Death Penalty & Brownwoodians (on KXYL) say "Kill em" & call for "Civil War" to secede from the Union
For Adults Only: Executions of juvenile offenders had to end
10:08 PM CST on Tuesday, March 1, 2005
By outlawing the execution of juvenile offenders yesterday, the Supreme Court wisely accepted a view formed of common sense and supported by science: Young people with undeveloped brains are not fully capable of adult reasoning.
The American Medical Association has amassed conclusive scientific evidence showing that impulse control, regulation of emotions, risk assessment and moral reasoning are the last parts of the brain to reach maturity. On some level, science aside, every parent already knew this.
And yet lawmakers have been inconsistent when it comes to dealing with children. Laws say juveniles are too immature to buy beer and cigarettes, to vote and to enlist in the armed forces. But, until yesterday, they could have been deemed mature enough to face the ultimate punishment for their crimes.
Of course, the 29 men on death row in Texas for crimes they committed as juveniles should stay behind bars. They must be held responsible for their crimes. But the highest form of punishment should be reserved for those who have the highest level of brain development.
That's the thinking of the rest of the world. Since 1990, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only other nations to have executed juvenile offenders. The United States stands alone – even among these peers – as the only nation refusing to sign international treaties that would forbid the practice.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was one of the four dissenting votes. She said she wants more evidence that society "truly has set its face against this practice." As tempting as it may be to answer her challenge with public opinion polls showing support for the death penalty in the 70 percent range and support for executing young offenders well below a majority, public opinion is not the most compelling reason to end this practice. Neither is the appearance of hypocrisy on the international human rights stage.
The bottom line is that scientists have learned more about when young people are capable of adult reasoning, and that science must be our guide.
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Dr Williams comments heard on KXYL this morning 3.2.05 regarding the Supreme court decision on executing juveniles: "Those gutless, weeine , yankees" !
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" Standing near the glass windows of the Supreme Court building and staring in at the Ten Commandment shrine, is a group of the most 50 particularly out-to-lunch fanatics. Arms outstretched, they pray that the Lord will cause the Alabama Supreme Court to contract the flesh-eating virus.
“I know that through you all things are possible,” said Rev. Deke Harrison, Mobile, AL. “Make them pay for their non-belief, I know that it is within your power to smite them down with a case of the flesh eating bacteria, please Lord, cause their skin to rot off and make them roll and knash from the pain.” "
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Praying For Supreme Court Shake Up
NORFOLK, Virginia, July 15, 2003
Court Watcher: Pat Robertson, unhappy with the Supreme Court's recent rulings, is hoping a higher power will remove three justices with opinions of which he does not approve. (Photo: AP)
Robertson, a former presidential candidate, is also annoyed over President Bush's position in Liberia, which he says is "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country."
(CBS/AP) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson urged his nationwide audience Monday to pray for God to remove three justices from the Supreme Court so they could be replaced by conservatives.
"We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club."
Robertson has launched a 21-day "prayer offensive" directed at the Supreme Court in the wake of its 6-3 June vote that decriminalized sodomy. Robertson said in a letter on the CBN Web site that the ruling "has opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest."
The same letter targets three justices in particular: "One justice is 83-years-old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?"
Judging from the descriptions, Robertson was referring to Justice John Paul Stevens, who was born in 1920, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had colon cancer surgery in 1999. The identity of the third justice was unclear.
Just last week, Robertson got on the soapbox on another issue: the Bush administration's demand that Liberian President Charles Taylor resign from office.
"It's one thing to say, we will give you money if you step down and we will give you troops if you step down, but just to order him to step down? He doesn't work for us," the evangelist said last Monday, speaking on "The 700 Club."
Robertson said he believes the State Department has "mismanaged the situation in nation after nation after nation" in Africa.
"We're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country," said an outraged Robertson, a Bush supporter who has financial interests in Liberia. "How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down.'"
On Sunday, Taylor accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria, but on condition that an international force is deployed in Liberia.
A U.N.-backed tribunal indicted Taylor on June 4 for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone.
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The Rise Of Elitism And The Death Of American Democracy
An essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup
"Fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with a belligerent nationalism."
Fifth, the fundamentalist conservative religious elites and economic elites are conspiring to ensure that power is removed from democratic institutions and is maintained in their grasp. It would have been inconceivable to earlier generations that a deliberate effort would be made to subvert the "wall of separation" between church and state, but now, we have a situation where the fundamentalist Christians realize that they can never evangelize their way to power, so they see the only way open to them to evangelize America is to sieze power and maintain it by force, and evangelize America by codifying their religious beliefs into the law of the land. The propertarian elites realize that they're vulnerable to a revolt against their hegemony if their hegemony were wholly sectarian - without an obvious reason why they should be the rulers - their hubris and sense of self-entitlement would be naked and exposed to the view of the lower classes. That's why the unholy alliance between what has been called the "theofascists" and the "econofascists." By combining their influence, a synergism is formed that will be difficult, if not impossible to stop in a predominately religious nation such as America, short of a violent revolution.
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