Capital Punishment

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty for James Holmes, the protagonist in the Aurora movie theater shootings last summer.  This raises in my mind the issue of capital punishment, and since I have a blog and a few minutes to kill...

If murder is wrong, then murdering a murderer is wrong.  If murder is illegal for citizens, murder should be illegal for the state.  The state has a right to defend itself, but incarceration is a sufficient self-defense, and I don't believe there should be state sanctioned vengeance for families and loved ones of victims. 

We don't assault those found guilty of assault.  We don't steal from those caught stealing.  We don't sexually offend sex offenders.  There is no sense to me in employing a punitive act which is itself the crime we are punishing.

To me, these things are self evident.

On How a Good Law Prevents a Harm

I read an interesting article at Popehat today which opposes North Carolina's Amendment One, in which voters there have been asked whether they want to add this text to the state's constitution.

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

The content of Patrick's argument against the law is encapsulated as follows.

All laws restrict freedom in some fashion.  All laws harm some subset of people within the body public, by punishing them for exercising their freedom, but sometimes that's justifiable.  A good law is one that protects the public, or individuals who make up the public, from a discreet, identifiable harm, while doing as little damage as possible in the process.

A heterosexual marriage is not harmed when a gay couple marries, so forbidding gay marriage does not prevent a harm.  Nothing is harmed by gay marriage.  So Forbidding it is a harm.

Unfortunately, this amendment has now passed, and North Carolina joins 28 other states that explicitly forbid same sex marriage in their constitutions.

US Allows Police to Strip-Search Anyone Arrested for Anything, Anytime.

The United States' supreme court has allowed police to strip-search anyone arrested for anything, anytime.  Yeah, for a speeding ticket.  Yeah, for not paying alimony.

“People detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals,’’ wrote [US Supreme Court Justice Anthony] Kennedy. As an example, he cited McVeigh, the domestic terrorist who was executed for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, who was first arrested for driving without a license plate. Kennedy also pointed out that one of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93.
- Joan Vennochi, The Boston Globe

Left as a weird exercise for us all is to understand how strip-searching a speeder might offer predictive evidence of some terrorist activity he or she might be planning in the next few days.
 
A more sinister view is offered in this article by Naomi Wolf, writer of The Beauty Myth, about the connection between sexual humiliation and control of the masses, and how this ruling is just one of many recent events that are eroding personal freedoms in America, the country that used to call itself, with pride, the land of the free.

Of greater concern to me than the fact that these erosions are occurring is the fact that nobody seems to care.  Yeah, you can find out about this story if you search for it specifically, but if it was the cold war and Russia enacted this law, it would have been all over our news.  But enacted here, where it can do us significant harm?  Our media are mostly silent.

Happy Constitution Day

Hey, it's Constitution Day! Who knew? If you need help understanding what a constitution is, check out this video from constitutionday.ca, which uses simple to understand hockey analogies, but watch out, there is a bit of blood during the description of what might happen if hockey had no rules.