Bring It On! National News

From AP via TruthOut:

A nine-second session gaveled in and out by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., prevented Bush from appointing as an assistant attorney general a nominee roundly rejected by majority Democrats. Without the pro forma session, the Senate would be technically adjourned, allowing the president to install officials without Senate confirmation.

The business of blocking Bush’s recess appointments was serious. It represents an institutional standoff between Congress and the president that could repeat itself during Congress’ vacations for the remainder of Bush’s presidency.

Way to go Webb! Warms the cockles of my little black heart don’t you know? The individual in question is Steven Bradbury, acting chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Counsel. Bush nominated Bradbury for the job and asked the Senate to remove the “acting” in his title. Seems Bradbury signed two secret memo’s in 2005 that allowed the CIA to use “harsh interrogation techniques” on those damn terrorists.

Another interesting part of this cat and mouse game is that a bill sent to a president automatically becomes law 10 days after he receives it, excluding Sundays of course, unless he vetoes it:

That could be the fate of two bills Congress passed last week. One growing out of the Virginia Tech massacre makes it harder for people with mental illness records to buy guns. The other makes it easier for journalists and others to obtain government documents through the Freedom of Information Act. The FOIA bill, for example, would become law on New Year’s Eve if not vetoed before then, according to Senate Judiciary Committee officials.

The gun bill is H.R. 2640. The Freedom of Information Act bill is S. 2488.

A white teenager got in a violent argument with a bunch of black teenagers at a party. He fled the party and ran home. He went inside and bolted the door and told his father about what had just happened. He said he was afraid some of those black guys — in a drunken rage — would come to the house to finish the argument. And they knew where he lived.

To make things even worse, this white family lived in a mostly black neighborhood. There were a lot of racial tensions, and the most trivial argument could easily explode into an ugly tragic incident.

And now the family’s worst fears have just materialized. Those black thugs from the party have arrived. They’re at the foot of the driveway. They’re in a drunken out-of-control fury and they’re shouting out threats to this white family. They aren’t gonna go away.

The panic-stricken father probably made the wrong choice — 20/20 hindsight and all. He took his gun and walked down to the foot of the driveway to confront the angry mob. One of the black thugs lunged toward the father and tried to grab his gun. The gun went off and the would-be attacker was killed.

And now the father — who was trying to protect his son from an out-of-control mob — has been convicted of second degree manslaughter. He faces up to fifteen years in prison. Do you think this is right?

Let’s see, I’m just gonna pore over this news article one last time to make sure I — OOPS!! Uhh…well, I got most of the story right; I just had one minor detail wrong. I had their races switched around. Doh! OK, so it was a black family living in a mostly white neighborhood, and it was a gang of out-of-control white teenagers who came to the house in a drunken fury, determined to settle a score.

So anyway, that doesn’t change the story or anything. Right???

Calling hours are two to four PM and six to nine at the State Penitentiary on Saturday. Burial will be private at the Governors request. In lieu of flowers please send donations to the New Jersey Democrat Party.

Never having been a big fan of the death penalty I don’t think that I will attend the memorial service. In some respects it is a relief that New Jersey has abolished the death penalty. There are far to many chances that the wrong person can be put to death even with overwhelming evidence. One innocent prisoner executed is one to many. In the past I have had strong emotions regarding putting to death someone that has brutally harmed and killed a child, or killed anyone in a police uniform capacity. In hindsight I have seen that two wrongs will never make it right for the families left behind.

With the latest technology and DNA testing there have been far to many near misses when it comes to throwing the switch or injecting the lethal dose to end a convicted but innocent persons life. Over at MSNBC they have this to say about Jersey’s decision to end the death penalty…

N.J. Legislature votes to abolish death penalty
State is first to legislatively outlaw capital punishment MSNBC News ServicesTRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey Thursday became the first U.S. state to legislatively abolish the death penalty since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled state Assembly voted 44-36 in favor of a bill to scrap the death penalty and substitute it with life in prison without the possibility of parole for those found guilty of the most serious crimes.

The vote follows approval by the state Senate on Monday, leaving as the last step the signature of Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, an opponent of capital punishment.

Snip a Noose…

A special state commission found in January that the death penalty was a more expensive sentence than life in prison, hasn’t deterred murder and risks killing an innocent person.
“It’s time New Jersey got out of the execution business,” Democratic Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo said. “Capital punishment is costly, discriminatory, immoral and barbaric. We’re a better state than one that puts people to death.”

Among the death row inmates who would be spared is Jesse Timmendequas, a sex offender convicted of murdering 7-year-old Megan Kanka in 1994. That case sparked a Megan’s Law, which requires law enforcement agencies to notify the public about convicted sex offenders living in their communities. -MSNBC

If someone was found guilty with overwhelming evidence of harming one of my kids or God forbid killing one of them, I’m sure that my opinion as a father might be swayed momentarily as pro death penalty. For that matter I might even want to find my own vengeance and perform the task myself. In the long run I would prefer that the guilty serve hard time with a lifetime of thought on why they are serving that time. Always in the back of their mind why they are in prison. Not just sitting in some cell with cable television and a radio to be entertained with. That is no different than living in a hotel in a bad neighborhood. I’m sure the hotel room is cheaper by the day though.

Maybe the solution to the problem of crime in this nation is to stop building these glorified Club Med for gang members and start making crime a real punishable offense. Whatever happened to hard labor and taking ten ton boulders and making beach sand out of them? We don’t do that anymore because that is supposedly inhumane but isn’t that the reason why the prisoners are behind bars in the first place? What we need to do is stop baby sitting these animals of society that have been irrefutability convicted and make doing time for the crime a real sentence.

Might it be possible to build a national prison system where the scum of the earth that have killed children, police officers and IRS agents that cheated on their taxes serve time in a prison with the sole mission of breaking down the Rocky Mountains and moving the beach sand to the Grand Canyon as fill? How about instead of drilling for oil in Alaska we have them dig for oil and all the oil goes to the poor in America? Then again we run the risk of them tunneling to true freedom in China so that idea may not work out after all.

Until we as a society make the alternative of any crime committed against the innocent a real deterrent then gross negligent crime will continue. Till then we have the revolving door of the gang members equivalent of the Super 8. They get a roof over their head, clothing, three meals a day and all the free time in the world to plot out survival and retribution against the man.

Killing them is far to easy. Lethal injection is the most widely used option for the death sentence and falling asleep as if getting a tooth pulled and never waking up is just not punishment enough for my liking. Then again, the electric chair or the gas chamber is just brutality up there with the worse forms of torture. I’d prefer a life long sentence of hard realistic labor.

If I were a family member of someone murdered for any reason I simply would want to know that the guilty persons life is equal to the pain I would have in my heart for the rest of my life. The death penalty is a tough issue and both sides have legitimate logic behind the thought process. I’m erring on the side of caution when there is a remote possibility that the death of my innocent loved one is the result of proof proven false years down the road that put another innocent to death. I would not wish that on anyone’s conscience.

Papamoka

Originally posted at Papamoka Straight Talk…