Well recreational outrage is just so much boring noise; there’s nothing to discuss, it’s purely masturbatory sensationalism.
I agree that there is no reason to believe this incident has any purpose beyond hurting, terrorizing, and possibly destryong the sanity of the one girl involved.
However, I don’t think that there are nice, simple legal terms for that other than ‘terroristic behavior.’ It works for hate crime riders (AIUI) when talking about how vandalism becomes more serious when a swastika is included with the other spraypainting. I do think that it’s reasonable, at this point, to assume that whomever did this seems to have chosen the girl as a very specific victim, whom he wanted to hurt as much as possible. With some pretty dreadful connotations for what he might do in the future.
I see your point about the Aqua Teen thing in Boston, but I don’t think it’s a valid comparison: In Boston it was a completely benign statement that was treated as a terrorist threat, simply because of paranoia on the part of people who had to make the judgement. I can imagine all sorts of innocent motives behind the placement of the Aqua Teen displays. I can’t imagine any motive but the most vile sadism behind what was done here. It seems calculated, to my mind, first to remove one of the girl’s supports for her sanity - the dog was described in the article as a service animal, after all; second to ambush her with horror after building up anticipation of a good thing; third to leave her paranoid. It’s not international terrorism, nor does it seem to be in pursuit of any larger issue, but it sure seems like a desire to terrorize.
Sorry about this, but five minutes isn’t long enough to get a good post script in.
My understanding is that by using the term ‘terroristic threat’ it does simplify getting past certain legal hurdles - the level of proof required for warrants is not as high as it would be otherwise, in part, because there is the potential for timely action to prevent further crimes. In this case, given the potential for escalation implicit in this incident (I don’t believe I’m the only one here who’s wondering if the sick fuck behind this isn’t nerving himself up for murder.) I’m not convinced that this simplification is necessarily a bad thing. I will agree it could be a terrible thing, if the first suspect the authorities focus on is the wrong one, as has happened before.
Until the Patriot Acts get repealled (May it happen soon.) it remains a very wide-ranging and powerful tool for law-enforcement. Whatever I may think of the wisdom of the Patriot Acts in general, they’re still on the books. This is a case that I’d be upset if the authorities weren’t trying to use all the tools they had available to them to stop the sick fuck, ASAP.
My RO for the day, buttonjockey308 doesn’t know how to dig a proper grave,
Dude, that’s like 8 tons of dirt!
There are much better solutions.
"You’re always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together. And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it’s no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it?
Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies’ digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don’t want to go sievin’ through pig shit, now do you? They will go through bone like butter.
You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute.
Hence the expression, “as greedy as a pig”."
CMC fnord!
I’m sorry–the Pit is for recreational outrage. Gratuitous *Godfather * references go in Cafe Society, down the hall.
I saw this story at work–I really need to stop pulling up cnn.com when I’m on hold on the phone.
Sorry, but I can completely relate to the need to rant about it. I don’t have children, but I do have a dog, and imagining the kind of ‘person’ that would do this to an animal, and then to the dog’s owner…
I also feel the same kind of horror for humanity when I read about cruelty to children. I think it’s the humaneness in us that has to react to inhumane acts, even if it’s just by writing about it here.
Actually, the idiot who did this has significantly increased the likelihood that he will be caught.
Compared to if he’d just tossed the dead dog’s body onto the lawn.
Now the police have gift wrapping, a box, batteries & valentine candy they can try to trace to a purchase. There’s the possibility of fingerprints on them. There’s the possibility of identifying the handwriting on the note that was left. Someone may remember seeing a person leaving the gift-wrapped package on her porch.
Also, the fact that it was addressed to her by name, and left at the location listed on the poster she put up, makes it likely that the creep who did it is someone in that neighborhood – that really reduces the range of possible suspects to be checked out.
Plus the cruelty of this, and the publicity it caused, will ensure that the police spend more effort on this crime than usual.
I certainly hope so.
And I hope that poor kid gets tons of gifts and support so she’ll know there are good people out there who care about her. From what little I’ve read, she seems to have a difficult life (lives with her grandmother, felt like her dog was her only friend, etc.) and I hope the ultimate result of this episode will prove to be a positive turning point in her life.
[not trying to piss people off, but couldn’t help making this observation while reading the article]
This girl sounds like a real loser.
[/nttppobchmtowrta]
She’s a lonely 17-year-old girl who lives with her grandmother, for cryin’ out loud! To me, the grandmother fact alone bespeaks either that she has loser parents–neither one of whom could/would care for her properly–or that perhaps she’s an orphan…and the fact that grandmother appears to be single bespeaks some sort of difficulty there–i.e., divorce or widowhood. Either way, there seems to have been plenty of sadness to go around in that family. And who knows, she may not have been living with her grandmother for very long and is lonely because she feels out of place in her new school and alienated because of her and/or her family’s history. Lots of things can happen to perfectly good people through no fault of their own that can have tremendously adverse effects upon them and which can make them profoundly unhappy and withdrawn…and it certainly doesn’t make them ‘losers’.
I don’t know what kind of ‘philosophy’ you’re supposed to be a professor of, but you seem to be amazingly lacking a philosophical bent of any kind in your post above.
Schmuck.
Here, here 's some more opportunity for selfrighteous voyeurism.
That’s for squares…
(or cubes, maybe) I hope I don’t need a grave that size.
Where? Where? Oh, man…don’t tease me like that! 
(The link’s busted, you dipstick.)
Hmmmmm . . . is it a metajoke? Or a fuggup ? (So much for my sense of timing . . . )
Okay…got it. Now I only have to wait for some asshole to come along and posit that the kid was a dumbass or something, then I’m off to the races…self-righteously speaking, that is.
Of course it’s a sad story, and it’s probably not her fault that she turned out the way she did, but anyone whose best friend and confidant is a dog is not a winner. Harsh fact of life.
Ooh, the burn.
Well, perhaps the confusion comes from the fact that I tend not to separate everyone into winner/loser groups. (How’s that for self-righteousness, there, lissener, old bean?) I believe most of us fall somewhere in between. I also doubt that she’s through developing yet, so who knows what kind of person she’ll eventually become?
Indeed! 
I’ll have you know that at age 17 I was completely a winner, and never did or said anything I would subsequently be ashamed of! And furthermore, I expect everyone else to live up to the same standard. And if they don’t, I am (recreationally) outraged!
Yeah, me, too…or so I thought!
Uh…not me, too.
Keep this up and I’m gonna have to revise my opinion of you, you…you…loser, you!
Well, if you get stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife and tossed out a car window, *surely *these kinds of things don’t just happen out of the blue? I mean, surely there was some snotnosedness, or some pantscrappedness, or something? I mean, do the words “smoke” or “fire” mean *anything *to you?
Won’t someone please think of the children’s victims?!?!?