A Tennessee man is facing charges of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor for what authorities say are three pictures — none of them featuring an actual child's body.

Instead, according to testimony presented at Michael Wayne Campbell's preliminary hearing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Wednesday, the photos feature the faces of three young girls placed on the nude bodies of adult females, CNN affiliate WDEF reported.

The supreme court has already ruled that when no child is actually harmed, it's not a crime and I agree with that ruling. As distasteful as I may think it is, what someone does in their own home that harms absolutely no one and has no potential for harming anyone isn't really any of my business.

If this kind of thing continues should we start prosecuting people who look at other types of extreme porn even if there's no victim? Should anyone looking at porn who's married be prosecuted for adultery? There is an argument that sometimes it's hard to tell the age of the participants and in extreme porn whether or not someone is actually getting hurt (ala the film 8mm), but there have even been cases of people getting in trouble for cartoon and computer generated porn where there's no possibility of a live person being hurt. I won't say that I'm completely decided on this issue, but right now I think that this trend is going just a little too far into the "thought police" arena.

That leaves school administrators with the choice of embarrassing a child through a search or possibly having other children die while in their care, Justice David Souter said. "With those stakes in mind, why isn't that reasonable?" Souter said.

But there are several problems with this argument. First, the "reasonableness" depends entirely upon two conditions, that she possessed drugs and that those drugs would have caused harm to another student, both of which were not met.

The event in question is now about 3 years old, but the rulings and hearings are just getting started.

(H/T to Privacy.org for the link)

Either way, Myspace is clearly still a fertile ground for sex offenders looking to make connections.

As always, be aware of what your kids are doing online and know who their friends are. Make sure they know what to do when threatened by someone online.

Anyway, if you or someone you know is looking for textbooks, perhaps you should give it a try.

Companies that use scare tactics, especially when inflaming peoples fears of extreme and rare issues, are complete and utter scum.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

Whee.

Instead, do something useful and take advantage of Maryland's Credit Freeze law to actually protect yourself rather than get ripped off by credit monitoring

I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like ****ing strawberries