I Do Not Know How to Respond to This

Two female Bul­gar­i­an stu­dents vis­it­ing the Unit­ed States for the sum­mer found hid­den cam­eras hid­den in their Flori­da apart­ment this week and fear they may have been video­taped through­out their three-month stay.

If true, this is a seri­ous vio­la­tion of the pri­va­cy of the vic­tims. I do not doubt for a minute that there are peo­ple out there who would com­mit such a vio­la­tion. I hope the crooks are caught and prop­er­ly pun­ished. I espe­cial­ly hope that what­ev­er pic­tures and/​or video that exist of the vic­tims (naked or clothed) nev­er make it on to the inter­net. Real­ly, the whole thing is disgusting.

OR

As I read the arti­cle, I can not help but feel a bit of cyn­i­cism. Was some­one spy­ing on these girls, or were they spy­ing on them­selves? Is the whole thing a set up to pro­mote their soon to be unveiled web site? If this is the case, then they are going to be in trou­ble (right­ly so) for false report­ing of a crime.

OR

The cam­era and equip­ment were left over from some pre­vi­ous use (which may or may not have been crim­i­nal) and were nev­er acti­vat­ed since the two girls moved in.

I find all three sce­nar­ios equal­ly plau­si­ble and I do not want to jump to con­clu­sions. I won­der if we will ever know.

Jumping to Conclusions

It is too bad that jump­ing to con­clu­sions is not a form of phys­i­cal exer­cise. If it were, Amer­i­cans would not be near­ly as out of shape as we are.

A gun­man in Nor­way? Clear­ly he must be an Al Qae­da ter­ror­ist. The after­noon of the attacks, The Week­ly Stan­dard had a post up based entire­ly on the assump­tion that Al Qae­da was behind the attacks. In the Stan­dard­’s defense, the arti­cle does main­tain the “if” stance.

Less than two hours lat­er, Jen­nifer Rubin at The Wash­ing­ton Post, fol­low­ing up on the Stan­dard­’s post, explains the pol­i­cy impli­ca­tions of Al Qaeda’s con­tin­ued existence.

Now we “know” that Al Qae­da had noth­ing to do with what hap­pened in Norway.

When Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of rape, every­one assumed he was guilty and the maid was a poor vic­tim of a man of wealth and power.

Then it leaks out that the maid had trou­ble keep­ing her “sto­ry” straight and has been/​is a pros­ti­tute and we all assume that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the vic­tim of a schem­ing woman out for a chunk of his change.

If it turns out she is not a pros­ti­tute, is Dominique Strauss-Kahn now guilty all over again?

Be sure to rush to judge­ment when the next detail emerges!

When it first came out that Jus­tice David Pross­er choked Jus­tice Ann Walsh Bradley at the Wis­con­sin Supreme Court (with the added detail that he had recent­ly called Chief Jus­tice Shirley Abra­ham­son a “total bitch”) we all assumed that Pross­er was guilty.

Then it turned out that Bradley had angri­ly approached Pross­er with her fists in the air.

I have no idea what I know about that inci­dent at this point.

Final­ly, here is a sto­ry of a woman who spent sev­en months in jail hav­ing done noth­ing wrong. An ex set her up and the police assumed guilt.