As a chappie, I served as an ecclesial endorser - and therefore also for the VA and for the Bureau of Federal Prisons.

We all know the history. All the world industrialised nations and the First Worlders have abandoned capital punishment for decades now...beyond one generation. This country joined them, but then the neocons took control, and it was "revived".

It is theocratic. It is "blood atonement". You hear it when victims' families - often poor and from fundamentalist churches - speak of retribution and peace achieved only through blood atonement.

My spouse is Canadian. She has seriously asked why and then when are we going to stop Gitmo, stop rendition, stop torture, and stop capital punishment?

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/03/2008 @ 05:43PM PST

OOPs......I referred to my spouse. I meant HE and not SHE. Imagine that, I lived through DADT and prior to that....from 1968 until 1998 - and always am aware that the America I love has always persecuted its minorities.......economic, cultural, psychosexual, ethnic, racial......and the oppressive minorities have been stopped only by a Judicial Co-Equal branch of government doing its duty. Activism is what justices and judges are supposed to do.

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/03/2008 @ 05:48PM PST

Let someone from your family be raped and killed then tell me you still want this piece of sh--t to live the rest of his life behind bars watching color tv, eating three times a day, working out with his buddies!!! B.S. MY FRIEND!!!! 

Posted by Jack O'Hara on 12/03/2008 @ 07:49PM PST

Jack -if such a tragedy occurred in your family, let me be the first to express what might be unacceptable empathy for the loss.

Only the Islamic fundamentalist states, the Russian Federation and the United States of America execute prisoners. Life imprisonment without parole is the unalterable fate of these persons.

Revenge and "blood atonement" is the belief of fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims. The death penalty does not bring back the murdered person. It only gives the survivors a true sense of revenge and blood atonement - often referred to in "newspeak" as "closure". In three and more decades of ministry, I can testify that for the victim's families, the pain never dies...no closure ever exists truly....even if they executed the person multiple times.

There is something else as well. We have the possibility of executing an innocent person. This is not fiction, Jack, but fact. The Innocence Project has used DNA - not available a few decades ago - to prove the innocence of a death row inmate.

Many such persons have been executed and proven innocent after the fact. You can correct it if the person is a lifer with no parole possible. At that point, justice is served and he lives the life of an innocent man.

Think about it....Jack ....

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/04/2008 @ 09:16AM PST

Funny how people from all those great countries with no death penalties are trying to get here not the other way around! That being said, I am actually against the death penalty. I do feel that certain dirtbags deserve to die, but government is far too incompetent to be trusted with determining whether someone is guilty of a crime that could get them executed.
lock them up, no tv, no books, none of the pleasures of life they took away from their victims.

Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/07/2008 @ 01:13AM PST

Charlie --- "ONCE upon a time............in a land far far away...........AND they lived happily ever after."

If fairy tales, or perceptive anecdotes inform you more than reality, then go right ahead and believe in your superiority beyond the fact that we Americans spend more on WMD and sell more WMD than any other country on earth. The Pentagon budget could operate several FIRST WORLD nations. Simultaneously, the United States is pitifully high in infant mortality rates, the highest rates of child autism, no health coverage for its citizens, etc...

If you are a millionaire, multi-millionaire or billionaire, or live in a trailer in an occupation and think that you will win the lottery, then capitalism as unbridled as George Bush gave you is an opportunity to buy foreclosed homes and profit from the misery of others. The virtue of selfishness.

You can enjoy the fact that more lawyers and law school students exist in the USA. Most legislators of old were not lawyers, but today most businessmen, journalists, and pols are lawyers. Private prisons and stricter laws are important. Longer sentences increase shareholder profits, and rules that remove your humanity will create revolt and add more years to the careerist at CCA and others.

Yes, Charlie, there are many undocumented Latin Americans from Mexico and Central America. You can thank your Right Wing Corporatists who engaged in legal economic treason by creating cheap jobs at home and abroad. Those are the ones who are literally and figuratively "dying to get in."

Then those who own our debt in the trillions get H2B visas to do professional work in the country - like India and China. You see, Charllie, those countries - including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, take our trillions and educate their students free of charge in our undergraduate, and graduate and doctoral programs, while there are fewer and fewer Americans with college and graduate degrees, especially white men, Charlie....who work for educated white and black women and foreign-born women and are easily manipulated by the Right Wing, especially the Media Dropouts like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

Ask yourself this, Charlie, ?  We once stopped capital punishment and we resumed it under Ronnie Raygun....tell me, Charlie, what do the stats say......more or less capital murders? How many DNA 21st century science has proven death row convicts to be innocent? before AND after they are legally but innocently MURDERED?  What is the military term? "acceptable losses"?

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/07/2008 @ 06:39AM PST

Raymond, I don't know where to start. I love a good argument, but first let me point out that, as said, I am 100% against the death penalty. I do not believe in automatic U.S. superiority. Our taxes are too high, we are over regulated, our right to defend ourselves in our own homes compromised, We have lost our right to free speech in some ways, I could go on and on, but in short we have a long way to go. Regards to the immigrants legal or otherwise, they are mostly good for us, multiculturism has been our greatest strength. Everyone knows we mutts are healthier and smarter! Regards to illegal immigration you can blame both sides. business people love cheap labor, the left doesn't believe in national borders. Regards to the "right", we don't have one. Every president since I have been alive (55 years) has increased the size of government, increased social services, and moved us closer to totalitalitarian government. That includes by far Bush 43. Honestly, other than Iraq and the environment, I don't know why the left doesn't love this guy!

Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/08/2008 @ 04:43AM PST

Good morning, Charlie !

Since I am 62, let us consider ourselves at the very beginning, for me, and in the middle, for you, of the so-called Boomer Generation. We share many "current events" even if we saw them from a decade or less in age from one another.

I graduated high school in 1964 and college in 1968. You had to be 21 and not 18 to vote, as you know. In high school, my family were liberal MA Republicans who opposed Goldwater but supported such guys as Leverett Saltonstall and Nelson Rockefeller's Eastern liberal wing. By 1968, I was a Democrat WASP in MA (with the exception of Chubb Peabody was as rare as a dodo bird") and it was my senior year and I found a gay bar in New Haven and  one in Hartford CT - and a few of my equally closeted classmates. I was in ROTC and then served my country both as a butterbar and then seminary student and then as a military chappie....so I am a patriotic liberal American who knows how to defend himself and has respect for firearms.

OK- the meat of the political matter, Charlie....I agree with you....the neo-liberal and the neo-conservative are brothers - "political siblings of the major corporations and plutocrats in power internationally."  We must always be careful to exposit this truth for fear of crossing the Rubicon into " conspiracy theories" and " one world plutocracy."  It is tempting to do so occasionally, but it translates either you or me into a marginal individual who is delusional and easily dismissed.

I believe that classic liberalism and classic conservatism as once defined by men like Barry Goldwater or Hubert Humphrey have been discredited by their former political affiliations. My point has been to show that unless you are a Boomer or older, you do not remember when their compromises held sway.

Example of this was the EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1963 and later added by LBJ in 1966. The liberals like Humphrey and Kennedy loved it ....higher education loans.....and the conservatives like Goldwater and Dirksen loved it because it meant cradle and grave....not cradle TO grave and the college grad would pay higher taxes.....

The true Left and the true Right no longer have any political power in Congress or elsewhere. That is the reality you seek to state. They don't, period.  Obama is a neoliberal and Bush is a neoconservative. They have much in common....and it is the degree to which they disagree that defines " political discourse" in this nation.

The federal death penalty - is still a matter of definitions...is criminal justice about rehabilitation or pure incarceration?

Charlie, we agree more than we disagree, if we are speaking about these issues of immigration and how it ties to capital punishment on either the state or federal level.

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/08/2008 @ 06:53AM PST

Ray there is not much in what you say here that a libertarian conservative can argue with. My "no tv, no books" argument was a bit harsh I suppose, but honestly, I have little sympathy for those who take others' lives. It is funny how people on far ends of the scale support the same goal though. Both the far left and the far right people I have talked to feel the government has no right to ban pot. Capitol punishment is another of those arguments, I want it ended at state and federal level now! Government has accidently murdered far too many people already!

Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/09/2008 @ 07:23AM PST

You know, this morning while driving my son to kindergarten, I listened to NPR and they spoke about a SCOTUS pending decision on the CONE (sic) case.

It seems that 28 years ago, this Vietnam war vet with PSD and drugs did kill without a doubt a 93 year old couple while robbing them. This is NOT a case of whether or not he committed FIRST DEGREE murder.

It seems that the TN prosecutors were NOT obligated to share with the defense that the man was not an outright "crazed animal" but that he was a drug addict and did have PTSD. You see, the TN prosecutors denied the fact that he had any drug or emotional illness at all. Then the law changed, and the TN prosecutorial lies were disclosed.

What is argued here is the difference between the death penalty under current and former statutes, and life in prison without parole.

I am not a lawyer, and the ride to school is an opportunity to sing and review "homework", I listened to the NPR reasons for SCOTUS involvement. It seems that this is Tennessee and the person is black, and the victims were white. The prosecutors who hid the information from the defense and ultimately the jury that would have mitigated his sentence were white.

It seems to me that the word " white " should be an adjective modifying the noun known as the "R" word....but there is always, for a clergyman, the benefit of the doubt when you do not know all the facts herein.

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/09/2008 @ 08:21AM PST

Hi Charlie !

You know, when I read your reply, I said to myself:" Self, Charlie is right, we do agree about much."

You know, at one time, I used to think that " far left" and " far right" were 360 degree linear opposites.....but then someone long ago told me to think of them as a circle and not a line.

The story of Albrecht Speer comes to mind. Speer spent 20 years, 1946-66 in Spandau Prison in then East Berlin- convicted of war crimes at Neuremburg.

Speer was a professional architect. The Nazis were either educated men or outright uneducated thugs. The circle. He was Hitler's unrequited love - the son he never had. Speer built the Reich chancellory in record time. Hitler gave him the Gold Party badge from his own waistcoat.

Speer would have been spared anything but "denazification" had be not become Minister of Armaments after the death of Dr. Todt. His efficiency caused the lives of many Allies and prolonged the war needlessly. The Russian judges voted for death, and the British and Americans saved his life and commuted his sentence.

In 1966, he wrote his memoirs. At the end, only he and Rudolf Hess, remained at Spandau. Rather, he wrote his memoirs while in Spandau, on TP and other such "parchment">

The illustrative story I want to share is about the difference between the left and the right.

Speer was a "Septemberling" one who joined the Nazi Party in September of 1930. In 1934, the Gauleiter of Berlin called Speer to "redecorate" the Communist Party Headquarters in Berlin. The Reds did not need their building any longer. The cemetery was their new home. It was then that he philosophically observed that the color scheme for Commies and Nazis was blood red and white and the latter had black too. He changed the color of the drapes in his office, and touched over the bullet holes and kept the same colors.

Your reply to me reminded me of that story, and wanted to share it. I will have a senior moment later, and probably forget that I shared it with you....so be kind if I repeat myself....but I suspect that you are sometimes guilty of the same thing. LOL 

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/09/2008 @ 08:50AM PST

Thank you Ray,great story, Just one thing though, I know that over the years it has become popular to identify the German nazi party as "right" but its' entire domestic agenda except the rascism and holocaust was firmly left wing, workers rights, 5 day week, 8 hr day, government health care, car for every family, job creation programs, kindergarten, all things I wish the right could take credit for, but I would be lying. The rascism and holocaust belong to neither side. The war and Hitler getting into power in the first place, I would blame on the Versailles treaty leaving the German people hungering to be recognized as human beings and players on the world stage.

Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/09/2008 @ 10:35AM PST

Au contraire, mon ami....LOL....it proves the point about the circle and not the linear approach.

There were several evolutions from the German's Workers Party to the National Socialist German Worker's Party and the fascist dictatorship accepted by the German Elite and Plutocrats in 1934 upon the death of Hindenburg, and Hitler combining Chief of State with Head of Government into "Leader of the Nation."

The Night of the Long Knives was more than the elimination of the true Leftist, the head of the SA, who also made gay synonymous with the Nazi Left, and the SS with the industrialists, army and the Nazi Right. That purge that evening altered which wing would define the Dictator's Party after that.
William Shirer devoted much to this Roehm affair. Speer said that the few men who could call the Fuhrer by the familiar "du" was very scant after 1934, and especially Roehm.

To many, it also proved that Paragraph 175 would be Himmler's weapon against all gays in Germany. Count Hans graf van Spreti, reputedly the most handsome man in all Germany, was shot minutes before Roehm. Hitler himself was "surprised" to find Roehm "asleep" with von Spreti that fateful night.

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/09/2008 @ 11:05AM PST

This, I am afraid does make your point, although my level of education (1.5 years college) does leave me at a slight disadvantage. I would however respectfully state that comparing we modern right wingers to nazis is as offensive to us as I am sure comparing modern democrats to the pro slavery party of 1860 must be to democrats. There are many such references, and they are simply offensive. I am not offended by these past references of course because they were presented in academic context.

Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/09/2008 @ 12:10PM PST

Oh, Charlie......there was NOTHING in my historical presentation that even slightly suggested that Americans who vote or promote either classic conservative or neo-conservative agendas are anyway synonymous with the Nationalist Socialist regime of the Third German Reich. That would NEVER be my intention.

History and Philosophy were my undergrad majors, and theology of course was my graduate seminary work. For my PhD, I worked on some ecclesial history....since obviously when something started and why it did, and where it did, and how it did, has always motivated me.

But when you peel me away, you see an ole chappie, a servant of the Almighty, a loving partner and a great dad and a loving son to a 94 year old lady.

Posted by Raymond Sawyer on 12/09/2008 @ 12:21PM PST

Ray, although I fear we have both strayed far from the subject, I have to acknowledge that it was not your post that has made that made that inference, but many Massachusetts liberals I have conversed with. You express opinions that are right wing and "nazi" is what they come with. It is offensive, there is no part of the right wing belief system that agrees with anything the nazis did. (ok maybe the often excessive patriotism/nationalism)

Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/10/2008 @ 04:38AM PST