Happy Labor Day

Here's what sounds like a good read -- a new biography of Joe Hill, songwriter of the IWW, the Wobblies, and apropos of the day...

The IWW ignited his sense of social justice and equality and his songs gave voice to those beliefs and a voice to the workers. His songs were parodied gospels, rewritten hymns that the Salvation Army (or, the Starvation Army as Hill would call them) used to drown out the worker's protests. As he explained in a letter from jail:

"A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over; and I maintain that if a person can put a few cold, common sense facts into a song, and dress them... up in a cloak of humor to take the dryness off them, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read a pamphlet or an editorial in economic science."

Hill was accused, tried and executed for a murder he didn't commit.

Jenna's Wedding Day Links

Here's a bit of what's going on out there on the net this weekend!

• Check out the weather forecast in Crawford, TX. According to John McCain's chief spiritual advisor, John "America is Damned" Hagee, this clearly means that God hates the Bushes.
• Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was in Chattanooga yesterday to speak at the 68th conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Check out the comments he made regarding the use of lethal injections: [H]e suggested that the recently-euthanized Kentucky Derby horse Eight Bells had probably experienced a more humane death than those who die on death row. "I had checked the procedure they used to kill the horse," Justice Stevens said, expressing surprise to learn it is against the law in Kentucky to kill animals using one of the drugs in a three-drug lethal injection cocktail that many believe is cruel to humans.
• Now that he's staring down the barrel at his reelection prospects, Chattanooga's Mayor Littlefield apparently is having second thoughts about the drastic cuts he's made to the curbside recycling program.
• Jesus! vs Darwin!
• You gotta love those family values republicans. It seems as though every week, another one finds his way out from under his rock...
• Would you crash this poll?
• The columnists speak of the end of the primary season: Eugene Robinson and Paul Krugman on the divisions in the Democratic party
• Cindy Lou: show me the money!

Saturday Stuff

Happy March, everyone! Here's the chatter from the internet in the past day or so...

Barack Obama: he reached out to the LGBT community this week, and then later took a step further, calling homophobia "unchristian."

John McCain: his campaign bus is filled with lobbyists and he's having all kinds of problems with those pesky campaign finance laws. And now he's making smoochie face with a scary, bigoted, catholic-hating wingnut and end-times kook (yeah he really is that charming), James Hagee, and he refuses to take it back (and he was warned about this!).

Tim Russert: has one set of rules for Democrats and another set for Republicans? But is anyone really surprised? There's a reason he's Cheney's favorite press patsy.

George W. Bush: incoherent as ever, garbled, out of touch, and not at all self-aware (did Bush really think it sent the wrong message when Reagan had summits with Gorbachev?!?).

Jack Kingston: refuses to wear a flag on his lapel! Why does he hate America?

Rush Holt: calls Bush a "miserable lying twit" -- and calls him on his disingenuous FISA theatrics.

Three Families of Privilege: the Windsors, the Romneys and the Bushes. (btw, how much do you think Harry hates Drudge?)

Prisons: More than 1% of Americans are incarcerated. I'm thinking we need to keep the violent offenders locked up, but a lot of those people could be supporting themselves, instead of being burdens to the taxpayer. I'm sure we could do better than we're doing now.

Autism and immunizations: another perspective.

Final thoughts: what people don't say on their deathbeds.

The US aligns with Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Iraq

How chilling. More from smijer.

Also:
Where does your church stand?
Additional resources.

Tonight's Republican Debate

I'm watching the Republican YouTube/CNN debate at the moment, and I can't believe my ears. When Giuliani was asked about the possibility that he let New Yorkers foot the bill for his adulterous trysts, he seemed to blame the police -- that it's their fault, because they were the ones who decided how to report (or hide?) the expenses involved in following Rudy around the state every time he got randy and snuck out to spend the weekend with his mistress. Did I hear that right?

Also, did Duncan Hunter just say that gays shouldn't be allowed to serve in the military because most Americans who join the military are homophobes? Yikes! By that logic, segregation was ok as long as most Americans were racists. And this guy wants to be president?

[The only other candidates to answer the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" question were Huckabee, Romney and McCain. Huckabee just agreed with Hunter. Romney tore a page from Hillary's book by awkwardly trying to triangulate on the issue. And McCain just said that "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is working (don't tell the people trying to cope with the shortage of translators in the Middle East) and that everyone in the military agrees with him -- almost unanimously. By the way, the homosexual 43-year Brigadier General who asked the question was in the audience and he was heckled by the crowd (who were those people?).]

No one answered the question about how Jesus would feel about the death penalty. Huckabee got a laugh for his evasion ("Jesus was too smart to run for public office"), but no one was able to deal with it directly. How sad. Republicans claim to be the party of Jesus, but they really can't seem to talk about him intelligently (and don't get me started on the Democrats all trying to out-Jesus each other!). Maybe we need to just admit that religion has no place in politics and put us all out of our misery.

Really, I honestly tried to find something positive in tonight's debate. But this selection of white men all seemed either really mean, crooked, or simply insane (what's the deal with Ron Paul's secret NAFTA superhighway?).

Oh, yeah...

...and now there's this unbelievably stupid flag pin controversy. According to the current crop of loud Republicans, if you go fight for our country in Afghanistan and Iraq and have a piece of your brain blown out, but you also don't agree with every thought squeezed out by Preznit AWOL McFlightsuit, you're pond scum -- BUT! If you put a freakin' flag on your lapel, you're saving the freakin' free world.

Oy vey. I think I could suspend my normal objection to capital punishment for these guys...   ;-D

Free the Jena 6

Today is the day of action in Jena, LA. I've seen a bit of coverage on today's cable news (well, it was more coverage of Al Sharpton than the kids), but largely, I think that Pam is right about this story being ignored -- I haven't seen any discussion of it outside of Facebook. I can't pretend to have any idea why the story is being ignored -- it involves a shocking level of racism by even Southern standards -- but I think it would be appropriate to spend a little less time obsessing over Britney's latest meltdown and a little more trying to make sure the Jena 6 get fair treatment under the law.

Update: here's an interesting look at the story.

Tennessee's Shame

We (all of us) killed a guy during the night -- and we're not even sure if he committed the crime for which he was executed. His name is Philip Workman and his last request was denied by prison officials.

For his last meal, Workman asked that a large vegetarian pizza be given to a homeless person. The prison officials denied his request, and Workman refused to eat anything.

These were his final words:

"I've prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ not to lay charge of my death to any man." He then closed his eyes and about two minutes later said, "I commend my spirit into your hands, lord Jesus Christ."

It apparently took Workman 17 minutes to die.

Almost all experts agree that from the time a person is paralyzed, he can feel everything, including the drowning in his own fluids and suffocation, but isn't able to speak or even blink to let someone know he is feeling the torture.

Phil Bredesen, of course, could easily have stopped this. He is quite aware of the problems states have with lethal injections. Further, the state obviously knows we should be ashamed to be killing people -- why else would we slink around during the dark of night as we inflict our feeble (and misdirected) revenge?

[T]he prosecuting D.A. and the victim's daughter have pled for clemency because new evidence strongly suggests that the State of Tennessee just killed an innocent man.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Food for Thought

Food for thought is just about the only food I've had today. G-Dog and I have both been felled by the stomach virus that's been traveling around Chattanooga in the past week or two. No food, no energy. What's a body to do? Well, around here, the answer is to crawl under a blanket and turn on a
West Wing marathon. We did the first season. And around about the episode "Take this Sabbath Day", I ran across this:

Toby: The Torah doesn't prohibit capital punishment.
Rabbi: No.
Toby: It says, 'An eye for an eye'.
Rabbi: You know what it also says? It says a rebellious child can be brought to the city gates and stoned to death. It says homosexuality is an abomination and punishable by death. It says men can be polygamous and slavery is acceptable. For all I know, that thinking reflected the best wisdom of its time, but it's just plain wrong by any modern standard. Society has a right to protect itself, but it doesn't have a right to be vengeful. It has a right to punish, but it doesn't have to kill.

That's all I'm sayin'...

Bravo, Bredesen!

It's a small step, but at least it's in the right direction!

Gov. Phil Bredesen said Thursday afternoon he has ordered a halt to all planned executions in the state for the next 90 days while there is a review of the method of execution.

This move will postpone four executions that were scheduled to take place in Tennessee in the next few months. With any luck, this "review" will turn into a longer moratorium.

TCASK responds here.

Execution

The news just came through that Saddam Hussein is to be put to death by hanging at 6:00 Saturday morning Iraq time, which is 10:00 tonight here.

Is killing a man really the best form of justice we people can come up with?

Boy, that's more than just a little depressing.

Dick, Rick, Dole, Iran, Iraq and more!

This has been a pretty busy news week. While the Dick Cheney story finally starts to die down, others (like the port security story) are just starting to pick up steam:

The Republicans are still having major problems with their ethical lapses. Rick Santorum's is just the latest corruption scandal to hit the sleazy House of DeLay.

And speaking of sleaze, does anyone think that it is good for our democracy when a former member of Congress is paid by a foreign government to lobby Congress on their behalf when the lobbyist's own wife is a current Senator?

With so many differences between our nations, how might we find common ground with the people of Iran? Why by hating gay people, of course!

How are things going in Iraq these days? Well, they're FUBAR, and even Bill O'Reilly is starting to talk in terms of cuttin' 'n' runnin'.

But not all the news is bad! The progressive wing of the Democratic party is finally getting busy. They've set up a Progressive Patriots Fund, plus a group of activists from the progressive community have recently launched the Progressive Legislative Action Network (PLAN).

Also, the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing now has a blog.

And finally, because I'm sure you've all been wanting to know, here are the Five Most Dangerous Children's Books Ever Written, According to Sean Hannity.

Moral dilemma?

A woman found a camera and thinks she's doing the right thing by returning just the photos, but not the camera, to the person who lost it. Is she? Should the person who lost the camera let it go?
What would you do in either position?

2/22 UPDATE: contrast with this (via Boing Boing).

Karma troubles for Ken Starr?

Via the Pensito Review, Ken Starr, finally on the right side of an issue, may have gotten himself into pretty deep doodoo, and the irony isn't lost on his legions of fans.

Tookie

I was thinking about writing a post about the death penalty, since I, as an American, have just participated in the murder of yet another human being, and by now you all know how I feel about that. But as it turns out, smijer has covered the issues surrounding Tookie's death quite well. What a waste -- of money, of time, of karma, of our nation's moral authority, of the court's time, of man hours, of expertise... for nothing.

UPDATE: there's more!

Hot Potato

Virginia Governor and potential presidential hopeful Mark Warner apparently doesn't want to be #1000:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Virginia Gov. Mark Warner will stop the execution of convicted murderer Robin Lovitt, who would have been the 1,000th person put to death in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, CNN reported on Tuesday.

Lovitt had been scheduled to be executed on Wednesday evening and CNN said Warner had decided to commute his sentence to life in prison.

An upcoming milestone

Some time next week, we as a nation will kill our 1,000th prisoner since bringing the death penalty back in 1976.

In the last 28 years, the U.S. has executed on average one person every 10 days.

That's a lot of dead people for our collective karma. And for what? Vengeance? Killing these people didn't bring anyone back from the dead, it cost the taxpayer more than it would have if we had just left them to rot in jail for the rest of their lives, and there's no clear evidence that it serves as a deterrent to others who might kill.

I know there are people out there who support the death penalty and don't want to discuss the possibility that it's a mistake, and a lot more people who just don't care one way or another -- they're trying to figure out who's going to get off the island or become America's next psuedo pop star -- but for the small number of people who might take this milestone as a opportunity to reflect on our use of the death penalty: do you think our justice system is perfect? If not, then how can we be sure we're not killing innocent people? What if we stopped killing people until we can get the kinks out of the system? We don't have to let these people go or anything -- just keep them locked up and thinking about the horrible things we think they did while we figure out a few things. That's all. What harm would that do? Thanks for listening (my apologies if I'm preaching to the choir).

NY rejects state killing

Here's a bit of good news out of New York State:

In an 11-7 vote, The New York State Assembly Codes Committee rejected a measure to re-authorize the state's death penalty, which was declared unconstitutional last June. This makes New York the first state to dismantle the death penalty since new death penalty laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.

Their motivation is financial (death penalty cases cost states far more than lifers) and not moral, but at least they're stopping New York's participation in what is one of America's greatest human rights abuses. Other states will probably be following suit, including our own fair state of Tennessee:

On the same day a legislative subcommittee in Tennessee discussed a bill to abolish the death penalty for the first time in 40 years. In 1965 then Governor Clement led a drive to end capital punishment that passed the Senate but fell one vote short in the House.

smijer provided us with some death penalty links last week, including a blog from death row in Maryland. Also note our own organization, TCASK, and another couple of anti-death penalty blogs: Abolish the Death Penalty and the Lonely Abolitionist.

Action Alert!

This is for those in Chattavegas. Tuesday is International Death Penalty Abolition Day and the Chattanooga chapter of TCASK will be observing it with a Write-A-Thon. We'll be meeting at 6:30 at Panera Bread on Broad Street. Please join us to write letters, get more information, or just to hang out with other human rights activists!