It sure has been a sweltering summer thus far. It seems like every day in July the high temperature has been well into the 90s with heat indexes past the century mark. Maybe it’s the hot sun just baking all that oil bubbling under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe it’s all the hot air blowing down from Washington D.C. Or anger from those who think we can deport every illegal in Arizona. Or maybe Al Gore finally found a way to make global warming real by doing dirty things with massage therapists. Fuck if I know.

I do know that yesterday I began plotting what I ate in a food diary. If it sounds a little gay, it probably is. But essentially you figure out all what you ate and how good or bad you ended up on main items like calories, fat, sodium, and stuff like that. Considering I’m nearing 32 years old and don’t have any health care, I probably need to be doing some watching of what I’m eating. I’m adding a bit of exercise to the whole thing too. But don’t call it a diet program. (And don’t call it a mid-life crisis either.)

In other news: Courtney (Elf) still looks fucking hot, DJ Rick Walsh is retiring from his duties behind the turntables at Heretic on Friday, and I’m really getting back into this Magic: The Gathering hobby again. I also still RP with Stephanie, play a few video games, and am looking forward to a jam packed fall season that includes DragonCon, Alchemy, my birthday, Atlanta Gay Pride Weekend, Halloween, and writing a new novel.

I still could find time for a boyfriend though. Any takers?

The maker of an instrument used in circumcisions claimed that injury was impossible with its use, but after an infant lost a portion of his penis during an operation with the Mogen clamp, a judge awarded $10.8 million in damages against the company.

The judgment handed down Friday in New York involves an Atlanta lawyer who has been crusading against circumcision as a dangerous and unnecessary practice.

Attorney David Llewellyn won a similar case in Atlanta last year and the injury behind that prior lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court put the New York clamp manufacturer on notice about the danger of the device, his current lawsuit said.

The baby in the current case, identified in court documents only as L.G., lost the entire glans, or head, of his penis after it was pulled into the jaws of the clamp, according to a federal magistrate’s order. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein ordered Mogen Circumcision Instruments of New York to pay $10.8 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the Florida boy, now 3, and his parents.

The parents “are extraordinarily distraught and angered that this company tells people it can’t happen,” Llewellyn said.

It’s unclear whether they will ever collect the money. Mogen is already in default on a $7.5 million judgment in 2007 from a Massachusetts lawsuit, Llewellyn said.

(more at ajc.com)

ACTION star Steven Seagal is being sued for US$1 million by a former personal assistant who claims he hired her and then expected her to be “on call for sex”.

He is being sued for sexual harassment, illegal trafficking of females for sex, failure to prevent sexual harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination and false representations about unemployment, RadarOnline reported.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Kayden Nguyen, 23, claimed Seagal flew her to New Orleans in February after hiring her to be a personal assistant.

However, Ms Nguyen said he expected her to be on call for sex and the legal documents claim Seagal “treated Ms Nguyen as his sex toy.”

The documents claim Seagal had two female Russian attendants on staff “who were available for his sexual needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

When one decided to leave, Ms Nguyen was hired to replace her.

It also claims that Ms Nguyen was required “to watch as ‘Sasha’ (the Russian attendant) and Mr Seagal performed sex acts on each other.”

Seagal used Craigslist to hire Ms Nguyen in Los Angeles and flew her to New Orleans where he is filming a reality TV show.

Ms Nguyen claims on her first night of work, Seagal allegedly engaged in physical and sexual assault by “pushing his hands under her shirt and attempting to fondle her bare breast,” and “forcing her head against his bare chest.”

The next morning he allegedly “forcibly held her legs apart” and “forced his hand down her pants.”

Later, when Ms Nguyen left the house Seagal allegedly chased her as she ran to a cab while holding a flashlight with a gun attached to it.

Seagal has not responded to the claims.

I want a personal sex slave available for my needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

When Netflix released a trove of “anonymized” information about consumers as part of a contest for a better recommendation tool, it only took a few weeks for researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to show how easily the data could be de-anonymized.

“An adversary who knows only a little bit about an individual subscriber can easily identify this subscriber’s record in the dataset,” they wrote.

If Netflix was chagrined by this development, you’d never know it. Not only did the company continue with the contest, but proudly declared it intends to hold a second one — for which it will release even more information than last time. For the new contest, Netflix will make available customers’ gender, ages, ZIP codes and previously rented movies in hopes of gleaning insight into users’ tastes.

Stunned privacy experts wasted no time bashing the plan. University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm implored Netflix to reverse course. “Researchers have known for more than a decade that gender plus ZIP code plus birthdate uniquely identifies a significant percentage of Americans,” Ohm wrote. Even without birthdates, he said, interested researchers will be able to figure out many people’s identities.

Attorney Jay Edelson predicted that Netflix would face a class-action lawsuit if it went through with its plans.

As it turns out, Edelson’s law firm, KamberEdelson, along with Joseph Malley of Dallas and other lawyers, decided not to wait for Netflix to start the contest. This week, they filed suit on behalf of four Netflix consumers, arguing that releasing the information would violate the federal Video Protection Privacy Act — a 21-year-old law, passed after a newspaper obtained the movie rental records of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork — that bans movie rental stores from revealing personally identifiable information about consumers.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in San Jose, Calif., seeks damages on behalf of people whose information was released by Netflix in the past.

The consumers also seek an order prohibiting Netflix from making any information available about their video records. One of the four, who sued under the pseudonym Jane Doe, alleges that she is a closeted lesbian who would be harmed if people figured out that she had rented a number of “gay-themed” movies from Netflix. “Plaintiff Doe does not want her movie selection or rating transactions to be included in any public disclosure of data for purposes such as the Netflix contest, regardless of any attempts by Netflix to anonymize or perturb the data,” the lawsuit alleges.

A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.

NDIANAPOLIS — A man who claims to be the leader of a group of vampires has pleaded guilty to charges that he threatened to torture and kill an Indianapolis judge and his family.

Forty-five-year-old Rocky Flash, also known as Jonathon Sharkey, was sentenced in a Marion County court on Wednesday to more than two years in jail.

Prosecutors say the man threatened to beat, torture, impale, dismember and decapitate Judge David Certo, who is presiding over another case involving Flash.

Flash claims to be the leader of a group called “Vampyre Nation.” A call to a phone number listed on the group’s blog got a recording saying the call could not go through.

The Associated Press called Flash’s public defender for comment after hours, but the office was closed and didn’t have an answering machine.

The Cobb County district attorney plans to move forward with the prosecution of a teacher who had sex with a 17-year-old student, even though a judge last week found that a similar romance was “gross” and “awful” but not illegal.

Cobb County Superior Court Judge Robert Flournoy ruled Dec. 9 that former Marietta High School teacher Christopher King was not guilty of sexual assault charges stemming from a relationship with a 17-year-old female student.

The judge’s decision echoed a Georgia Supreme Court ruling in June that stated it is not illegal for a teacher and a student who is 16 or older to have sex. The age of consent in Georgia is 16.

Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head said he disagrees with Flournoy’s ruling. He plans to move forward with the case against Steven Martin Parkman, a former teacher at Harrison High School in west Cobb.

Parkman, 34, is accused of having consensual sex with a 17-year-old female student.

“The judge and I differ on our opinion about whether expert testimony regarding consent is a factual issue for the jury or not,” Head said in an e-mail. “Obviously, I think it is and he does not.”

Head said he will ask a grand jury to reindict Parkman within the next few weeks and add a charge of sodomy against the former orchestra teacher. Parkman resigned in lieu of termination before his arrest April 14, 2008.

Parkman’s lawyer, Noah Pines, said the continued prosecution of his client is “ridiculous.”

Letters, texts and Facebook posts indicate that the alleged victim willingly had sex with Parkman, Pines said.

Pines said he will file a motion to dismiss the sodomy charge on the grounds that it is unconstitutional if his client is reindicted. The state law prohibiting sodomy, which is defined as either oral or anal sex, is seldom enforced when it involves consenting adults.

Sodomy is a felony punishable by one to 20 years in prison and a lifetime on the sex offender registry. The punishment is much harsher for a couple caught engaging in oral sex than it is for a couple caught having intercourse in public. Public indecency is a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 12 months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Parkman told investigators that he had sex with the student in the orchestra room at school and in his car. The student has since graduated from high school and entered college, Pines said.

“If they present the case on sodomy, they are selectively prosecuting my client,” Pines said. “The law applies to anyone who gives or receives [oral sex]. She is just as guilty as my client.”

A Cobb County judge used a rare procedure to rule that a former Marietta High teacher was not guilty of sexual assault charges stemming from an affair with a 17-year-old student.

Judge Robert Flournoy bypassed the jury and issued a directed verdict Wednesday afternoon in the case against 36-year-old Christopher King, who admitted to having a sexual relationship with the girl.

“It’s gross, it’s awful, but it ain’t illegal,” said Flournoy. “This was a consensual relationship.”

In June, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that, when the student is a willing participant and is 16 or older, the student’s consent can be a defense for teachers facing a sexual assault charge. The judge referenced that decision in his ruling.

“I have a feeling the Georgia Legislature is going to amend this law,” Flournoy said.

Defense attorney Scott Semrau said it wouldn’t be surprising if this case were used by legislators as a reason to change the consent defense. Semrau doesn’t know of any similar case that’s been prosecuted since the state Supreme Court ruling.

“That ruling really guts the prosecution,” Semrau said.

The judge’s decision followed Wednesday morning testimony from the girl, who as a state witness testified the affair was consensual.

Asked by Semrau if she ever felt intimidated or coerced by King, the girl responded, “Absolutely not.”

“Have you ever wavered on that point?” Semrau asked. “No,” the girl said.

The girl looked in King’s direction several times during her testimony, smiling nervously. Though she admitted to jitters, her answers were resolute.

If he had been convicted of sexual assault, King faced 10 to 30 years in prison.

“[The student] was obviously persuasive, ” said Semrau. “She was thoroughly knowledgeable about what she wanted.”

Semrau said his client, who is now a salesman, would like to resume his relationship with the girl.

“I know he cares very deeply about her, but at this point the ball’s in her court,” he said. As for teaching again, Semrau said, “Realistically, [King]‘s put [that] behind him.”

The girl’s testimony revealed that King began personal correspondences in the fall of 2008, soon after they first met as student and teacher. “He called about a Steelers game,” the student said.

Her father, who testified Tuesday, said he was concerned that a teacher was contacting his daughter at home about an issue not related to school.

“My dad overreacts to everything,” she said. “He has very high moral standards. He’s never gotten a speeding ticket.”

Since the romance with King became public her relationship with her father has suffered, she said.

Her involvement with King was much more relaxed, she said.

“We’d go shopping, we’d go out to dinner, we’d go to movies … things dating couples do,” she said. “Piedmont Park, that was like our place.”

King was in the process of divorcing his wife, with whom he has two small children, when they began dating, she said.

“He was unhappy in his marriage,” she said.

She confirmed details that were revealed in court Tuesday about when their relationship became sexual.Their first tryst took place at a hotel on Barrett Parkway, she said.

“It evolved the way I assume any sexual encounter does,” she said.

She said when the relationship became public after King’s arrest she lost some friendships and transferred to a college preparatory program at Kennesaw State from Marietta High.

On Tuesday, Semrau acknowledged that his client was engaged in a sexual relationship with the girl.

“They were in love,” Semrau told jurors. “This may be a bad idea, it may be taboo, but it’s not illegal.”

Cobb County prosecutor Maurice Brown unsuccessfully argued that King used his position to take advantage of a romantically naive teenager. “He led her to believe he was in love with her,” Brown said in his opening statement. “He led her to believe she was in love with him.”

Brown refused comment following the verdict.

King’s relationship with his student turned physical last March, when the two met for a hike at Kennesaw Mountain. There, they shared their first kiss, and within a month they were having sexual intercourse, facts neither side disputes.

“The only thing that ended this relationship was Mr. King’s arrest (on May 27),” Semrau said.

A federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday against the city of Atlanta on behalf of 19 patrons searched and detained during the Sept. 10 raid of the Atlanta Eagle gay bar.

Police Chief Richard Pennington and 48 of his officers, including members of the department’s Red Dog unit, also are named in the civil rights suit, which claims violations of federal and state law.

“The illegal activity going on in the Atlanta Eagle that night was committed by the APD,” said Greg Nevins, an attorney in the Atlanta office of Lambda Legal, which is representing the plaintiffs.

According to police records, undercover vice officers had been to the Ponce de Leon nightclub and witnessed men having sex while other patrons watched. The department also received complaints alleging drug sales on the premises.

No charges were filed against any of the 62 patrons forced to lie down on the bar floor during the raid, though eight Eagle employees were arrested for permit violations. Pennington said the patrons were “frisked” for the officers’ safety. No search warrant was served.

“My first thought was, ‘we’re getting robbed,’” said one of the plaintiffs, Geoffrey Calhoun, who works as a local 911 dispatcher. He described feeling “dehumanized and humiliated” by the officers conducting the raid. “It needs to stop here. Silence is no longer an option.”

Last month at a community forum, Deputy Chief Carlos Banda defended the use of the Red Dog unit, which is known for its aggressive tactics.

“The procedures are very strict and they go bam, bam, bam by the numbers,” Banda told the forum, organized by Atlantans Together Against Crime. “Sometimes the tactics are a little more aggressive than we would see on regular patrol because of the enforcement problems we are given.”

Attorney Dan Grossman, a co-counsel in the lawsuit, said Tuesday that policy contradicts constitutional law regarding probable cause.

“Police didn’t care whether they were suspected of a crime or not,” he said. “I couldn’t believe police officers would have such a callous disregard for people’s human rights.”

Grossman said the suit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, also aims to change police procedure.

“It’s unfortunate we need a federal judge to make our police department follow the law,” he said. “Since [police] don’t think they did something wrong they’re going to do it again.”

Acting city attorney Roger Bhandari said he would reserve comment pending review of the complaint.

A Vogue cover girl has won a precedent-setting court battle to unmask an anonymous blogger who called her a “skank” on the internet.

In a case with potentially far-reaching repercussions, Liskula Cohen sought the identity of the blogger who maligned her on the Skanks in NYC blog so that she could sue him or her for defamation.

A Manhattan supreme court judge ruled that she was entitled to the information and ordered Google, which ran the offending blog, to turn it over.

Ms Cohen, a tall, Canadian blonde who has modelled for Giorgio Armani and Versace, went to court after reading the wounding anonymous comments on Google’s Blogger.com.

“I would have to say the first-place award for ‘Skankiest in NYC’ would have to go to Liskula Gentile Cohen,” the blogger “Anonymous” wrote in one posting. The blog, since removed, ridiculed the former Australian Vogue covergirl as a “40-something” who “may have been hot 10 years ago”, when she was actually 36.

Justice Joan Madden rejected the blogger’s claim that the blogs “serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting”, and should not be treated as factual assertions.

The model was looking forward last night to discovering the identity of the alleged acquaintance who insulted her. “Everybody is waiting to see who this coward is,” Steven Wagner, her lawyer, said.

Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesman, said: “We sympathise with anyone who may be the victim of cyberbullying. We also take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order.”

(Ed note: Um, what? First of all, is it really defamation if you’re called a name? Someone better alert the playgrounds across the Universe! Second of all, how could the courts even dream of trying to set such a precedence? This is obviously going to become a loop-hole for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to come running to Google (or your ISP) with their hand out asking for your information because you said such and such about so and so.))

A jury this morning found John William Moyer guilty of groping of a woman playing Minnie Mouse at Walt Disney World.

Moyer, 60, of Pennsylvania, was convicted of misdemeanor battery for the June incident this morning.

Judge Wayne Shoemaker imposed the sentence this morning.

“The verdict reinforces the fact that this type of behavior is not acceptable,” said Walt Disney World spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez. Disney officials also banned Moyer from entering any of the company’s resorts, Suarez said.

According to the sentence, Moyer has to write a letter of apology to the victim, Brittney Duncan McGoldrick. He also is under supervised probation for 180 days, must complete 50 hours of community service within four months, pay $1,000 in court costs and submit to a mental evaluation with treatment, if necessary.

Before sentencing, Moyer’s adult son spoke on his behalf.

“He’s a good man,” Emory Moyer said. “He’s a nice guy.”

Emory Moyer also described his father as a man who would never touch a woman inappropriately.

Later, Moyer spoke briefly to the judge.

“I am innocent, I am not guilty of the crimes that I’ve been charged with,” Moyer said.

Moyer has no criminal history and has never received a speeding ticket, he said. This was his first offense.

McGoldrick told prosecutors at the Orange County Courthouse on Monday she had pushed Moyer away from her after the incident.

“My first reaction I just pushed him down. I was doing everything I could to get his hands off my breasts,” Duncan McGoldrick said.

Jurors began their deliberations Monday afternoon.

“We’re just hoping for the only fair and just verdict in this case, which is ‘not guilty’,” said Zahra S. Umansky, Moyer’s attorney.

Moyer had been booked into Orange County Jail on June 7 and was released on $1,000 bail.

(update to this story)

LONDON — A judge has sentenced a cast member of the “Harry Potter” films to 120 hours of community service for growing marijuana.

Twenty-year-old Jamie Waylett, who plays school bully Vincent Crabbe in the magical movie franchise, pleaded guilty to producing the drug at a court hearing last week.

Prosecutors say police found 10 marijuana plants growing in a bedroom at Waylett’s mother’s London house.

Producing cannabis carries a maximum 14-year sentence. Judge Timothy Workman said Tuesday that he accepted the cultivation was on a small scale and for Waylett’s own use.

He said the actor had been, “until now, a man of good character.”

An Iowa man was convicted of possessing child pornography last week because some of the books in his vast collection of Japanese manga (comics) appeared to depict minors engaged in sexual acts. How exactly can a court determine whether a comic book character is a “minor” or not?

39-year-old Christopher Handley, an office worker, was brought up on charges of possessing child pornography in 2006 when customs officials seized a package for him. It contained several manga, some of which were “lolicon” that showed what officials said were children being sexually abused. There were also images of bestiality. Handley has a huge collection of manga, and only a few are lolicon. He also had absolutely no child pornography of any description in his house or on his computer.

Nevertheless, Handley entered a guilty plea. According to Threat Level, it was simply because his attorney had exhausted all other options:

“It’s probably the only law I’m aware of, if a client shows me a book or magazine or movie, and asks me if this image is illegal, I can’t tell them,” says Eric Chase, Handley’s attorney.

Chase says he recommended the plea agreement (.pdf) to his client because he didn’t think he could convince a jury to acquit him once they’d seen the images in question. The lawyer declined to describe the details. “If they can imagine it, they drew it,” he says. “Use your imagination. It was there.”

The manga collector faces up to 15 years in prison for possessing comic books.

Handley is the first person to be convicted under the controversial Protect Act, which makes drawings of fictional characters into potential child pornography. How did this happen?

In 2002, the Supreme Court struck down the so-called Morphing Law, which held that fictional cartoon or photoshopped images depicting minors having sex would would also be treated as obscene (Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition). Under that decision, last week’s conviction of Handley could not have happened. But in 2003, the Protect Law passed, which held that “a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting” showing children in sexual situations could be ruled illegal if local community standards consider it “obscene.” This is particularly relevant given that Handley was tried in an area, Southern Iowa, where average community members may not be aware of the styles and content of typical manga.

In the United States, the original intent of the child pornography laws was to protect children from sexual abuse. The idea is that when actual, living children (not images of them) participate in the making of sexual images, they are harmed. The US Supreme Court heard a case in 1982 (New York v. Ferber) whose outcome, in short, made any sexual images containing minors obscene and illegal – even if those images had redeeming social value. New York v. Ferber did not cover fictional images, only photography and film which involved actual children.

The Protect Act dramatically expands the scope of laws permitted under Ferber. But will actual children be protected by sending a man to prison for collecting fictional comic books?

As Comic Book Legal Defense Fund executive director Charles Brownstein put it:

This art that this man possessed as part of a larger collection of manga … is now the basis for [a sentence] designed to protect children from abuse. The drawings are not obscene and are not tantamount to pornography. They are lines on paper.

(PIXIE says: Obviously this is a real problem for fans in the United States of this genre. I just want you to know that shotalicious isn’t going anywhere. If our web host takes us down, we’ll be back using another one. And unless I’m arrested, I’ll be here posting shota on shotalicious.org.

SAN FRANCISCO — California voters legally outlawed same-sex marriage when they approved Proposition 8 in November, but the constitutional amendment did not dissolve the unions of 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who wed before the measure took effect, the state Supreme Court ruled today.

The 6-1 decision was issued by the same court that declared a year ago that a state law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman violated the right to choose one’s spouse and discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation.

Prop. 8 undid that ruling. The author of last year’s 4-3 decision, Chief Justice Ronald George, said today that the voters were within their rights to approve a constitutional amendment redefining marriage to include only male-female couples.

Justice Carlos Moreno, in a lone dissent, said a majority should not be allowed to deprive a minority of fundamental rights by passing an initiative.

The justices ruled unanimously that Prop. 8 was not retroactive and that gay and lesbian couples who relied on the court’s May 2008 ruling to get married before the Nov. 4 election will remain legally wed.

Prop. 8, which declared that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California, passed with a 52 percent majority after an intense and expensive campaign. Sponsors, mainly affiliated with Christian conservative groups, raised nearly $40 million for the measure and opponents more than $45 million – combined, a record for a ballot measure on a social issue anywhere in the nation.

The ruling, the court’s third major decision on same-sex marriage in five years, may be the last word from the state’s legal system on the issue. But the matter is far from settled in the political arena. Gay-rights advocates, anticipating the decision, have discussed putting another constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2010 or 2012 to try to repeal Prop. 8.

Meanwhile, same-sex marriage has been legalized by the Supreme Courts of Iowa and Connecticut and the legislatures of Vermont and Maine, joining Massachusetts, whose high court issued the first such ruling in 2003. Similar legislation is pending in New Hampshire and New York.

California’s legal battle dates back to February 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom authorized the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Nearly 4,000 weddings took place in the next month before the state Supreme Court ordered a halt, then voided the marriages in August 2004 and found unanimously that Newsom had no authority to disregard state law.

The city and a number of couples quickly returned to court and sued to overturn the law. They won in Superior Court, lost in an appeals court, and won in the state’s high court on May 15, 2008 – but by then, their opponents had already submitted more than 1 million signatures qualifying Prop. 8 for the November ballot.

This time, the issue before the justices was whether the voters’ power to amend the Constitution by initiative.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuits were two groups of same-sex couples, some already married and some thwarted by Prop. 8, along with an array of local governments led by San Francisco. They argued that a measure eliminating fundamental rights exceeds the scope of a constitutional amendment and amounts to a revision, which needs a two-thirds legislative vote or approval from delegates at a state constitutional convention to reach the ballot.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, who usually defends state laws in court, joined Prop. 8′s opponents and argued that “inalienable rights” in the California Constitution cannot be repealed by majority vote.

Prop. 8′s sponsors noted that the court had declared ballot measures to be revisions only twice. The court has rejected similar challenges to such far-reaching measures as a legislative term-limits initiative, the Proposition 13 tax cut and the reinstatement of the death penalty.

Backers of the measure argued that the people are the highest political authority in California and the court should defer to their judgment.

PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) – A youthful-looking sex offender who posed as a 12-year-old boy to enroll in several Arizona schools was sentenced to more than 70 1/2 years in prison Tuesday.

Neil Havens Rodreick II pleaded guilty last year to seven criminal charges. Most involved child pornography but two stemmed from the charade he pulled off for two years.

Rodreick, 31, didn’t speak at his sentencing, shaking his head ‘no’ when Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Thomas Lindberg asked if he had anything to say.

Lindberg told Rodreick that he found his conduct deceitful and appalling and said he should have received an even longer sentence.

Rodreick attended schools in Surprise, Payson and Prescott Valley starting in 2005.

Authorities said he shaved and wore makeup to help him appear younger, convincing teachers, students and administrators that he was a boy named Casey.

He was caught in January 2007 after spending a day in the seventh grade at a Chino Valley school when school officials became suspicious because his birth certificate and other documents looked forged. They had initially thought they might be dealing with a child who had been abducted.

Authorities didn’t find any victims of sexual abuse at the schools Rodreick attended, but they found an extensive collection of child pornography at his home.

Rodreick originally faced 28 counts, but pleaded guilty to only a quarter of them: four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor stemming from the pornography, and one count each of failure to register as a sex offender, fraud and simple assault. The assault charge involved an allegation that he grabbed a girl’s buttocks at a school in Prescott Valley with the intent to injure, insult or provoke.

Rodreick was arrested with Brian J. Nellis, 36, who was posing as his cousin, and two older men posing as their uncle and grandfather.

Nellis, Lonnie Eugene Stiffler, 63, and Robert James Snow, 46, were indicted on various charges, including child pornography and forgery. Nellis and Snow, both convicted sex offenders, were also charged with failing to register with authorities.

Stiffler was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years in prison, and Snow received 22 years. Nellis was sentenced last month to 51 years in prison with no chance of parole.

Before coming to Arizona, Rodreick was convicted in Oklahoma of lewdly propositioning a 6-year-old boy in 1996. He served about six years in prison.

(Ed note: *snicker*)

A Fulton County jury has awarded $1.8 million in damages to a boy whose penis was severed in a botched circumcision.

The state court jury gave another $500,000 to the boy’s mother in the decision rendered Friday.

The case involves a child, identified only as D.P. Jr., who was born at South Fulton Medical Center in 2004. In a suit filed two years later, his mother contended that the doctor who circumcised him removed too much tissue and that his pediatrician failed to respond when a nurse complained of excessive bleeding.

The tip of the penis was placed in a biohazard bag and might have been reattached if a urologist had attended to the boy within eight hours, one of the mother’s lawyers, David J. Llewellyn of Atlanta, said.

The jury found that both the pediatrician, Dr. Cheryl Kendall, and the physician who performed the circumcision, Dr. Haiba Sonyika, were negligent. South Fulton Medical Center was absolved of liability.

The pediatrician’s lawyer, Roger Harris, said he disagreed that the jury’s decision indicated that Dr. Kendall was negligent because she didn’t go to the hospital. He hinted at an appeal. “We believe there was error committed during the course of the trial,” he said.

Dr. Sonyika’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Llewellyn said the money awarded by the jury is to cover the cost of medical treatments and psychiatric counseling for the boy and his family. The jury did not award punitive damages. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not naming the mother to avoid identifying the child.

“This case does point out one of the dangers of circumcision that every parent must seriously consider when having the procedure done,” Llewellyn said. He contended that parents are not told of the risks of the procedure.

(Ed note: Sure to continue the hot debate over the topic of circumcision. I must reiterate that I do prefer uncut and commercial free guys.)

A trial date in the child molestation case against DragonCon founder Ed Kramer has been set at least three times since Kramer was arrested on Aug. 25, 2000, but one delay after another has forestalled it. Kramer’s chronic health issues have been the main reason for the repeated continuances, said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter. Attorneys for both sides on Wednesday tentatively to set a new trial date for May 11.

Kramer is a science-fiction author who founded DragonCon, a sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention that brings thousands of visitors to Atlanta every year. He is accused of molesting three teenage boys.

Porter said special arrangments may have to be made to accomodate Kramer, who suffers from severe spinal cord injuries that affect his ability to breathe. Kramer’s doctor advised that he be tried for just two hours at a time, for no more than a total of four hours a day.

“We’re sort of trying to figure out a way, because you can’t really try a case at that pace,” Porter said.

Porter said some options that have been discussed are bringing in furniture that would allow Kramer to sit more comfortably. Prosecutors may also consider doing a Web-cast of the trial, if Kramer waives his right to be present in the courtroom.

Kramer has been awaiting trial under house arrest since 2001. A judge ruled in May that he no longer had to be tethered to his home by an electronic monitoring system as long as he checked in daily with the district attorney’s office concerning his whereabouts.

*********

Dragon Con founder Ed Kramer is suing the current director of Atlanta’s annual sci-fi/fantasy convention for allegedly shortchanging him on stock proceeds.

In the suit, filed in Fulton Superior Court, Kramer accuses Dragon Con president Robert Patrick Henry of misspending company funds on Las Vegas boondoggles and hiring unqualified family members.

Kramer also accuses Henry of hiding company financial records to trick him into selling his majority stake in Dragon Con for less than its worth. “Pat Henry initiated an aggressive, coercive, and nepotistic campaign,” the suit states, “to wrest control of the company away from its shareholders.”

Henry could not be immediately reached for comment. Kramer’s attorney, McNeill Stokes, refused to comment.

The civil case coincides with Kramer’s pending criminal trial on charges he molested three teenaged boys. The case, which began with Kramer’s arrest in August 2000, has been repeatedly delayed because of Kramer’s chronic health issues.

Kramer, 47, suffers from severe spinal cord injuries that affect his ability to breathe and make it difficult for him to stay alert. His doctor has said Kramer can only stay in court for two hours at a time.

Nevertheless Kramer is demanding a jury trial in the civil case, which, if granted, could prolong it.

Kramer founded Dragon Con in 1986. The first convention was held the following year at the Piedmont Plaza Hotel. The event attracted 1,400 people.

Since then, Dragon Con’s legions of impersonating Imperial storm troopers, Star Trek officers, orcs and double hair-bunned princesses have hit warp drive.

The 2008 event in downtown Atlanta drew more than 30,000 people, according to Dragon Con.

Kramer accuses Henry of underreporting attendance figures at past conventions to keep Atlanta’s fire marshall from materializing at the events.

According to the lawsuit, Kramer hired private investigators to stake out the 2008 convention. They counted more than 41,000 in attendance.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to consider attempts to revive a 1998 law intended to protect children from Internet pornography, ending a legal conflict dating to the administration of President Bill Clinton.

Without comment, the court handed down an order declining to take the case of Mukasey v. A.C.L.U., No. 08-565. The administration of former President George W. Bush, through Attorney General Michael Mukasey, had asked the justices to review the law. The American Civil Liberties Union has been a leading foe of the statute.

The Child Online Protection Act has been the subject of court battles since Congress enacted it in 1998, and it has never taken effect. Some judges have called the controversy an agonizing conflict between the cherished right of free speech and society’s duty to watch over children, many of whom grow up as familiar with computers as earlier generations of children were with coloring books.

The high court’s refusal to take another look at the law was not surprising, given that the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, ruled last July that the law violated the First Amendment because filtering technologies and other tools offered less restrictive ways to shield children.

Signed by President Clinton in the fall of 1998, the law would have made it illegal for the operator of a commercial Web site to make sexually explicit material deemed harmful to minors available to those under 17. Violators would have faced fines of up to $50,000 per offense and six months in jail. A site that carried such material but gated it off from children through credit cards or other age-verifying measures would have had a defense under the statute.

Backers of the law contended that it was aimed primarily at “teaser” ads, or free samples offered by Web pornography sites. But opponents of the law complained that it was too broad and could have covered non-pornographic sexual material, like those dealing with gynecological issues.

The Child Online Protection Act was an attempt to fill a void created when the Supreme Court struck down a broader measure, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the year after it had been enacted. The court ruled then that the decency act was defective because, among other things, it had not defined its key terms clearly enough.

The journey of the Child Online Protection Act through the court system began early in 1999, when Federal Judge Lowell A. Reed Jr. in Philadelphia issued an injunction against the statute, concluding that the fears of the law’s critics were reasonable. But Judge Reed’s remarks were memorable for their ambivalence.

The judge wrote that he felt “personal regret” that his injunction would “delay once again the careful protection of our children.” But he went on to write that “perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if the First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection.”

Judge Reed’s injunction was upheld by a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit in June 2000. Then the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 ruling in June 2004, affirmed that the injunction against enforcement of the law should remain in effect pending a trial on the law’s constitutionality in Federal District Court.

Early in 2007, Judge Reed declared the law unconstitutional, while again voicing his regret. After the Third Circuit upheld Judge Reed last July, the Bush administration made one last attempt to revive it, which the Supreme Court rejected on Wednesday.

A Supreme Court judge in Australia has ruled that an internet cartoon in which look-a-like child characters from The Simpsons engage in sexual acts is child pornography.

In a landmark finding, Justice Michael Adams upheld a decision convicting a man of possessing child pornography after the cartoons, depicting characters modelled on Bart, Lisa and Maggie engaging in sex acts, were found on his computer.

The main issue of the case was whether a fictional cartoon character could “depict” a “person” under law.

“If the persons were real, such depictions could never be permitted,”Justice Adams said in his judgement.

“Their creation would constitute crimes at the very highest end of the criminal calendar.”

Alan John McEwan had been convicted in the Parramatta Local Court of possessing child pornography and of using a carriage service to access child pornography material, the latter of which has a maximum penalty of 10 years’ jail.

The male figures in the cartoons had what appeared to be human genitalia, as did the mother and the girl depicted in the cartoons.

The magistrate had said that had the images involved real children, McEwan would have been jailed.

However, he was fined A$3000 and required to enter into a two-year good behaviour bond in respect to each of the charges.

McEwan appealed the decision arguing that fictional cartoon characters could not be considered people as they “plainly and deliberately” departed from the human form.

But Justice Adams agreed with the magistrate, finding that while The Simpsons characters had hands with four fingers and their faces were “markedly and deliberately different to those of any possible human being”, the mere fact that they were not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they could not be considered people.

Justice Adams said the purpose of the legislation was to stop sexual exploitation and child abuse where images are depicted of “real” children.

However it was also to deter the production of other material, including cartoons, that could “fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children”.

He dismissed the appeal and ordered each party to pay its own costs as it was “the first case dealing with (this) difficult issue.”

(Ed note: -snicker- That’s so fucking retarded, I don’t even know where to begin. Then again Australia has been on a huge downward spiral for several years now.)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – California’s highest court agreed Wednesday to hear several legal challenges to the state’s new ban on same-sex marriage but refused to allow gay couples to resume marrying before it rules.
The California Supreme Court accepted three lawsuits seeking to nullify Proposition 8, a voter-approved constitutional amendment that overruled the court’s decision in May that legalized gay marriage.

All three cases claim the measure abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue that voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change.

As is its custom when it takes up cases, the court elaborated little. However, the justices did say they want to address what effect, if any, a ruling upholding the amendment would have on the estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages that were sanctioned in California before Election Day.

Gay rights groups and local governments petitioning to overturn the ban were joined by the measure’s sponsors and Attorney General Jerry Brown in urging the Supreme Court to consider whether Proposition 8 passes legal muster.

The initiative’s opponents had also asked the court to grant a stay of the measure, which would have allowed gay marriages to begin again while the justices considered the cases. The court denied that request.

The justices directed Brown and lawyers for the Yes on 8 campaign to submit arguments by Dec. 19 on why the ballot initiative should not be nullified. It said lawyers for the plaintiffs, who include same-sex couples who did not wed before the election, must respond before Jan. 5.

Oral arguments could be scheduled as early as March, according to court spokeswoman Lynn Holton.

“This is welcome news. The matter of Proposition 8 should be resolved thoughtfully and without delay,” Brown said in a statement.

Both opponents and supporters of Proposition 8 expressed confidence Wednesday that their arguments would prevail. But they also agreed that the cases present the court’s seven justices—six of whom voted to review the challenges—with complex questions that have few precedents in state case law.

Although more than two dozen states have similar amendments, some of which have survived similar lawsuits, none were approved by voters in a place where gay marriage already was legal.

Neither were any approved in a state where the high court had put sexual orientation in the same protected legal class as race and religion, which the California Supreme Court did when it rendered its 4-3 decision that made same-sex marriage legal in May.

Opponents of the ban argue that voters improperly abrogated the judiciary’s authority by stripping same-sex couples of the right to wed after the high court earlier ruled it was discriminatory to prohibit gay men and lesbians from marrying.

“If given effect, Proposition 8 would work a dramatic, substantive change to our Constitution’s ‘underlying principles’ of individual equality on a scale and scope never previously condoned by this court,” lawyers for the same-sex couples stated in their petition.

The measure represents such a sweeping change that it constitutes a constitutional revision as opposed to an amendment, the documents say. The distinction would have required the ban’s backers to obtain approval from two-thirds of both houses of the California Legislature before submitting it to voters.

Over the past century, the California Supreme Court has heard nine cases challenging legislative acts or ballot initiatives as improper revisions. The court eventually invalidated three of the measures, according to the gay rights group Lambda Legal.

Andrew Pugno, legal counsel for the Yes on 8 campaign, said he doubts the court will buy the revision argument in the case of the gay marriage ban because the plaintiffs would have to prove the measure alters the state’s basic governmental framework.

Joel Franklin, a constitutional law professor at Monterey College of Law, said that even though the court rejected similar procedural arguments when it upheld amendments reinstating the death penalty and limiting property taxes, those cases do not represent as much of a fundamental change as Proposition 8.

“Those amendments applied universally to all Californians,” Franklin said. “This is a situation where you are removing rights from a particular group of citizens, a class of individuals the court has said is entitled to constitutional protection. That is a structural change.”

The trio of cases the court accepted were filed by six same-sex couples who have not yet wed, a Los Angeles lesbian couple who were among the first to tie the knot on June 16 and 11 cities and counties, led by the city of San Francisco.

NEW YORK (CNN) — The Connecticut Supreme Court in Hartford ruled Friday that the state must allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.

The decision makes this the third state, after Massachusetts and California, where a state court has decided its constitution mandates a state treat citizens equally when applying for marriage licenses, regardless of their sexual orientation.”Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice,” said the decision, ” the ruling said.

“To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.”

This summer could become a real eye-opener with nudists legally allowed to strut their stuff on Wellington beaches, including the golden sands of Oriental Bay.

Wellington City Council spokesman Richard MacLean said the council had “quietly got rid of” an old bylaw that required beach-goers over the age of eight to wear swimming togs or clothes.

“There is a bit of topless sunbathing on Oriental Bay Beach but generally people tend to keep their swimming kit on when on busy beaches.

“So the old bylaw was of no use and was not enforced by council staff. We don’t have apparel enforcement officers.”

The move means the council has no bylaws on its books that expressly prohibit nudity – not just on beaches but anywhere in the city.

Mr MacLean said if nudists behaviour was lewd or offensive, the council would then turn to police for enforcement.

The council has recognised the status of an unofficial nude beach at Breaker Bay, near Seatoun, for years. “Nudists have to walk about 10 minutes [from the road] through soft sand before they get to the nude zone,” Mr MacLean said.

The council’s governance portfolio leader, Deputy Mayor Ian McKinnon, does not expect the lack of nudity rules to lead to beaches being crowded with naked sun lovers.

“People do not expect to see that on our beaches and I think people will respect that. And there is nothing like a good southerly to make people put on a bit of clothing.”

RIVIERA BEACH, Florida — A judge says Riviera Beach’s “saggy pants” law is unconstitutional in the case of a 17-year-old who spent a night in jail for having his underwear showing.

And a public defender said her office wants to get the law tossed altogether.

Julius Hart was charged Wednesday when an officer spotted him riding his bicycle in the 2800 block of Lakeshore Drive with 4 to 5 inches of blue and black boxer shorts sticking out of his black pants.

A first offense carries a $150 fine or a requirement of community service; only habitual offenders face the possibility of jail time.

But, a report said, the charge against Hart meant a violation of his probation on a marijuana possession charge, so he went to jail.

“Somebody help me,” Palm Beach Circuit Judge Paul Moyle said.

“We’re not talking about exposure of buttocks. No! We’re talking about someone who has on pants whose underwear are apparently visible to a police officer who then makes an arrest and the basis is he’s then held overnight, no bond. No bond!” the judge exclaimed.

“Your honor, we now have the fashion police,” public defender Carol Bickerstaff said. “Our office really does intend to appeal this ordinance, which we believe is totally unconstitutional.”

Moyle ruled the law unconstitutional “based on the limited facts of this case.” Instead of issuing bail, the judge released Hart on his own recognizance.

Asked how this will affect the law overall, Riviera Beach’s city attorney deferred to the police legal counsel and the mayor, Bishop Thomas Masters. Masters referred calls to city spokeswoman Rose Anne Brown, who said the city hadn’t yet seen the ruling and couldn’t comment.

Technically, the charge is not yet dropped; a new arraignment is set for Oct. 5.

“The first time I saw this particular fashion, I disliked it, and then I realized I’m getting old,” Bickerstaff told the judge.

“You can have Speedo underwear, which is way less than boxer shorts, and that is perfectly legal, but boxer shorts, with pants over them, is not?” Moyle asked.

Bickerstaff quipped, “It’s like a Monty Python skit.”

City voters had approved the law in March by a 72 percent tally, after Masters lobbied heavily for it, helping collect 4,769 signatures to put the measure on the ballot.

The saggy pants fad surfaced in jail, when juvenile offenders wore overly large prison garb that sagged, exposing their underwear. It later became a fashion statement among rappers and remains popular in urban communities across the country.

Harry Potter maker Warner Bros is suing an Indian film company over the title of upcoming film Hari Puttar – A Comedy Of Terrors, according to reports.

Warner Bros feels the name is too similar to that of its world famous young wizard, according to trade paper The Hollywood Reporter.

A spokesman confirmed the lawsuit against Mumbai-based Mirchi Movies.

The case is reportedly due to be heard in Bombay High Court later. The film is due to open in India on 12 September.

“We have recently commenced proceedings against parties involved in the production and distribution of a movie entitled Hari Puttar,” Warner Bros spokeswoman Deborah Lincoln told The Hollywood Reporter.

“Warner Bros values and protects intellectual property rights.

“However, it is our policy not to discuss publicly the details of any ongoing litigation.”

Hari is a popular Indian name while Puttar means son in Punjabi.

Hari Puttar, directed by Rajesh Bajaj and Lucky Kohli, stars Zain Khan as Hari alongside veteran Bollywood actor Jackie Shroff.

It tells the story of a 10-year-old boy who moves to England with his parents and becomes embroiled in a battle over a secret microchip.

Munish Purii, of Mirchi Movies, told The Hollywood Reporter: “We registered the Hari Puttar title in 2005 and it’s unfortunate that Warner has chosen to file a case so close to our film’s release.

“In my opinion, I don’t think our title has any similarity or links with Harry Potter.”

Hasbro Inc., the company that owns the word game’s North American rights, sued the creators of the Scrabulous program on Thursday, less than two weeks after the release of an authorized version of Scrabble for Facebook.

Hasbro said in its lawsuit that Scrabulous violates its copyright and trademarks. Separately, Hasbro asked Facebook to block the game.

In the year since Facebook began letting outside developers write Web programs that Facebook members can plug into their personal profile pages, Scrabulous has attracted some half-million daily users, despite efforts by Scrabble’s owners to end it.

Video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. released an official version for American and Canadian Facebook users last week as part of a broader, year-old licensing deal with Hasbro, yet Facebook users have continued to spend countless hours on the unauthorized Scrabulous.

Now, Hasbro is trying to stop Scrabulous completely and collect unspecified damages.

Mark Blecher, general manager for digital media and gaming at Hasbro, said the Pawtucket, R.I.-based company waited until Thursday to file a lawsuit to ensure that Scrabble fans had a legal option first.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, named as defendants Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the brothers in Calcutta, India, who created the program, along with their Web design and technology company, RJ Softwares.

The Agarwallas did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment made after business hours in India. A 24-hour number for RJ Softwares went unanswered Thursday.

Facebook, which was not named as a defendant, refused to immediately block the application, pending a response from Scrabulous’ creators.

“Over the past year, Facebook has tried to use its status as neutral platform provider to help the parties come to an amicable agreement,” the company said in a statement. “We’re disappointed that Hasbro has sought to draw us into their dispute.”

By waiting, Facebook risks losing immunity protection from copyright lawsuits. Under federal law, service providers are generally exempt for their users’ actions — at least until they become aware of a specific infringement.

Earlier, Jayant Agarwalla said he was looking forward to competing with the official version, suggesting that Electronic Arts would have a tough time attracting “the attention and patronage of a large and dedicated user base,” as Scrabulous has done.

Blecher said that rather than blame Hasbro for trying to block a popular game, “the fans of Scrabble will appreciate an authentic version.”

Both games are free.

Mattel Inc. owns Scrabble rights outside the United States and Canada and did not join the lawsuit. It has a deal with RealNetworks Inc. to make a legal version available in other markets.

Hollywood actor Verne Troyer, who starred as Mini-Me in the Austin Powers films, is suing a website over a video of him having sex with a model.

The star, who stands 2ft 8 ins tall, has filed a $20 million lawsuit claiming invasion of privacy and breach of copyright.

He says the tape was stolen and has since ended up in the hands of the same film producer who distributed a notorious sex tape of hotel heiress Paris Hilton.

Mr Troyer, 39, is the latest in a long line of Hollywood celebrities to have their sex lives aired on the internet.

He made the tape with a former girlfriend, an American model in her 20s.

Mr Troyer filed his lawsuit at a court in Los Angeles and also requested and injunction banning further distribution of the film.

The actor, who is Hollywood’s smallest star and also a stunt man, was married briefly in 2004 to a yoga teacher.

The following year he appeared on a US reality television show where he got drunk and urinated in the corner of a gym while riding naked on a scooter.

His most famous film role has been as Mini-Me, a miniature clone of Dr Evil, played by Mike Myers, in the Austin Powers films.

He appears in the second and third films of the trilogy – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember.

The actor also starred as Griphook the Goblin in the film of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

MTV Networks Europe has been fined a total of £255,000 ($484,500) by U.K. media regulator Ofcom for “widespread and persistent” breaches of its broadcasting code by four of its channels.

The Viacom-owned operator will have to pay the following penalties: TMF £80,000 ($152,000), MTV France £35,000 ($66,500), MTV UK £80,000 ($152,000) and MTV Hits £60,000 ($114,000).

The “highly offensive language and material” was broadcast before the 9pm family-viewing watershed.

Auds complained about a number of shows. They included: repeated use of the words “motherfucker”, “fuck you” and “fuck” in a music video by Aphex Twin for the song “Windowlicker” on TMF, and racist and homophobic text messages aired by MTV France in “Belge Chat.”

Additionally TMF screened a trailer for the reality skein “Totally Jodie Marsh” on seven occasions between 9.48am and 3.15pm on July 24 last year containing the sentence: “I just don’t want you settling down with some fucking wanker from a modeling agency.”

Other breaches identified by Ofcom included a 4.30pm broadcast of MTV UK show “Totally Boyband” in 2006 featuring “extensive offensive language.”

In a statement the regulator said: “Ofcom concluded that this material was not justified by the context of broadcasts that were likely to appeal to children and that the likely audience would have expected to have been protected from the most offensive language and material in such programming.”

A spokesman for MTV said: “MTV Networks Europe takes this sanction and fine very seriously and has taken a series of steps to minimize as much as possible any breaches in the future.

“These include strengthening procedures regarding programs for pre-watershed broadcast, reviewing MTV’s archive programming, increasing the number of staff involved in compliance and investing in a new channel management system.”

Edward Kramer has spent more than seven years awaiting trial under house arrest, but a recent ruling has given him new freedoms.

Gwinnett Superior Court Judge Richard T. Winegarden ordered that Kramer, accused of molesting three teenage boys, no longer has to be tethered to his home by an electronic monitoring system.

The judge’s May 21 ruling allows Kramer to move freely as long as he avoids contact with witnesses and anyone under 16. Kramer also must check in daily with the Gwinnett District Attorney’s office concerning his whereabouts.

Kramer is a science-fiction author who founded DragonCon, a sci-fi, fantasy and gaming convention that brings thousands of visitors to Atlanta every year.

Prosecutors agreed to the new conditions of bond in part because Kramer needs to leave home for doctor appointments in and out of state, said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter.

“He’s got to have some mobility because of his medical condition,” Porter said. “The thing we’re most concerned about is we don’t want him in a position where he’s in contact with children.”

Kramer’s attorney, Edwin Marger, could not be reached for comment at his office Monday afternoon.

As long as Kramer complies with the conditions of his bond, they will likely remain in place until his trial, Porter said. No court date has been set. However, prosecutors expect the trial could begin in early fall.

Kramer has been awaiting trial since early 2001 under house arrest in Duluth. His lawyers asked a judge to dismiss the case last year, citing his right to a speedy trial. However, the Georgia Court of Appeals ruled that the delays were mostly caused by Kramer.

Prosecutors successfully argued that Kramer had filed repeated requests for continuances and scheduled medical treatments that conflicted with trial dates.

In an October 2007 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kramer said he suffers debilitating back pain, the result of spinal injuries he suffered in jail and in a subsequent car accident. The spinal injuries caused a partial paralysis of his diaphragm, which makes it difficult to breathe.

Kramer’s mother also has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and he wants to assist in her home health care, court documents show.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court upheld criminal penalties Monday for promoting child pornography.

The court, in a 7-2 decision, brushed aside concerns that the law could apply to mainstream movies that depict adolescent sex, classic literature or innocent e-mails that describe pictures of grandchildren.

The ruling upheld part of a 2003 law that also prohibits possession of child porn. It replaced an earlier law against child pornography that the court struck down as unconstitutional.

The law sets a five-year mandatory prison term for promoting, or pandering, child porn. It does not require that someone actually possess child pornography. Opponents have said the law could apply to movies like “Traffic” or “Titanic” that depict adolescent sex.

But Justice Antonin Scalia, in his opinion for the court, said the law does not cover movie sex. there is no “possibility that virtual child pornography or sex between youthful-looking adult actors might be covered by the term ‘simulated sexual intercourse.’” Scalia said.

Likewise, Scalia said, First Amendment protections do not apply to “offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography.”

Justice David Souter, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissented. Souter said promotion of images that are not real children engaging in pornography still could be the basis for prosecution under the law. Possession of those images, on the other hand, may not be prosecuted, Souter said.

“I believe that maintaining the First Amendment protection of expression we have previously held to cover fake child pornography requires a limit to the law’s criminalization of pandering proposals,” Souter said.

The 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals struck down the provision. The Atlanta-based court said it makes a crime out of merely talking about illegal images or possessing innocent materials that someone else might believe is pornography.

In the appeals court’s view, the law could apply to an e-mail sent by a grandparent and entitled “Good pics of kids in bed,” showing grandchildren dressed in pajamas.

In 2002, the court struck down key provisions of a 1996 child pornography law because they called into question legitimate educational, scientific or artistic depictions of youthful sex.

Congress responded the next year with the PROTECT Act, which contains the provision under challenge in the current case.

Authorities arrested Michael Williams in an undercover operation aimed at fighting child exploitation on the Internet. A Secret Service agent engaged Williams in an Internet chat room, where they swapped non-pornographic photographs. Williams advertised himself as “Dad of toddler has ‘good’ pics of her an me for swap of your toddler pics, or live cam.”

After the initial photo exchange, Williams allegedly posted seven images of actual minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Agents who executed a search warrant found 22 child porn images on Williams’ home computer.

Williams also was convicted of possession of child pornography. That conviction, and the resulting five-year prison term, was not challenged.

(Ed note: As you can see nothing is mentioned about cartoon or anime or anything of the sort, so that part is still held legal from the last Supreme Court ruling. So continue to write me your hate mail about shota, but realize that it is, in fact, still legal.)

California’s supreme court ruled that a ban on gay marriage was unlawful Thursday, effectively leaving same-sex couples in America’s most populous state free to tie the knot in a landmark ruling.

In an opinion that analysts say could have nationwide implications for the issue, the seven-member panel voted 4-3 in favor of plaintiffs who argued that restricting marriage to men and women was discriminatory.

“… limiting the designation of marriage to a union ‘between a man and a woman’ is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute,” California Chief Justice Ron George said in the written opinion.

Before Thursday only one US state — Massachusetts — allowed gay marriage, although California, New Jersey and Vermont have legislation which grants same-sex partners many of the same legal rights as married couples.

Thursday’s ruling came after a long-running legal battle that erupted in 2000 when California voters approved a law declaring that only marriages between men and women could be legally recognized.

In February 2004, the City of San Francisco defied state law by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, arguing that existing laws were illegal because they violated equal rights legislation.

A court later halted the issuance of licenses and declared that same-sex marriages that took place during this period were void.

However San Francisco and civil rights activists waged a legal case arguing that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples was unconstitutional and that the law should be struck down.

In 2005 the San Francisco Superior Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that there was no justification for refusing to allow marriages on gender grounds.

But the decision was overturned in 2006 by the California Court of Appeal, which ruled in a 2-1 decision that the state’s desire to “carry out the expressed wishes of a majority” was sufficient to preserve the existing law.

California lawmakers have also voted in favor of gay marriage but the bill was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has said that the matter is for the state’s court system to decide on.

A New York City man is suing JetBlue Airways Corp. for more than $2 million because he says a pilot made him give up his seat to a flight attendant and sit on the toilet for more than three hours on a flight from California.

Gokhan Mutlu, of Manhattan’s Inwood section, says in court papers the pilot told him to “go ‘hang out’ in the bathroom” about 90 minutes into the San Diego to New York flight because the flight attendant complained that the “jump seat” she was assigned was uncomfortable, the lawsuit said.

Mutlu was traveling on a a “buddy pass,” a standby travel voucher that JetBlue employees give to friends, from New York to San Diego on Feb. 16, and returned to New York on Feb. 23, the lawsuit said.

Initially, Mutlu was told a flight attendant had taken the last seat on the plane, but then he was advised she would sit in the employee “jump seat,” meaning he could have the last seat, the lawsuit said.

The pilot told him 1 1/2 hours into the five-hour flight that he would have to relinquish the seat to the flight attendant, court papers say. But the pilot said that Mutlu could not sit in the jump seat because only JetBlue employees were permitted to sit there, the lawsuit said.

When Mutlu expressed reluctance to go sit in the bathroom, the pilot, who was not named in the lawsuit, told him that “he was the pilot, that this was his plane, under his command that (Mutlu) should be grateful for being on board,” the lawsuit said.

When the aircraft hit turbulence and passengers were directed to return to their seats, but “the plaintiff had no seat to return to, sitting on a toilet stool with no seat belts,” court papers say.

Sometime later, a male flight attendant knocked on the restroom door and told Mutlu he could return to his original seat, court papers say.

Mutlu’s lawsuit, filed Friday in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court, says JetBlue negligently endangered him by not providing him with a seat with a safety belt or harness, in violation of federal law.

A JetBlue spokesman declined comment on the lawsuit Monday.

SAN DIEGO — A Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered Starbucks to pay its California baristas more than $100 million in back tips that the coffee chain paid to shift supervisors.

Saying baristas were entitled to $86 million in back tips plus interest, San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett also issued an injunction preventing Starbucks’ shift supervisors from sharing in future tips.

Cowett said the practice was a violation of a state law prohibiting managers and supervisors from sharing in employee tips.

Starbucks Corp. spokeswoman Valerie O’Neil said the company planned an immediate appeal, calling the ruling “fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and reason.”

The lawsuit was filed in October 2004 by Jou Chou, a former Starbucks barista in La Jolla, who complained that shift supervisors were sharing in employee tips.

The lawsuit gained ground in 2006 when it was granted class action status, allowing for the suit to go forward for as many as 100,000 former and current baristas in Starbucks’s California stores.

“I feel vindicated,” Chou said in a written statement released by attorneys. “Tips really help those receiving the lowest wages. I think Starbucks should pay shift supervisors higher wages instead of taking money from the tip pool.”

California is Starbucks’ largest U.S. market, with 2,460 stores as of Jan. 8, the latest count available. The company has more than 11,000 stores nationwide.

Starbucks earned more than $672 million on revenue of $9.4 billion during its fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30.

The coffee company also took issue with the brevity of Cowett’s ruling, which was only four paragraphs, saying the judge failed to address the unfairness to shift supervisors.

“This case was filed by a single former barista and, despite Starbucks request, the interests of the shift supervisors were not represented in litigation,” O’Neil said.

Terry Chapko, an attorney for the baristas, said the ruling was a victory, but the case was far from over.

“Starbucks should be paying their shift supervisors a supervisory wage, not compensating them through tips that legally belong to baristas,” he said.

Gay and straight youth groups in Canada have come out against a change in age of consent from 14 to 16.

Richard Hudler of the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario claims that it will unfairly prejudice gay teenagers.

“My first lover was 17 years older than me. And this is common [among gay people],” he said, according to xtra.ca.

“It is dangerous, considering the attitude toward sexual orientation in schools, for a young person to attempt to make sexual contact with a peer.”

The change in the age of consent has cross-party support and is almost certain to become law.

Politicians argue it is a necessary child protection measure.

LGBT groups also spoke against the discriminatory age of consent for anal sex in Canada.

Under Canada’s Criminal Code, anal sex is only legal if both individuals are 18 years old.

The Canadian House of Commons justice committee had a chance to strike down the law last year, but the chair, Conservative MP Art Hanger, refused.

“This factor sends a strong message to the gay community that hostility toward same-sex relationships is a motivating factor behind this legislation,” said Hudler.

“The bill is homophobic,” Jeremy Dias, executive director of Jer’s Vision, a youth group that seeks to end discrimination in schools, said, according to xtra.ca.

“Why can’t a gay male youth make sexual decisions until he’s 18?”

Canada’s legal system ties consent to the desire to protect children from adults who wish to exploit them sexually.

Section 153 of Canada’s criminal justice code then goes on to prohibit the sexual touching of a person under 18 by a person in three circumstances: if he or she is in a “position of trust or authority” towards the youth, if the youth is in a “relationship of dependency” with him or her or if the relationship is
“exploitative.”

The alleged intention of the bill is to target sexual predators and pimps, although no legal distinction is made to differentiate them from older partners engaged or interested in non-exploitative relationships, or to distinguish between sexual harassment and normal approaches.

Details of the proposed change include raising the age of consent from 14 to 16, while creating a near-age exemption for sex between 14 to 15 year olds and partners up to five years older, and keeping an existing near-age clause for sex between 12 and 13 year olds and partners up to two years older.

The Canadian Senate will continue hearings on the Conservative government’s omnibus crime bill, which includes the age of consent changes, this week.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City street performer “The Naked Cowboy” is suing Mars Inc. for $6 million over the use of his trademark look — white underwear, cowboy boots and a hat — by a blue M&M candy on a Times Square billboard.

For nearly a decade, Robert Burck has been a fixture in Times Square, where he strums a guitar on a street corner while dressed in his skimpy signature costume.

In a lawsuit filed this week in Manhattan federal court, Burck said that two oversized Times Square billboards that promote M&Ms used his look without compensating him.

The billboards feature a scantily clad blue M&M with a guitar alongside views of New York including street scenes and the Statue of Liberty.

Burck is suing privately held Mars Inc., which makes M&Ms, and Chute Gerdeman Inc., an Ohio agency that he said created the ad, for trademark infringement.

Neither company was immediately available for comment.

“Just like The Naked Cowboy does on a daily basis in Times Square, the M&M is not only dressed as “The Naked Cowboy,” it is playing the Naked Cowboy’s distinctive white guitar in the cartoon,” the lawsuit said.

Mars and Chute Gerdeman “decided to exploit and trade upon The Naked Cowboy’s well-recognized likeness without a license and without furnishing any compensation,” the lawsuit said.

Burck has trademarked his signature look and has made several television and movie appearances in costume, including for a televised audition on the “American Idol” reality TV program, the lawsuit said.

A federal appeals court has overturned a Texas statute outlawing sex-toy sales, essentially leaving Alabama as the only state with such a ban.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by up to two years in jail, violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.

Companies that own Dreamer’s and Le Rouge Boutique, which sell the devices in its Austin stores, and the retail distributor Adam & Eve, sued in Austin federal court in 2004 over the constitutionality of the law. They appealed after a federal judge dismissed the suit and said the constitution did not protect their right to publicly promote such devices.

In its decision Tuesday, the appeals court cited Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 opinion that struck down bans on consensual sex between gay couples.

“Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct,” the appeals judges wrote. “The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification after Lawrence.”

The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which represented the Travis County district attorney in the case, has not decided whether to appeal, said agency spokesman Tom Kelley.

Phil Harvey, president of Adam & Eve Inc., said the 5th Circuit Court’s decision was a big step forward. He said his business plans to expand to sell in stores and at home parties, something company consultants had been fearful to do because of the Texas law.

“I think it’s wonderful, but it does seem to me that since Texas was one of three states in the country — along with Mississippi and Alabama — that continued to outlaw the sale of sex toys and vibrators, that it was probably past time,” Harvey said Wednesday.

Alabama is in the 11th Circuit. But Mississippi, which also is in the 5th Circuit, essentially will have its ban overturned as well, some legal experts said.

Virginia’s law barring obscene items is different from other state laws and does not seem to apply to sex toy sales, said Harvey, whose company distributes nationwide. Louisiana, Kansas, Colorado and Georgia had laws barring obscene devices, but courts have since struck them down.

The 5th Circuit Court’s decision is encouraging for Sherri Williams, who has been fighting the issue in Alabama for a decade. Williams, who owns Pleasures stores in Alabama, sued in 1998 after state lawmakers banned the sale of sex toys there. A year ago, she lost her fight again when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider a lower court decision upholding the Alabama law as constitutional.

Williams hopes that lawmakers will take notice of the recent Texas case and support a newly filed bill in the Alabama Legislature to overturn the ban on adult toy sales.

“I think the courts are finally listening to the people,” Williams said Wednesday. “You have ‘Sex and the City,’ ‘Desperate Housewives’ and other shows promoting what society is doing. I think the courts have finally opened their eyes and looked around, which is a miracle in the South.”

In the goofiest waste of law enforcement time we’ve seen in weeks, an on-campus police officer for a Florida middle school is facing a criminal investigation over his MySpace account. Why? It turns out one of the people on his friends list had a link on his or her profile to an internet porn site.

Or, as the St. Peterburg Times puts it, “kids could navigate from Officer John’s page on the social networking site to ‘Amateur Match Free Sex’ in just three clicks.”

You’re reading correctly. Gulf Middle School resource officer John Nohejl didn’t have porn on his MySpace profile, and he didn’t link to porn. But one of the 170-odd people on his friends list, which seems mostly populated by students at his school, had a link to a legal adult site. Now the New Port Richey Police Department and the Florida attorney general’s elite cyber crimes unit are investigating him for making adult content available to underage children.

Nohejl set up his MySpace account late last year with the school’s and the police department’s support, in a laudable bid to communicate with students where they live.

Presumably, he was expected to check all of his friends’ profiles every day for inappropriate links — because a school cop has nothing better to do.

Lauren Weinstein of People for Internet Responsibility correctly calls the investigation a “witch hunt,” and points out that the school itself can be accused of the same crime, if we’re now holding people responsible for content three clicks away.

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Several gay adult Web sites have posted photographs of teenage water polo players from several high schools in Southern California, a newspaper reported.

Some of the pictures, of boys as young as 14, were displayed next to photos of nude young men and graphic sexual content, an Orange County Register investigation found.

Parents, coaches and school officials were alarmed, and parents said some of the boys were traumatized and sought counseling.

“These kids don’t look at what they do as shameful,” said Joan Gould, an international water polo official and a spokeswoman for a group of Orange County water polo parents. “For someone to come in and take what these kids are doing and take it out of context and exploit these images, these kids and their schools, because you can see the school name on the caps, is just horrible.”

Police at the University of California, Irvine, confirmed they are investigating whether a campus police dispatcher had photographed the high school athletes for gay-oriented sites. The man had not been charged, and police Chief Paul Henisey said he remained on duty.

“We’re looking into the matter,” Henisey said. “We’re not exactly sure about what we have or what kinds of issues there are.”

It was not clear if posting the pictures constituted an offense.

“With free speech and photography, there’s a gray cloud in terms of what is legal, constitutional,” said state Assemblyman Jose Solorio, chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

Solorio said he would have the committee investigate the matter.

The Register said it found photos of players from 11 Orange County high schools plus schools in Los Angeles and San Diego counties on several pages of one gay porn site registered to a London address. Photos were also posted on other sites, the paper reported.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

Craig, of Idaho, is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport.

The ACLU filed a brief Tuesday supporting Craig. It cited a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago that found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms “have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

That means the state cannot prove Craig was inviting an undercover officer to have sex in public, the ACLU wrote.

The Republican senator was arrested June 11 by an undercover officer who said Craig tapped his feet and swiped his hand under a stall divider in a way that signaled he wanted sex. Craig has denied that, saying his actions were misconstrued.

The ACLU argued that even if Craig was inviting the officer to have sex, his actions wouldn’t be illegal.

“The government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Senator Craig was inviting the undercover officer to engage in anything other than sexual intimacy that would not have called attention to itself in a closed stall in the public restroom,” the ACLU wrote in its brief.

The ACLU also noted that Craig was originally charged with interference with privacy, which it said was an admission by the state that people in the bathroom stall expect privacy.

Craig at one point said he would resign but now says he will finish his term, which ends in January 2009.

Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.

Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry’s lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

“I couldn’t believe it when I read that,” says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. “The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”

RIAA’s hard-line position seems clear. Its Web site says: “If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you’re stealing. You’re breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages.”

They’re not kidding. In October, after a trial in Minnesota — the first time the industry has made its case before a federal jury — Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $220,000 to the big record companies. That’s $9,250 for each of 24 songs she was accused of sharing online.

Whether customers may copy their CDs onto their computers — an act at the very heart of the digital revolution — has a murky legal foundation, the RIAA argues. The industry’s own Web site says that making a personal copy of a CD that you bought legitimately may not be a legal right, but it “won’t usually raise concerns,” as long as you don’t give away the music or lend it to anyone.

Of course, that’s exactly what millions of people do every day. In a Los Angeles Times poll, 69 percent of teenagers surveyed said they thought it was legal to copy a CD they own and give it to a friend. The RIAA cites a study that found that more than half of current college students download music and movies illegally.

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG’s chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Copying a song you bought is “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy,’ ” she said.

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don’t usually kill off old media: That’s the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.

The RIAA’s legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only “created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies,” Beckerman says. “Every problem they’re trying to solve is worse now than when they started.”

The industry “will continue to bring lawsuits” against those who “ignore years of warnings,” RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said in a statement. “It’s not our first choice, but it’s a necessary part of the equation. There are consequences for breaking the law.” And, perhaps, for firing up your computer.

(Ed note: Obviously this is just further showing the sheer desperation of the recording industry as they continue to cling to a dying dinosaur of a buisness model.)

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The 19-year-old woman — whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms — was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for “being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape,” the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.”

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine known as Wahhabism and forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and forces them to cover head-to-toe in public.

Last year, the court sentenced six Saudi men to between one and five years in jail for the rape as well as ordering lashes for the victim, a member of the minority Shiite community.

But the woman’s lawyer Abdul Rahman al-Lahem appealed, arguing that the punishments were too lenient in a country where the offence can carry the death penalty.

In the new verdict issued on Wednesday, the Al-Qatif court also toughened the sentences against the six men to between two and nine years in prison.

The case has angered members of Saudi Arabia’s Shiite community. The convicted men are Sunni Muslims, the dominant community in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Lahem, also a human rights activist, told AFP on Wednesday that the court had banned him from handling the rape case and withdrew his licence to practise law because he challenged the verdict.

He said he has also been summoned by the ministry of justice to appear before a disciplinary committee in December.

Lahem said the move might be due to his criticism of some judicial institutions, and “contradicts King Abdullah’s quest to introduce reform, especially in the justice system.”

King Abdullah last month approved a new body of laws regulating the judicial system in Saudi Arabia, which rules on the basis of sharia, or Islamic law.

ATLANTA (AP) – Georgia’s Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a young man who has been imprisoned for more than two years for having consensual oral sex with another teenager.

The court ruled 4-3 that Genarlow Wilson’s 10-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.

Wilson, 21, was convicted of aggravated child molestation following a 2003 New Year’s Eve party at a Douglas County hotel room where he was videotaped having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was 17 at the time.

Wilson was acquitted of raping another 17-year-old girl at the party.

The 1995 law Wilson violated was changed in 2006 to make oral sex between teens close in age a misdemeanor, similar to the law regarding teen sexual intercourse. But the state Supreme Court later upheld a lower court’s ruling which said that the 2006 law could not be applied retroactively.

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion that the changes in the law “represent a seismic shift in the legislature’s view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants.”

Sears wrote that the severe punishment makes “no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment” and that Wilson’s crime did not rise to the “level of adults who prey on children.”

State Attorney General Thurbert Baker said he accepts Friday’s ruling.

Baker said he hopes the ruling will “put an end to this issue as a matter of contention in the hearts and minds of concerned Georgians and others across the country who have taken such a strong interest in this case.”

The state Supreme Court had turned down Wilson’s appeal of his conviction and sentence, but the justices agreed to hear the state’s appeal of a Monroe County judge’s decision to reduce Wilson’s sentence to 12 months and free him. That judge had called the 10-year sentence a “grave miscarriage of justice.”

Dissenting justices wrote that the state Legislature expressly stated that the 2006 change in the law was not intended to affect any crime prior to that date.

They said Wilson’s sentence could not be cruel and unusual because the state Legislature decided that Wilson could not benefit from subsequent laws reducing the severity of the crime from a felony to a misdemeanor.

They called the decision an “unprecedented disregard for the General Assembly’s constitutional authority.”

A spokeswoman for Wilson’s lawyer said his legal team received no advance notice of the decision.