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I?ve been trying to suppress this feeling, but I can?t stand the thought of Terri Schiavo lying in that bed slowly dying, while people who love her can only watch. THIS IS NOT RIGHT!!! Her mother is watching her child die.I don't mean to pick on Barber here -- I chose the quote because it seemed representative of the reason why so many conservatives are upset over the case. But if that's the way they feel, what would they have done differently? Florida law, and I assume the law in most if not every State, puts the spouse in the position of acting as guardian. Not the parents mind you -- the spouse. Is that law wrong in this case for any specific reason, or always wrong in each case? Is it unconstitutional? If so, on what basis?
U.S. District Judge James Whittemore has defied Congress by not staying Terri Schiavo's starvation execution for the time it takes him to hold a full hearing on her case, a leading Republican senator said Tuesday.I don't know which is worse -- is Santorum really as dumb as a rock or is that just his day job? Seriously, the problem here is that the law passed this weekend didn't require the District Court to issue a preliminary injunction. Indeed, it only, but specifically, said the Court "may" issue an injunction. Federal rules relating to preliminary injunctions are well known -- well they're well known to lawyers, judges, law clerks, and law students (eventually), and perhaps should be taught to Senators. The reason why an injunction wasn't issued here is because the Schindlers had no substantive legal arguments left to, well, argue. See a good discussion of the point at Volokh in this post by Orin Kerr. And check out the comments too.
"You have judicial tyranny here," Santorum told WABC Radio in New York. "Congress passed a law that said that you had to look at this case. He simply thumbed his nose at Congress."
"What the statute that [Whittemore] was dealing with said was that he shall hold a trial de novo," the Pennsylvania Republican explained. "That means he has to hold a new trial. That's what the statute said."
"What he's saying is, 'I don't have to hold a new trial because I've already determined that her rights have been protected,'" Santorum said.
"That's nice for him to say that. But that's not what Congress told him to do," he added. "Judges should obey the law. And this judge - in my mind - simply ignored the law."
Mark Kleiman's extremely sensible post has persuaded me that much as some monsters -- recall that we began with a man who raped and murdered 20 children, and progressed to include Eichmann and various other Nazis -- deserve a deliberately painful death, our society's legal system (no matter what constitutional amendments there may be) can't provide it.Volokh's essentially saying that as emotionally satisfying as it might seem to be to have an extreme-pain-then-slow-death capital punishment system, it actually wouldn't provide much satisfaction at all.
What I found most persuasive about Mark's argument was his points about institutions: about how hard it would be for a jury system to operate when this punishment was available, and how its availability would affect gubernatorial elections, legislative elections, and who knows what else. Even if enough people vote to authorize these punishments constitutionally and legislatively (which I've conceded all along is highly unlikely), there would be such broad, deep, and fervent opposition to them -- much broader, deeper, and more fervent than the opposition to the death penalty -- that attempts to impose the punishments would logjam the criminal justice system and the political system.
Note that this is no mere factual correction; anyone might be forced to engage in one, though the real Masters of the Web retract as seldom, and as grudgingly, as possible. This is an actual admission by a blogger that he is not infallible.Surely, Tina "Bloggers are the new Stasi" Brown will enjoy Volokh's downfall.
Such an admission undercuts the entire purpose of blogging, which is the competitive expression of unchangeable opinion accompanied by personal abuse. Without the unchangeable opinion, the personal abuse would be pointless; what value is there in questioning your opponents' intelligence, morals, and sanity based on their opinions if you admit that your own opinions are not unvarying parts of your inmost self, but mere possessions, which you can change as easily as you change your clothing? If a blogger "concedes error," as Volokh admittedly has done, what won't he concede?
Perhaps such wishy-washiness is considered acceptable behavior in Prof. Volokh's ivory tower, but here in the real world it simply will not do. I've defended him in the past, even when we disagreed. But I won't defend him now. His expulsion from the International Association of On-Line Pontificators is a foregone conclusion, and my vote will be cast, albeit regretfully, with what I expect to be the overwhelming majority.
A key role of the adolescent school experience - in whatever culture - is to impart the essential values and practices of the society at large to the younger generation. It follows, therefore, that an important part of the French lyc?e experience is to pass along the essential Gallic arts of striking and street demonstration - for if these skills are not handed down, the society would likely cease to function (or at least become unrecognisable).Read it all.
Needless to say, most (all?) of the student demonstrations are organised and carried out by the left, ostensibly as calls for social equality for the "underprivileged" - that is, those of arab and black descent. The current row is over proposed changes to the educational system that are seen as "a particularly acute threat to minority students and those who attend schools in working class communities," in the (English) words of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Large crowds of students have been demonstrating across the country in response to the pending reforms.
So far, so ordinary.
But the lead story in yesterday's Le Monde reveals an unexpected new angle. It seems that, during these protests, many of the white liberal teens are being beat up and robbed of their phones and money by gangs of the very black and arab youths (up to 1,000 of them, in a recent Paris demo) that they're so earnestly trying to help. As a result, attendance at the most recent event was markedly lower than that of those previously held.
As one bewildered victim rather plaintively put it:"We're demonstrating against inequality, and they're beating us up."
Mohammad Bijeh, 24, dubbed "the Tehran desert vampire" by Iran's press, was flogged 100 times before being hanged.I shared this story with three friends today, and all of them bascially had the same reaction -- good for the Iranians. Eugene Volokh to some, surprisingly agrees:
A brother of one of his young victims stabbed him as he was being punished. The mother of another victim was asked to put the noose around his neck.
The execution took place in Pakdasht south of Tehran, near where Bijeh's year-long killing spree took place.
The killer was hoisted about 10 metres into the air by a crane and slowly throttled to death in front of the baying crowd.
Hanging by a crane - a common form of execution in Iran - does not involve a swift death as the condemned prisoner's neck is not broken.
I particularly like the involvement of the victims' relatives in the killing of the monster; I think that if he'd killed one of my relatives, I would have wanted to play a role in killing him. Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing ? and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act ? was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there's a good explanation.Volokh makes about the best case I can think of for supporting practices like this. But the longer one thinks about it the more difficult the argument is to accept. In various times and places in our (U.S.) history public punishments, including executions, were (I'm guessing) common. We moved away from that quite some time ago and maybe I'm suffering from a lack of imagination, but I don't see it coming back anytime soon. But as a matter of "victims rights" (something I'm ordinarily not very sympathetic to), I've got no problem if, say Laci Peterson's Mom got to push the button that did in Scott Peterson when the time comes, oh some 15 or 30 years from now.
I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.
And, yes, I know this aligns me in this instance with the Iranian government ? but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and in this instance the Iranians are quite correct.
We need tighter controls not only to protect our children and families but also to protect our law enforcement officers who are at risk every day as they attempt to safeguard our citizens.I like that manner of argument -- set out your concern, and illustrate it with important examples that support the concern. I'm going to take a stab at it too. I think Mayor Street is talking out his butt. Consider:
The human cost of gun violence is devastating to the soul of the city and weakens the fabric of our region. Consider:
* Almost 80 percent of our 348 homicides in 2003 were committed with a gun;
* In a three-year period from January 2001 to February 2004, there were 4859 gunshot victims killed or injured by gun violence, nearly ten percent involved juveniles;
* Almost a year ago we had the tragic murder of Faheem Thomas-Childs outside his school. Unfortunately there have been more juvenile murders since, sometimes youth shooting youth.
Use a rubber, folks. You'll be glad you did.My mother always told me to use two, but then she was talking about my feet.
Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing only men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals, Norway's prime minister says.
IKEA, which has more than 200 stores in 32 nations, fears it might offend Muslims by depicting women assembling everything from cupboards to beds. Its manuals show only men or cartoon figures whose sex is unclear.
The time is going to come--and we can argue about when this will be, but it is going to happen one day--when we can't keep the old promises any more without either cutting benefits, or having a huge tax increase, or realistically, doing both. That's a pretty rotten thing to do to people who're paying money out of their paychecks every day to support the current system, and reasonably enough think they ought to get a decent return on their money.So what Bush is really doing is trying to create a system that will work AFTER I've died in poverty. Well, I'm a forward thinker and I generally like the idea of that, but all politics is local and it doesn't get any more local than me. What about me?
What private accounts can do, but the pay-as-you-go system can't, is grow the pot of money available for people to retire on. The government can't grow money, all we can do is tax or borrow, but the market can. With a private account that'll grow for the next 35 years, a 30-year-old will have a cushion against the benefit cuts that will have to happen at some point in their lives--not tomorrow, not next year, but someday--to keep the government from going broke and their taxes from growing to Swedenesque levels.
