So today I started off already in a pissy mood from the drive home Friday because I had to listen to this and this, but then there was this and I felt better. No wait a minute, OK. I at once realized that this is not about the USA “Security Act for Dealing with Terrorism Extension Bill of 2005”. Now I have a good idea. Add a three to five year extension to the current bill on Monday and leave the sundown dates in and get to leave town. Cool with me. The deal is we are sitting on a big string of success. Don't blink it’s just them trying to hold back the sea. Iraqi Success is just too much. Got to fight against the success of the Good old USA of A because were The NY Times, it's what we do!

Then today Condi was on TV and all was good(transcript eventually it's Fox they are slow to post this one for some stupid reason. Then Harry “what a punk” Reid. And then it was a good day off to the mall to pig and buy stuff. Not to bad really till I stopped to get milk at Wally World. Some group in from of me with lobotomies all the around. Each of them with his/her own pile of envelopes, cards and change. The one took at least two minutes with her Signature. Ok if you are not in a hurry the WTF are you doing in the “Quick Checkout Lane”, Ehem, The President is giving a speech in like two hours lady. Then at the gas station a DJ on the Radio just blanked old Harry out of the local newscast. I was standing there, and it says, ”House Minority Leader Harry……….. ……………..”. Then the news just continued on. I felt better and I hope you do to. Then I read this and felt even better. Double death for Zaqueery am I not correct he is already wanted dead there? I wonder how Jordan works that out? Read the related links as well, all good. I have to go now. President you know. Yes it all works out one way you can tell it's working is all the ruckess!!

Updated : link to transcript and what I thought was the chincher in the speech.

FOXNEWS:It is also important for every American to understand the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done. We would abandon our Iraqi friends and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word.

See the terrorists first of all doubted our government had the gumption to act. Now they count on our people to falter. They believe "We the People" are soft and will loose heart and fail. That we can be easily waited out because as a society they are stronger than we. I'm willing to bet there is still some fight left in this dog. Don't let me and the rest fo the Nation down.

So while I'm at it Caption This pic of old Harry.

Updated : So now I have to pick winners. I hate that part. Due to some urgent stuff that must me done yesterday I'll be scarce for a few days. Not to worry the other bloggers are kickinig ass and taking names.

Winner Carter for : "Harry Reid fails a basic sobriety test, missing his nose and putting out a reporters eye"

Runners up Carlos for "Here, sniff my finger." Filthy for: "In my line of work I seldom need more than this".

Honorable mention Vinnie and traderrob although they post here so they can't win. And also Agent Smith's poem was good. See I would make you all winners if I could.

Posted by: Howie at 07:46 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment
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The other day, I asked my readers to share their views on the death penalty and why they believed what they believed. It is no surprise that most of the answers are divided down party lines with the more liberal readers being against the death penalty and the more conservative ones for. Even if it doesn't drive elections, this is probably one of the most contentious issues before us today. Most of the contention comes from the fact that there is no real factual basis for belief either way. There is nothing to point to on your side to say "I'm definately right and you're definately wrong." And when we try to assign factual basis to our arguments, then we sometimes end up a lot further off base than we'd like. For example: some conservatives argue that the death penalty is necessary because it costs too much to feed and house a criminal for the rest of his life. Personally, the idea of putting a dollar value on a human life, even the life of a serial killer, bothers me. If we allow it to be done in the case of a criminal, how long will it take to do it in other cases too? How long will it take to determine that keeping grandma alive simply costs too much? We're already headed in that direction due to other arguments and I'd like to aviod it as much as possible.

In order to understand the death penalty, we must understand the reasons behind the death penalty. And in order to understand that, we must first understand the proper reason for crime and punishment to begin with. Most people in the US believe that jail is (or should be) for the purpose of rehabilitation. Thus, we have introduced numerous social programs, projects and experiments aimed at turning the criminal into a useful member of society. This process fails for a number of reasons.

For the most part, a criminal has already been taught (or has been born with) a certain mindset. This mindset can be caused by any number of factors, but the largest factor is simply not being taught any differently at home. Does that mean that someone who grows up in a good home with loving parents and is taught right from wrong will never do anything bad? No, but the odds of them becoming a career criminal are far smaller than someone who grows up in a single parent home or with parents who disregard him and is not taught right from wrong.

A child, growing up and being taught, will absorb just about anything you give him at the time. They are constantly learning and emulating everything that they see and hear. They are eager to learn. However, once a person gets out of that child stage, learning becomes a matter of choice. They will not learn anything that they don't wish to learn. And when a person is being punished, they are nowhere near as likely to want to learn. So, when rehabilitation is combined with punishment, the likelihood of its success is dropped dramatically.

In order to simplify matters, I equate the treatment of criminals to raising children. In both cases, they need constant reminders of what is acceptable and what is not. And when they know the rules and break them intentionally, then they are swiftly punished for that violation. The punishment has nothing to do with rehabilitation and is used simply to make them scared enough of the punishment that they do not wish to repeat it.

Of course, this assumes that all criminals have "normal" minds. There will always be serial criminals or people who commit crimes of such horrific proportion that they must be treated differently. When such a person is identified, it is obvious that they it will never be safe to allow them to interact with other people. No amount of rehabilitation will change them and no social program will "reeducate" them. For this type of person, there are only two solutions. Leave them in jail for the rest of their natural lives or kill them. I propose that if this is the choice, it is more humane to kill someone rather than keep them locked up for the rest of their lives with no chance of ever seeing the outside again.

It has been suggested that if we are to supply such a horrific choice, the criminal himself should be given the choice to either live in prison or die. I'm afraid, though, that this approach would open the door to cries of "state assisted suicide." And that would be a reasonable claim. It would be somewhat of a catch-22 if someone knew that just by committing a horrendous crime that they would be allowed to die and they wouldn't have to do anything themselves. Would we still be able to put that person to death? Of course it's possible for that to happen even now, but the odds are much smaller when the decision is in the hands of a judge and jury.

Although our current death penalty system is not perfect, I haven't been presented with any reason yet to do away with it. In a just system, some people simply cannot be allowed to live. It's not pretty, it's certainly not nice, but it's the truth.

Posted by: Drew at 11:12 AM | Comments (41) | Add Comment
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Well, you can tell that an election year is coming up. The Democrats are trying to indict Tom Delay for anything that they can possibly scrape up. Democratic mouthpieces are coming out of the woodwork to talk about how corrupt this administration is and attempting to tie them to every wrongdoer being indicted, investigated, charged or on trial. They've even trying to use the 9/11 comission in their desperate grab for power. It seems to me that when the original 9/11 report came out, they went to great lengths not to blame anyone for that horrible act of terrorism. Yes, Clinton could have done things differently. So could most Presidents before him. Of course that doesn't keep the Democrats from taking that report and attempting to point fingers.

It seems that the one thing they want to harp on most is the lack of a unified communication system for all police, fire, emergency and other first responders. The 9/11 comission had recommended this as a suggestion in their report. Now Democrats are saying that this "Republican stranglehold" on Congress is preventing anyone from doing anything to implement it. A number of Democratic congressmen are attempting to place the blame solely at the feet of the Republicans for this not happening yet. Now, I can't seem to find a straight story on the whole thing, but it looks to me as if Congress has been attempting to free up some spectrum for this for some time. There is currently a law that requires TV broadcasters to give up analog spectrum in favor of digital by December 31, 2006. Unfortunately, there was also a huge loophole left in that law. TV broadcasters only have to give up the spectrum in areas where 85% of the TV sets are digital capable. By those standards, it could take quite some time to clear that spectrum. Senator McCain (a Republican of all things) and Conrad Burns (another Republican) are attempting to change this by setting a hard date of January 1, 2009 for release of the disputed spectrum. This bill was amended in comittee (by another Republican!) to set the deadline at 2008 instead of 2009. It has currently been introduced to the Senate, but I can't find the status of it from there.

Now, there were a number of Democrats on TV last night at a press conference taking every possible shot at their Republican counterparts, and of course the emergency spectrum was something they harped on quite a bit. I don't seem to recall, however, any of them mentioning McCain's actions. But hey, maybe they just forgot. No, that couldn't be, because they actually did mention one part of McCain's bill. They mentioned the fact that the original estimate for getting the needed spectrum was $15 Billion, but the Republicans were only willing to spend $500 million on it. Their conclusion, of course, was that the Republicans wanted to put a cheap price tag on the safety of American citizens. Of course the actual truth of the matter is that passing McCain's bill will only cost a small fraction of what they started out wanting to spend. I can only see saving $14.5 million as a Good Thing.

The yammering went on for quite a while after that, but to be honest I lost interest in listening to how Evil Bush and his Republican Cronies are responsible for all the woes in our society. One of the reporters at that press conference must have gotten a little tired of it as well. He asked them why, if these issues were so important, the Democrats hadn't done anything about them. That was when the whole "Republican stranglehold" was mentioned.

So I just want to make sure that I have this straight. A conservative judge on the Supreme Court is such a horrendous threat to our American way of life that the Democrats are willing to stop the entire government from moving forward by filibuster simply to prevent him from being appointed. But when it comes to potentially saving the lives of thousands, or even millions of Americans, you are completly powerless? Something about that doesn't sound right. I'm pretty sure that any Senator or Congressman can introduce a bill. And I'm pretty sure that there are enough Democrats still in both houses that it would at least stand some reasonable chance of getting through. So take a good, hard look at yourself and give us a real answer. If this issue is as important as you say it is, are you REALLY doing everything you can to make sure it is taken care of?

Posted by: Drew at 08:14 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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In reading my morning news, I came across this article about the most recent abortion/parental notification debate in the supreme court. While reading this article, I was totally stunned by the twisting of facts going on and the lack of understanding shown by even the judges in the case. One of the biggest reasons we have not progressed further in this debate is because we let complete fallacies stand as fact. The first and foremost falsehood is the so-called "health of the mother" exception in every abortion law. This is what stands at the center of the current debate and what has stood in the way of many other debates in the past. Abortion proponents insist that every law even being attempted contain broad exceptions for the "health of the mother." What they don't want you to hear, however, is that:

1. The "health" of the mother is a judgement call based upon each individual doctor's interpretation. It doesn't mean that she's going to die if she doesn't have an abortion. It could mean something as trivial as her body won't be in as good a shape as it was before she had the baby.

2. Health exceptions always include mental health. If a doctor determines that a woman may be mentally unstable because she's pregnant, he can use the health exception to perform an abortion. This has included cases where the woman was simply "unhappy" with her pregnancy.

And yet these are the types of things that don't get talked about during the debate. Instead, we get this "inspired" line of questioning from Justices Souter and Bryer: more...

Posted by: Drew at 08:47 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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