From the Pulpit to the Prison Cell

A Roman Catholic priest has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The priest was convicted for leading a militia to kill 1500 Tutsi refugees in a church. After failing to kill many of them by having fuel poured through the roof while grenades were thrown inside, the priest ordered the church demolished, killing the remaining refugees.

Peace, love, understanding, sanctity of human life. Obviously, this priest does not represent the views of the Catholic Church, and I am in no way suggesting that he does or ever did. It does bring to mind the Church's silence during the Holocaust, however, and the millennia-long internal contradiction between the Church's stated position and its orders and actions that include holy wars (like the crusades) and persecutions against pagans, Jews, and other Christian groups.

In the words of George Carlin, "Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that god is one of the leading causes of death." Hard to argue with the man.

Now I do not believe that being in a church should exempt a criminal from being apprehended by law enforcement authorities, but I do believe that, whenever possible, places of worship should be exempted from the horrors of war, even when soldiers stay there. If a church becomes a base of operations, or a firing station, it should be attacked. But if a soldier lays down his weapons and hides out in a church, I could see him being protected there. A civilian seeking refuge in a church, however, should never have to justify the sanctuary of a church. And for a priest to destroy a church in order to kill the civilians seeking refuge there? It ranks with some of the worst actions in all of human history.

Let the priest rot away in prison. There is no punishment too severe for this prime example of the scum of the Earth.

The 1% Crisis

Don't let the title make you think this is a tiny issue. The Pew Center on the States has come out with a report that has found that more than 1% of the U.S. adult population is in jail or prison. Unbelievable. We have 230 million adults in this country, and over 2.3 million of them are behind bars. And where is the money coming from? We cut taxes, and funding for the arts, and for health care, and for research, and for everything else you can imagine. But we spend money on building more prisons to incarcerate people for longer and longer and longer.

I once had a professor who said that no elected representative was ever voted out of office for being to tough on crime. And what puts people behind bars more than anything? Drugs. Murderers have the lowest recidivism rate of any crime (with the notable exception of serial killers, but they never get out once they are caught anyway). But drug users, who commit an almost victimless crime, will be in and out of prisons for their entire adult life. Why? Because we don't like what they put into their bodies. Heroin was once prescribed to clear the skin. Today, it can get you locked up for years. I wonder how many of that 1% are veterans?

We have the largest prison population in the world. We have the largest per capita prison population. Who joins us in the top 10? Russia and the old Soviet Bloc. Another list that we should feel extremely proud to be on, along with that list that includes China, and Saudi Arabia, and our good friend Iran. I refer, of course, to the list of countries with the death penalty.

What a terrible thought. The politics of imprisonment is a harsh one, indeed.

Moral Authority and the First 1,000

Today is a sad day in our country. Today is the day the 1,000th execution since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1977 took place in North Carolina. Kenneth Lee Boyd was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. after receiving a lethal dose of chemicals for a double murder in 1988 of his wife and father in law.

Today there is a debate raging in our country about the death penalty. Is it humane? Is it fair? Is it accurate? Is it a legitimate action for a state to take against one of its citizens? Today, I will not be touching on any of these issues. Instead, I want to focus on just one aspect of using the death penalty. Is capital punishment effective?

Just after 9:00 this morning in Houston, Texas, a clerk at Vega's Meat Market was shot during the course of a robbery attempt. He died later at the hospital. Just eight hours after the 1,000th execution in the modern era of capital punishment took place, a murder was committed in the state with the most executions during the same period. Clearly the threat of execution was no deterrent to the two men seen fleeing from the scene.

One argument for the death penalty is that it deters people from committing crimes, yet murders continue to occur. Crime has not gone down since the death penalty was reintroduced. If there is a way to deter crime, we either have not found it, or at least are not using it. When murders occur constantly across the country, there is clear and present danger to our society, and we must do everything we can to stem the tide of blood that flows through our cities. If capital punishment is the best solution we can come up with as a society to solve this problem, however, then I feel ashamed to call myself a member of this society.

I do not know what the best answer is. Maybe it is to increase funding for education. Maybe it is increased restrictions on handguns. Maybe it is increased restrictions on ammunition. All I do know is that we are not better off now that Kenneth Lee Boyd is dead, and as long as would have remained locked away in prison, we are not any safer than when he was alive.

The only other thing I know is that our moral authority is at stake. I do not know how we can claim to have the moral high ground on any subject when we still carry out barbaric practices that keep us in league with Iran, China, Singapore, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I am looking forward to the day when no one is led into the death chambers at San Quentin, or Terra Haute, or Raleigh, or Huntsville, or anywhere else. We will all be better off when we are not killing anybody as a society.

Musings and Philsophy for July 5

"I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other." – Napoleon Bonaparte

Revealing the name of a CIA agent sentences that agent, as well as any secret contact they may have had, to death. Causing someone to be unjustly executed is also a capital offense. Being against capital punishment, I think it is fair to be merciful and to sentence Karl Rove to life in prison. Of course, everyone knows that a presidential pardon is probably already written and sitting in Bush's desk drawer, but at least someone responsible will answer for it. Maybe now Rove will back the idea of a journalist's right to keep his sources private.

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." – Benjamin Franklin

The USA Patriot Act is showing its true colors as a war on Americans. Richard Kreimer, a homeless man, has filed a lawsuit against a New Jersey suburb saying that they used the Patriot Act as an excuse to evict him from the train station where he was sleeping. Already an unconstitutional, anti-American piece of legislation that violates our most fundamental rights, the Patriot Act is now taking us another step closer to a totalitarian government, spying on its citizens and preying on the weak.

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." – Nelson Mandela

Commercials over the weekend coinciding with, and having the same goal as, the Live 8 concert series featured Nelson Mandela speaking to a crowd about debt relief and aid to Africa. "We know what to do, and how much it will cost," he said. Mandela is a great world leader, and a man who has dedicated his life to the betterment of those around him. We can only hope that the world leaders meeting this week in Scotland at the G8 Summit listen to him and pledge the aid needed. The richest owe a debt to the poorest. We can and must spend the money and send the aid. To borrow from the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary we celebrated yesterday, nothing less than our sacred honor is at stake.

"Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself." – Horace Walpole

President Bush now has the opportunity to nominate a new Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Bust has repeatedly declared his admiration for Justices Scalia and Thomas, the most conservative members of the Court. Instead of following this line, Bush should look to Earl Warren as the ideal justice. A man of vision and daring, Warren presided over many of the greatest moral decisions the Supreme Court has ever made, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954. Oh, and by the way, Earl Warren was a conservative Republican from California appointed by President Eisenhower.

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." – Galileo Galilei

On July 4, NASA successfully crashed a probe into a comet to learn more about the origins of our solar system. Another success for the oft-ridiculed agency deserves accolades and applause. Revealing our past can help us learn about the future. Where we come from can help point us to where we are going. Hopefully more successes will be forthcoming, and NASA can return to the prominence it had in the heyday of Apollo success.

America has come a long way in 229 years. Our nation was founded on the ideals of freedom and justice. There are people who work every day for these causes, and towards furthering freedom around the world. We stand in the shadows of great men and women who have gone before and worked to bring us to where we are today. I only hope that it does not all come undone before our eyes, and that we can, in the words of the Constitution, "secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

Supreme Court puts Journalists in the Line of Fire

On June 27, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeals of two journalists who would not identify their sources, letting their convictions stand and forcing them to face prison time. The Court has made a grievous error in issuing this non-decision. In denying the appeal and ducking the issue, the justices have again restricted one of the fundamental rights that protect democracy and hold the government accountable for its actions.

The First Amendment to the Constitution provides for, among other things, a free press in this country. Journalists follow a calling that takes them around the world to report back what is going on around us, be it charges of torture at Guantanamo, news on the elections and deaths in Iraq, or on cases of the President of the United States violating the law in covering up a crime. We were reminded again just a few weeks ago how important investigative journalism can be when Mark Felt unmasked himself as Deep Throat, the secret source who was critical in uncovering the Watergate break-in and cover-up that brought down the Nixon presidency.

It is even more appalling that in this environment of renewed interest in investigative journalism and awareness of the importance of legitimate, high-placed anonymous sources, the Supreme Court has denied reporters this important avenue of information. Without the guarantee of the protection of anonymity, it is much more likely that those with information will not come forward. While their information can be critical, their coming forward may depend on their identity being protected. It is the same reason we have witness protection and whistleblower laws, so that fear of retribution does not get in the way of someone doing the right thing.

In 1965, the Supreme Court recognized that there was a right to privacy in what was termed the "penumbra of rights" in different amendments to the Constitution. This set the precedent for recognizing and protecting fundamental rights that were not specifically listed in the document. The protection of non-enumerated rights is especially important when the right in question is related to one of the fundamental rights listed in the constitution, as is the case here.

The First Amendment specifically says that the press is protected, but, in this case, the Court has taken the teeth out of that right. It is as if they have handed journalists a flashlight, complete with batteries, but have taken away the light bulb inside. It looks good, almost as if it could work, but in truth is nothing more than a shadow of what it could and should be.