Polite Kid

Did you watch the '100 Days' press conference? Neither did I, though I've looked at the transcript just to see what was said. But the following question and the ambiguous answer given has me puzzled. At one point, #44 says that waterboarding was torture, and that it 'violates our ideals and values' but then he says he is convinced it was the right thing to do. However I don't expect logic or consistency from him or his administration; it looks like he is trying to have it both ways, predictably:
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said in the past that waterboarding in your opinion is torture. And torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?
MR. OBAMA: What I've said -- and I will repeat -- is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic. And that's why I put an end to these practices.
I am absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways -- in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.
I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, "we don't torture," when the -- the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And -- and -- and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people.
It corrodes the character of a country.''
I have not blogged about this waterboarding/torture issue, because it is rather a thorny subject with which I haven't concerned myself very much. On the one hand, I find little sympathy for terror suspects but on the other hand, I cannot and could not bring myself to share the Rush Limbaugh attitude that, say, the incidents at Abu Ghraib were 'no worse than a fraternity hazing', just no big deal. I remember when that scandal first broke I was still somewhat of a mainstream conservative in many respects, but broke ranks with the dittoheads on the subject of the War on Terror or the Iraq War specifically.
So is waterboarding 'torture'? I don't know. I don't have a clear-cut answer. I do see a danger of simply reacting, as most Republicans do, in knee-jerk fashion to the rantings of the left. In other words, if the Democrats are agin' something, we have to be for it, and not only for it, but rabidly so. If they think waterboarding is torture, we have to say it's not only not torture, but in fact a good and virtuous thing. I reject knee-jerk politics or partisanship.
Overall, though, this issue is not high up on my list of priorities. But here is an interesting discussion from What's Wrong With the World, where Lydia writes about the changing views among conservatives on the ethics of 'torture' and capital punishment.
The End of a Consensus
This post is going to be full of sociological claims about which I am uncertain. It's okay if you disagree with me about them, so long as you do so nicely.
First claim: Thirty-five years ago, most conservatives were both very strongly in favor of the death penalty and strongly opposed to torture, where "torture" would have included waterboarding, if they had been asked about it.
Second claim: This is no longer true today. Now, conservatives who are strongly in favor of the death penalty tend to be the same ones who support at least some forms of torture, and conservatives who are opposed to those same forms of torture tend to be, at least, uneasy about the death penalty rather than strongly in favor of it.
Suppose these are both true. What caused the change?'
There is a paradox here. I would say she is right that a generation or so ago, most conservatives were pro-capital punishment yet they would not have approved of torture, or of some of the 'interrogation methods' that are apparently being used in recent years. She asks why views have shifted among conservatives. It does appear that more conservatives now have misgivings about the death penalty, but there is also a much more cavalier attitude about 'torture' in interrogation. I found the approval of torture by many conservatives to be surprising when it first became apparent a few years ago. I wondered at the time why this was so; I always, even when I was liberal, had a picture of conservatives as being more gentlemanly and civilized than many liberals. I suppose the generation of 'conservatives' who were dittoheads or listeners to talk radio generally tended to be less genteel than the old-time conservatives.
This isn't your father's conservatism.
But why has there been a change, as Lydia asks?
Further down, she says:
There is something to my mind bracing and healthy about a person who recognizes, sternly, uncompromisingly, and forcefully, the importance of the death penalty, who takes a manly position also on self-defense, who is nowhere close to pacifism, but who views torture with unmitigated disgust and rejection. Can anyone imagine John Wayne torturing anyone? But I can certainly imagine him solemnly sentencing a murderer to death. And what about the Marine hymn? "First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean."
Regardless of what John Wayne would have countenanced, or more accurately, what his movie characters would have done, would, say, Robert E. Lee have approved of torturing anyone? Stonewall Jackson? Thomas Jefferson? George Washington?
Yet all of these men would, as Lydia says of Wayne, would have no objection to the death penalty where appropriate.
We live in a strange and inconsistent age; some of the same people on the right who support the death penalty for certain criminals are too squeamish to send illegal invaders home, or to close our borders, because that would be cruel and inhumane.
As far as the death penalty, this subject has come up here before. I notice something strange about the comments on Lydia's post at WWWtW: almost no one references or cites the Bible on the subject of the death penalty. Someone quotes G.K. Chesterton as an authority; I admire Chesterton as much as the next, and a quote of his adorns my sidebar. But he is not my authority on ethics and morals. Another commenter references C.S. Lewis; I would say the same of him that I say about Chesterton. But shouldn't a Christian look to the Bible to know God's will on that subject? Surely the absence of Biblical references is surprising on a site which espouses a Christian worldview -- or perhaps more accurately a Catholic viewpoint.
I think the question of the Church's teachings on capital punishment is an interesting topic which should be explored, although I won't attempt that here, as I am not a Catholic and I don't feel qualified to explore that. It's a subject for those who are Catholic or who are more knowledgeable about Catholic theology or doctrine than I. I do know, simply, that the Catholic Church used to favor capital punishment for certain crimes like murder, though I don't know how or why that position was reversed.
Even less do I know why Protestants, in some cases, are abandoning Biblical teaching on the death penalty. I was talking about capital punishment with a very conservatively-brought-up Christian recently, when we were discussing various crimes. This person told me that she was not sure about capital punishment because the Bible says ''vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.'' I attempted to point out that this is in reference to personal matters, admonishing us not to take revenge on someone who has wronged us, just as with the 'turn the other cheek' admonition. But I fear it fell on deaf ears. She thinks capital punishment is revenge, and that it is a failure to show mercy and forgiveness. Again, I tried to point out that God is not only merciful but just and holy, not tolerating sin. She was unconvinced. And I know there are many more like her, who are now becoming more liberal and vacillating on issues like punishment in general. Many have been persuaded by years of exposure to the Oprah approach, and the emphasis on mental illness as the cause of crime, not human sin or evil. Punishment, according to that worldview, is backward; an enlightened society 'understands' and 'rehabilitates' its 'sick people'; it does not punish criminals. That is so 'medieval.'
Someone on the WWWtW thread opines that the tendency to favor harsh interrogation methods for terror suspects is driven by the tribal defense instinct; we feel under threat so we are willing to justify harsh measures to protect our own in wartime or other such extraordinary situations. I think that makes sense; perhaps it's why I am not inclined to feel sympathy for terror suspects or actual terrorists. I don't believe that the Islamic threat is a bogeyman created by the neocons or the media. On the other hand, neither do I see Islam as the primary threat, so I don't fit in with the mainstream right on this issue.
As for the capital punishment question, I think it will assume more importance as the ascendant far left tries its best to abolish capital punishment. They have been relentlessly working towards that goal for decades and they are sensing victory, so they will ratchet up their efforts to end it. And what with the liberalizing of many formerly conservative churches and denominations, I fear Christians will lose the will to defend the death penalty, and concede the moral battle to the left, probably feeling good about themselves as they do so. It's all part of the same phenomenon which causes the Christian 'conservatives' to reverse themselves on homosexuality, same-sex ''marriage'' or other such social issues. What's next?
Addendum
Here are some good defenses, from a Biblical point of view, of capital punishment. They do a very thorough job of examining many possible objections or questions from skeptics on the issue:
Stand to Reason: The Bible and Capital Punishment
by Gregory Koukl
The Bible and Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment and the Bible

Labels: Capital Punishment, Conservatism, Creeping Liberalism, Crime, Death Penalty, Justice System, Liberal Christianity, Traditional Morality

This is a story I posted over on the Forum a couple of days ago, and which has received little notice. Yet it troubles me in several ways.
Threat in Maine, the whitest state, shakes local NAACP
BANGOR, Me. � In October, the N.A.A.C.P. chapter for northern Maine got shocking news. A man from a nearby town had threatened to shoot "any and all black persons" attending the group�s meetings at an old stone church here, and state prosecutors were worried enough to seek a restraining order.
First of all, please notice the headline the NYT attaches to the story. The fact that Maine is 'the whitest state' seems to carry an implication that this is indicative of a greater propensity for 'hate'. In the New York Times' world, of course, white=hate, so this is not really surprising but still troubling.
Now: before somebody puts words in my mouth, the fact that an elderly (75-year-old) white man supposedly made a threat against the NAACP or black people is not something I intend to defend; although generally I think that if the man has reached 75 years of age and has not heretofore committed violence against others, he is not likely to at this stage of his life.
If, however, he made such a threat, in a credible way, certainly notice should be taken. I don't condone threats, racial or any other kind, from whatever quarter. But the fact is, the man in question has apparently been charged with no crime, although the article says:
This month a state judge signed an order barring Mr. Sawyer from threatening, using violence against or even speaking to any of the chapter�s members. It also requires him to stay at least 150 feet away from anywhere the N.A.A.C.P. meets. A hearing has been delayed for six months while Mr. Sawyer gets medical treatment and counseling, Mr. Harnett said.
And of course Mr. Sawyer has had his firearm taken away. But if he has not been convicted or even charged, how can his gun be taken away? Are our Second Amendment rights so attenuated that it takes merely the word of one witness (in a doctor-patient context) to lose one's right to bear arms? And will Mr. Sawyer's compulsory 'medical treatment' and 'counseling' (read: re-education) involve confinement? Does he have no rights at all, or is he, as an old-stock American, entitled to no such privileges?
It looks as though, judging by the lack of comments over on the forum (save one) I am alone in my concerns about this case. It is about more than just one senior citizen in Maine; it's about the rights of American citizens, especially those of the majority white population. It appears as though 'some are more equal than others.'
How many times have non-whites threatened whites and those of differing races? I suspect there are too many cases to count in an average, say, week in this country. We have seen a number of prominent blacks and Hispanic making very hateful and threatening statements against whites with no consequence whatsoever. For example:
"Go back to Simi Valley, you skunks! Go back to Woodland Hills! Go back to Boston! Go back to Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims! Get out! We are the future. You are old and tired. Go on. We have beaten you. Leave like beaten rats. You old white people, it is your duty to die." Augustin Cebada, Quoted in Barbara Coe, Reconquista, The Takeover of America, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, 1998, p. 20
"We are here to say that violence and racism and hatred of the white man in America is just as American as apple and cherry pie." Khallid Abdul Muhammad, quoted in Las Vegas Review-Journal and Sun, June 14, 1998, pg. 3A
"We have an ageing white America. They are dying. They are ****ting in their pants with fear!� I love it!"-Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, University of Texas, Arlington, from a speech in Jan. 1995, quoted in Coe, 'Reconquista, The Takeover of America
Then there was the speech by ''Dr.'' Kamau Kambon:
A Raleigh activist and bookstore owner told a panel at Howard University Law School on Oct. 14 that the solution to many of the problems faced by black people is the extermination of "white people off the face of the planet." Dr. Kamau Kambon, who taught Africana Studies 241 in the Spring 2005 semester at North Carolina State University, also said this needs to be done "because white people want to kill us."
This kind of thing is so routinely spoken by various minority 'activists' that it is met only with yawns from most people. Somehow we dismiss it as venting or just rhetoric. But why does Mr. Sawyer up in Maine not receive the same benefit of the doubt as these 'minority activists'? And the doctor, who is apparently the only witness who asserts that 'threats' were made: who is he? (Oops, of course I mean 'he or she'; how sexist of me to assume the doctor is a man.) But who is the Veterans Administration doctor? A medical doctor? A psychiatrist? What? And do doctors routinely report such conversations as these to authorities?
It may be that these things are happening around America and I just haven't heard of such a case before. I think of the increasing role medical practitioners are being asked to play in gathering information on citizens, supposedly for our own good, of course. Children are being asked questions during doctors' visit about whether or not their parents own guns, or whether there are drugs in their house. When I visit my doctor I am invariably asked about domestic violence, and about whether I am safe in my home. Many of these lines of questioning seem intrusive and one wonders what use is made of the responses; is the government tracking certain data this way?
But to return to the case of Mr. Sawyer, who has been disarmed and ordered into some kind of 'treatment' for his 'sickness', this should be troubling to those who care about personal privacy, freedom, and our Constitutional rights. A number of issues are at stake here. Should anybody lose their right to bear arms, which is a crucial right for a free society, on the strength of one person's assertions? Can one lose one's Second Amendment rights without having been convicted of a felony? Maine's Constitution says:
Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms for the common defence; and this right shall never be questioned. Article I, section 16.
Can someone be ordered to enter 'counseling' and 'medical treatment' based on their holding or expressing politically incorrect views (such as Mr. Sawyer's purported statement that 'Maine should be a white state)? Another thing which troubles me about this case is that Mr. Sawyer's name and town are mentioned very explicitly. Why? Our media are very scrupulous about not mentioning the names of people involved in various scrapes with the law, or people who are accused but not yet convicted of a crime. The old media are now obsessive about omitting any mention of a suspect's race, even when there is supposedly a manhunt going on, with a dangerous criminal roaming free. They are more careful to avoid any possibility of 'racial profiling' and probably also worried lest the public notice that most of the crimes are being committed by certain groups of people. So they cover the facts up as long as they can. But Mr. Sawyer's name is right out there for the public to see. What's the point of this?
Suppose Mr. Sawyer becomes the target of the racial agitators, like Joe Horn, who shot two burglars in Pasadena, Texas, was. Suppose Mr. Sawyer has an angry mob congregating around his door and making threats? And of course he has been disarmed and left a sitting duck for any self-righteous liberal who wants to make an example of him or 'teach him a lesson.'
So I can see no good reason for publishing Mr. Sawyer's name. Shame on the New York Times. Where are their journalistic ethics? Of course we know the NYT is not the paragon of journalistic virtue they pretend to be, after their many missteps. We all know they have an agenda, and that the Grey Lady is a woman of easy virtue.
A further injustice is that only majority white people are held to rigid standards about 'hate speech' or racial threats. We all know that racial threats are made by minorities on a regular basis, and these are almost never treated as crimes. There is a manifest injustice based on race in the way these laws are applied and enforced. It is evident that 'hate crime' laws are designed to be employed against only one group of people, to benefit another broad category of people. This violates the idea that we are all equal before the law.
And if this kind of thing can happen, and is happening now, we should be very concerned about our rights and freedoms. I am concerned that too few Americans display any zeal for preserving their Consititutional rights and freedoms. With such a passive and apathetic population, the PC tyrants have free rein.
One more thing which strikes me: the name Sawyer has been in New England since the days of the earliest English colonies. The Sawyers are one of the original Mayflower families. It seems Mr. Sawyer is symbolic here of old America, and he is being made an example of. Out with the old, on with the new.

Labels: Hate Crime, Hate Speech, Justice System, Mainstream Media, Media Bias, Political Correctness, Second Amendment, Thought Crime

It seems I've never written a post on this blog which is specifically about capital punishment. It's odd that I haven't because I feel strongly about it.
Every now and then, there is some mainstream media article attacking the death penalty, and making claims about our 'biased' justice system. Every now and then, like clockwork, Mexico -- Mexico, of all countries! -- has the colossal temerity to condemn us for executing criminals in our prisons, usually in Texas prisons. Well, if they only kept their killers at home, we might not execute so many of them, but that would not occur to them. Mexico, one of the most corrupt, dysfunctional, ramshackle countries in the Western Hemisphere, lecturing us on morality, and striking a superior pose. That really is humiliating.
This is something that really annoys me: the way the left uses the death penalty as an issue on which to lecture to us, from their moral high horse. I find it really rankling when countries like Canada or Ireland or France or wherever refuse to yield up one of our fugitive murderers, actually making said murderers into some kind of perverse heroes, as if they were political prisoners. Ireland and France, for instance, harbored the odious Ira Einhorn, whose girlfriend's body was found in a trunk in his apartment. To me, his guilt was apparent.
Why did some in other countries take up his dubious cause? To teach the U.S. a moral lesson, I think. We are so often seen as the heavies in the rest of the world.
For liberals, capital punishment is merely legal murder. We have quite a few American-born liberals who hold this opinion, but the reality is, most Americans are not opposed to the death penalty where appropriate. The rest of the world seems to be of a different mind.
Sarah, Maid of Albion writes an honest blog entry on the subject, confessing some ambivalence about it. I tried to make a case for it as best I could in a few short paragraphs in a comment, but it's near impossible to do so in a blog comment.
I respect that Sarah has written about her misgivings. I simply think that all too often, this subject is not discussed, and the media relentlessly presents only their side of things.
It seems that there is quite a rift between us and our British cousins when it comes to some of these issues like capital punishment and the right to bear arms. The difference is greater than in previous eras due to the greater influence of liberal/leftist ideas in Britain, and the weakened state of Christianity there. At one time, we were more of one mind with the British on such matters, but a wedge has been driven between us. Unfortunately, liberal ideas, and an increasingly enfeebled Christian establishment may soon cause Americans to lose our traditional perspective.
Fewer and fewer Americans are really conversant with their Bibles, though we still have a Biblically-based system of laws. The Bible lays out the reasons for the death penalty.
However it is now commonly believed even in America that the commandment 'thou shalt not kill' forbids the death penalty, and that the popular statement that 'all life is sacred' means that we must executing killers.
Really? Sparing the murderer denies the value of innocent life; the Bible clearly differentiates between 'shedding innocent blood' and shedding the blood of a mankiller, a murderer.
This distinction between innocent blood, and the blood of a murderer or otherwise heinous criminal, is something that few people today seem to grasp. Why is it so hard to understand? Somehow, in place of the old understandings, we have this new liberal nonsense about how ''all life is precious.'' Really? Where does that idea come from? The Bible makes clear that those who shed innocent blood, who murder, must forfeit their own lives. That is putting the ultimate value not on life per se, but innocent life.
There is a difference. The Bible, contrary to what Christian and secular liberals think, is all about discerning, making distinctions, dividing, separating, judging, choosing a side -- the side of justice and right. It is not about egalitarianism or moral equivalency or blurring differences into nonexistence.
Liberal egalitarian dogma insists that 'all life is sacred' (except, seemingly, that of the unborn); though killers' lives are put on a par with those of the innocents whose lives they take.
Here this website puts forth the usual liberal arguments against the death penalty, such as:
Value of human life: Human life has intrinsic value, even if a person has murdered another individual. The death penalty denies the sacredness of human life. Live is so precious that nobody should ever be killed, even by the state.''
See above.
Other 'arguments' used to oppose death for murderers:
Unfairness: The mentally ill, poor, males, and racial minorities are over-represented among those executed. One pilot study of over 2 dozen convicted criminals on death row found that all had been so seriously abused during childhood that they probably all suffered from brain damage.''
Yes, and let's see some proof of this ubiquitous claim of abuse or 'brain damage.' Criminals always whine that they were themselves abused as children, so they can't help what they do. Never mind that many people who were abused in some way as children --- or as adults -- commit no crimes, and are law-abiding, decent people. Abuse does not guarantee a criminal career.
And again, I have an idea which will shock many post-moderns: criminals lie.
Is that so hard to imagine? Criminals are, as a group, guilty by definition of dishonesty or anti-social conduct. Lies are always part of their self-justifying, rationalizing, self-serving, narcissistic 'defense mechanisms.' They will, almost 100 percent of the time, try to deny everything, and when the evidence is against them, when they are backed into a corner, they try to deflect blame: somebody or something made them do it. They did not know what they were doing. They 'dissociated' and became temporarily insane. They had bad childhoods (which may be true, but does not excuse them), and they are often prone to blame their victims.
So nobody with an ounce of common sense should accept, at face value, unproven claims of childhood abuse on the part of criminals. They are prone to lie when it serves their needs.
But if it's the case that our justice system is so flawed, then let's scrap our whole justice system, by all means, because if it's not perfect we can't try or punish anyone, apparently. The ACLU and all other such criminal-friendly organizations are constantly bemoaning how blacks, I mean 'African-Americans' are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and punished at all levels. So they say. What is never considered, or even mentioned here, is that this may just be the case because blacks are more crime-prone (statistics certainly suggest this) and they simply commit more crimes. Yet the mainstream media perpetuate the idea of a 'racist justice system', apparently wishing us to believe that all races are 'equal' in the commission of crimes, which is absurd.
If anything, I would suggest that Whites, especially White males may be at a disadvantage. When a White man commits some heinous crime (which does happen; I don't deny that) there is no big media machine or racial advocacy apparatus that goes into overdrive to drum up sympathy and outrage over the 'unfairness' of his being arrested, convicted, or sentenced. There is no 'race card' to be played. There is no NAACP to march or to hold press conferences. There are no crying, hymn-singing, sign-carrying White liberals and black protesters when a White man is about to be executed. No, this only occurs when a person from a 'protected' group is convicted or sentenced or facing execution. So they have far more people advocating for them, at public expense ultimately, and they have a biased media on their side. Who is truly at a disadvantage here?
The website linked above even admits that there is a bias in favor of female criminals in general; it may seem surprising that they state this matter-of-factly, but not really, because race trumps all, even the feminist agenda:
Women convicted of murder are almost never executed; that is a penalty that is almost entirely reserved for men.''
I've mentioned that fact in a previous blog post. I am somewhat morbidly fascinated with women who commit violent crimes. I've followed many of these criminal cases, some involving women who kill, and it often seems as if they kill those nearest to them: spouses, children, siblings in some cases. Even parents.
Most of us still have a residual belief that women are the 'weaker' sex, the gentler sex, but there are always exceptions. The belief still persists, which makes many jurors think that surely something ''made'' the accused woman kill, because they ''know'' women would not do so without some extreme circumstance ''forcing'' her to do it, or 'driving her insane.'
So the justice system is imperfect. So is every human institution. It's an inbuilt thing. Does that mean we abolish courts, laws, and prisons because the occasional innocent person is accused, convicted, and in rare cases, executed?
And if there are a few innocent people convicted, I would wager there are many, many more guilty people who walk free, who suffer no punishment (because they have slick, shrewd, unscrupulous attorneys, or because a biased jury -- as in the OJ Simpson case -- gives them a pass). I am far more worried about the dangerous criminals who game the system being free to continue their crimes than I am about the few innocent ones being punished. It's absurd to expect perfection of our justice system, and I don't think we err on the side of harshness; just the opposite.
And why am I more concerned with the guilty ones being exonerated or getting obscenely light sentences? Because many innocent people suffer in some way at the hands of the guilty who go free. If an innocent man or woman is imprisoned, is there commensurate suffering? Certainly the wrongly convicted, and their family members would suffer, but how much worse is the suffering of an innocent victim of a murderer who should not have been free, and of course the suffering of the victim's family and friends.
I am more concerned about the fate of innocent people on the street who are prey to criminals than I am about possibly wrongfully convicting an accused. Of course we should try to minimize mistakes, but we are leaning far too much toward the lenient side, with predictable results. To fret and worry that we are executing innocent people while guilty and dangerous ones are running free is to have one's priorities upside down.
Here, I will recite the usual cliche that 'one innocent person convicted is too much', but when one guilty murderer or molester goes free, far more than one innocent person suffers, in most cases. And too often it is the most vulnerable who suffer.
One innocent victim of a wrongly-freed criminal is too much.
I think it is the stuff of Hollywood movies and of liberals' fevered fantasies to believe that innocent people, who have never done a wrong in their lives, are whisked off the streets, wrongly accused, railroaded by evil prosecutors, convicted by corrupt, biased juries and 'hanging judges,' and sentenced to death. I don't believe it's statistically likely that an innocent 'first offender' would end up on death row and be executed without a chance at justice.
If anything, the process drags on and on, as delays are sought, appeals are made, and years pass before a convicted murderer is executed, if ever. This process affords more than enough time for evidence to be gathered and presented to exonerate an innocent person, if he is truly innocent.
We hear so often, thanks to Hollywood's and the news media's bias, of some innocent man who is exonerated after years in prison, thanks to DNA evidence. But what of the cases in which the evidence proves the man's guilt after all? I suspect there are more of these cases, but the media plays these down.
Every prisoner claims to be an innocent victim. It's sensible to be skeptical of those claims rather than too credulous.
Another argument often made against executing criminals is that 'it's actually crueler to sentence them to life in prison; I would rather die than spend decades in prison, so we are letting them off easy to execute them." This argument has the advantage of trying to sound rather conservative, as if punishment for the murderer really is desirable, while paradoxically claiming that the death penalty is 'letting them off easy.'
If there were no chance of a killer serving life in prison escaping and victimizing others, which we know is not realistic, maybe there could be a case made for life in prison. But prisoners in maximum security prisons have escaped and have killed again. Think of the Texas Seven.
Others have managed to escape, or have been released by some bureaucratic incompetence or due to bad decisions by liberal judges, and have killed again. Google Kenneth McDuff.
No prison is escape-proof. Dangerous criminals whose lives are spared may one day be walking free and will almost surely do harm to more innocent people. When they do, whoever is responsible for their wrongful freedom should be held accountable for the harm they do.
And as for the supposedly harsher punishment of life in prison: maybe in the old days, the days of solitary confinement in a dank cell, fed on bread and water, or doing hard labor breaking rocks, this might, might have been true. Somewhat. Nowadays, prisons are generally not that bleak; prisoners have many amenities that some on the outside lack, such as cable TV, phone privileges, 'conjugal visits', gym equipment, and so on.
The idea that convicted killers spend time in a dark cell, alone with their supposed 'consciences', living out their lives tormented by remorse, is just straight out of a movie or a bad novel. Instead, the reality is the example of mass murderer Richard Speck in prison videotaping his 'parties' with his prison boyfriend. The videotape was shown, (the the least offensive parts, anyway) on national TV. Or think of Susan Smith, the mother who killed her children, seeking romance via personal ads while serving her sentence. Or Pam Smart, who had her husband killed, having liaisons with guards in prison. Or the Colorado 'black widow', whose name escapes me, who advertised that she would help an illegal get a green card via marriage, in exchange for companionship. I'm afraid that none of these people were sitting and repenting, weeping over their crimes, in prison. They were using and manipulating and having a good time, in many instances, at our expense.
We live in such a liberal age that even many who are in some respects conservative and who believe in being 'tough on crime', will shrink from approving the death penalty. We often hear things like 'if we kill criminals, we are just as bad as they are.' I think this kind of statement shows just how strong and pervasive liberal indoctrination is, and further, how far most people are from traditional understandings and interpretations of the Bible.
It is not just those "harsh" Protestant fundamentalists who traditionally supported the death penalty; the Catholic church followed the authority of Thomas Aquinas, and St. Augustine in approving of the death penalty for certain crimes, including murder.
If a man is a danger to the community, threatening it with disintegration by some wrongdoing of his, then his execution for the healing and preservation of the common good is to be commended. Only the public authority, not private persons, may licitly execute malefactors by public judgement. Men shall be sentenced to death for crimes of irreparable harm or which are particularly perverted." - St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Further, Thomas Aquinas also said that executing criminals 'protects those who are undergoing capital punishment from the harm they may suffer . . . through increased sinning which might continue if their life went on."
Surely this makes sense from a Christian point-of-view. If the criminal is truly repentant, I would think the pain of remorse, and the fear of doing the same things again, would make them prefer to pay the penalty.
One such criminal, who was a child-killer, requested the death penalty, and said
"I must be executed before I have an opportunity to escape or kill someone within the prison.''
Further, he said that he knew he would kill again, including killing prison guards, if he had the chance.
Predictably, liberals took this statement as proof that he was just a poor sick man who should be spared and 'helped.'
His statement contained another reason for execution: prisoners have killed, even in prison. Prisoners have been killed (remember Jeffrey Dahmer?) while in prison. Better, from the criminal's perspective, to have been executed than subjected to 'justice' at the hands of another killer in prison, surely.
The fewer killers in prison, the safer for those who work there, as well as for the less dangerous prisoners there. Why keep dangerous individuals alive indefinitely, where they can wreak more harm?
Those who are not Christians will not be persuaded by arguments from Scripture or from Christian scholars, but they should at least concede that our society, though it may have fallen away to some extent from its Christian roots, is centered on Christian morality. The weakening of Christianity, and the decline in familiarity with the Bible and our Western traditions, have meant that our society is becoming more incoherent, in the true sense of the word, every day. We can't just cobble together a crazy-quilt of do-it-yourself liberal 'morality' and expect our society to hold together, or to be a safe and stable place in which to live and raise our families. There have to be some agreed-upon values and standards, and liberalism has made that more and more difficult, as liberalism constructs a warped mirror-image of Christianity which even cites Scripture in the cause of some rather un-Biblical ideas.
Here's another thing which crosses my mind: the anti-death penalty forces often point the accusing finger at the United States as being a 'backward' country because of our (rather infrequent, in some states) application of the death penalty. They like to associate us with some of the more barbaric countries which still execute criminals. Guilt by association.
It's often said that America is the 'only first-world nation still executing people', or words to that effect.
Actually Japan still uses the death penalty, and I think they are actually more sensible about it than we are, though some would say they are too harsh also.
But if our rulers are to go through with this rumored shotgun marriage between the U.S. and Mexico and Canada, and if we ultimately move towards some kind of one world system, with the U.N. having some authority over us all, our justice system is finished. Mexico and Canada do not use the death penalty. We will be the red-headed stepchild made to conform to Mexico's and Canada's ideas of justice. The system of jurisprudence that grew up over the centuries in England and later here will not be part of any New World Order. It's one more part of our longstanding traditions that will be slated for extinction should we lose our sovereignty.
Our system is not perfect, but I don't see any other country as being a superior example to follow. Our forefathers took great care to give us our jurisprudence system and we should not jettison it lightly.

Labels: Capital Punishment, Justice System, Media Bias, Western Civilization, Western Culture

First, a hopeful sign or two: what a pleasant surprise to read about a judge who favors enforcing our laws -- equally, with no preference given to protected groups. What a radical notion in this age of liberal madness:
A state Superior Court judge called for a grassroots effort to change federal laws which he said currently allow legal immigrants and U.S. citizens to be prosecuted for unlawful activity, but prohibits prosecution of illegal aliens.
It's happening in communities like Gettysburg and Shenandoah and Tamaqua, Judge Correale "Corry" F. Stevens told members of the Adams County Republican Committee Thursday evening at the county ag center, and it could happen in Black Horse Tavern and Aspers and Zora. For example, he said state police stopped a van for speeding on an interstate and detained the four illegals they found inside.
They called ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and they were told, "Let them go," Stevens said. The policemen had no choice.
He offered several additional examples showing that in situations that would result in arrest for legal immigrants and U.S. citizens, illegal aliens would be set free.
[...]"The federal policy is non-enforcement," he said.
[...]He said voters should ask their federal senators and representatives to amend the federal law to give:

police the power to arrest;

county district attorneys the power to prosecute; and

county judges the powers to deport;

all without needing the permission of the federal government.

"They're committing crimes and the federal government is not doing anything," Stevens said.'
So maybe common sense is not dead in our judicial branch, at least not in Judge Stevens' jurisdiction.
This is what is needed: to take action at the local level, since the feds seem determined to let anarchy reign where immigration and borders are concerned.
And here is a particularly ugly story of a crime by two of those hard-working, undocumented folks just looking for a better life in what was once a pleasant, safe town. The two perpetrators should have been dealt with by the judicial system long ago, but at least this judge, Judge Falcone, shows a no-nonsense attitude toward the demanding defendant.
Morristown rape suspect wants 5th lawyer
The trial of a man charged with dragging a woman off a Morristown sidewalk and raping her was put on hold Wednesday after he demanded a new attorney, his fifth in 21 months.
Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Falcone, sitting in Morristown, agreed to relieve the latest lawyer for suspect Joel A. Romero, 27, because Romero refuses to speak to counsel Douglas Del Tufo and claims he does not have "his best interests at heart."
Since he was caught in the act of assaulting a 20-year-old woman on July 10, 2005, Romero has gone through three public defenders and one private lawyer, Del Tufo.
[...]The Morris County Prosecutor�s Office has extended a 30-year plea deal. Falcone said he had been willing to consider a 24-year sentence but upped the offer back to 30 years Wednesday after Romero started making demands, through a Spanish-to-English court interpreter.
"I want one who speaks Spanish," said Romero, who is in the United States illegally from Honduras.
"Too bad!" blurted out deputy Public Defender Dolores Mann, who was watching the hearing in court.
"And I want to win the lottery!" the judge snapped at Romero. "You don�t run the system. Let me say this again: You don�t run the system."
I like Judge Falcone's gutsy attitude; too often I've read accounts of weakling liberal judges who coddle such defendants because of their 'special' status.
Now we will just have to see if somebody accuses the above-mentioned judges of 'racism' or 'xenophobia' for taking a non-coddling stance towards illegals.
Unfortunately this kind of decision by a judge is, depressingly, more typical.
And apparently our federal courts are being swamped by immigration felony cases. This is no surprise to any of us who have been following this situation. It's just one more cost of our 'cheap labor.'
And speaking of our judicial system and illegal aliens, the issue of 'sanctuary cities' has been in the news, with San Francisco possibly joining a growing list of cities which in effect have nullified our immigration laws, declaring that they will flout the existing statutes and protect the lawbreakers. Note that New York City is one of those scofflaw cities, which harbors illegal aliens. And with Rudy Giuliani being touted as the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2008, please keep in mind that he was a determined advocate of the sanctuary policy in NYC, to the extent of defying the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Heather MacDonald in the City Journal wrote this extensive piece in 2004, detailing Giuliani's defiant position:
Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city�s sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to "terrorize people." Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans�four of them illegal�abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS.
Citizen outrage forced Mayor Michael Bloomberg to revisit the city�s sanctuary decree yet again. In May 2003, Bloomberg tweaked the policy minimally to allow city staffers to inquire into immigration status only if it is relevant to the awarding of a government benefit. Though Bloomberg�s new rule said nothing about reporting immigration violations to federal officials, advocates immediately claimed that it did allow such reporting, and the ethnic lobbies went ballistic. ''
So if Giuliani has supposedly gotten religion on this issue, we should remember his sanctuary policies, and his past pro-illegal statements:
As other anti-immigration movements spread across the country in 1990s, Mr. Giuliani consistently pushed back. "The anti-immigration issue that�s now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past," he said in 1996. "You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement � these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that is different, and to stop immigration."
Giuliani misrepresents the Know-Nothing movement, or the American Party, as do most people who refer to it as a favorite whipping boy, a symbol of 'hateful' nativism and xenophobia.
And Giuliani invokes the 'proposition nation', the idea that being an American is only a matter of uttering some magic incantation about freedom or liberty, and adhering to an 'idea':
But as he talks about immigration on the campaign trail, Mr. Giuliani suggests that his core beliefs have not changed much since his days as mayor, often quoting a speech Abraham Lincoln gave in the 1850s.
"He made a beautiful speech in which he said the best American is not the American who has been here the longest or the one who just arrived," Mr. Giuliani said recently. "It is the one who understands the principles of America the best because we are a country held together by ideas."
This is just one more example of the 'my grandfather was an immigrant' syndrome; Giuliani, like so very many of the open borders, America-as-an-idea liberals, takes his position based on sentimentalism or defensiveness about his recent immigrant roots.
Will 'conservatives' fall for Giuliani's tough-guy persona? On the immigration issue, he is not on the side of the American people. Yet it seems that so many 'conservatives' are falling in line behind Giuliani. If he is nominated and elected, we will see mass immigration continuing if not accelerating.

Labels: Illegal Immigration, Justice System, Open Borders, Presidential Candidates

Is anybody surprised?
Judge denies freedom plea by jailed ex-agents
A federal appeals court judge yesterday denied a motion by former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean that they be released from prison pending appeals in their convictions for shooting a drug-smuggling suspect.
[...]
They sought release pending the outcome of their appeals, but the motion was denied by U.S. District Judge Fortunato Pedro "Pete" Benavides of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Austin, Texas, who said the men "had not shown unique or unusual circumstances that justify their release based on an exceptional reason."
Judge Benavides granted a motion by Ramos that his appeal be sealed and ordered the government's response to both men's motions sealed. ''
And here, there are allegations that another Border Patrol officer, who was a friend of the drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, was a double agent:
I believe Rene Sanchez acted as a 'double agent' in the Ramos-Compean case," Joe Loya, father of Ramos's wife Monica, told WND. "He was doing everything he could to protect his life-long friend, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, but at the same time he was working with Johnny Sutton to make sure Ramos and Compean were convicted."
Loya further charged that he had reason to believe "Rene Sanchez's actions make it look like he could have been in the drug business with Aldrete-Davila all along.'
But the possibility of ascertaining the truth of this whole matter, much less of obtaining justice, looks more remote all the time, as the system seems to thwart every effort made to determine what really happened, and why.
Doug Patton, in this piece at Human Events, argues for a Presidential pardon for Ramos and Compean:
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two former border patrol agents, are now serving hard time in prison. If you are unfamiliar with these two men, you are getting far too much of your news from the mainstream media, which has virtually ignored their story. Ramos and Compean were on duty along the Rio Grande in Texas when a Mexican drug smuggler named Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila tried to flee back across the river into Mexico. Aldrete-Davila brandished what the agents thought was a gun. Ramos and Compean fired their firearms at the suspect, but when he continued to flee, they logically assumed he had not been injured.
Fast forward two weeks, and our tax dollars were being used to transport the drug smuggler back into the United States, where he was given full immunity to testify against Ramos and Compean -- for shooting him in the buttocks! They were tried and sentenced to 10 years each.
Subsequent information has shown that "evidence" brought against Ramos and Compean was fabricated by officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
[...]
So let�s review: Two border agents shoot a drug smuggler and end up serving time in federal prison. A bounty hunter brings a dangerous serial rapist to justice and gets extradited to face the hell of a Mexican prison. And Scooter Libby faces a possible sentence of 20 years in prison for leaking the name of a CIA employee whose name was already known, while Bill Clinton�s former security advisor, Sandy Berger, gets a slap on the wrist for stuffing Top Secret documents in his pants and stealing them from the National Archives.
Pardon these men immediately, Mr. President.''
Meanwhile, Ramos and Compean have their own song now. Michael Britton, a Southern California musician, has recorded a song he wrote about Ramos and Compean.
Michael Britton, who makes a living performing an acoustic one-man-band show, said he was inspired to act when he learned details of the case. Ramos and Compean were convicted and sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison respectively after a drug smuggler they shot fleeing across the border was given immunity to testify against them.
"I'm upset that men like Ramos and Compean are sitting in federal prison simply for doing their jobs, while drug smugglers are allowed to go free and sue the Border Patrol for violating their 'civil rights,' he said.
You can hear the song here.
And last, this op-ed piece implies that many immigration-restrictionist conservatives are rallying behind Ramos and Compean not because they are truly thought to be innocent, but because of frustration and anger towards our government in its refusal (I started to say failure, but decided refusal was correct) to enforce our laws.
Could the movement around Ramos and Compean simply be a byproduct of the American people�s frustration toward their government? Are Americans capable of excusing the actions of these men to make a statement to an administration that seemingly cares more about Iraqi confidence in their government�s ability to protect and preserve Iraq, than the American people�s confidence in its own leadership to protect and preserve America?''
The writer of this op-ed makes the same unconvincing arguments which I have read and heard from the usual 'respectable Republicans'; his supporting evidence being the U.S. Attorney's Office transcripts.
The writer points out that the official version of the story contradicts the version given by Ramos and Compean and other skeptics of the administration's version. But as usual, the administration, and Johnny Sutton's office, must be right, and the opposition wrong. Obviously this op-ed writer has not chosen to read any of the voluminous evidence, which I and others have linked to previously, casting doubt on the 'official' version of events. Even if one believes that the agents are guilty as hell, which the op-ed writer apparently believes, the fact remains that Ramos and Compean seem to have been way more important than they seemed, since the government seems to have gone to extraordinary lengths to see that they were made an example of and punished to the full extent of the law and more. I invite anyone who doubts that to check the records concerning the prosecution and sentencing of Border Patrol agents accused of wrongdoing. There are a number of such cases, involving agents who colluded with human smugglers, illegal aliens, and drug lords, often for an extended period of time, flouting the laws of the land, the laws they are sworn to uphold, and who received milder treatment from our government, and lesser sentences. How does that work? How do the knee-jerk defenders of the administration account for that? Surely men who may have gone a little overboard in doing their job should not be punished as harshly as agents who knowingly broke our laws and colluded with drug lords and illegals. It should give people pause that men who are trying to uphold our laws and protect our borders are made an example of, while rogue agents, with a long pattern of corruption, are given lesser sentences. It shows the priorities of our administration. But the op-ed writer's argument, following the usual pattern, is thus:
Either the US Attorney General for the District of West Texas, 12 jurors, two additional border patrol agents, and one judge are heartlessly lying to "get" these two agents for some dark motive or agenda, or these cause groups are using this event to elicit donations and pull media attention back to the border. Media attention that was lost when the majority of the politicians who responded to their pressure lost their offices in the last election.''
This writer is either being disingenuous or he has obstinately refused to read the many reports which cast doubt on the administration's case. I am not going to repost all the links I've previously posted here on the subject, but there is plenty of evidence of irregularities in the government's case. That is not the same as saying, in the straw man argument above, that Johnny Sutton, a judge, 12 jurors, and various others all 'lied' in a plot serving 'some dark motive or agenda.' Various people involved may have lied for venal ends of their own, and it is hardly unknown for the government to deceive in the name of 'secrecy' or in the name of plain old CYA. The op-ed writer surely does not think that people in official positions are scrupulously honest at all times; they are as human as anyone else, and government officials can and do lie and obfuscate. Homeland Security officials admitted during recent Congressional hearings on the Ramos-Compean case, that they did in fact 'mislead' the Congressmen in previous statements, admitting that the evidence they claimed to have never in fact existed.
And the stories of overzealous prosecution of law enforcement officers like Gilmer Hernandez and David Sipe should confirm that there is a pattern to these kinds of incidents: the message seems to be that those who are zealous in going after drug smugglers and illegals are going to be made an example of. As to what the 'dark motive or agenda' is, I can only guess, as can the rest of us; we need to examine this pattern and determine where the orders are coming from.
But the need of some people to defend their anointed elected leaders, and to defend their Party, often trumps the desire to know the truth, or to seek justice. It must make life incredibly simple, when your only concern is the well-being of 'your' political party our 'your' guys in office.

Labels: Border Patrol, Illegal Immigration, Justice System, Open Borders

Did anybody catch Tuesday's Lou Dobbs Tonight special on the border? I saw only part of the segment in which Dobbs interviewed Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney who is now being criticized for his seemingly overzealous prosecution of the two Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.
Dobbs is to be commended for his dogged devotion to the illegal immigration issue; no one else in the MSM pursues this subject as relentlessly as he does. In the part of the interview with Johnny Sutton which I saw, I was amazed at his toughness with Sutton. I thought he really had Sutton cornered, and he kept peppering him with questions. Bill O'Reilly over at Fox looks positively timid compared to Dobbs in this interview; talk about the 'no-spin zone.' Dobbs had Sutton on the ropes; Sutton did not acquit himself well at all. He had no convincing answers, and he was on the defensive, sputtering and stumbling at times when Dobbs had him pinned.
Dobbs kept asking him who instigated the prosecution.
DOBBS: ... did you get orders from Washington, D.C. to prosecute this case?
SUTTON: Absolutely not. This case...
DOBBS: Did you in point of fact ask for the FBI to investigate it?
SUTTON: No, I mean the FBI...
DOBBS: Why not?
SUTTON: These are standard procedures. The FBI was notified. OIG was notified...
DOBBS: They're notified.
SUTTON: They decided who -- who...
DOBBS: The inspector general is caught point blank lying to Congress about this case. Where did they get the idea that these agents were dirty?
SUTTON: Six months after the trial, there's a briefing in Washington that...
DOBBS: No, no, no.
SUTTON: Yes, yes, yes.
DOBBS: No, no.
SUTTON: Six months after the trial, there's a briefing. I can't tell what some bureaucrats say in Washington. That didn't affect the jury. The jury already...
(CROSSTALK)
DOBBS: You're doing what they tell you to do because the OIG led the investigation instead of the FBI. And now you're calling them bureaucrats?
SUTTON: What these guys...
DOBBS: I agree with you, but...
SUTTON: They're talking about a case that they had nothing with. The jury had already convicted these guys before these congressmen got their hearing. But of course, out there in the world, that's a big -- that's a big conspiracy.
DOBBS: If you had it to do over tonight, would you still go after these two men?
SUTTON: Absolutely. In America, the cops are the good guys.
Transcript is here; read the rest; the segments with Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Ted Poe are also worth reading.
And here is more background on Sutton:
A respected U.S. prosecutor faces a conservative backlash over convictions that sent two Border Patrol agents to prison
WASHINGTON - Throughout his rise from a rookie prosecutor's job in Houston to a position as a U.S. attorney pursuing criminals across much of Texas, Johnny Sutton said, he was bound by an unwavering ethic: Do the right thing and follow the facts, even when they lead to "unhappy places" such as errant public servants.
Sutton's adherence to that credo has transformed him from a relatively low-profile federal prosecutor to a punching bag on conservative talk shows and Web sites, where he's been vilified for weeks for prosecuting two Border Patrol agents who now are imprisoned for shooting a Mexican drug courier.
Another prosecution, involving a Texas sheriff's deputy who fired at a vehicle loaded with illegal immigrants, has heightened the outcry. T.J. Bonner, the head of the national Border Patrol agents' union, calls Sutton "public enemy No. 1." Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a former Harris County judge who remembers Sutton as an able young prosecutor, now accuses him of choosing "the wrong side" in the border war.
Read the rest here.
And last, here is an interesting piece about Sutton's possible role in the DOJ firing scandal; see the e-mails in which Sutton is mentioned.
I don't know that we will ever know the whole story on this case.

Labels: Border Patrol, Borders, Justice System

First, the story being discussed here has been posted on a number of blogs and forums, and has occasioned a lot of discussion, most of it of the garden variety shock and outrage that accompanies -- and should accompany -- any discussion of such acts.
However, the linked discussion begins with a reasonable blog entry -- at least until I hit this sentence:
For that matter, while the possibility of the execution of an innocent man troubles me, I don't regard this consideration as very telling.''
Execution? Innocent man? I'm lost here, I confess.
First, there was no 'execution' in the legal sense. The man was stopped in the act of committing horrible violence on a child, violence which was real enough and serious enough to cause the child's death. He had to be stopped. As for his possibly being 'an innocent man' -- good grief; there were several witnesses to this thing, and it seems the police arrived on the violent scene in progress.
It would seem that there was little doubt about his 'innocence.' So I don't understand the blogger's mention of that as a possibility.
The discussion that follows degenerates into a 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' exercise in splitting hairs over capital punishment and whether it is or is not moral, or Christian, or fair, or whatever, and whether concern for 'potentially innocent' suspects should be given equal consideration alongside victims.
The exasperatingly pedantic tone of the discussion adds to the frustration it inspired in me.
Another thing: the discussion (and many of the news stories reporting the incident in question) made no mention of the name of the suspect. Just for the record, his name was Hispanic (Sergio Aguilar) and it may be he was illegal, but that is not the main point. His heritage and culture are not inconsequential, as far as I'm concerned. Why? Because culture plays a part in how we comport ourselves individually and in groups. And culture is linked with race. Certain groups are demonstrably more likely to commit violent crimes. That's something most oblivious 'I'm no racist' Americans need to understand; the fact that we are becoming a Hispanic country will not just mean more good Mexican restaurants. It will mean our country will come to resemble Mexico more and more, and this kind of thing is part of it.
But that's not the point of this post. I'm more troubled by the fact that even among conservatives, or 'conservatives', there seems to be a moral obtuseness that hints at how much liberal ideas have filtered into the conservative discourse. This fussing over whether the mad-dog individual beating the child was 'innocent', whether in a hair-splitting legalistic sense, or in an absolute moral sense, should not be taking place. At all. Especially not among conservatives.
30 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago, I cannot imagine those questions being raised and fretted over except among hyper-liberals.
Not so long ago, it was simply a given that should citizens or police come upon such an act happening, the attacker would need to be stopped, by whatever means worked, up to and including lethal force. The fretting about how someone could have stopped him without killing him is just decadent.
I suppose, in a way, this is a predictable side-effect of years of propaganda on the right about how ''all (human) life is sacred.'' Now, this line seems to have come into use as a weapon against the pro-abort crowd. However, the liberals, while not deeming unborn babies' lives to be sacred, certainly seem to think that all criminals (or suspects') lives are sacred. But was this idea of all human life being sacred a commonly-held idea in the old America? I honestly don't remember ever hearing it until after abortion became legalized.
Does the Bible say that 'all human life is sacred'? It certainly holds that all is created by God, and implies that all beings are created for a purpose. Since God is the Creator and giver of life, it isn't ours to decide arbitrarily to end a life, our own included, unless certain circumstances existed. The Bible commands capital punishment for murder. And here, the liberal will say, regarding the situation of the man beating the baby, that 'he hadn't been tried or convicted.' Yes, but under Biblical law, someone threatening innocent life is to be stopped from taking life, by force if need be.
The Bible always differentiates between shedding innocent blood and the blood of a criminal, or even someone in the act of harming another, who has not yet been 'tried and convicted'.
I have never been able to fathom the obtuseness of many liberals who cannot or will not see the difference between using lethal force to stop a dangerous attacker, or executing a killer, and taking an innocent life. It's as though most of our people in the West have become morally blinded.
Distinctions are important; how can we have reached the point where we seriously think that it may be morally wrong to kill a man committing such a heinous act? Can we no longer discern between killing someone for a valid reason, in extreme circumstances where a life is at stake, and wanton murder? Have we gotten too squeamish and too timid to deal with moral absolutes, and thus resort to shilly-shallying over life-and-death matters? I think we have, and I think this is manifest in many areas of our society these days. For example, our reluctance to defend our borders. Nobody wants to be unfair to these nice people who just come here to work and make a better living for themselves and their children. Like Mr. Aguilar, perhaps? Nobody wants to believe that among those nice, hard-working church-going, pious immigrants that there are some like Mr. Aguilar. We must always presume the best of everybody, the evidence notwithstanding.
We refuse to take tough stands and make hard choices. We would rather stand by and wring our hands and discuss fine moral points about the ethics of any possible action we might take to stop whatever evil we are up against. Sometimes, we just have to act and not stop to analyze and shilly-shally. (And by the way, that word comes from the phrase 'Shall I? Shall I?" The favorite phrase of the hesitant and the timid).
Sometimes we don't have the luxury of being timid and self-critical. Sometimes we have to 'act, act in the living present.'
But as for the question of killing a suspect, it's unfortunate, I think, that the English translation of the Ten Commandments uses the phrase 'thou shalt not kill' when the original phrase meant 'thou shalt not murder'. Hence the moral confusion of many about capital punishment. Every time some killer is executed and the bleeding-hearts gather around to protest and weep crocodile tears, the protesters carry signs saying 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.' And someone lectures us, saying that if we execute killers, we are 'no better than they are.' Such people are moral imbeciles.
As for the case of the man, Aguilar, murdering the child, I can only say that anybody who is not outraged and sickened by his actions does not deserve the label of 'civilized human being'. Anybody who wants to split hairs about whether or not he may have been 'innocent' has his priorities exactly backwards.

Labels: Capital Punishment, Crime, Justice System, Traditional Morality

From the Newark Star-Ledger, we read that according to U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, illegal ''immigrants'' are not criminals.
Huh?
Immigrants and their advocates today found an unlikely ally: the top law enforcement officer in New Jersey.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie surprised many at a Dover church public forum when he said sneaking into the United States is not a criminal act.
"Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime," Christie told more than 60 residents and town officials. "The whole phrase of 'illegal immigrant' connotes that the person, by just being here, is committing a crime."
Being undocumented may be a civil wrong, but it's not a criminal act, Christie said.
"Don't let people make you believe that that's a crime that the U.S. Attorney's Office should be doing something about," he added of entering the country illegally. "It is not."
After having read the whole article (read the rest at the link, if you think it will help) I still say: huh?
Can some of my readers with legal savvy or knowledge explain this to me? Or is he just obfuscating and announcing that he has no intention of doing his job? I really don't understand how something that is illegal is not at the same time criminal. Is this just parsing of words, or is there something I am not understanding? Or does it depend on what the meaning of ''is'' is?
I ask these questions in all seriousness, not rhetorically. Explanations, anyone?

Labels: Illegal Immigration, Invasion, Justice System, Legal System, Open Borders, Rogue Government

Sutton Withheld Exculpatory Evidence In Border Patrol Trial
By Darnell McGavock of Independent Conservative
As far as major finds in how badly the case of former US Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean was not only messed up, but intentionally tipped towards their conviction, legal experts say this is the biggest! The defense says that a document from the Department of Homeland Security confirms that two supervisors were on the scene the day an illegal immigrant drug smuggler claims he was shot in the butt. The defense is just finding out about this document, that US Attorney Johnny Sutton�s office had and did not reveal to them during the trial. This was all reported on CNN show Lou Dobbs Tonight last night. I�ve YouTubed the video and you can watch it below.

Why did Sutton�s office withhold exculpatory information?
Ramos and Compean said they never filed a report because supervisors were there. Sutton claimed otherwise in court. Their version of the story has now been verified and once again we see another obvious lie from the mouth of Johnny Sutton.
Jeffrey Toobin, CNN Senior Legal Analyst says this news is potentially major, as opposed to other news he does not feel is as impacting to changing the outcome of the case. Toobin says this moves things into a "new category" that may cause a new trial. Lou Dobbs says that Johnny Sutton "lied" when he said he had no choice but to offer immunity. And World Net Daily has found more information about illegal alien drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila still running dope into our country, after being given medical treatment at US taxpayer expense. This offense was gagged by the judge and the family of Ramos and Compean still refuse to even talk about it, for fear that Johnny Sutton will come after them.
We need and I mean NEED a full Congressional investigation of this entire case right now. We also need to know who in our government knew what, when and what orders they gave to Johnny Sutton and/or the judge. We need to know every single detail related to President George W. Bush involving this matter. It�s time to stop reading and start writing your congresspeople. We now have more than enough information to not simply be suspicious about this case, we know these men were setup!

Labels: Border Patrol, Borders, Justice System