Year: 2007

Toss Death Penalty, Save Money, Solve Cold Cases

Buck Banks

About time: A Colorado House committee took the first step toward abolishing the state’s death penalty Wednesday. The proposed legislation would use the millions of dollars saved on endless appeals of death penalties to investigate 1,200 unsolved murder cases.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 there have been 1,047 executions in the United States.

Of course, Colorado has only executed one death row inmate in the past 30 years, and only has two men on death row now. Opponents of the bill say it’s a “red herring” because the legislature could vote to fund the cold case investigations and still keep the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes.

But what I find interesting about the story is the money angle. I oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, but that’s an argument you can always have with a proponent of state-sponsored homicide. The money angle, however, provides an argument that could cross party lines. The Colorado lawmakers noted that since the state’s last execution in 1998, $40 million has been spent on capital-punishment trials and appeals. That’s an average of $5 million per year, which, at $30,000 a pop, could underwrite 167 DNA tests.

The death penalty simply does not make economic sense. Amnesty International found that Texas taxpayers spend $2.3 million on every execution, while it only costs $800,000 to $1 million to maintain an inmate for life.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 there have been 1,047 executions in the United States (as of September 25, 2006). At 2.3 million each, that comes to $2.41 billion. That’s a lot of moolah. And a lot of it is simply wasted.

Approximately 67 percent of capital convictions eventually are overturned, usually on procedural grounds of incompetent legal counsel, suppression of evidence or bad or wrong instructions from the judge to the jury. Seven percent of those whose sentences were overturned between 1973 and 1995 have been acquitted. Ten percent were retried and resentenced to death.

Add to that the fact that the “cruel and unusual” moniker has been slapped on that most benign of executions — the “lethal” injection — and you’re looking at Constitutional violations, which can be really expensive. After a recent botched execution, the state of Florida imposed a moratorium on executions until it can figure out a painless, foolproof way to kill them so they stay dead.

Several other states are under moratoriums based on challenges to the efficacy of lethal injection as a means of execution. So you’ve already got inmates sitting on death rows where they average 10 years before they exhaust their appeals, why not just let them sit there for the rest of their lives?

It’s a hell of a lot cheaper and, dare I say it? More humane.

Rice Refused to Take Iran’s Call in 2003

Trish

Nobody home Iran reached out to the incompetent Bush diplomatic team in 2003 but its calls went unreturned by the worst president ever’s worst diplomats.

Conjuring deja vu all over again in congressional testimony this week, Secretary of Narcolepsy State Condo Rice said the Iranians just didn’t make it clear enough for her or her predecessor, Colin Powell.

“We had people who said the Iranians went to talk to you, lots of people who said the Iranians want to talk to you,” Rice said

Rice told Congress she does not remember seeing the 2003 Iranian proposal, which suggested Iran was ready to discuss its disputed nuclear program, support for militant groups that the United States labels terrorists and the acceptance of Israel…

The document, faxed to the State Department in the early days of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, proposed direct talks, perhaps in Paris. Iraq was at the top of the proposed agenda, with Tehran proposing “active Iranian support for Iraqi stabilization.”

Like the infamous “Terrorists are Going to Hijack Passenger Jets and Fly Them into Skyscrapers” memo that Rice’s National Security Council couldn’t quite parse out the meaning of, the Iranian fax will go down in history as one of the biggest missed opportunities since Capt. Smith said, “Icebergs? Who cares about icebergs? This ship is unsinkable!”

“We had people who said the Iranians went to talk to you, lots of people who said the Iranians want to talk to you,” Rice said during an exchange with Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla.

“But I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, ‘We’re ready to recognize Israel,'” Rice said. “I just don’t remember ever seeing any such thing.”

Well of course you don’t, Condo, and therein lies the problem. The Bush team’s idea of diplomacy is sitting back and waiting for the other side to wave a white flag and say, “O.K., we’re giving you everything you want and a few things you haven’t thought of yet! And would you like that gift-wrapped?”

To them, it’s a zero-sum game. Gone are the days of give and take, back and forth, and agreements all parties can live with long-term that win Nobel Peace prizes. Now it’s just threaten sanctions, impose sanctions, and send Cheney off to the bunker to await the explosion.

“This administration, out of some combination of ideological blindness and incompetence, couldn’t be bothered to explore whether this opportunity was as serious as it looked on paper,” [Rice’s former National Security Council Aide Flynt] Leverett said Wednesday…

The Bush administration has resisted suggestions, including from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, that it should engage Iran to try to improve security in next-door Iraq.

And these idiots want us to take their word for it when they tell us now that we might possibly need to go to war with Iran? Don’t!

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task.

— Epictetus (c. 50-120 A.D.), Greek stoic philosopher

Sorry, I was just jonesing for some Donald Rumsfeld rhetoric. — Buck

Libby Was Bush Team’s Only Incompetent Liar

Jon Ponder

The hallmark of the Bush administration — its short summary in future history books — is its utter incompetence in all things but one: lying. So it is surprising — and not a little ironic — that a former member of the White House leadership has proved to be a thoroughly incompetent liar.

Why did Libby expect Russert to back him up? If there were any justice, someone would put Russert under oath and ask him why an official in the Office of the Vice President thought Russert would willingly risk federal perjury charges for him.

Worse news for the Bush team: Not only was he caught on tape telling lies badly, he was under oath at the time.

Based on audiotapes of Scooter Libby’s testimony before a Grand Jury that were played this week in his perjury trial in the CIA Leak scandal, we now know that Libby, a former special assistant to Pres. Bush and chief of staff to Vice Pres. Cheney, hadn’t even bothered to work out his false story before he was interrogated.

David Shuster on Countdown Tuesday night described an obvious “tell” in Libby’s lousy performance lying to the Grand Jury:

Scooter Libby, in a very sort of soft and hesitant voice, kept denying that he talked about Valerie Wilson with government officials, and then kept repeating Tim Russert‘s name over and over, as if Russert were Libby‘s holy grail.

Quote, “All I recall that week is that Tim Russert conversation.”

Another quote, “My first recollection is Tim Russert telling me that.” Another quote, “I don‘t recall any other conversations earlier in the week about it.”

Libby’s conversation with Russert, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, in July 2003, is at the center of the government’s perjury case against him. Libby’s version of events — that Russert was the first to tell him that the wife of an administration critic was a covert CIA agent working in the counterproliferation of terror weapons — had been disputed by six other witnesses in his trial before Russert took the stand yesterday and denied he told Libby the CIA agent’s name.

Here’s Libby’s sworn Grand jury testimony about his converrsation with Tim Russert:

[…]

Just as Many Repugs Running as Dems

Trish

There are so many Democratic candidates for president in 2008 because Democrats are flighty and disorganized and usually out of left field. In fact, trying to get them to move together is like herding cats.

At least, that’s the sentiment that underscores the punch lines of the recent jokes on late night T.V. on the subject.

But according to my count, there are at least as many contenders on the Republican side. Why aren’t we yukking it up over how many and varied they are?

Democrats Declared or Expected to Run for President in 2008:

1. Sen. Joe Biden
2. Sen. Hillary Clinton
3. Former Sen. John Edwards
4. Sen. Barack Obama
5. Gov. Tom Vilsack
6. Sen. Chris Dodd
7. Rep. Dennis Kucinich
8. Gov. Bill Richardson

Republicans Declared or Expected to Run for President in 2008:

1. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani
2. Gov. Mike Huckabee
3. Rep. Duncan Hunter
4. Sen. John McCain
5. Gov. George Pataki
6. Gov. Mitt Romney
7. Rep. Tom Tancredo
8. Sen. Chuck Hagel
9. Rep. Mike Pence

Then there are the nightmare wild card candidates: Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, Condo Rice. And once that pesky constitution gets amended (or — more likely by the time Bush leaves office — just plain trashed), Arnold Schwarzenegger. The only comparable wishful thinking maybe on the Democratic side is Al Gore.

So enough with the jokes about the sea of Democratic candidates. From where I sit, there are about a dozen too many Republicans on the way.

Abominations: You Could Be Committing One Right Now, Even if You’re Not Gay

Jon Ponder
Hell
Hell

In response to the article I posted today describing a couple of innovative and important proposals for saving the institution of marriage — criminalizing adultery and de-licensing marriages that do not produce children — a Christian conservative wrote a rather lengthy response that caught my attention.

If you have mowed the lawn, stopped by the office or baked a cake on Sunday, you are as big an abominator as the gayest person on the planet. Your earthly punishment is death and your cosmic penalty is eternal damnation.

It would have been interesting to hear what a right-wing Christian thought about a tight clampdown on the rules related to marriage. Instead, as is typical of the Limbaugh-Hannity-O’Reilly-trained mind, this writer focused on the style of my article (my questionable wordsmithing), railed fantastical charges against “the Left” and offered wild suppositions about what I don’t know — but never got around to addressing the substance: locking up adulterers and annulling non-procreative marriages.

But this bit of Dittohead bombast made me chuckle:

The piece is also filled with fallacies, and I give the writer (and most activists) the benefit of the doubt in that they don’t read the Bible, and that they have been spoonfed the lies about what it contains and base it off of stereotypes instead of lying themselves. “In fact, there is nothing of any consequence about gay sex in either Testament.” Oh really? Ever read Leviticus? Probably not.

Leaving aside the fact that I am not an “activist” (and calling me one insults those who are), as it happens, I am extremely familiar with the contents of the Bible, especially Leviticus, and especially the part of Leviticus that says being gay is an abomination unto the Lord:

Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Yup, and since “lying with” is Bible code for “having sex,” I’m in deep shit. But as bad as this is, a couple of lines down it gets worse — much worse:

Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”

What? No boiling in oil?

Yes, the biblical sentence for being gay is the death penalty. It is unambiguously clear. Gay people must be killed on sight, and their corpses are to be drenched in their own blood.

It says so in the Bible.

Which brings us to the tricky part. If you believe the Bible, and you believe that gay people are doomed to hell because of this edict in Leviticus, then you also have to believe gay people should be executed on the public square. If you don’t believe all those things, then why bother believing any of them?

The experience of human spirituality might well remain constant from millennium to millennium, but it is impossible to take seriously today judgments made by desert nomads 5,000 years ago about food storage, apparel, animal sacrifices, women’s rights and human sexuality. Our understanding of these things has changed radically — is still changing. What we know now renders the attitude of nomads in 3,000 BCE to be, well, inconsequential.

But Enough about Me

So let’s talk about you for a moment, dear reader. You may be thinking, “He’s just tap dancing around the issue to excuse his immoral lifestyle choice. I’m not gay so I’m going to be fine.”

Sorry. Even if you are as “completely heterosexual” as Rev. Ted Haggard, you are not off the hook, abominations-wise.

Sadly, dear reader, you have undoubtedly committed abomination-class sins in your life — maybe as recently as at lunchtime. Maybe even at this very moment. In fact, you could be committing an abomination-class sin as you are reading these words — without even knowing it.

Worse news: ignorance is no excuse. You have committed sins that are equally as bad, equivalently as offensive to the Lord, as anything any gay person has ever done. And you are going to hell in the very same handbasket.

So before you judge me and deny me the right to marry the man I love and have lived with for 28 years, let’s examine your sins more closely.

But first, let’s define our terms.

[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

We must not depend on any sort of Divine Providence to put a stop to war. Providence says, Kill one another, my children. Kill one another to your hearts’ content. There are plenty more where you came from. Consequently, if we want war to stop we must all become conscientious objectors.

— George Bernard Shaw

Saving Marriage: Life Sentences for Adulterers, Forced Annulments for Childlessness

Jon Ponder

There have been two exciting developments recently in the campaign to protect marriage. In Ohio and Michigan wingnuts are pushing adultery laws with life-sentence penalties. In Washington state, liberals have proposed a law that prohibits infertile couples from marrying and annuls marriages that have not produced children after three years.

Count me in. I’m strongly in favor of both these efforts, and believe they warrant serious debate.

Criminalizing Adultery

Rightwing anti-marriage activists say that allowing same-sex couples to wed would destroy the institution of marriage.

But any rational observer would say that it isn’t homos who are wrecking marriage, it’s adulterers who cause most marriages to fail. And since about half of marriages end in divorce, we can surmise that there is a whole lot of adultery going on.

If conservatives feel as strongly as they say they do, why not make adultery punishable by death?

I have long been an advocate of taking the anti-marriage right at its word and criminalizing adultery — after all, it’s in the Bible. One of the Big Ten: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.

Conversely, nowhere in the Ten Commandments does it say Thou shalt not be gay. In fact, there is nothing of any consequence about gay sex in either Testament.

I was surprised to learn last week that several states already (or, rather, still) have laws on the books against adultery. In Michigan, the penalty for sexual misconduct is a life sentence.

Now we’re talking!

[…]

One in Three Remains a Believer in Bush

Buck Banks

Bottom third: Our man in the White House still manages, amazingly, to garner the support of a third of respondents to polls, according to National Review’s PollTrack:

Bush’s job approval rating in Gallup’s latest survey is 32 percent, a slide of 4 points since mid-January, which puts the figure just one point higher than the lowest it has been during his administration.

His approval mark on foreign affairs has reached its lowest point to date at 31 percent. And assessments of his handling of immigration and the situation in Iraq, now at 25 percent and 26 percent, have returned to the bottoms they reached in January 2006 and last month, respectively.

Recent attention on global warming hasn’t caused his approval ratings on energy policy to bounce around much, either. Three in 10 said they approve of the way he’s handling energy issues — not a marked difference from 2006’s numbers.

Kind of explains the popularity of “American Idol” and “Deal or No Deal.”

It’s a Miracle: Rev. Ted Haggard Is ‘Completely Heterosexual’ Now

Jon Ponder

Here is good news for unhappy homos and homo-hating Christians alike. Rev. Ted Haggard has completed his therapy and apparently has forsworn consorting with male prostitutes forever. After only three weeks of therapy, he has been judged to be “completely heterosexual” now:

Evangelicals believe science has a liberal bias.

“He is completely heterosexual,” [said Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur, Colorado, one of four ministers who oversaw Haggard’s re-education therapy.] “That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”

Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.

“If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,” he said. “We’re into this thing over 90 days and it hasn’t happened.”

Science, of course, says that sexual identity is engrained and immutable, and that no amount of guilt, recrimination or praying away the gay can change it. Of course, Evangelicals like Rev. Haggard believe science has a liberal bias, as Stephen Colbert put it.

No word on whether Haggard addressed the issues behind his and his wife’s admitted use of crystal methadrine.