So, basically, some guy tried to blow up the plane but failed miserably. The passengers saw what he was trying to do, seeing how very close they were to a horrible fiery death, and leapt up and subdued him, stopping what could have been a horrible Christmas for a lot of people.

How does the TSA respond? By making it illegal for passengers to move around in the last hour of the flight. So in other words… what the heroic passengers did is now against the rules. Because how dare they move around during a flight, when they should have been good little people and… let the terrorist kill them all. *headdesk*

And because a fucking terrorist will totally obey these little rules, right?

Some other rules I heard of include not allowing passengers to know the flight path or what cities or landmarks they are near. Which pisses me the fuck off because I think this means that airlines that allow you to watch your flight path on the little screen in front of you, such as JetBlue and British Airways, will now no longer be allowed to have that feature, a feature I fucking LOVE! What the shit?!

That’s the TSA. It’s not important for them to actually stop terrorists when the most important part is to just LOOK like it.

Taser gun used on 10-year-old girl who ‘refused to take shower’

The officer had been called to the girl’s home in Ozark, Arkansas, by her mother because she was behaving in an unruly manner and refusing to take a shower.

In a report on the incident the officer, Dustin Bradshaw, said the mother gave him permission to use the Taser.

When he arrived, the girl was curled up on the floor, screaming, and resisting as her mother tried to get her in the shower before bed.

“Her mother told me to take her if I needed to,” the officer wrote.

The child was “violently kicking and verbally combative” when he tried to take her into custody and she kicked him in the groin.

He then delivered “a very brief drive stun to her back,” the report said.

The girl’s father, Anthony Medlock, who is divorced from her mother, said the girl showed signs of emotional problems but did not deserve to be “treated like an animal”.

He said: “Ten years old and they shot electricity through her body, and I want to know how the heck in God’s green earth can they get away with this.

“If you can’t pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don’t think you need to be an officer. She doesn’t deserve to be treated like a dog. She’s not a tiger.” Local Mayor Vernon McDaniel said the FBI should investigate.

He said: “People here feel like that he made a mistake in using a Taser, and maybe he did, but we will not know until we get an impartial investigation.” The local Police Chief Jim Noggle said no disciplinary action was taken against Bradshaw.

“We didn’t use the Taser to punish the child, just to bring the child under control so she wouldn’t hurt herself or somebody else,” he said.

He said if the officer tried to forcefully put the girl in handcuffs, he could have accidentally broken her arm or leg.

Mr Noggle said the girl will face disorderly conduct charges as a juvenile.

A little girl was violently electrocuted by a police officer, at her idiot mother’s consent, because she didn’t want to take a shower and was upset at being forced to.

Come here, Officer Bradshaw. You too, girl’s mother. Look at this trough full of water I have here. Lovely, isn’t it?

*grabs their heads, holds them underwater*

You LIKE that, you fucking assholes?! Like being forced into water?!

*ties them down so heads are still underwater as they thrash around desperately*

Like electricity, too? Well, have some goddamn toast!

*throws plugged-in toaster into water, the two are being electrocuted and drowning at the same time*

This is still too good for degenerate monsters like yourselves! Hope Satan has fun raping you with flaming pitchforks! Because even all that is too lenient for anyone, ANYONE, who tortures a child.

Why? Why in the fucking HELL does this shit keep happening? A depressing part of being a youth rights supporter is consistently hearing the most horrifying news about parents, police officers, school officials, and others using outrageous force and torture on kids for the tiniest reasons. Whether it is little kids getting tasered or school security guards beating up special ed students for not tucking their shirts in, it’s just a stark sobering reminder of just how deeply our world hates children. They make up the weakest excuses for the obvious pleasure they get out of hurting these young people, because we live in a fucked up world where everyone is continually taught the dangerous message that kids are inferior beings and always bad and you can do whatever you want to them. And, what is at the same time even more depressing yet with a hint of hope, this is all still better than it used to be.

But, seriously, even after the above scenario, it’s hard to describe how much more ways I want to mutilate anyone who harms a child. Perhaps in the above also employ some pickaxes somehow.

I do sort of wonder why the little girl was so upset to begin with, something people seemed to not give a shit about asking. Okay, she didn’t want to take a shower, but you think maybe there’s more to it than that? Does her mother molest her during showers or something? True, it’s not unusual for a little kid to get that upset and throwing a tantrum even if it is just an ordinary shower. But then again, so what if she doesn’t want to take a shower? How long had it been since her last one? The little girl was still being forced to do something she didn’t want to do, and that sort of thing tends to make people of any age lash out violently. But, goodness, who gives a shit what the little girl has to go through? It’s not like she’s human or anything. What’s more important is that she’s disobeying for mother and for that she must be tasered and fucking arrested. How many people get arrested for getting angry and throwing a tantrum in their own homes? Funny, if this is the sort of thing this mother does to deal with her daughter’s behavior, there’s probably other horrible shit going on that she does to the girl, that would have gotten the little girl also tased and arrested had it been the other way around. Oh, but this is all for the benefit of children, right?

Also, to answer one issue I know will come up. The “youth rights supporters” who might think this sort of thing is fine since “the same would be done to an adult” and that this is somehow the more youth rightsy outcome. Don’t be fucking stupid. Youth rights does NOT mean that kids would be treated exactly the same as adults. There are inherent differences between kids and adults that do call for different approaches to be taken when dealing with members of each group. Youth rights is certainly about changing dramatically how those differences are dealt with and choosing when something is and isn’t appropriate, but it’s not about throwing out that system entirely, as such would be impractical, impossible, and would open youth up to much more harm. So STFU with that or you get to join the two frying drowning bitches.

Except I did get caught by one earlier this year because it was hidden in a parked car. So I received a lovely photo of the back of my car and was out $40. Meh.

Anyway, the other day, saw this article come over NYRA’s youth rights news wire.

Why speed cameras hit over-60s hardest

Older drivers are six times more likely to be fined for speeding than a decade ago, according to a study which also reveals that young motorists have adapted far better to the increased use of speed cameras.

The number of older offenders may be higher partly because, unlike a police officer, a speed camera has no discretion, the study author says. Most speed enforcement a decade ago was carried out by traffic police, who often gave older drivers a verbal warning rather than a ticket.

The Department for Transport commissioned the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) to analyse the age of offenders in two three-year periods: 1997-99 and 2003-05.

It found that the number of men aged 60 and over receiving penalty points for speeding increased by 540 per cent between those periods. Among women aged 60 and over, there was a 1,200 per cent rise, though starting from a very low base.

By contrast the number of drivers under 25 being caught for speeding grew by only 18 per cent.

The study, based on an analysis of the records of 300,000 motorists, also showed that in 2003-05 there were almost three times as many drivers aged 60 and over with speeding convictions as drivers aged under 25. In the 1997-99 period, young offenders outnumbered older ones by more than two to one.

The age group most likely to have a speeding conviction changed from 24-34 in the earlier period to 45-59 in the later period.

The number of speed cameras increased from fewer than 500 in 1997 to about 5,000 in 2005. The increase was partly due to changes in funding rules in 2000 that allowed police to keep a proportion of fines to pay for the cameras. That system, known as “cash for cameras”, was abolished last year.

Speeding convictions from cameras grew from 337,000 in 1997 to a peak of 1.91 million in 2004, before declining to 1.74 million in 2006.

Jeremy Broughton, author of the study, said that the low number of older drivers being prosecuted for speeding in the 1990s might be explained in part by police showing more leniency to them than to young drivers. “Police would have a mental image of the sort of person they were expecting to stop and if it was an elderly lady they wouldn’t look at her in the same way as a young male,” he said.

Rob Gifford, director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, said that older drivers had been accustomed to driving on roads without cameras and would have found it harder to adapt when they spread across the country.

“Police may have given elderly drivers a telling-off rather than a fine whereas cameras are blind to the age of the driver,” he said. “It was wrong to be lenient with older drivers because they were posing a danger on the roads by ignoring the limit. Since the growth in cameras, the proportion of vehicles breaking the 30mph limit has fallen from 75 per cent to 30 per cent and deaths have fallen sharply.”

Mr Gifford said that the rise in older speeding offenders helped to explain the emergence of a vociferous anticamera campaign dominated by drivers in their fifties and sixties.

Paul Watters, head of roads policy at the AA Motoring Trust, said that older drivers had grown up with a different attitude to speed. “They were more used to driving at a speed they judged to be safe according to the conditions rather than sticking to the legal speed limit,” he added. “Older drivers have also had to cope with the introduction on many roads of lower speed limits imposed for environmental purposes.”

o snap

Ah, speed cameras, the great equalizer. Ever wonder if this is the reason everyone says young drivers are such menaces on the road? The stats get skewed against them because cops are more likely to issue them tickets, thus the speeding incident being recorded, than older people. Cop has no problem ticketing a driver young enough to be his daughter but will cringe at ticketing at one old enough to be his mother.

Do the stats lie? What a dumb question. But what we do have here is a rather big self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s the idea that young people are bad and old people are to be respected. And when put into practice by traffic cops such as in this case, we are left with stats seemingly supporting such a premise. Imagine that.

Stats don’t lie. But they don’t exactly tell the truth either.

Girl Punched Dad During Spanking

CRESTVIEW, Fla. — A 16-year-old Florida girl who hit her father when he tried to spank her has been charged with misdemeanor domestic battery.

An Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office report said the father told a deputy that he was attempting to spank the girl when she turned around and struck him in the face with her fist.

The report said she tried to hit him several more times before leaving with friends.

Both father and daughter said the argument started over an item that had been broken. She acknowledged that when he went to spank her, she punched him, the report said.

….

Do I even need to point out everything that is very WRONG with this scenario?

I feel like it all should be very obvious. And the fact that very many people do not see everything that is wrong here is a major shot at any semblance of faith in humanity. It’s like you’re trying to explain it to someone, something that should be as clear as the sky being blue, water being wet, and two plus two being four. You finally just roll your eyes and say “come on, are you really THAT stupid?!”

Are people SO afraid of ever questioning the almighty power and authority of parents, that when it comes time for their children to defend themselves from them (a far too common time), it is they, the children, who are considered the criminals? It’s probably safe to assume the father is a lot larger than the girl, so she was faced with a larger, menacing being coming at her, so she reacted by fighting back, a reaction that is a natural instinct of self-preservation that all normal humans have, and somehow she’s the one who got arrested and sent to jail. Are you fucking KIDDING ME?!?!

I applaud this girl for fighting back. I echo what Galen said about this: all kids should fight back when their idiot parents resort to cruel barbaric practices against them, the physically weaker innocent people their only-sometimes-trustworthy procreators are foolishly given ultimate unquestioned power over. I don’t care what the stupid law or the mindless sadistic pro-corporal punishment morons or the ultra anti-teen whiners out there say, this girl did the right thing by defending herself and there is absolutely NO justification for her even having to live in a house where she is under the threat of physical abuse, NONE!

You people wonder why there are so many women out there who stay with abusive husbands and believe their abuse is a form of love? Here’s your answer. This is how they were living ten years ago! You want to save the battered wives? Maybe stop excusing the parents of the battered daughters so the girls learn that is no way to be treated so they don’t grow up to become the battered wives who stay with their asshole abusive husbands. Ever thought of that, geniuses?

And, of course, the other vomit-inducing thing about this story. The girl is 16. Unless she’s a majorly late bloomer, she’s a physically mature young woman who was just defending herself from being unconsentually touched on an underwear covered part of her body by a much older man. Shit, she shouldn’t have just punched him. She should have pepper sprayed him until he collapsed in agony and stomped on a few sensitive vital organs. That’s what any woman would do when a man comes at her that way. But, no, because he’s her father and she’s not that magical age of 18 yet, instead somehow she, the smaller one and the real victim here, is considered the dangerous criminal while the menacing insane pervert older man is considered the poor little victim. Again… are you fucking KIDDING ME?!?!?!

Well, with the way society is, all I can really do about this is rant about it here and devoutly hope this man someday soon drowns slowly in sulfuric acid after having his intestines mauled by rats.

[Some redneck]’s backing John McCain because the Arizona senator “thinks murdering little babies is not a good idea”.

Ah, we saw this four years ago. And eight years ago. And so on. Many Republicans’ persistent belief that if an anti-abortion president takes office, abortion will become illegal and never be done again. You know, I wonder what life is like to live in such a strong delusion, for these people seem to completely ignore that even though we’ve had anti-abortion president George W. Bush in office for the past eight years, abortion is still legal. I’ve got news for you. John McCain is not going to make abortion illegal. He and Sarah Palin may talk all the time about how bad it is, but the fact is, it won’t be made illegal even if they are elected. So you Republicans thinking the McCain-Palin team is going to be the saving grace of embryos and fetuses from women making an excruciatingly difficult decision, and you Democrats thinking the McCain-Palin team will take away a woman’s inalienable right to kill her unborn child, you’re living in a serious fantasy world.

A lot of people seem unable to separate their personal opinion on something from their political opinion on something. Plenty of people believe abortion is wrong yet do not believe it should be illegal, for example. Not to mention the many online idiots you’ll find that, any time you mention you don’t like something or think it’s wrong or whatever, they’ll pipe up with “why should that be illegal?! how dare you push your opinions on others?!” to which you say “uhh, I never said anything about it being illegal.” So this concept is lost on a lot of people. Legal versus illegal and right versus wrong are two very different concepts, and would remain so even in the most libertarian of societies.

Funny thing about Republicans, though, is they hate abortion and won’t shut up about how bad it is (citing “religious” reasons of course and leaving the very many real reasons unused). But other than pissing and moaning about it, they aren’t doing much to actually reduce it. In fact, other Republican policies seem to be explicitly trying to increase the number of unplanned pregnancies. Then again, if these people think John McCain will outlaw abortion, it’s no surprise they also believe that if you never let anyone under 18 know what condoms are, they’ll never have sex. Not to mention their insistence of shaming anyone who gets pregnant outside of marriage. Or their opposition to any kind of assistance for the needy, which often includes pregnant women. So, yeah, these people seem to be the types who play with matches all the time but are pissed and surprised when there’s a fire.

While you’re putting that McCain-Palin sticker on your pick-up truck, right next to your “God Is Pro-Life” one, your 14-year-old daughter is first learning about sex from her horny 20-year-old cousin. Your grandchild/grandnephew is about to have a date with a coathanger, and you’ll be burying your daughter after she succumbs to septic shock after the home procedure. But you thought this was impossible. I mean, your sticker does say that God is pro-life!

Anyway, so we all know Hillary Clinton just won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. Kind of expected. In any case, Barack Obama, as some suggest, pretty much screwed himself in a comment he made about small town Pennsylvanians. Here’s a quote from the Lexington column in the Economist:

He told a group of fat cats in San Francisco that the reason why he is finding it hard to appeal to blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania is because they are “bitter”. They have suffered from so many broken promises that they prefer to “cling” to God, guns and xenophobia rather than reaching out for a helping hand from the government.

Anyone else think that comment just alienated practically the whole country? Haha. Or is essentially saying those blue-collar Pennsylvanians are… Republicans? I mean, I can understand, as a Democrat, he’d at least mildly fault them for the guns and xenophobia thing, but God? Since when to politicians act like “clinging to God” is anywhere near a bad thing?

But those are amusing observances here. There’s also an implication in there that concerns me. It’s that last part about “reaching out for a helping hand from the government”.

So, basically, he faults these blue collar Pennsylvanians for being too bitter to request help from the government? I mean, I may be taking this out of context, but if they don’t want help from the government, shouldn’t that be fine? If they want to just help themselves, isn’t that a good thing? But apparently not. They’d rather not have government help, so that just means they’re bitter over whatever conservative stereotype.

Admittedly, I don’t really know the economic conditions of the people he’s talking about. I’m guessing they’re victims of NAFTA type stuff or whatever. Also don’t know what kind of help Obama thinks they need that he’s offering and they’re refusing. I guess that’s the trouble with these newsworthy quotes; you don’t really get the whole story and oftentimes are too lazy to look it up.

Even so, the message is still there. They’re bitter because they don’t want help. Maybe help should just be for those who want it, or at least those in such dire immediate need for help that their refusal is just retarded, as if someone is sitting on the tracks when there’s a train coming but refuses to budge so you finally just tell them to STFU and yank them off the tracks anyway. Yeah, in THAT case, I can see the contempt for someone who doesn’t want assistance. Are these Pennsylvanians in any such predicament?

I mean, don’t go thinking I’m conservative or anything. I’m quite moderate. I’m not one of these types who thinks the government should help no one, hell no. Plenty of people do need help, and they ask for it, and as such they should get it so long as they really do actually need it. But if you don’t want help? Fine. There’s other ways. So long as you’re not forcing your children or other dependents to suffer because you refuse help, that’s your right.

I could be reading too much into this, sure. Just seems to me the idea is that we all should be expecting to get help and should avoid trying to solve our own problems. One of very many reasons I’m the ardent youth rights supporter I am is that the many restrictions placed on young people are essentially teaching them to never figure things out for themselves or solve their own problems, but to expect some higher authority, be it a parent or politician, to take care of everything for them. And if you don’t want to live your life in this “safe” little cradle, then you’re just bitter.

Well, I still like Obama better than Clinton anyway, but I said my piece about her a while ago. Obama is more the “youth” candidate, which with that as his label, is a good enough reason to support him since it’s a roundabout way of supporting the youth in this election. He insists he doesn’t want to lower the drinking age, which sucks, but of course, saying he does would be political suicide right now, as, sadly, lowering the drinking age isn’t a popular enough opinion yet. Doesn’t sound “good” to enough people. It IS good, but few are patient enough to sit around reading NYRA’s Drinking Age FAQ to find out why. In any case, not too worried about that. Especially since I heard through some people working on his campaign that he’s open to lowering the voting age!

And he’s not Osama bin Laden’s brother, you fucking Jonesville church idiot!

It was early last month when Jane Hambleton of Fort Dodge found the bottle under the front seat of her 19-year-old son’s pride and joy.

Her next move was a call to The Des Moines Register’s classified advertising department:

OLDS 1999 Intrigue

“Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for 3 weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.”

The son soon found himself on foot. And the meanest mom on the planet became the target of accolades from across Iowa and beyond.

Hambleton, 48, a disc jockey, said she has fielded more than 70 telephone calls from emergency room technicians, nurses, school counselors and even a Georgia man, who wanted to congratulate her.

“The ad cost a fortune, but you know what? I’m telling people what happened here. I’m not just going to put the car for resale when there’s nothing wrong with it, except the driver made a dumb decision,” Hambleton said. “It’s overwhelming, the number of calls I’ve gotten from people saying, ‘Thank you, it’s nice to see a responsible parent.’ So far, there are no calls from anyone saying, ‘You’re really strict. You’re real overboard, lady.’ ”

Steven Hambleton, a freshman business major at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, obviously was not one of the callers. And he didn’t feel much like talking when contacted Tuesday.

“I don’t think you can print” his response to the ad, his mother said. “He’s very, very unhappy.”

Jane Hambleton described her son as a great kid who does excellently in college and is active in church. But she’ll stick to her guns, even though Steven Hambleton said that the bottle of alcohol wasn’t his, and that someone else had left it in his (former) car.

For the record, Mom believes him.

But she and her husband set two rules when they bought the car at Thanksgiving: No booze, and always keep the car locked. The car sold within two weeks, but Hambleton said she will continue the ad for another week – just for the feedback.

“A couple in Hubbard bought it for their 19-year-old son,” she said. “I told the kid when they were leaving, ‘Do not have any booze in that car. And if you do, don’t hide it under the front seat.’ “

I’m actually almost in tears after reading that. Some “big tough” mom found a beer bottle or something in her 19-year-old son’s car, and decided to sell the car as punishment. She made a stupid little ad in the paper where she sold the car, explaining the whole situation. This attracted a lot of attention, as it was apparently newsworthy to the folks at the Des Moines Register. Not to mention all the calls the horrible mom got commending her actions.

I want to strangle that woman so badly. Oh, man, I wish she were right in front of me so I could whack her with something until she stopped squirming. How the HELL can this bitch just do something so callous to her son, who she supposedly loves, and sit there laughing about it with all her idiot little supporters around the country?

Look at happened to this guy. His mother stabs him in the back, and he loses a cherished vehicle. And if that weren’t horrible enough, he is publicly humiliated over it. I mean, just look at the comments on the webpage with the article. Lots of retards going on and on about how she’s some kind of hero and that it’s great that she’s so tough with such a horrible kid, that “it’s so hard raising teenagers, you’ve done the right thing”.

You know, at 19, I’d say he’s pretty well raised. But not enough for you idiots. You see that he’s under 21 and is in any way involved with alcohol (the article never said he was actually drinking, and if he had, it would have said so), so he must deserve anything horrible that happens to him. You believe his mother owns him and can do whatever she wants to him, including parading him out in public, after she’s done something horrible to him, and leaving him for you all to mock and belittle.

We’ve gone well beyond the issue of the car itself at this point. This guy is being humiliated because of his age and familial status, and little else. If this woman had done this to her husband, this would not happen. She wouldn’t be getting the accolades, or at least not as much. You’d have a lot of people condemning her for betraying her husband, that it was wrong to do to a “grown man”, even if he were drinking and driving.

Look at yourselves. Leave this guy alone. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve for this family issue to be so broadcast. We should be feeling sorry for him, for all he has gone through. That’s right, he’s going through a lot here, and you all are mostly responsible for it. But I bet you’re more thinking about his mother in that aspect, how she must be having a horrible time dealing with him, that anything he’s going through is trivial and stupid teen crap that he’ll grow out of.

I suppose you think she did this out of love, right? And that somehow makes it all better? If so, you are perverting the concept of love in extremely offensive ways. You’re turning love into coercion and torture. That you must coerce and torture the ones you love, and to be lenient and understanding is to not love them. This is the kind of parenting that is encouraged. This is what young people have to grow up with, and even, as is this case, have to continue to deal with after growing up. This downright sadistic idea of parental love is damaging young people far more than anything the things you think you’re protecting them from ever will.

Source

Canadian Muslim Teen’s Dad Charged in Her Murder; Friends Say They Clashed Over Head Scarf

TORONTO — A Canadian man has been charged with murdering his own daughter, and her friends say the two clashed over her refusal to wear a Muslim head scarf. Police have not commented on a motive.

Aqsa Parvez, 16, of Mississauga, Ontario, was rushed to hospital in critical condition Monday after a man made an emergency call in which he claimed to have killed his daughter, police said. She died late Monday night.

The emergency call “came in from the father saying he had killed his daughter,” police spokesman Wayne Patterson said. “Police arrived and rushed her to hospital and she passed away.”

Patterson said they are working at determining the motive and refused to confirm it was over the head scarf.

The girl’s friends said in interviews Tuesday that Aqsa loved shopping for clothes and clashed with her family over her reluctance to wear the hijab, a traditional veil or head scarf for devout Muslim women.

“She didn’t want to go home … to the point where she actually wanted to go to shelters,” classmate Ashley Garbutt, 16, told the Toronto Star.

Muslim leaders cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

“I don’t want the public to think that this is really an Islamic issue or an immigrant issue,” said Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress. “It is a teenager issue.”

The girl’s father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, made a brief court appearance Tuesday morning and was remanded in custody pending another court appearance Wednesday. Aqsa Parvez’s brother, Waqas Parvez, 26, is facing a charge of obstructing police and remains in custody pending a Dec. 14 hearing.

Neither man has entered a plea yet.

Calls to the Parvez family home went unanswered Tuesday night

Patterson said he did not know if the man had a lawyer yet.

What the HELL?!?! A father murders his daughter because she didn’t want to wear a stupid scarf? Screw the hijab. She’s not your property, asshole! So, what, somehow you killing her over this isn’t as bad as her not wearing it? That excuses you? You’re a piece of shit.

And, you, the jerk who thinks he speaks for Muslims getting all up in arms because you think people will assume this sort of thing is specific to Muslims. It’s a teenager issue? The girl was KILLED for not wanting to wear the stupid hijab, and all you care about is implying her father was right to do it because she was being a disobedient teen? And somehow this is supposed to make Muslims look BETTER in the public eye?

If you want to be an apologist so bad, you’ve got to stop thinking Muslims, or Muslim men anyway, can’t do any wrong. True, I defend Christianity constantly when radical idiots like the Phelps family and similar people do crazy horrible shit in the name of God, but the important difference is that I do NOT defend the actions of those fundamentalist lunatics. Unlike some groups, Muslim or other religions, who seem to think defending the wrongdoer even accomplishes this or is the right thing to do.

If you want to defend the Muslim image, the only thing to do is condemn the man. He’s a murderer. To hell with why he did it. He murdered his daughter, and if you won’t say it was a horrible thing to do, or at least say it louder or just as loud as you say you don’t want people to think it’s a Muslim thing, then you leave everyone else to believe you condone it.

A teenager issue. Please! Ageist sexist retard. It’s not HER fault she was killed.

But under the Washington Post pages about the fallen #21 of our hallowed NFL team, news which has shaken the DC area quite a bit (seriously, those of you who don’t live around here wouldn’t understand, the Redskins are serious business!), is a profile article in the Style section meant to give hope to us all, especially our young friends.

It’s called Age Is Just a Number: Youth Rights Advocate Tries to Break Down Barriers to Adulthood. And it is featuring our very own NYRA and our very own Alex Koroknay-Palicz!

Click that link and read it. Then come back here for more comments. I’ll wait.

Oh, good. You’re back. Isn’t it great? Let’s review it, shall we?

To the casual visitor, Dupont Circle on this lovely autumn afternoon is a friendly, inclusive space.

To Alex Koroknay-Palicz, executive director of the National Youth Rights Association and voice in the wilderness, the Circle is a cold microcosm of a deeply divided world. And it’s the perfect observation deck for pointing out the myriad ways American society devalues the lives of young people.

Go Alex!

In untucked blue-striped shirt, khaki cargo shorts and sneakers, Koroknay-Palicz, 26, takes off his shades and points toward a:

- bank where you have to be 18 years old to open a checking account;

- sandwich shop that doesn’t hire anyone under 18;

- drugstore where 17-year-olds can’t buy certain cough medicines;

- movie theater where anyone under 17 who wants to see an R-rated movie must be accompanied by an adult.

He could, he says, go on and on. And for the next couple of hours, he does.

You people still think overt discrimination is a thing of the past? Think again! But it’s for their protection right? Oh, sure, because if a 17-year-old were to work in a sandwich shop and gain work experience and a taste of the adult world, he would shrivel up and die! Please. But, well, Alex seems to be already pointing that out nicely.

Seen through his eyes, the city is hostile to young people. And the United States is a repressive country that should lower voting and drinking ages and lift all curfews. In fact, Koroknay-Palicz (pronounced koh-ROCK-nay PAL-is) believes that all age-based restrictions — on driver’s licenses, tobacco purchases, car rentals — should be challenged.

Eh, makes us sound unpatriotic a bit, which couldn’t be further from the truth, but the rest is about right. And, yes, his last name is quite fun to say. Hey, girls, he’s single! Marry him and take that long funny name. Or if you already have a hyphenated name, attach them and make four last names! That’d be hilarious. But I digress.

Just about any age restriction, he says, can be replaced with a competency test. If a young person wants to drink, for instance, he could be required to attend classes that teach responsibility and moderation. He would then receive a license to drink. Same with smoking, voting, driving and many other activities.

Well, that sounds more like what Choose Responsibility wants than what we want. Really, the classes aren’t necessary, or at least not this late in life. Maybe at a much earlier age when teaching proper eating habits in general, add in the alcohol thing. Instill responsible use from an early age rather than just saying “ZOMG! It will kill you!” all the time. Not saying anyone that much younger should really be drinking, but it helps to at least know what it is and to handle it with care. But, yeah, other countries don’t have the same alcohol attitude we do. There’s no reason for our drinking age being so high. Drop it to 18. It’ll be fine, so long as other precautions are taken, precautions that could stand to be taken even now. As for licensing the other things, I don’t know. Seems too bureaucratic. Competency tests for voting? Hell no! For driving? Um, I think there already is one.

To him, the denial of youth rights is more than ageist effrontery, it’s a civil rights issue.

Yes! Why don’t more people see that? Always with the excuses, but it doesn’t take away that fact.

It takes a certain kind of grown-up to champion such a cause — someone who hasn’t forgotten the indignities of youth. Someone who can live in Washington on an $8,000-a-year salary. And someone who can face the issue’s greatest enemy: getting people to take it seriously.

I’ve said not-nice things about Alex in the past, but THAT makes him seriously awesome and worthy of all kinds of respect. He gives his all to this, for his fellow NYRA members, for all the youth of the United States and maybe even the whole world.

For Koroknay-Palicz, the mission began at home. An only child, he grew up in a working-class family in Holland, Mich. His father mans the midnight shift at a power plant. His mother took classified ads for the Grand Rapids Press until a couple of years ago.

Power plant? Come to think of it, Alex’s hair does seem a bit spiky.

“There was always love in our family,” Koroknay-Palicz says. “What I didn’t have was respect. My parents didn’t respect me.”

Sounds like my family. And every other family. So, yeah, he’s just like everybody else!

He had a paper route when he was 9 years old and his own checking account when he was 10. He felt financially self-reliant and he wanted to spend his money as he saw fit, but, he says, his parents didn’t let him. Like the time in middle school when he wanted to buy a mini-fridge to put in his basement room. They said no.

Wanting the mini-fridge, but the parents say no. We’ve ALL been there! In fact, I still think having one in my room would be cool! But I digress. Now, the paper route and checking account thing? Not bad at that age. People say kids should be “protected” from those sort of things. I say it’s something that teaches kids more about basic life skills than school ever could.

Koroknay-Palicz says he was annoyed by his parents’ desire for control. At one point he even thought about filing for legal separation from his parents, known in youth-rights circles as emancipation.

What do you mean “known in youth rights circles”? That’s what it’s actually called. Funny. I keep wanting to follow it with “proclamation”.

His parents, however, don’t have the same memories. “Alex sees that there was conflict in our family; we see it as parents setting down rules,” his mother, Margo, 53, says in a phone interview.

Rules must have real reason. But, yeah, you gave birth to Alex, so you’re cool for that.

“We raised Alex to be an independent person,” father Robert, 61, says. He adds that it looks as though they have succeeded.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Margo says.

Be careful indeed. All parents hate that, right?

She is proud of her son: “He does not drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t do drugs. He’s a good person.” He doesn’t want anything controlling his life, she says, alcohol or chemicals or other people, including his parents.

“I remember him wanting to be emancipated,” she says. “But I don’t remember the mini-fridge incident.”

Yeah, he even goes to church every Sunday. Alex is a good Catholic boy! As for you not remembering the mini-fridge incident, that’s where he gets his poor memory from! Ha! It’s all your fault. Or maybe it’s a guy thing. Then again, you’re a woman, so I’m all confused again. Oh, well.

As a senior in high school, Koroknay-Palicz and his friend, Buddy Halbert Jr., noticed that a few small convenience stores had put signs on their doors forbidding entry to more than two students at one time. “They were akin to the Jim Crow laws that I had studied in school,” Koroknay-Palicz says.

And you people probably don’t think high school students pay attention in school. For shame! These guys are smarter than you! They’re calling you out for being hypocrites. Lots of other people do that too. I think one of them is someone whose birthday we’re celebrating soon.

Eventually, Koroknay-Palicz appeared before the city council. The city’s human relations committee got involved and the signs were removed. That was the genesis of Koroknay-Palicz’s youth rights advocacy campaign.

Win Alex is win.

“Alex was very committed to youth rights even back in high school,” says Halbert, 27, who lives in Fenton, Mich., and is head cook at a Ruby Tuesday. “Young people need a voice.”

The cook says so. The cook speaks truth.

The next summer, Koroknay-Palicz discovered the National Youth Rights Association, which at the time was just a Web site run by a handful of young people. In 1999 he moved to Washington to attend American University, and in 2000 he became executive director of NYRA. He left college after three years.

Ah, yes. The year was 1492, and Alex convinced Queen Isabella that the world was not flat, but that there was a youth rights organization that he could discover and find gold. Er, no, wait, that’s another story. Got myself mixed up there! The gold would be cool, though.

Since 2001, Koroknay-Palicz has lived in a group home in Rockville, just off Veirs Mill Road. He has a small room in the back of the house with a bed, a desk and a computer. On the walls, posters — Spider-Man, scantily clad supermodel Ashley Richardson — and photos of family and friends. His rent is $345 a month.

I wouldn’t call it a “group” home. Maybe “shared house” would be a better term. The former sounds like he’s in some kind of facility, though if I drive him nuts much more, he might be. Hehehe. Check and check on the Spiderman and the model, but he’s also got a Star Wars poster, damn it! And they printed his rent? Seems weird to me. I wouldn’t want my rent printed like that. Well, okay, at the moment it’s zero as I live with my grandmother, but still.

He drives a 1989 Grand Marquis. “It’s the only car I have ever had, since I was 16,” he says.

THABOAT!!!!!

Next year NYRA will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Today there are in various cities some 10 active chapters, “which come and go, depending on who graduates,” Koroknay-Palicz says. He is excited about a new group at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Fear the Turtle!

He is the only full-time paid employee. The board is composed of nine young people, including several high school students.

And I’m one of them! Not one of the students, but still one of the nine!

The nonprofit organization, Koroknay-Palicz adds, had two main goals for this year: Find an office and somehow develop “more of a real-world presence.”

Well, at least he found an office — $500-a-month digs he rents from Common Cause. It’s a tiny room, really, smaller than his Rockville bedroom, packed with two desks, three donated desktop computers and three chairs on the ninth floor of a 19th Street NW office building. There are no windows. Koroknay-Palicz shares the space with a parade of interns.

It’s not without its charm. NYRA office = win.

Posters on the wall include one for the National Youth Agency — a lower-the-voting-age coalition in Great Britain, where the threshold is also 18. Koroknay-Palicz points out that several countries in the world, including Brazil and Nicaragua, allow citizens to vote at 16. Austria lowered its voting age to 16 this year.

Hear that, fellow Americans? Are we going to let Brazil, Nicaragua, and Austria be all like “hey, look at us, we value our teens more than you do”? No! Let’s lower our voting age. Why? Because we’re the United States. That’s right! I told you we were patriotic!

On the bookshelves: “How Children Fail” by John Holt, “Birthrights” by Richard Evans Farson and “Framing Youth: 10 Myths About the Next Generation” by Mike A. Males. These are bibles in the youth rights movement.

And I haven’t read any of those yet. I feel so dirty. I did read “The Case Against Adolescence” by Dr. Robert Epstein, though. It’s one of the important ones and just came out this year. Alex is even quoted on the back! Is there anything this ambitious Hungarian can’t do? Well, yes, he can’t beat my score on Space Invaders in the arcade on our message board, but he’s still cool.

Males, a senior research fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, is given to observations such as this, from an e-mail to The Washington Post: “When a broad array of rights are denied to youths, important adult skills are not learned in adolescence. Adolescents must learn them on their own or arrive with little experience in adulthood, a period in which skills are harder to learn.”

I met Mike Males last year at our annual meeting in San Francisco. Smart man.

At the headquarters, a high school intern works on the computer that holds the membership list. There are 7,500 names in the association’s database, but only 150 pay to belong. “Young people don’t have much money,” Koroknay-Palicz points out. Dues are $10 a month. Some students who can afford more send in larger donations.

No! Wrong! It’s not $10 a month. It’s $10 a year! We don’t shake down our members THAT badly!

NYRA’s annual budget last year was about $16,000. Koroknay-Palicz has subsidized his salary of $8,000 by working at an auto parts store and tutoring. He eats a lot of ramen noodles.

Even though he ain’t got money, he’s so in love with this, honey!

Youth rights is not a front-burner issue. It’s more like an all-day roux on the back of the stove, simmering, occasionally receiving a stir.

You know, before I read this article, I was randomly thinking “what’s that Cajun stuff called, that spicy stuff that has to simmer for like a day and slowly stirred?” and I read this and I’m like “yes, that’s it! roux!”

At a recent Democratic debate, for example, someone asked the candidates if they were in favor of removing the requirement that a state must have a legal drinking age of 21 to receive federal highway funds. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Christopher Dodd all opposed lifting the requirement.

Only Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich were in favor of lowering the drinking age. Kucinich even said he wants to lower the voting age to 16.

Gravel and Kucinich = win. The rest of them, see the light! Quit insulting your young voters!

“I thought that Kucinich’s call for lowering the voting age . . . was bizarre,” Chris Matthews said on MSNBC after the debate. Matthews was echoing the sentiments of many Americans. “I mean, do you get it with your bicycle?”

Quiet you!

Jabs like that don’t help the youth rights movement gain gravitas.

Seriously!

On the home page of the group’s Web site, Youthrights.org, are these words: “The Last Civil Rights Movement.”

I hate that slogan.

Jackie Woinsky, 26, one of Koroknay-Palicz’s college friends, teaches first grade in Silver Spring. She admires him. “A lot of ideas can seem crazy and off-the-wall at first,” she says. “Other similar civil rights movements have gone through similar paths.”

Damn it, Woinsky! Get off my turf!

But Julian Bond, chairman of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a veteran of the civil rights movement, says he is not sure that the youth rights push qualifies. “Kids obviously do have human rights,” he says, “but society has decided, and properly, I think, that they are not mature enough to have certain rights: the right to drive, to go to an X-rated movie, the right to buy cigarettes. I think society has made wise decisions, the right decisions, about the rights given to young people.”

You, sir, are sadly mistaken. Seems people can’t just learn that discrimination based on superficial qualities is bad all around. Have to chip away at one piece of that at a time. Oh, well, I guess that’s why we youth rights folks are here.

Not far from Dupont Circle, Koroknay-Palicz strolls past a convenience store that — like the mini-marts that ticked him off in the first place — restricts the number of students allowed inside at one time. Nearby is a YMCA that you can’t join unless you are 18 and the U-topia Bar & Grill, where you must be 21 or older to stay past 11 p.m.

Funny. Do this to older adults, and you’ll never hear the end of an affront to rights. Do it to youth and “it’s for protection”. This double-standard is based, of course, on absolutely nothing.

True utopia, Koroknay-Palicz says, will be a place where “society will look at people as they are, not judge them by their birth dates.” People who are mature, he says, should be allowed to make decisions for themselves.

Yes!

If there were competency tests for each individual issue — drinking, driving, voting — “industries would arise,” he says, “that would teach young people how to be an adult.”

Well, maybe those industries should arise anyway. Because of young people being so isolated from adults, they grow up ignorant of the adult world, and have trouble beginning. We’re forsaking our young friends just to make ourselves think we’re protecting them, but really we’re harming them. We can’t keep pushing them away with the same old “you’re not old enough” excuse. The best thing to do is share our world with them.

It’s true, he says, that American society coddles young people, caters to them, builds commercial empires around their comfort and consumption. It’s also true, he says, that “adults do everything in their power to shield and protect youth from the outside world.”

Yeah, also what I just said. Sad thing is, so many people mistake this coddling and forced “protection” for having rights. Very, very different things.

But such an argument reminds him of arguments he has heard before. “A lot of societies will tell you they care very much about women — respect them, hold them in high esteem. But they don’t listen to them,” he says. “They don’t ask women what they want.”

Exactly! Damn, Alex is awesome!

Youth rights initiatives can’t get traction, he says, because baby boomers grew up and stopped caring about youth. “The rights they fought for are no longer important to them,” he says.

This comment probably should have been accompanied with a bit more explanation, as standing alone, it might look a little odd if you aren’t already familiar with this sort of thing. Basically, the baby boomers were the hippies who wanted rights for everybody but, as Brian Griffin of Family Guy puts it “they lost the values and kept the weed”.

And so Koroknay-Palicz labors on — against inertia and inattention. He says he is locked in a long-running David vs. Goliath fight and he lets it sink in that David was, after all, just a kid.

Win comparison is win.

In July, the group staged its annual meeting. The board president, a high school student from North Carolina, was planning to fly to Washington and preside. At the last minute, he had to cancel: His mother wouldn’t let him come.

Poor Adam.

Occasionally, Koroknay-Palicz goes home to Michigan for rest and relaxation. This year he will see his parents for Christmas. They say they understand their son’s commitment and respect him.

Oh, sure, nooooow they respect him. When they never see him. Sounds like, well, all parents.

“We want him to be successful,” his father says. “We want him to get a good job that pays well, with benefits. Right now he is doing his pro-bono work.”

Do you even know what he does? From a comment you once left on One and Four, you thought he was pilot.

“Young people,” says his mother, “aren’t given their due when it comes to their worth in the world. He’s doing a great job of bringing that to life.”

*applause*

And that’s the end. There you have it. Alex is awesome. NYRA is awesome. All in all, the article could have been better, as we could have seen more quotes from actual NYRA people and more in-depth about the organization, but this is good, too. I’ll give it a 9 out of 10.

That’s right, everyone. We were just a seed in the cold ground, and we’re still a struggling sprout, but some day, we’ll be one hell of an awesome plant.

Oh, this is sweet.

I hate that guy.

A few years ago, I saw him on Letterman, and he was discussing his 16-year-old stepdaughter and how she was learning to drive. His comment? “Sixteen-year-olds just should not be driving. Not just her. All of them.”

To which he received rounding applause.

Sure, he can pretend to be some kind of voice of reason for driving when talking about 16-year-olds and acting like they’re all incompetent just because of their age, but where is all this when it comes to his own driving habits? He thinks a 16-year-old should not drive because she is too dumb to think correctly about it just because of her age, yet he’s the idiot who drives while drunk?!

So nice to see this really. He makes a stupid ageist comment on late night TV, only for his actions to prove he’s a hypocritical moron.

Basically, Kiefer, you’re a dick. You’ve got no place pointing any fingers at those younger than you while getting behind the wheel after consuming alcohol. I hope they throw the book at you and ruin your career over it.