Senator Dad to the Rescue

This is pretty disturbing. I don't know what's worse, the fact that the kid did this, or that his famous father is trying to get him out of serving jail time:

The son of state Senate President Ken Bennett admitted in court Monday to assaulting middle school boys with a broomstick in their rectal areas, but a judge allowed charges against him to be reduced from 18 to one, and he may avoid jail.

Three of the 18 victims, all boys between the ages of 11 and 15, are from Tucson, and the families are angry that 18-year-old Clifton Bennett and co-defendant Kyle Wheeler, 19, were not charged with sexual assault.

Also, the families said Bennett is being treated favorably by the court system because of his father's position in the Legislature. Bennett's plea would allow the court to classify the aggravated-assault conviction as a misdemeanor, which means he could go on to become a teacher or counselor and would never have to disclose the so-called "brooming" incident.

"I think he got a sweetheart deal," said the father of one of the three Tucson victims, a 12-year-old boy who attends a local Catholic school. "I'd like him to get a year in prison. The victims should have been heard from before the plea was agreed to. If this was 18 girls who were victims, it would have been sexual assault."

So an 18 year-old kid makes a terrible mistake, sodomizing his camp charges with broomsticks for fun (hey, I guess he learned about such hijinks from those Abu Ghraib reports). It's a mistake which at the least should require some jail time. And his dad gets the charges reduced. By the way, State Senator Bennett is a Republican. This is from the people who brought you "the era of personal responsibility."

Incidentally, this is the kind of story on which cable news crusades are made. Let's see if Nancy Grace or Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity touches this one.