Frank's Musings

18 U.S.C. § 2252A

The U.S. Federal Code includes laws that are intended to reduce, if not eliminate, the sexual exploitation of minor children.  The behavior that is prohibited includes not only production and distribution of computer images that depict such criminal acts; it also penalizes the simple possession of them.  This latter violation is what the defendant, Mr. Hawkins, was convicted of in 2013, the federal district court decision and sentencing for which were determined by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Judge has been under attack by Sens. Hawley, Graham, Cruz and other Republicans for her sentencing of Mr. Hawkins lightly, when she was on that district court.  They wish to implicate her of being typical of the ideological and partisan  opponents they anticipate facing in the elections later this year and in 2024   This is an extreme  distortion of the Constitutional procedure  for confirming a nominee to the Supreme Court.  Moreover, it illustrates the improper attempt to impose social values on the public by Congress when it was controlled by reactionary ideologues.

Some of those ideologues, particularly in the U.S. Senate, now believe they have an opportunity to recapture a majority in the Congress and to preserve a conservative majority on the Supreme Court despite the Democratic control of the White House.  Therefore, they are using the confirmation hearings for Judge Jackson to energize their base of supporters by creating a crusade against child abuse to defend the misuse of federal regulatory power that this feature of the U.S. Code represents.  Indeed although she hasn’t admitted it, Judge Jackson’s sentencing decision in the Hawkins case demonstrates how a judge can attempt to moderate the overzealous pursuit of cultural conformity by a minorit political faction.                          

Fortunately, we have no law that criminalizes the production of a murder mystery.  Only a revision of Section 2252A of the U.S. Code will return this section of our law to its correct function of addressing the commission of crimes that foist child abuse.  Left alone, it puts the U.S, Government in the role of a parent or religious leader instilling our citizens with moral virtues. 

How can a tyrant like Putin continue to govern a large population like the140 million people in his country?   They are accustomed to autocratic rule, under the Czars, the Communist Party, znd the chaos of the Yeltsin years, Now that a former KGB operative  has assumed control for the past 23 years. the population seems wiling to withstand the supposed hardship of Western economic sanctions while acquiescing to his internationally condemned and costly violent pursuit of the restoration of Russia’s empire. 

His service to personal depictions of national grandeur contravenes the values that countries of the West (including Western Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea, for example) have enshrined since the 17^th Century Enlightenment.  Putin has been a notable denier of the universality of those principles.  His ability to carry on in defiance of the subservience of government to the will of the people that Western Civilization advocates either proves his point or evidences the effectiveness of his political  suppression.

Regardless,  a tenet of the West is that a people like Ukraine have the right to govern themselves in conformance with Western values.  (Here is the main  distinction of the Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression with the American Civil War.)   Threfore, a conclusion might be reached that because he has surpassed the boundaries of international conduct, the least risky  solution to the problem of his tyranny is to facilitate his removal from office.  Undercover intervention by assassination would be antithetical to Western values, although not unprecedented.  A traditional method, according io former Russian Foreign Minister Kozyrev, would be financially  to encourage some of his trusted associates to usher him to the grave or to an early retirement.