The Death Penalty

Where Was the Hoopla This Time?

Tookie is dead. I'll admit, I didn't know much about his case before last week, but I find the way it was handled a bit telling of our 'impartial' legal system, and our Republican President.

Rewind to April 2005: the Supreme Court took much interest in a right to die case, and the President even (gasp!) cut short his precious (and normal) 3 week vacation. The subject being Mrs. Terri Schiavo. The news coverage it got was excessive to the point of ridiulous. Here was a husband, who had suffered along with his brain dead wife for way too long, using his right as next-to-kin/health care proxy to finally let his wife's tortured soul rest in peace after 15 years of being in a vegetative state. Let's be honest: you're living, but when you've got no potential to regain much brain activity, if any, you're not really living unless you were born a tree.

Michael Schiavo joins the fray
Terri Schiavo's husband starts a PAC devoted to defeating the Bible-thumping politicians who used his comatose wife as a football.

By Michael Scherer

At the height of the battle, Michael Schiavo appeared to be a reluctant cultural warrior. His wife, Terri, lay comatose, in her 15th year of vegetative slumber, connected to a feeding tube, but well beyond resuscitation. Around her hospice, a political hurricane swirled.

In Terri's name, President George Bush interrupted his vacation, Sen. Bill Frist played doctor from the Senate floor, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush launched a flimsy criminal investigation, and Rep. Tom DeLay issued ominous political threats to the judiciary. The religious right had turned Terri into a symbolic beachhead in the battle for a "culture of life," and the Republican Party had answered the call.

Where's the Political Hurricane?

I know Bush isn't quick to lend a hand in a hurricane, but this debate on whether Stanley Williams should be killed has been stirring for some time.

I'm not here to speculate on whether Mr. Williams was innocent or guilty for those murders in '81. I agree with The Terminator (how's that for irony? The guy best known for being the Terminator is the only one who can grant you clemency seeing how Bush couldn't give two shits) that if he was guilty for those murders he should have apologized to the victims' families, and that would have helped bring him closer to redemption.

My issue with this life/death case lies with President Bush. Mr. President loves to gain religious votes with his anti-abortion crusades citing God as his ally. Where was he this time and, pray tell, why does he support the death penalty if he is pro-life? As a religious person I believe God's judgment is what counts the most in the end. Sure the human/passionate part of me would like to see "an eye for an eye," but who am I to cast judgment on another human being?
"Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone."

I met this guy from Saudia Arabia one time named Yamen. One of his favorite quotes was, "Why do we kill people that kill people to show them that killing people is wrong?" He read it on a t-shirt.

I would love to hear George's response to that question.

Bush stirred international moanings when he insisted shortly after 9/11 that those countries and governments who were not with him were against him. Life is not so black and white. There are shades of grey and I would have to say that most everyone I know is a grey person. Grey is beautiful and intelligent.

A friend of mine had an abortion a few years back. Most of her friends shunned her, and turned away from her because they had gotten pregnant in high school and college and kept their beautiful babies. This friend had her reasons, some medically related, some selfish, some altruistic, but in the end it was her decision, and in the end only God can cast judgment. Not me, not her friends who chose life, nor her friends who never have accidently gotten pregnant and were actually faced with that fact. I was a source of comfort for her at a time when most abandoned her, friends that were closer to her than me. I told her I disagreed with her decision, but I forgave her as a friend. I've lost touch with her now more out of circumstance than personal differences, but I hope she is living, and living well.

He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would reach heaven: for every one has need to be forgiven. -- Thomas Fuller

I sin. You sin. My priest sins. We're all human. Only human. It doesn't excuse it, it reveals it.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
-- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Let us hope a time of peace comes soon.
Wherever you are Tookie, rest in peace.