Article

2004-12-30 Home Front: Culture Wars

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by davemac 2004-12-30 21:07|| || Front Page|| [11 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 It's too bad she doesn't seem get nearly as excited about the innocent.

Protect the guilty, kill the innocent!

Posted by Dishman 2004-12-30 2:23:43 AM|| 2004-12-30 2:23:43 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Life is hard when you are a sister in the order of St Pancake I guess.

She could be productive helping the families of these murdering bastards victims but she made her choice. She is a loser just like the evil scum she has sided with. If there was no death peanalty she would be railing against life sentences. Then we could be like Europe where murders get a actual 15 year sentence at most. People like this are revolting.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-12-30 5:25:38 AM|| [http://www.slhess.com] 2004-12-30 5:25:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 The author of this drivel is the local book editor for the Times-Picayune. Beyond sucking up to Ann Rice and shilling for trash like this, I'm not really sure what her qualifications are.

Note the commment on Dobie Gillis, Prejean's case is not that the guy is innocent but that the Supreme Court changed the rules two years later.

The story also states that Prejean notes that she is opposed in her 'crusade' by her dedication of the book to some microscopic anti-death penalty victims group.

The fact that she quotes Mother Jones tells me all I need to know about Helen Prejean.

Posted by davemac 2004-12-30 8:05:21 AM|| 2004-12-30 8:05:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 "When I wrote 'Dead Man Walking,' I was confronting all those things: What do you do with your grief? What do you do with your sense of anger? What do you do with your sense of hopelessness?

Jeez, I don't know, sister.
Why don't you ask the loved ones of these maggot's victims? Maybe they figured out how to deal with it? But I doubt it.

Posted by tu3031 2004-12-30 8:48:10 AM|| 2004-12-30 8:48:10 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 It's one thing to be against the death penalty, but another to direct all your sympathy towards those who are murderers rather than their victims. Remember "do not murder"? Funny things those Ten Commandments.

Posted by Spot 2004-12-30 8:54:55 AM|| 2004-12-30 8:54:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Dobie Gillis got the death penalty? I mean, the show wasn't all that good, but . . . isn't that still a bit harsh? Nobody got the death penalty for My Mother the Car or Me and the Chimp or Thicke of the Night or Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire or . . . .

Posted by Mike 2004-12-30 10:16:42 AM|| 2004-12-30 10:16:42 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Abolishing the death penalty? Why not? But when a ten years old girl is raped and killed by a guy who had already done the same thing and was released (like in Europe) then I am all for putting a dozen liberals on the electric chair. The _first_ duty of the state is not to be lenient towards criminals but to protect the innocent. Those who endanger child lives with their poseur attitudes have to pay for it.

Posted by JFM 2004-12-30 3:18:05 PM|| 2004-12-30 3:18:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 You either support the death penalty for the guilty perpetrators.....or for the innocent victims. Those are the ONLY two choices.

My only hesitancy is, BE DAMN SURE they're guilty, (dna and all that),......THEN FRY THEIR SORRY ASS!!!

Posted by Floting Granter5198 2004-12-30 3:18:56 PM|| 2004-12-30 3:18:56 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 It's one thing to be against the death penalty, but another to direct all your sympathy towards those who are murderers rather than their victims.

I have zero sympathy for murderers and could not care less if they're executed. I am also foursquare against the death penalty. Innocent people are executed in this country every year, an outrage that will continue so long as we have incompetent defenders and judges. In other words, forever. There is utterly no justification for killing the innocent-- not deterrence (the death penalty has no deterrent effect) or justice (one innocent life taken outweighs a thousand Jeffrey Dahmer monsters justly killed). This is not a "liberal" position any more than standing up for due process and against an overbearing or tyrannical state is. Conservatives should be against the death penalty as well.

The death penatly is a sham that allows incompetent politicians to pretend they're doing something about crime. A freak show whose unintended but inevitable consequence is the execution of innocent people every year in this country. Shameful, scandalous: piss on our cowardly politicians for not having the guts to put an end to this scam.

Posted by lex 2004-12-30 3:32:23 PM|| 2004-12-30 3:32:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 Lex, what about the innocent lives taken by the one thousand Jeffrey Dahmer you release? How nice to play liberal when what is at stake is the lives of other people's children.

Posted by JFM 2004-12-30 3:42:44 PM|| 2004-12-30 3:42:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Lock them up for life. Sorry but there's absolutely no reason to permit the execution of innocent people. The point's not leniency for Dahmer or Mumia or whoever-- I couldn't care less about such scum-- but about the obscure people who are wrongly convicted and executed every year. It happens, it's disgusting, it should shame every one of us. This is simply not a liberal or conservative issue. Which perhaps is why none of our politicians will show any courage on the matter.

Posted by lex 2004-12-30 3:52:05 PM|| 2004-12-30 3:52:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 fwiw my position is NOT at all the same as that of those euro-hyenas who scream every time a truly guilty, truly monstrous killer is executed. Those executions are just acts. The point is that our process is always going to be flawed and prone to error, especially as regards obscure impoverished defendants of sub-standard intelligence, and therefore we will continue to kill utterly blameless citizens along with the monsters.

It is infuriating that this issue has been poisoned by the idiocies of both the Howard Stern-type geekshow touts and the euro/Sister Prejean "save 'em all" types. The goal is to save the innocents, period. And the only way to ensure that is to imprison the monsters for life.

Posted by lex 2004-12-30 3:57:22 PM|| 2004-12-30 3:57:22 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 A small semantics adjustment, if you please...

Y'know, the claim that innocent people are executed every year strikes me as exaggeration and embroidery. Innocent people have been executed, yes, but saying it happens every year as fact requires substantiation. I do not believe you -- and everything else you said hinges upon this being fact.

Now if you said it has happened before (fact) and, given human nature, it will happen again, and thus I am against it - you'd have a foursquare argument.

Posted by .com 2004-12-30 4:05:44 PM|| 2004-12-30 4:05:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Lex

Lock them up for life? Fine. But did you know that in Europe there is no real life sentence because they consider that this would put the guards in danger? (Ie the inmate has nothing more to fear). If you can keep them in prison AND keep the guards safe, I am for it but if you can't then you atre playing with other people's lives.

Another test for your theory. You capture a major terrorrist and you keep it locked for life. But while in jail he prozelitizes and instructs people who are not sentenced for life and who, when released will cause hundreds or even thousands of people. What are you going to do? Or will you have the nerve to tell to the parents of the victims that all is well as long as you didn't dirty your hands with the terrorist's blood?

Posted by JFM 2004-12-30 5:03:02 PM|| 2004-12-30 5:03:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Innocent people are executed in this country every year,..

Got any proof of that?

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2004-12-30 5:15:43 PM|| 2004-12-30 5:15:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 As I say, I have nothing in common with the euro approach, which is equally absurd.

As to terrorists, why would you execute them? We should interrogate them for all the information we can get. They're worth far more to us alive than dead.

.com, I don't know at what number your moral calculus begins to operate. Amnesty reports that the ratio of those convicted and executed to those falsely convicted and sentenced to death (but not executed) is 6:1. Other sources say the ratio is 8:1. Either way, there have been something on the order of 600-800 executions since 1976 and about 100 death row inmates found to be innocent and released during that same time.

At least 1%, and probably several times more, of all US death sentences imposed since 1972 have been imposed on people who were innocent of the crime.

Amnesty notes:
"Remedying these hideous mistakes (for the innocents who were released from death row) took anywhere from two to 22 years; many of these innocent people came within hours of execution.The true number of innocent people condemned and then released is undoubtedly higher. When a capital conviction is overturned, prosecutors will frequently offer a sentence of 'time served' in return for a guilty plea. The defendant thus "admits" their guilt as the price of their freedom, rather than face further incarceration, another trial and the possibility of a new death sentence. It is likely that a large number of defendants who enter guilty pleas following reversal were not guilty of the crime for which they were originally convicted."

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510691998

Posted by lex 2004-12-30 5:25:31 PM|| 2004-12-30 5:25:31 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 Note that this is not my or any outsider's subjective opinion as to innocence; this is the state itself admitting that it f**ked up and reversing the sentence for a convicted death row inmate. And again, those whom the state proclaims innocent and mistakenly convicted-- Amnesty says 72 such cases since 1976, others say it's higher-- are a subset of all those midtakenly convicted. The real number of innocents who have passed through or are still on death row during the last thirty years is undoubtedly in the hundreds. That's a national disgrace.

Again, this isn't a liberal or a conservative issue. It's about citizens opposing the monstrous deprivation by the state of a free citizen's most fundamental right imaginable, his right to live.

Posted by lex 2004-12-30 5:33:07 PM|| 2004-12-30 5:33:07 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Deep Fat. Fry 'em.

Play word games and sematics after lunch.

Posted by Shipman 2004-12-30 5:55:05 PM|| 2004-12-30 5:55:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 Lex, don't play stupid please. By the time they are sentenced the terrorist has been interrogated and all info extracted. All he is doing is sitting in his cell and proselitizing. Then his pupils kill and it is YOUR fault for allowing him to live. Or are you willing to keep it in complete isolation for life?

Posted by JFM 2004-12-30 5:55:43 PM|| 2004-12-30 5:55:43 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 If you can keep them in prison AND keep the guards safe,

The solution to that would ofcourse be retaining the death penalty for those who commit murder *within* jail.

Posted by Aris Katsaris 2004-12-30 6:13:29 PM|| [http://www.livejournal.com/~katsaris/] 2004-12-30 6:13:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 are you willing to keep it in complete isolation for life?

Yes.

Posted by lex 2004-12-30 6:14:54 PM|| 2004-12-30 6:14:54 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 I'm not. DNA proof? check. Habeas Appeal? check. stick the needle.

Posted by Frank G 2004-12-30 6:20:40 PM|| 2004-12-30 6:20:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 I think this whole "lethal injection" thing is just plain wrong. Too neat, too clinical, too gentle. Electric chair--now, that's more like it. (I prefer hanging, myself, but then I always was a little old-fashioned.)

Posted by Mike 2004-12-30 6:33:51 PM|| 2004-12-30 6:33:51 PM|| Front Page Top

#24 OK, thread's dead. haha, heehee. RIP.

Posted by lex 2004-12-30 6:37:16 PM|| 2004-12-30 6:37:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#25 By the time they are sentenced the terrorist has been interrogated and all info extracted. All he is doing is sitting in his cell and proselitizing.

Not in my jail, he doesn't.

-- superintendent, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Marion, IL

Posted by Steve White 2004-12-30 6:42:00 PM|| 2004-12-30 6:42:00 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 No Frank it is: DNA proof? check. Habeas Appeal? check. pull trigger BLAM.

It's cheap and efficent and it can't be proved that it's cruel or unusual.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-12-30 6:43:23 PM|| [http://www.slhess.com] 2004-12-30 6:43:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#27 In certain cases, I wouldn't mind them being kicked to death by the victim's family. I just thought we were operating under today's rules :-)

Now if King Frank ruled.....

Posted by Frank G 2004-12-30 6:49:23 PM|| 2004-12-30 6:49:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#28 Well, how about Dead Victim Not Walking? Who is to speak for all the victims brutalized by the criminals? Where are their rights? Screw the murderers. Let them answer for their crimes.

Posted by John Q. Citizen 2004-12-30 7:13:22 PM|| 2004-12-30 7:13:22 PM|| Front Page Top

#29 Sanctimonious reply, lex. If you re-read, I was offering an accurate and defensible alternative statement for your position - with no judgement of the position itself implied.

Posted by .com 2004-12-30 7:19:16 PM|| 2004-12-30 7:19:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#30 >Amnesty reports that the ratio of those convicted<

I doubt AI is a trustworthy source. Amnesty International (Permanently Blinded in the Left Eye) long ago lost my respect and support with their constant battering of the USA as opposed to the the horrors perpetuated by the Soviet Union, Cuba, et. al. They're like any other left wing NGO; i.e.- it's easier and more profitable to go after the west than the monsters in the east. They're no better than Helen Prejean's empty empathism.

Posted by davemac 2004-12-30 9:24:20 PM|| 2004-12-30 9:24:20 PM|| Front Page Top

23:57 Bomb-a-rama
23:50 Zenster
23:50 WingedAvenger
23:46 WingedAvenger
23:42 lex
23:40 lex
23:39 WingedAvenger
23:39 Bomb-a-rama
23:35 Poison Reverse
23:34 lex
23:32 lex
23:31 Sherry
23:31 WingedAvenger
23:29 lex
23:27 WingedAvenger
23:27 lex
23:23 Capt America
23:22 Poison Reverse
23:20 Sock Puppet of Doom
23:19 lex
23:17 lex
23:16 WingedAvenger
23:10 WingedAvenger
23:09 Capt America