"We have a machine with a robot fist that will be programmed to deliver a punch in the chest that inflicts exactly that amount of pain."

A hypo for the clueless.

New York's "rape is rape" bill.

The New York penal code only uses the word "rape" for forced vaginal penetration. Crimes involving anal and oral penetration are punished just as severely, but the statutory name for the crime is "sexual assault."  There's a current effort in the NY legislature to extend the term "rape" to all 3 forms of forced penetration. This effort arose out of a case involving a victim named Lydia Cuomo (who is not related to the NY governor, Andrew Cuomo).

Lydia Cuomo... said the difference in terminology can lead to a rape victim’s attacker being convicted of a crime other than rape — as happened in her case last year. She said such an outcome makes it harder for the victim to heal.

The word "rape" conveys more emotional meaning than "sexual assault," which is the supposedly modern terminology found in the Model Penal Code. It's like changing from "murder" to "homicide." But whether you prefer the old words that convey our culture's deep moral condemnation or the new bureaucratic style that organizes everything into a big catalog, pick one approach and stick to it. It's terrible to say to a woman who was raped 3 ways — as Cuomo was — that only the vaginal penetration is — for official purposes — called "rape." In Cuomo's case, the jury failed to convict on the rape charge but convicted on the sexual assault charges, conveyed the unintended but outrageous message that she was not raped.

Now that the problem is plainly exposed, you'd think the fix is simple:

Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D-Queens) submitted the “rape is rape” bill...

Hours after Lydia Cuomo and Simotas held a press conference last week, a co-sponsor of the bill, state Sen. Catharine Young (R-Cattaraugus County), withdrew her support and filed an alternative measure. Young’s bill is backed by prosecutors across the state, who fear the change Lydia Cuomo is seeking could make it both harder to convict rapists and more difficult for judges to apply sentences consecutively, thereby maximizing prison time.

Young’s alternative would no longer require that penetration of any sort be proven for a rape conviction. Prosecutors instead would have to meet a less onerous standard of vaginal contact, which is the same threshold used for criminal sexual act.

The suddenly obvious need for one thing creates the momentum to try to get other things. The will to legislate is unleashed and the prosecutor's wish list pops out.

Anti-rape suggestions: public execution of convicted rapists and a ban extra-marital sex and an end to co-education.

"Co-education should be abolished and proper education facilities meant exclusively for women should be made available at all level of education."

The Indian government requested proposals, and those ideas come from Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, a Muslim group.

But many Muslim educators, female students, and working women across the country have opposed [the single-sex education] suggestion, charging that it would be detrimental to the development of the Muslim community in India. The public resistance highlights the growing appetite among Muslim parents to improve their minority community's trailing status through education, including that of girls.

"We regret very much that the impression has been given to the public that rape victims are no longer able to be treated in Catholic hospitals."

"That is false."

"I need over 7 rounds (rapists are harder to kill than deer)."

Sign at a "Guns Across America" rally.

"I couldn't take it anymore: 'Your father! Great! Genius! I always liked him!'"

"The idolization has got worse and worse since he died."

"A culture in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage is a rape culture."

Asserts E.J. Graff in The American Prospect.

In that vision, women’s bodies are for use primarily for procreation or male pleasure. They must be kept pure. While cultural conservatives would disagree, this attitude gives men license to patrol — in some cases with violence — women's hopes for controlling their lives and bodies.

Fighting ideology with ideology.

"'It’s wrong to stop girls from going out' of the house... but there’s little choice because the city is so unsafe for women."

"Revulsion and anger over the rape have galvanized India, where women regularly face sexual harassment and assault, and where neither the police nor the judicial system is seen as adequately protecting them."

Tracking down Tawana Brawley in pursuit of a $429,000 in damages (and interest) for defamation that occurred in 1987.

"In all these years, she’s never told the truth about this hoax or paid me a cent," said Steven Pagones, the former Dutchess County prosecutor who was called a "gang-raping, kidnapping racist."

The case was catapulted onto the national stage by attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, and the then-little-known Rev. Al Sharpton, who claimed she was raped 33 times.

Celebrities weighed in, with Bill Cosby posting a $25,000 reward for information on the case, Don King promised $100,000 for Brawley’s education and boxer Mike Tyson gave her a $30,000 watch to ease her pain.

Brawley has just been located, working as a nurse, under an alias, in Virginia.

"Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City."

Steubenville, Ohio.

Haley Barbour wants to give the GOP "a very serious proctology exam."

"We need to look everywhere.... We have to look at everything in depth.... and be brutally honest."

That's perilously close to the rape theme that got the GOP into so much trouble this year.

Meanwhile, the Governor of Wisconsin — the illustrious Scott Walker — said the GOP needs a new "tone."

Yes. Back away from the nether orifices.

"In numerous phone interviews beginning in April, Thomas initially told The Post, in hushed tones, that Erwin was responsible for the crimes."

"He said that 'Erwin would show up' and things would happen in the middle of the night, and that 'he only comes around when I’m lonely.'"

Isn't it interesting that The Washington Post drops its long, sympathetic article about a rapist after the election is over? Rape (strangely) became a huge issue in the past campaign season, and it dramatically hurt the Republican Party to have 2 senatorial candidates that said something stupid related to rape (both inept efforts at pro-life sentiment).

And now here's this big WaPo article about a man who committed many rapes — "more than a dozen rapes by his count, although police think there were probably many more."

The man was arrested in March 2011, so it's not as if this is late-breaking material. This is an elaborately worked-out invitation into the mind of the rapist that expects us to care about his struggle to understand himself. "It’s awful. It’s scary. . . . I don’t know why I couldn’t just stop." And: "I understand I need to be punished... Now tell me what the hell is wrong with me."

ADDED: Robert Stacy McCain takes a different perspective on the article:

To me, it relates to the “broken windows” theory of crime prevention: The petty criminal — the burglar, the thief, the minor dope dealer — is potentially capable of serious crime. The defiant anti-social personality who finds himself able to get away with petty crime will tend to develop an arrogant contempt for the law, which leads to the pattern of escalating [recidivism]. Thus, more stringent enforcement of laws against relatively minor offenses will ultimately tend to reduce the number of serious offenses.

"We need a third party to save this country. Not Ron Paul and the Ron Paulites. No."

"We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have, because I don’t believe that the Republican Party... has the ability to rebrand itself."

Said Herman Cain, who would like the GOP to rebrand itself in the opposite way from what I'd like.

I voted for Romney even though I reject the package of issues that comes marked with the label "social conservative," Cain's favorite material. One reason I felt calm and distanced from the results of the election in less than 24 hours is that I only wanted about half of what Mitt Romney was offering, and I agree with Obama on the other half. Making the best of what happened is, for me, automatic. I support gay rights and abortion rights, to name the 2 most prominent social issues in this year's elections.

The linked article — at Salon — is a bit confusing, especially the last paragraph:

After the GOP’s crushing 2008 loss, there was lots of talk about a new third party. When the Tea Party emerged, this talk almost became a reality. Instead, the conservative activists opted for a hostile takeover of the GOP. It’s still very unlikely that Cain or anyone else could start a viable third party, but his comments underscore the cleavage within the conservative movement in the wake of the defeat last night.

I thought the Tea Party was about the economic issues — taxing and spending. Do the social issues belong in the Tea Party? Well, apparently they've seeped in. Were Todd "legitimate rape" Akin and Richard "something God intended" Mourdock Tea Party? I didn't buy the "War on Women" demagoguery, but those guys made the GOP look really awful — at least old-fashioned and dumb if not deeply sexist or scarily religionist.

Can we get a GOP with sound economics and a commitment to individual liberty?

The age-old problem of theodicy is injected into the American political discourse in a way that God is allowing to happen for reasons unknown.

"A theodicy... is an attempt to resolve the evidential problem of evil by reconciling the traditional divine characteristics of omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience with the occurrence of evil or suffering in the world."

This is perhaps the most profound question in the history of religion and philosophy... so that makes it prime material for late-season political demagoguery.

Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock struggled or purported to struggle with his anti-abortion principles and the problem of rape. Should there be a rape exception?

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen." 

And apparently, also, God intended — by Mourdock's lights — that Mourdock be kicked around for professing that everything that happens is something that God intended. God works in mysterious ways, or — as non-God-invoking folks say — everything happens for a reason.

Mourdock is up for election, and he's a Republican — so is Romney (have you heard?) — so this is excellent material for stirring up war-on-women emotionalism once again — all under the presumably watchful eye of God. What's HIS plan? Whatever His plan is — when is He mailing out His brochure, eh? — He's got a plan, and it's included rape and unwanted pregnancy since time immemorial. It might not be smart to come out and say that in the final throes of the campaign season. Silence was an option. So if you don't like what Mourdock said — as opposed to the fact that he said it — your alternatives can be selected from the philosophers' array of options: God is not omnipotent, God is not benevolent, or God does not exist.

Come on, everybody weigh in. It will be really helpful in deciding how to vote.

"Sexual violence is a way of denying women journalists access to the story in Egypt... It’s not accidental. It’s by design."

Says Lara Logan — who was attacked, sexually, by an Egyptian mob last year — about a very similar attack this past weekend on French journalist Sonia Dridi.

67% said Romney won the debate.

And "No presidential candidate has topped 60% in that question since it was first asked in 1984," according to CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

That is, it was by far the most decisive win they'd ever measured. And they measured that time Dukakis didn't seem to mind if his wife was raped and that time Reagan said "There you go again."

"We certainly haven’t forgotten about Mr. Sandusky’s victims."

Of course, you haven't. Whether you care or not — and past behavior suggests you do not — they all represent lawsuits.

"We want to make sure that we do the right thing in terms of providing a just outcome for them." Aren't you wonderful?! I'm assuming "just" is code for not ruinously destructive to the ongoing enterprise that is Penn State.

"American RW conspiracists and pro-Romney hate sites are all ablaze with the 'news' that Ambassador Stevens was repeatedly raped..."

"... by his assailants before they killed him. This is obviously false since his assailants did not kill him face-to-face. He was murdered, of course, but he died from asphyxiation by smoke inhalation in a burning building."

Discussion at Democratic Underground.

A Madison modus operandi.

I hesitate to reveal an approach to victimizing women in Madison....

A Saudi Arabian man who police say has returned to his country was charged with attempted sexual assault Tuesday after he allegedly talked his way in to a neighbor's apartment in Madison last month.

The July 4 incident was one of three within five days in July in which Riyad M. Alsulaiman, 24, allegedly approached women who had cats and asked to pet them in order to get into their apartments, all in the 1600 block of Fordem Avenue.

Let's retune those stranger-danger sensors. Elsewhere in the annals of getting creeped out in Madison, we've got our legislator, Brett Hulsey subjected to a disorderly conduct charge, because his horseplay with and photography of some kids at the beach creeped out the adults who were watching from a distance.

"That is the head of one who toyed with my honour."

Said the rape victim, arrested near the head she severed from her attacker.