LMAO: Looking at the body of law

John McCain and Barack Obama are missing some really critical issues. Are they clueless, or is it a bipartisan conspiracy to keep certain issues away from the public debate? One such issue was brought to my attention recently when a judge threw out a rape charge where the victim was a prostitute. According to the judge, the case should have been brought as a theft of service. (I sense you are already starting to grin, but there’s more.)

Seems that the john hired the whore for the usual services – or maybe unusual services, I really don’t know – but regardless, at the end of the performance of service the guy pulled out a gun and demanded that she perform similar services on some of his friends without further compensation. (Where these guys standing around watching?)

Now, I know a lot of feminists have a rather expanded definition of rape (unless committed by liberal Democrat politicians). I have heard, with my own ears, a National Organization of Women activist say that construction workers giving the “wolf whistle” to boob and bum emphasizing women is “tantamount to rape”. Personally, I think her comment is tantamount to man-hating hyperbole.

I am just not politically correct enough to equate the action of our john, as bad as it was, with the guy who drags an innocent co-ed into the bushes and brutally beats and assaults her, or the pervert who lures an 11-year-old into his rusty van to force her to perform oral sex. I sort of like the theft of service angle.

I suppose it is possible to rape a prostitute in the midst of her rendering some service, I’m just not sure how that happens. Let’s say a guy agrees to pay the hooker for the service de jour. She performs, he gets full satisfaction. After the fact, he refuses to pay because he is a jerk. Did he commit rape? Or was it a theft of service? And, can you even steal an illegal service? That is what the judge was grappling with.

Lets look at it another way. Is it possible to grab a prostitute on the street, force her to provide any one of her standard services, and then avoid a rape charge by giving her $100 after the fact?

This also makes me wonder whether a john is obligated to pay if the services were unsatisfactory, or not performed properly. What if, at the climax of the encounter, he did not? When I worked as Sears we had a “satisfaction guaranteed or your money back” policy. Does that apply to the sex trade? I assume you are starting to appreciate the importance of these questions.

Maybe we should ask Eliot Spitzer for his professional opinion on this matter. Not only is the former Governor of New York, and a one-time federal prosecutor, but he was a regular procurer of prostitutes for personal pleasure.

(The way Democrats handle sex scandals, I’m surprised Spitzer was not on Obama’s short list for Vice President. To what am I referring? Think Bill “nothing like a good cigar” Clinton, Ted “the champion of Chappaquiddick” Kennedy, Gerry “thank heaven for little boys” Studds and Barney “pimps on the public payroll” Franks. Despite MAJOR scandals, all these guys continued to receive homage from their Democrat colleagues.)

But, I digress.

So where are McCain and Obama on this issue? I suspect these questions could affect more people than all the house foreclosures and bankruptcies combined. Geez! Sometimes our leaders have no sense of priorities.