush I won against Dukakis, namely by painting Dukakis as an effete elitist, and it worked. Now you have to understand that Dukakis was ahead in the polls before the Republicans started hitting him. the problem for Dukakis was that he played into the characterization.

So is Obama, the intelligent man that he is, really going to put himself in a position of trying to explain why he "hates America" (FISA) or why he wants to take people's guns away (2nd Amendment) when time after time it's been shown that these are losing issues for Democrats.

I mean, you have to pick your battles people.

I'm like, what? This McCain shiznit is cr-azy. He's drawing, like, these thousands of people to his events. What? I know, It's crazy. They all clap thunderously at his speeches and shit. Seriously dude, I know, it's like literally crazy.

All you hear all the time is, like, McCain. Like all over the place. McCain this, McCain that. It's McCain-o-mania. Totally, you know.

...........

Oh wait. It's Barack Obama drawing the thousands of people? He's the one with the enthusiastic crowds? Nevermind.