Over a third of the states either already require age verification for access to porn sites or are in various stages of passing such legislation. Thus far, one-third of states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia—have enacted legislation to protect children from accessing pornography websites. The state legislatures of Arizona and Alaska are in the process of passing similar legislation, bringing the total of states currently or soon to be requiring age verification for porn sites to 18. Late last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition from a pro-pornography organization to block Texas from enforcing its age verification laws. “This effort to protect children from pornography is laudable and demonstrates the need for federal legislation requiring age verification,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “Such legislation could build momentum for a total prohibition of pornography,” Kilgannon said. “We also need to demand more protective measures from device manufacturers to filter out this content. Parents can always do more, but help from the institutions we build and fund is long overdue.” “Children have a right not to be assaulted by this content,” she said. “That porn producers masquerading as free speech advocates think only the adults performing sex acts need protection is frankly disgusting and depraved.” Dani Pinter, senior legal counsel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, told The Washington Stand: “It is crucial that states are moving in the direction of protecting children from pornography exposure by requiring pornography websites to verify their users are adults. Pornography can be extremely harmful to children, with negative impacts on the brain and relational development.” Pinter continued: Some studies show that pornography exposure is a tool in grooming and those exposed are more vulnerable to assault and predatory acts. Online pornography sites like XVideos, XHamster, Pornhub, and OnlyFans have allowed filmed child sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, and other nonconsensual explicit material on their websites—material that normalizes criminal activity. The largest pornographic website, PornHub, has outright shut down in many states that require age verification. Last year, shortly before Utah’s age verification law went into effect, PornHub’s parent company—then called MindGeek, now called Aylo—blocked access in Utah to PornHub and other pornography websites it owned. PornHub also has shut down in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Now, when internet users visit the site, they are greeted by a message criticizing state laws that bar minors from accessing pornography. PornHub and other pro-pornography organizations have filed multiple lawsuits against age-verification laws, alleging that they infringe upon free speech. Responding to the Supreme Court’s refusal to block the Texas law last month, a spokesperson for the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing pornographers, argued that allowing the Lone Star State’s law to go into effect “remains in direct opposition to decades of Supreme Court precedent. “We will continue to fight for the right to access the internet without intrusive government oversight,” the spokesperson said. Polling from RMG Research found that 83% of registered American voters support a national mandate requiring age verification for access to pornography websites, including 58% who “strongly” support the move. A Common Sense Media survey released last year revealed that a lack of age-verification laws affect and harm minors: 73% of teens ages 13 to 17 said that they had been exposed to internet pornography by 12, mostly by clicking on advertisement links. Additionally, the survey found that 84% of pornographic content consumed by teens depicted violence, choking, bondage and sadism, or rape, and that two-thirds of teens who identify as LGBT reported that they “consumed pornography intentionally.” This led Common Sense Media to conclude: “Pornography may play a larger role in exploration for LGBTQ+ teens than for other teens.” Originally published by The Washington Stand The post More States Require Age Verification for Online Porn Access appeared first on The Daily Signal.

How About Some Gas at Pre-Biden Prices?

A remarkable fossil of a worm has been described, estimated to be around 425 million years old and marking the youngest species of its group to have been classified. The carnivorous burrowing predator was retrieved from Leintwardine in Herefordshire and has been named Radnorscolex latus by scientists at the London Natural History Museum.Radnorscolex is thought to have moved along the seafloor like an accordion, using a set of sharp teeth and hooks on its head to anchor itself as it shuffled along. Its feeding mechanism has been compared to that of Dune’s sandworms, consuming anything unlucky enough to be in its path.“We believe anything that happened to be close by when they shoved their throat outwards into the sediment would have been grabbed,” said lead author Dr Richie Howard, Curator of Fossil Arthropods at the London NHM, in a statement emailed to IFLScience. “They weren’t too dissimilar to the sandworms in Dune in that respect!”“We know this fossil was studied in 1920, but without the advanced technology we have today using state-of-the-art imaging techniques they weren’t able describe them as accurately and precisely as we can now."Image credit: Richie Howard & Luke ParryThe description is new to science, but the fossil has been kicking around for a while – retrieved sometime back in the 1920s from a disused Victorian quarry site in Herefordshire, UK. It was studied at the time of its discovery, but without the advanced technology available in scientists’ arsenal today, the researchers of the time weren’t able to get to the bottom of what they were looking at.With the aid of advanced scanning technology, today’s team of scientists have been able to describe the worm and uncover clues about its position in the ecosystem. Turns out that Radnorscolex was remarkable even in its heyday.“What we’ve found is quite rare in that we may be looking at today’s equivalent of a living fossil, but from the perspective of the Silurian,” explained Howard. “Like how we see coelacanths or horseshoe crabs today, groups which have been around for such a long time they exist as very ancient fossils but also show up as low-diversity groups relatively unchanged millions of years later in the present day.”Closeups reveal the pattern of armor plates on the prehistoric worm Radnorscolex latus.Image credit: Richie Howard & Luke Parry“We know this fossil was studied in 1920, but without the advanced technology we have today using state-of-the-art imaging techniques they weren’t able describe them as accurately and precisely as we can now. We hope this study lays the groundwork for the research people will do in the future on Silurian palaeoscolecids.”The study is published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.

Louisiana police are investigating a horrific case of abuse against a 15-year-old girl allegedly at the hands of her mother and the mother's boyfriend. Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Tim Soignet released details about the investigation in an emotional media briefing on May 15, according to WDSU-TV. 'For somebody to do that to their child, I can’t even put it to words or understand.' Soignet said the abuse was discovered after a car crash on April 21 involving the victim; her mother, 40-year-old Latonya Harris; another child; and her mother's boyfriend, 41-year-old Terrence Washington. Washington got into a crash on Interstate 10 while driving recklessly on the way to Texas, and police said they were horrified to find the victim in the backseat with injuries unrelated to the crash. Soignet said the girl was "found to be suffering from large-scale burns to majority of her upper body and multiple gunshot wounds." Police said that Washington admitted to sexually abusing the girl and shooting her with a shotgun and also admitted to knowing about Harris setting her on fire. Soignet said they also took into custody the 10-year-old child. 'I'd say they're pure evil.' Investigators believe that the teen was abused for months at the couple's trailer in Terrebonne Parish. Washington and Harris were arrested, and the teenager was transported to a hospital for treatment of her extensive injuries. Soignet struggled to explain what motivation they might have had for the horrific abuse. “I’d say they’re pure evil. They might have some mental issues going on. They know the difference between right and wrong," he continued. 'You have to be a monster to tell a child, to make it seem like it’s her fault.' The teenager's identity was not released to the public, but her father and stepmother spoke to WVUE-TV about her medical condition. Timothy Johnson said he was called about his daughter the day after the car crash, but he believed it was a practical joke and hung up. Once he realized it was not a joke, he and the girl's stepmother rushed to go see her. “The doctor said, ‘Brace yourself before you walk in,’” said LaTricia Johnson. “I walked in the room. I fell. My sister and the nurse had to try to grab me,” said Timothy Johnson. They said the teenager had half of her face burned off and one of her eyes had to be medically removed. She is permanently disfigured and has lost multiple teeth. “They took a lot away from her physically, mentally and emotionally,” LaTricia Johnson added. “It hurts to hear her tell me everything she went through, and no one had a clue,” Timothy Johnson continued. “You have to be a monster to tell a child, to make it seem like it’s her fault.” He says that he allowed his daughter to go live with Harris after she expressed the desire to reconnect with her mother. The father now regrets that fateful decision. They say that initially the teenager was allowed to contact them but the interactions grew more and more sparse and eventually stopped altogether. “If you didn’t want her, you could’ve brought her back. You could’ve called. We would’ve come and gotten her. Just could’ve brought her back to where she’s loved at,” LaTricia Johnson said. They said despite the horror that she's been through that she wants to study to become an attorney and help other children who suffer from abuse. The family has set up a GoFundMe donation page to help pay for her lengthy medical procedures. “For somebody to do that to their child, I can’t even put it to words or understand,” Soignet concluded. Here's a news video about the incident: Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Many are familiar with the snakelike basilisk from the Harry Potter series, but the ancient legend of this serpent king describes a monster much different from the one that the young wizard encountered in the Chamber of Secrets. The post The Legend Of The Basilisk, The Mythical Rooster-Serpent Hybrid That Can Kill With A Single Look appeared first on All That's Interesting.

David Morens testified in front of Congress Wednesday and claimed his references to hiding information were either jokes or had been misconstrued.

Johnson contends that the council has no ‘legal standing’ to strip him of the power to cancel the gunshot-detection technology contract.

Bill Maher Tells Megyn Kelly That Hillary Clinton Is Not an Election Denier

The Left Has a TOTAL Meltdown Over the Flags at Justice Alito's Vacation Home

Hamas Sympathizers Try to Discredit Newly Released Video of Female Hostages