Category: Politics

WRAL.com – News – House Committee To Consider Two-Year Moratorium On Death Penalty

I love it when hard-core Christian conservatives ban together in support of killing innocent people. Who cares if a couple of people who didn’t commit any crime get the hot needle? A few innocent lives is a small price to pay to make sure the real bad guys burn right? Ah,where would we be without good ‘ol NC redneck, lynch mob ideology?

This story quotes one really intelligent death penalty supporter, Representative Nelson Dollar, as saying that releasing two innocent men who spent over five years on death row shows the system works. Yep folks, this genius was elected. What does he care – no reparations are required. And never mind the controversy that surrounded the investigation of the crooked lawyers who withheld evidence that could have exonerated one of the men during their original trial.

Here’s a solution, I’ve posed it before but it doesn’t seem to popular among criminal prosecutors: If any defendant is aggressively prosecuted, with blatant disregard for researching facts that could lead to an acquittal, and that defendant is proven to have been wrongfully convicted, then the prosecutor must serve a minimum of half the sentence imposed on the innocent defendant.

Somehow I think the prosecutors are going to want to hold on to their current infallibility.

Seems everyone’s asking the wrong question. It’s not if, it’s how.

As a co-worker put it this morning, everything must be AOK in the USA. I suppose the war in Iraq is complete and the budget deficit is taken care of. The argument over social security must be over and oil prices are fine as long as we’re paying more than $2.00 a gallon.

Now that the government has fixed all these “little” problems apparently they have time to concentrate exclusively on Terri Schiavo. It’s important for the government to act quickly to decide who lives and dies. Medical professionals be damned. We don’t want the medical community making medical decisions now do we?

Of course not. We want the courts to decide based on hearsay and a power of attorney agreement. But when the courts rule in favor of the current state laws we want our federal legislators to quickly enact new laws because the current laws don’t suit an immediate cause. Queue the President and the moral right. There’s something to gain here – it adds credibility to “the right to live” which, lucky for them, sounds a lot like “the right to life”.

But what about Terri Schiavo’s implied wishes that she not be left in a vegetative state? Certainly her husband would know if she wanted to be left in this condition. So let’s quickly abide by the state courts decision and once again sentence her to death by starvation. The feeding tubes have been removed. Terry you will wither and die.

But wait – the aforementioned emergency legislation could save you – if indeed you need to be saved. No doctor would want to put the cause of death as dehydration and starvation on a death certificate would he? Well then, do we have a credible case for euthanasia? One beyond the tabloid version of the “right to die” promoted by Dr. Kevorkian?

There’s no way euthanasia would get past the conservative right. Doctors can’t be in the business of putting people to sleep like dogs, even if it is in their best interest. So here is our conundrum in detail. Doctor’s can’t be trusted to make straight-forward medical decisions when there are moral and political issues at stake. Clearly this requires legislation at the federal level???

Amy and I spent last weekend in Williamsburg. It was actually pretty cool because I found out a lot of things about how Virginia played into the revolution. Here’s a couple of interesting things about the area:

The Virgina Declaration of Rights preceded the Bill of Rights after the signing of the Constitution.

The Virginia colonies were the first to declared independence from Britain at the Fifth Virginia convention and told the Virginia delegates to propose total colonial independence before the Continental Congress in Boston.

Thomas Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary here which still has the oldest building of higher education in North America standing at it’s entrance.

Basically Virginia always revolted first from the Williamsburg Capital. Therefore they had a large armory where the powder kegs to the right were stored.

Amy wasn’t happy that I didn’t take her on a ride in a horse drawn carriage.

Instead I took her on a tour of North America’s first insane asylum now called the DeWitt Wallace Public Hospital. Nice accomodations.

That’s when she had me put in the stock for the rest of the day.

So I was right in the middle of Duke of Gloucester St. ready for everyone to throw rotten cabbage at me.

Turns out that one week ago I was right where the revolution really started and tomorrow I’m leaving for Charleston where it all ended.