Before she landed at Go Daddy, the company that made her famous, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Christine Jones co-wrote an important article on necrophilia law.
The candidate who made headlines last week after the media discovered her 2004 DUI also publishes a lot, we found, on a blog she keeps called "The Rudy Syndrome." There, you'll find interesting entries, like her annual predictions for the years 2009-2013 and a pro-SOPA essay that drew the anger of many Go Daddy customers.
See also: - Christine Jones Gave Cop "One Drink" Story in '04 DUI; Blew .102 About Five Hours Later
Jones' interest in necrophilia law came while she was a student at California's Whittier Law College in 1997. With assistant professor Tyler Ochoa, Jones wrote "Defiling the Dead: Necrophilia and the Law," which focused on why necrophilia should be a felony.
The paper's a fun read, if you like that sort of thing. It starts off with the tale of a couple of burglars who in 1995 broke into the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, stole some computer chips, and had sexual intercourse with two female corpses. The men were charged only for the theft because California had no law against necrophilia at the time, the article says.
In short, the 41-page paper lobbies for a stronger necrophilia law than one that had been floated in the California Legislature the year before the paper was written.
"Because our society is generally outraged by the notion of sexual contact with dead bodies, the Legislature should take advantage of the opportunity before more individuals engage in the legal defilement of human remains," the paper concludes.
As can be seen online, the current California law adopted the wording suggestion made by Jones and Ochoa to include not just obvious sexual behavior but any "sexual contact" with the dead intended to arouse the perpetrator.
In 2004, then-Governator Schwarzenegger signed the bill that made necrophilia a felony.
"Indeed, the crime raises many questions, according to a widely cited 1997 Whittier Law Review article by Tyler Ochoa and Christine Jones," says a 2006 article about strengthening the '04 law in California's Capitol Weekly news site. "How broadly do you define the 'victim?'"
Necrophilia's a felony in Arizona, we learned from the State Legislature's website. But it appears our law doesn't go as far as Jones would have liked. Perhaps she'll do something about that if elected governor next year.
Speaking of things that might happen, we can't wait to see "The Rudy Syndrome's" predictions for 2014.
"The Rudy Syndrome" is a website and personal blog started by Jones in 2007. She apparently came up with the title and made-up syndrome. To Jones, the syndrome is the condition of failing to utilize your talents. In that sense, then, the blog is actually about avoiding The Rudy Syndrome. Possibly, the blog is a tool for Jones, more than anyone else, so she can repress her inner slacker.
Jones loves to make predictions in "The Rudy Syndrome" and has drawn up a list of them each year since 2009. Here are Jones' predictions for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Jones is not psychic.
"Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will move back to her home state of New Mexico to pursue the continuation of her extremely successful and politically astute career in the public sector, this time seeking national office," she wrote for the 2013 predictions.
Not quite. The former Arizona governor did quit her job this year and move, but not to New Mexico. She's now the president of the University of California.
Jones predicts that more evidence about global warming will come out in 2013, (evidently she's not a climate-change denier), but it didn't take a miracle to guess that one. Jones keeps track of the accuracy of her predictions on the blog site and claims to be doing fairly well, though sometimes it's a judgment call.
We were surprised to find her essay supporting the "Stop Online Piracy Act," or SOPA, still extant on her blog site, like a memento. It begins:
This week, the House of Representatives introduced its long-awaited bill, H.R. 3261 (the Stop Online Piracy Act), aimed at protecting the intellectual property of hard-working Americans, U.S. business and the American public from the harm that necessarily flows from the purchase of counterfeit products.
It's a welcome step in the right direction, and we at GoDaddy.com applaud the leadership in the House Judiciary Committee, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet and the Senate Judiciary Committee, for taking decisive, bicameral and bipartisan action. It's a welcome step in the right direction, and we at GoDaddy.com applaud the leadership in the House Judiciary Committee, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet and the Senate Judiciary Committee, for taking decisive, bicameral and bipartisan action.
The essay was published widely -- and two months later, under crushing criticism and a boycott of its domain-name-selling service, Go Daddy reversed its position on SOPA. In a news release, the company says specifically that it has removed pro-SOPA blog posts by Jones from its site. A few months after that, Jones left Go Daddy -- a move that some say was related to the SOPA controversy.
Jones apparently wants some record of her former stance on the failed bill -- or maybe she just forgot to take this one down.
In any case, The Rudy Syndrome is a good way to learn more about one of Arizona's attention-getting gubernatorial candidates.
