Reason #75308 why you should vote in local elections.

I don’t know how I missed this last week. I was just innocently checking out Bust.com and saw the post Just Yelling Fire, Guys.

In Kansas City (and elsewhere as well), a judge has prohibited the words “r*pe” and other synonymous terms like “s*xual assault” to be used in a trial about that! (Fyi, we can’t use the word here since we sell porn, and that kind is illegal, and we don’t want people to find us thinking we have it.) The judge says that he doesn’t want to create “an unfair environment,” and that “the defendant’s presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial trumps… right of free speech.”

Um, wow. I’m feeling very inarticulate now as the only words running through my head are “what the fuck!” over and over. I can think of many other criminal trial types that use the “alleged” crime words in them, so I’m not sure why this one is different? Or sadly yes, I can think of some really fucking stupid yet surprisingly unfortunate reasons why this sort of crime is different. Jesus, it’s 2008!

Read the full story here: Judge Bans the R word at Trial.