One Innocent Victim is One Too Many

This is why I oppose the death penalty. He might be guilty, he might not be guilty. Do we really want to take the chance that we may execute an innocent man? Seven witnesses have recanted their testimony some saying that they were coerced by the police, there is no murder weapon and no physical evidence, and two jurors signed an affidavit stating that with the recanted testimonies that he shouldn't be executed, but thanks to Newt Gingrich and his 1996 bill the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the appeals process for Troy Anthony Davis has been severely limited:

One of Davis' major obstacles has been the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), legislation championed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as part of his Contract with America and signed by former president Bill Clinton. The act was passed in 1996 as a way of reforming what Gingrich called "the current interminable, frivolous appeals process." Its major provisions reduced new trials for convicted criminals and sped up their sentences by restricting a federal court's ability to judge whether a state court had correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution.


Facing political pressure one year after the Oklahoma City bombing and seven months before the presidential election, Clinton signed the bill, but inserted a somewhat incongruous signing statement that called for the federal courts to continue their oversight role.


That was wishful thinking, say many legal experts. "President Clinton was trying to have his cake and eat it, too," said George Kendall, senior counsel at Holland and Knight and a board member of the Death Penalty Information Center. The reality since 1996, legal analysts say, has been a U.S. Supreme Court that has narrowly interpreted the act, further restraining the ability of federal courts to grant new trials (on June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to give Davis one last hearing). "The bottom line," said Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender in Arizona, "is that the AEDPA is very harsh and unforgiving."

Newt Gingrich once stated that justice delayed is justice denied, but where is the justice in possibly executing an innocent man. I can't make this clear enough, an innocent man could possibly be executed right here in Georgia on July 17th.

Another disturbing issues is that the "acquaintance" who was with Davis at the shooting of the Savannah police officer was the first to implicate him. This "acquaintance" is Sylvester Coles and three witnesses have signed affidavits stating that he is the true killer, but Superior Court Judge Penny Haas Freesemann has refused to hear new evidence or halt the upcoming education. Defense attorneys are appealing to the State Supreme Court but it will appear that the only hope for Davis lies with a stay of execution from Governor Sonny Perdue.

I am not an expert on this case, but I am opposed to the death penalty for precisely this reason, the chance that maybe, just maybe, an innocent person could be executed. One innocent victim is one too many. It is already a tragedy is he has spent the last 17 years of his life on death row for a crime he didn't commit but to think he could die for it also is unthinkable, unbelievable, but it is happening.

Here is a campaign site for Davis. It looks bleak for Davis.

The Religious Right in Action

Sadie Fields would be proud.

Answer Me This...

How can Democrats simply threaten filibuster when in the minority and be vilified as obstructionists, but Republicans actually use the filibuster constantly and there is not a peep from the media? Liberal media?

Remembering Lady Bird Johnson

Sidney Blumenthal has written an excellent article for Salon highlighting this southern lady's courageous support for civil rights. Much of the pioneering efforts of LBJ to bring civil rights to the oppressed African-American population of the American South can be attributed to the behind the scenes influence of Lady Bird. She faced hostile crowds, death threats, hecklers and Klansmen to drum up support for LBJ and his civil rights platform. Blumenthal writes:

The obituaries of former first lady Lady Bird Johnson extol her beautification projects, graciousness and steady handling of the outsize personality of her husband. But she was also an unwavering supporter of civil rights and through the decades kept close ties to key people in the movement. Her achievements are inseparable from her marriage. Lady Bird managed Lyndon's turbulence, quietly offered her counsel, ignored his wandering eye, and calmed those he might upset. Nothing of that relationship was easily reducible to simple motivation. Over time, rather than becoming more submissive and diminished, she became stronger, more formidable and clearer minded. At almost every turn, at every difficulty and problem they encountered, Lyndon discovered and rediscovered his reliance on her strength and judgment.

...

Lady Bird was of her time and ahead of it. As first lady she was a bridge between the eras of Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton. Unlike either of them, Lady Bird reserved her influence strictly for behind the scenes and did not impose herself in public apart from her husband's agenda, except on environmental issues, on which she was a pioneer. She shares the glory of the greatest presidency for civil rights since Lincoln. In 1960, after seeing Lady Bird's picture in Time magazine, Virginia Durr wrote Lyndon: "Of course I've thought that Bird is your secret weapon ... Southern womanhood really has something when they are like Bird." Let us now praise famous women.

The United States has often been blessed with truly remarkable First Ladies, women who were more than trophies but intelligent, forceful advocates for social change, women who, if not for the times, could have been, and maybe should have been, Presidents in their own right. Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Hillary Clinton (who may earn it on her own right after all) are examples of these impressive, intelligent women.

Of course we now have the vapid, robotic Laura Bush and one must remember for every Lady Bird and Eleanor we've had a Dolley Madison and Mamie Eisenhower. Thank God for Hillary!

Isakson and Chambliss Hypocrites?

Say it ain't so:

Agricultural interests, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, are already worrying out loud that if Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials crack down on illegal hiring this year, as it should, it will leave hundreds of millions of dollars of crops in the field to rot. That's a very different message than that preached in public by the state's political leadership, including U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, who claim to support stricter enforcement of current immigration laws as a precondition for tackling comprehensive reform.

Both Georgia senators abandoned a bipartisan effort last month to enact a top-to-bottom rewrite of laws regarding the use of immigrant labor. Among other things, the failed proposal — which Isakson and Chambliss helped draft — would have streamlined the process to allow more legal temporary immigrant workers into the country to pick crops. Afraid of a backlash, American business and agricultural interests did not push hard enough for that change and other major reforms. They talked in political back channels about the need for comprehensive reform, but they fell largely silent once critics started attacking a proposal to provide temporary legal status to many of the workers they have lured here to produce food, products and services for American consumers.

I've said it before, agriculture in South Georgia relies on immigrant Latino labor because no one else is willing to do the work. Trust me, there are going to be a lot of rotting onions down here.

Dum Dum Saxby Speaks Again

Jeez, Bob Geiger really smacks Dum Dum down when he compares troop rotations in Iraq with those in WWII while attacking the Webb Amendment:

Leave it to a Republican desperate to bail out Bush, to compare World War II and the gravity of that global conflict with Bush's war of choice about absolutely nothing.

And here's the real kicker: Chambliss cynically uses the work ethic of America's troops as a bizarre frame of reference for how Democrats really aren't supporting the troops by taking them out of the Iraqi civil war so they can spend more time with their families.

With brilliant men like this you would think Bush's approval ratings would be higher than 26%, then again, perhaps that is the problem. Republicans say the dumbest things. Here's an apt description of Dum Dum:

It's no secret that Republican Saxby Chambliss of Georgia is not considered one of the deepest thinkers in the United States Senate. He doesn't do a hell of a lot legislatively and, after all, he only got there by the swift-boating of highly-decorated Vietnam Veteran Max Cleland, whose Senate seat Chambliss took in 2002 by running television ads depicting Cleland with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Man, Georgia should be embarassed.

What Republicans Think About African-Americans

It is true, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The NAACP invited all 9 Republican candidates to the forum, but only one showed up: Tom Tancredo. All the Democratic Presidential hopefuls showed up for their forum.

The excuses given by the Republican campaigns mostly had to do with scheduling conflicts--just too busy to make it.

The resulting photo of Tancredo--standing on a stage of empty podiums--sums up the Republican party's commitment to civil rights in America: the only Republican interested is the guy running to deny immigrant workers their rights.

Democrats seem to be the only ones willing to reach out to minorities attending the NAACP debate and a debate sponsored by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and will also attend a debate sponsored by LOGO, the openly gay network, that will focus on issues relevant to the LGBT community. Republicans only care so long as you are white, wealthy, Christians who love guns and despise gays, and anyone else perceived as different.

Sharpton in Georgia

God help us all.

Giuliani Whistling Dixie

Giuliani made a campaign stop in Savannah where he was obviously pandering to the crowd by claiming:

"It doesn't matter if I believe in it or not — and I do — it is the Second Amendment," Giuliani said. "I'm a strict constructionist. The Second Amendment says you have an individual right to bear arms."

And:

Asked about President George W. Bush's recent veto of federal funding for stem-cell research, Giuliani said he could support government funding with "very, very strict limits" on the use of stem cells from human embryos.

Because we all know that Georgians are a bunch of pro-life whackos who always have a gun or two on hand. Strict constructionist: pandering buzzwords intended to make conservatives smile at the thought of pro-life justices. Was Giuliani a strict constructionist when he was cracking down on New York City with extremely strict gun control laws? He says that what is good for New York City may not be good for other parts of the country, but wasn't he infringing on the constitutional right to bear arms for the citizens of New York City?

Here are the facts: Giuliani is a liberal Republican which plays well in the Northeast but real bad in the South and Midwest, therefore Giuliani is trying to pass himself off as a pragmatic conservative and asking Republican primary voters to forget what he once was in the past and think about what he says he will be in the future. This type of pandering is only exceeded by that of Romney who has miraculously experience political changes of heart just in time for the primary election.

I wonder if Giuliani even knows who he is anymore.

Go Fish!

I'm so glad that Sonny Perdue was able to keep funding for his bass tournaments even at the expense of funding for charter schools. It does show where his priorities lie, with fish and not children.

Scooter Libby Walks Free

I really didn't want to talk about Scooter Libby. In many ways he's the low level flunky, the scapegoat, who is sacrificed to justice while the true criminals, who sit much, much higher on the food chain, can walk free, but his recent sentence commutation courtesy of President Bush has stirred up the left and the right on this issue. So I figured I would throw my two cents in the mix.

President Bush is completely within his constitutional rights to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone he sees fit. From the United States Constitution Article II, Section 2:

...and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

It seems vague, and much of the Constitution is deliberately so, but the Supreme Court has already interpreted that to mean that the President does have the power to grant pardons and reprieves to American citizens. Consider it to be part of the web of checks and balances that permeates the powers of the branches of the American government, the executive check on the judiciary.

Presidential pardons are often controversial, see the Ford pardon of Nixon or Clinton pardon of Mark Rich, and much of the opposition, or support, of a presidential pardon is based upon partisanship. If you wander over to Peach Pundit you'll see many of these types of arguments. Many who support the pardon use Clinton as an example saying, well Clinton pardoned x, y, and z so nananananana. One particular poster, CobbGOPer, had this to say:

Would you like to see the VERY long list of pardons our previous president (you know, that guy that’s married to Hillary) handed out? Larceny, drug trafficking, embezzlement, tax fraud, counterfeiting, OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, bank robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, bribery of public officials, mutiny in a time of war, wire fraud, mail fraud, perjury…

One day I'm going to finally write about this Clintonphobia on the Right. It seems as they they ALWAYS have that man, and his wife, on the mind. Strange.

Okay, so we know that the President, as per the Supreme Court of the United States, does have the right to pardon who he sees fit, but was the decision made by Bush the right one? I think Bush caused a bit of a problem by the use of one single word to defend his action:

"I felt like the jury verdict ought to stand, and I felt like some of the punishments that the judge determined were adequate should stand, but I felt like the 30-month sentencing was severe."

"Severe." Bush based his decision upon the fact that he felt the 30 month sentence was too severe. Is it? From the U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 79, 1621:

...is guilty of perjury and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

A severe sentence that truly would warrant a President commutation of the sentence would be a sentence that imposed a prison sentence of five years. Libby's sentence was 30 months, so that doesn't seem very excessive or severe. I found this posting from David Van Os, the Democratic nominee for Texas Attorney General in 2006. He states:

In a decision announced on June 21, 2007, the US Supreme Court in Rita v. United States upheld as reasonable under federal sentencing law a prison sentence of 33 months for the offense of perjury committed in testimony to a grand jury, which is virtually the same sentence imposed on Scooter Libby for the same offense.

I find this to be a very telling statement from Rich Galen, a Republican strategist:

If Scooter Libby had been a Democrat in Bill Clinton's administration, people like me would be in a projectile sweat. Your position absolutely depends on where you are on the political spectrum.

Many supporters of a Libby pardon base it upon the fact that no crime was committed, or no one was charged with a crime so how is he guilty of perjury or obstruction of justice. First, Patrick Fitzgerald admitted that it was nearly impossible to charge anyone with a crime, partly due to the perjury that was committed by Scooter Libby. If the people who are brought in are continuously lying to the investigations team then how the truth ever be reached? Second, it doesn't matter whether a crime was committed or if anyone was charged with a crime, according to United States law perjury is perjury. According to Title 18, 1621:

...having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true.

If you take an oath before "a competent tribunal, officer" who is conducting an investigation with appropriate authority and willfully deliver false statements, you are guilty of perjury, end of story. It seems as though Republicans, who are supposedly the party of Law and Order, only believe in it so long as it doesn't affect one of their own.

Check out these statements made by Republicans against Bill Clinton:

former Senator Bill Frist (R-TN): "He is not above the law. If an ordinary citizen committed these crimes he would go to jail."

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX): "I very much worry that with the evidence that we have seen that grand juries across America are going to start asking questions about what is obstruction of justice, what is perjury, and I don't want there to be any lessening of the standard. Because our system of criminal justice depends on people telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That is the lynch pin of our criminal justice system and I don't want it to be faded in any way."

Rep. Steve Chabot (R-IL): "It would be wrong for you to send a message to every American that it's acceptable to lie under oath and obstruct a federal investigation. It would be wrong for you to tell America's children that some lies are all right. It would be wrong to show the rest of the world that some of our laws don't really matter."

More quotes:

former Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX): "This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law. Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth. No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country."

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-MN): "What is on trial here is the truth and the rule of law. Our failure to bring President Clinton to account for his lying under oath and preventing the courts from administering equal justice under law, will cause a cancer to be present in our society for generations. I want those parents who ask me the questions, to be able to tell their children that even if you are president of the United States, if you lie when sworn "to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," you will face the consequences of that action, even when you don't accept the responsibility for them."

It is obvious that this is a political party of double standards, of applying verdicts of guilty or innocent based upon the partisan divide. Is it any surprise that U.S. attorneys were fired for not prosecuting enough Democrats? If the President truly felt the prison sentence was excessive or severe then why did he reduce it to zero? His statement implies that a prison sentence was warranted, why didn't he wait a few months and then commute the sentence? Here is one simple fact to explain this whole mess: you are only guilty if you don't know the right people. End of story.

UPDATE:

I just wanted to add one thing more to those who in response to Hillary's condemnation of Bush's commutation of the Libby sentence constantly bring up the pardons issued by Bill Clinton. Those pardons were issued by the Bill Clinton administration, not by Hillary. Any vitriol one has against those pardons should be issued against he who issued the pardons. If Hillary had issued those pardons then, yes, they could be fair game to be used against her if/when she spoke out against the Libby sentence commutation by President Bush, but she didn't, Bill did, so she can speak out against Bush's decision without having to worry about any past actions b/c those actions WERE NOT ISSUED FROM HER. Do you understand now?

Socialized Medicine?

Ron Gunzburger over at Politics1.com offers a quick defense of universal health care and his confusion, which I share, in the application of the dreaded label of "socialized medicine":

I appreciate the underlying message of Michael Moore's new film Sicko -- and this doesn't reflect any new stance for me. I've openly editorialized here for several years in support of a universal national health care system for the US. Here's an excerpt from my July 2004 editorial on the topic: "Why do critics always deride it as 'socialized medicine'? And why, when people call it socialized medicine, do moderates quickly shy away from any meaningful discussion on the merits of the topic? We have universal public education through the high school level (to wit: everyone pays taxes regardless of whether or not they will have a kid in school in order to ensure that every child has the opportunity to attend public schools for free) ... but no mainstream politician ever calls it 'socialized education.' The same universal method of tax payments coupled with full public access -- usually without user fees -- applies to all of our public roads, parks, police, and fire/rescue. Despite this, I've never once heard anyone decry 'socialized streets' or 'socialized parks' or 'socialized law enforcement' or 'socialized public safety.' When do we set aside the rhetorical war -- and some of this political polarization of the nation -- and start having calm, serious, thoughtful discussions about real solutions to real problems facing real people?" I don't care what you want to call it -- including the feared "S-word" -- but our nation desperately needs universal health care coverage. And I could care less if we put all of the private health insurance companies out of business. While we're on the topic of fixing our nation's problems, adopting the living wage wouldn't be a bad idea either ... but I'll save that one for another day.

Republicans are the first to place the label of "socialized medicine" on any mention of universal health care and there are clear reasons that they do this. The term "socialized" is used to scare the American public. Yes, I know that it is strange to believe that the Republican Party is willing to use FEAR to win votes but, in this instance, it is happening.

The United States spent over fifty years involved in a Cold War against the socialist state of the Soviet Union (you might of heard of this one), and Americans spent fifty years being bombarded with propaganda to fear and revile this nation. "Socialized" immediately creates an image of the dreaded hammer and sickle in the minds of the American people and, God forbid, under socialized medicine it means that the government controls the means and access to health care, and can see your medical records. Let me repeat that, they can see your medical records. I don't know what the government can do with such information, they spent four years looking at my medical records when I was enlisted in the U.S. Army and I don't recall any oppression, other than your garden-variety sergeants and ladder climbing, butterbar lieutenants.

The sooner Americans realize that many politicians in D.C. are using fear to control them, I'm sure at the behest of the mighty HMO lobby, and realize that universal health care is the only logical step to solving the ailing health care system in this nation, the better we'll all be. Let me break it down to you like this: X has no health care b/c he can't afford it, so X never goes to the doctor and receives preventative care, X develops a condition which worsens, X has to get care, X cannot go to a doctor b/c he can't afford it, so X goes to the ER which will not turn him away for his condition, X and other Xs clog up the ER, X can't pay b/c he has no health care, so the cost of Xs care is shifted to the hospital and the government, but if X had been able to receive preventative care this might never have happened. Universal health care will give all the Xs preventative care and will make doctor's office accessible and they can go to their offices rather than clog up the ER which would only be for emergency situations.

Think about this as well, who is the only group that will not benefit from universal health care? HMOs. Now you see why they fight it so hard.

Obama Raises $32.5 Million

Holy shit, those are some seriously impressive numbers:

Sen. Barack Obama reported Sunday raising at least $32.5 million for his presidential campaign from April through June, a record for a Democratic candidate.

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That is more than what Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's main Democratic rival, has said she would raise for the reporting period that ended Saturday.

At least $31 million of Obama's total is for party primaries, according to campaign aides.

The first-term senator from Illinois received donations from more than 154,000 individual contributors and through the first half of the year had 258,000 donors. Obama raised $25.7 million in the first three months of the year.

A more impressive number, in my opinion, is the fact that Obama has over 250,000 donors. That's a serious grassroots base. With Hillary's estimate hovering around $27 million and Edwards not even breaking $10 million, Obama has taken control of the money and grassroots of the Democratic Party, and with no Republican estimated to break $20 million for the last quarter it is obvious that Obama has become a man amongst boys, and girls. Will it hold? Only time will tell.

Did I mention...holy shit.

The Liberal Media Strikes Again

CNN, in all its liberal media bias, declares that the reason for the low approval ratings that Congress receives from the American people is that Democrats are one big failure:

How do people think the Democratic Congress is doing after six months? Lousy.

Of course the same polling shows that Americans have an even lower opinion of Republicans and even though they feel that the Democrats are performing "lousy," they would still rather have a Democratic Congress than a Republican one. What is interesting is the quotes they use to bolster the poll.

There are a total of seven quotes used in the article and the breakdown goes like this: there are four quotes that blame Congress in general (which is still an indictment of Democrats being that they are the majority), two quotes which directly blame Democrats, and one, short quote offered by Harry Reid which tells the truth that the GOP is allowing an legislation to proceed, but in an effort of appearing "fair and balanced" CNN says that it is simply Democrats blaming Republicans and then further on CNN states "And Republicans blame Democrats."

Good job, CNN! By appearing "fair and balanced" you simply vomit up the Republican talking points. What liberal media?

GOP, The Party of Obstructionism

Someone needed to say it:

As Roll Call reported this week, 239 separate bills have passed the House, only to find Senate Republicans "objecting to just about every major piece of legislation" that Harry Reid has tried to bring to the floor, whether it enjoys bi-partisan support or not.

Indeed, Senate Republicans -- the ones accusing Dems of being a "do-nothing Congress" -- are proud of their efforts. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott boasted, "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it's working for us."

Voters are understandably frustrated about the lack of legislative achievements thus far, but the explanation is surprisingly straightforward: Republicans won't allow up-or-down votes on anything of significance.

The Republican Party is also the Party of Hypocrites. They complained about the filibuster and even threatened to remove it, saying it was unconstitutional, but now they use it constantly. They complained about Democrats using procedural motions to stop legislation, but they do the same thing. That is hypocrisy, but does the national news media call them on it? No. Does the news media report that it is Republican obstructionism that is stopping important legislation, that enjoys popular support amongst American voters? Again, no. The media simply regurgitates whatever Republican talking points is available to them and reports on a "do-nothing Congress" and ignores the fact it is Republican obstructionism that is stopping the legislation. The news media doesn't even have to dig deep to discover this truth, all they have to do is ask Republican Senators like Trent Lott who basically stated that they are intentionally obstructing legislation to try to make the Democrats look bad, and the news media are their willing accomplices. What liberal media?

Here is the Republican message: give the Democrats a black eye and screw the American people. Go here and help expose the obstructionists.

Dumbass Quote of the Day

Courtesy of the one and only Senator Jim Demint (R-SC) who blames American casualties in Iraq on the Democrats:

Al-Qaida knows that we’ve got a lot of wimps in Congress. I believe a lot of the casualties can be laid at the feet of all the talk in Congress about how we’ve got to get out, we’ve got to cut and run.

Can you feel the testosterone pumping out of Demint? What a manly man! Why, he's so manly that he makes King Leonidas look like a little girl with pigtails.