40 Years for Porn? More WTF

Jesus, what the fuck is it with Connecticut? As if re-electing Joementum Lieberman wasn't embarrassing enough, now there's the Norwich teacher porn case that reeks -- stinks to high heaven -- of an egregiously outrageous miscarriage of justice.

You can read the whole story and its followup article, but briefly Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in a middle school (it wasn't even a fucking grade school), was the victim of a porn cascade.

A porn cascade, for those not in the know, used to occur with alarming regularity in the days before popup blockers, firewalls, virus shields and the like. Without you knowing really what had triggered it, suddenly your computer would be taken over by porno zombies and start popping up screen after screen after screen of pornography. Every time you shut one down, two more would pop up.

So our poor sub was victimized by this. And not only victimized by this, but subsequently by the school board and the county prosecutor, along with a jury whose members were apparently so fucking stupid that they believed the prosecutor's lies about computers.

Without going into a long diatribe about it, I've worked with computers for the last 25+ years and I can tell from the prosecutor's arguments that either he's never seen one before, or he has a hidden agenda to run for statewide office on a get-tough-on-crime-and-let's-start-with-pornography ticket.

One of the prosecutor's arguments that apparently held sway with the jurors: You have to click on the links to get the pages.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit. I'm actually surprised that anyone would really believe that. But, on the other hand, maybe these people have never actually seen or heard of a porn cascade. After all, with modern equipment and software, they don't happen very much any more.

Modern equipment, modern software.

But do I really need to point out the fact that the computer in question was running a system so old as to be an antique: Windows 98 with Internet Explorer 5, no popup blockers, no virus protection, no spamblockers and no firewall?

And that's the fault of the school district, not this poor sub who tried to prevent the students from seeing the screen while she panicked out and tried to make it stop. The prosecutor's argument? She could have just unplugged it. So that's the bottom line? She's facing 40 years in the graybar hotel with a cellmate named Butch for not unplugging it????

The friends and family of teacher Julie Amero have set up a website at http://julieamer.blogspot.com for contributions to her legal defense fund. Please drop by and give a few bucks for a worthy cause.

Let's all stand up for what is right and help overturn this outrageous injustice.