Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America

[SteveRiley]

I think the main problem with the Republican party is that they have let themselves be led by a succession of Religious nuts, loud mouth bigots, and corporate goons.

#1, corporate goons: yep, these are the true string-pullers, operating largely in secret.

#2, loudmouth bigots, or what I call sabbath gasbags: propped up by category #1 as putative leaders, but serve mostly as amplifiers and rabble-rousers.

#3 religious nuts: not generally in powerful leadership positions (*) but often manipulated by categories #1 and #2 because of their outsized influence over large numbers of sheople.

---

(*) with the notable exception of a tiresomely predictable procession of individuals who lack discretion with respect to where they place certain body parts...

[SteveRiley]

Or you simply haven't done proper research and have gone with your liberal biases instead of your gut instincts. I've found, in my years of researching and debating, that my instincts are more accurate than any scientific method.

Such a statement, alone, is a sufficient reason for me to doubt any legitimacy of your arguments regarding this topic. The scientific method was developed precisely to eliminate, to the best degree possible, the influence of gut instincts and biases. That you can claim your own colon is a more accurate predictor of outcomes than a method developed and fine-tuned over many decades smacks of breathtaking hubris.

[oshunluvr]

I disagree. The study in my previous post suggests that 1 execution of a prisoner potentially saves 18 innocent lives. So, executing 2,000 guilty men and 2 innocent men (of the crime their sentenced for, not necessarily "innocent" period) would save roughly 36,000 lives.

So logically, we need only execute 388,888,889 people and the remaining 6,611,111,111 people will live in a murder free world. What a ridiculous concept.

Time to lock this thread...

[charles052]

Such a statement, alone, is a sufficient reason for me to doubt any legitimacy of your arguments regarding this topic. The scientific method was developed precisely to eliminate, to the best degree possible, the influence of gut instincts and biases. That you can claim your own colon is a more accurate predictor of outcomes than a method developed and fine-tuned over many decades smacks of breathtaking hubris.

Your kidding!!! I have a hard time believing that one as smart as you would be so naive. Sorry, but not even the great "scientific method" is a match for greed, bias, and basic human stupidity.

I actually proved this in another forum, lost some good friends and I think I drove one man insane.

[charles052]

The Columbia Law School weighs in on these studies, and finds a number of flaws that weaken their utility. Predicting the number of potential lives saved is scarcely more than guesswork, and hardly qualifies as science:

So basically, when a study doesn't agree with the bias of the majority of the scientific community, simply set the standards higher. There is simply no way to take into account every variable when it come to behavioral studies. Everyone is different, some are crazy, many feel justified, and very few actually feel that they are really responsible for their crime.

As for the study, it seems to be a typical behavioral study. I wonder if there would be any such criticisms if the study showed that executions were no deterrent at all?

Than again, you realize you're quoting a professor of law, someone who teaches others how to create a persuasive argument with or without any real merit.

Contrary to your earlier assertion, these criticisms are indeed constructive and highlight many of the flaws and biases that corrupt the methodological processes of the studies.

Such is your opinion, which is biased.

More damning is an indictment of the cost. Indeed, splurging for executions diverts funding away from more productive police work:



Blood lust, in all its forms, is truly appalling. Expensive, too.

Which proves to me that it's the justice system that needs to be fixed rather than capital punishment needing to be rid of. As I've said: A little rope goes a long way.

[charles052]

So logically, we need only execute 388,888,889 people and the remaining 6,611,111,111 people will live in a murder free world. What a ridiculous concept.

Time to lock this thread...

Are there that many people on death row?

[Snowhog]

This is obviously an emotionally charged thread, so please be careful and not let emotion replace thoughtful dialog. There are strong, even entrenched, positions here. Neither side is going to persuade the other. So, at best, agree to disagree.

[GreyGeek]

When we develop the technology to resurrect those who were later found out to be executed by a miscarriage of justice then I'll be all for the death penalty. Until then, I am not because I've seen first hand how the justice system works.

One homicide case I was asked to work on in 1988 was about a 14 year old adopted boy who murdered his step-sister after she refused his sexual advances and said she was going to tell the folks. He had been planning a murder because he obtain in advance the bullets for a locked up .22 pistol, and had also previously located the hidden key to the gun cabinet. He shot her in the head while she was cleaning up a head wound he inflicted on her with a broom handle while trying to knock her unconscious after she refused his advances. Blood trails indicated he had chased her around the house after hitting her. I was called in a year later, a couple months before the trial, to review the evidence and see if the investigators had missed something that could prove motive. They had. Blood stain analysis of over looked spots established the location of the boy when he shot her and the position of the girl when the bullet hit her in the head (ejecta). Photographic evidence showed a bullet hole in the girl's chest, and blood flow from the would showed that her heart was still beating when he shot her in the chest. The blood flowed from the wound and gathered in a pool near the belly button, where it stained the top of her jeans and panties. Photos showed that the jeans had been unzipped. Physical analysis of the panties and blood stains on them showed that the boy had sexually molested the girl after the second shot. All of this the investigating officers missed. They could just as easily missed evidence which could have exonerated him, had such evidence been present.

The boy, Sydney, was born to a teenage girl who was a high school drop-out addicted to drugs. She sold herself to support her drug habit. She got pregnant and after the boy was born she sold him to perverts for their sexual pleasure, again to fund her drug habits. When he was old enough she'd boost him through windows and transoms so he could unlock doors from the inside, allowing her to enter and rob the places. He was five when they were caught he was placed in state childcare, which put him in foster homes. He was moved from home to home as he attacked girls in those home until none of the foster parents would accept him. So, the state expunged his records and put him up for adoption. A very religious Mennonite family adopted him. The murder broke the family apart.

At his first trial my evidence was enough to convict him of 2nd Degree murder, although the prosecutor could have tried for 1st degree with malice and forethought, considering the planning that was involved. Later, one of my students at the college where I was teaching, Mike, took time out from college and got a job as a prison guard at the state prison in Lincoln, in the block where Sydney was housed. He said that Sydney had beefed up and his favorite pass time was pasting photos of women on his cell wall then and mutilating them. The psychiatrist who evaluated him says he was psychotic and would be all his life and should never be released because he represented a threat to the community. After a couple years Mike went back to school and obtained a PhD in English at an Ivy League school back East.

Ten years later, in 1998, a Nebraska supreme court judge, in an apparent effort to get his nephew a new trial, nullified all 2nd Degree murder convictions, and jail house lawyers (cons who studied law in prison at our expense) recommended that Syndey ask for a retrial because, they reasoned, the investigators had retired and the evidence was probably destroyed. They were only 1/2 right. I had kept all of the evidence locked in a "chain of custody" control. The investigator who was still alive came out of retirement and we reviewed the evidence I kept. The result of the second trial was a conviction for 1st degree murder with no possibility of parole.

End of case, right?

Wrong. When did "no possibility for parole" ever mean that the criminal would never be set free?

I got an email LAST WEEK stating that a couple of groups had been working to get the the 38 year old Sydney's sentence "commuted" because he was a juvenile when he was convicte. I was asked if I would like to write or present a statement to the board of pardons. I wrote to them expressing two basic facts:

1) Sydney's pathological condition has not changed. He was, is and will be a danger to the community, and there is every reason to believe that if he is released he will kill again, such is his hatred for women. When a girl or boy is sexually molested, or has some other highly traumatic event happen to them at an early age, they carry those wounds with them for the rest of their life. Counseling and other treatments are not effective in eliminating the trauma/fear, and often does not reduce the anxiety. That last sentence is an accepted dogma in our culture, and from personal experience in my family I find it to be true. So, no amount of counseling, hand holding, shoulder patting, or "there, there" is going to heal Sydney of is his murderous impulses any more than those palliatives could heal the pain of surviving victims, even if it makes the do-gooders feel good or self-righteous about themselves.

2) If Sydney is released following the Dec 5th meeting of the board of pardons, then I shall obtain a Concealed Carry Permit and pack a Ruger LC9 or Glock 26 in my waistband for personal defense of myself and my wife. My son also carries my name. I have warned him and my daughter, who has changed her FB account name to conceal her identity, even though I told her that information on the web goes back for years and is un-erasable. If Sydney wants to find us he will have no problem doing so.

Although I swore off shooting animals 30 years ago I have been a life long shooter of guns and bows, and am an excellent shot. And, having assisted in various criminal investigations during the 15+ years I ran my consulting business, I have learned that when seconds count the police are only minutes away.

Oh, and before anyone responds that I should depend on the police to protect us I will remind them that the SCOTUS has ruled in more than one case that the police have NO obligation to protect anyone, even if they are aware of a pending threat.

[HalationEffect]

I'm 100% in agreement with GreyGeek's stance as outlined above.

In order to be in favour of the death penalty, I'd have to have a lot more faith in a justice system that has proven itself to be very, very fallible, time and again. Let them get their "false positives" down to zero, then my stance may change.

Yes, there are some individuals who are so damaged / dangerous that society at large will never be safe from them if said individuals aren't kept locked up... so we should keep them locked up. There is no need to kill them, nor is there any benefit to society by doing so.

[GreyGeek]

I may not be able to defend myself after all. While researching more about CCW I found this:
http://thenewamerican.com/world-news...n-ban-flimflam

As we have reported, when the treaty was being deliberated in July, the United States was the only obstacle preventing the global arms control regulations from being imposed on the world.Miraculously, however, all the points of the agreement Secretary Clinton found so distasteful in the summer were made so much more palatable after President Obama’s reelection, and every single attack on the right to bear arms remains in the version of the treaty approved on November 7.
Within hours of his securing his reelection, President Obama placed a late night call to the U.S. United Nations delegation ordering them to vote in favor of a passage of L.11.
As soon as news of the U.S. policy 180 was confirmed, a new round of negotiations on the treaty was scheduled for March 18-28 at the UN headquarters in New York City.
That was immediately followed by a press release sent out early the next morning from the United Nations General Assembly’s First Committee proclaiming the good news of President Obama’s go-ahead for the gun grab and setting the agenda for the next gun control conference.

Here is what Clinton said last July:

“As defenders of the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, we write to express our grave concern about the dangers posed by the United Nations’ arms trade treaty,” the senators said in the letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Our country’s sovereignty and the constitutional protection of these individual freedoms must not be infringed.”

But, nothing has changed in the UN treaty. The only thing that changed was the re-election of Pres. Obama. Now I am wondering what it was that he asked Pres. Meddevdev of Russia to tell Putin to wait on till he was re-elected.

[NickStone]

...I shall obtain a Concealed Carry Permit and pack a Ruger LC9 or Glock 26 in my waistband for personal defense of myself and my wife.

You've been watching too many movies! Carrying a firearm that way is likely to turn you in to a eunuch. Safety catches on firearms are infallible!

[calcmandan]

I also read somewhere that this same idea popped up after the 2004 and 2008 elections (although it didn't say what states were involved in those years). I think it is just people unhappy that their preferred candidate wasn't elected and they are acting out anyway they can.

People also said they'd move to Canada but that didn't happen either. Shucks

Sent from my Galaxy S2 using tapatalk 2

[GreyGeek]

You've been watching too many movies! Carrying a firearm that way is likely to turn you in to a eunuch. Safety catches on firearms are infallible!

Sorry, NickStone. I don't watch many movies, especially the shoot'em up variety. And, you are showing your rookie knowledge of gun handling. You should never depend on the "safety" and never keep a round under the hammer. As far as my anatomy is concerned, if you ever get a severe case of BPH you'll understand why your fears are not justified. And, at 71, I won't be fathering any children because of a vasectomy 40 years ago.

Carrying a weapon is not about ego. Ego will get you or someone around you killed.

[NickStone]

...you are showing your rookie knowledge of gun handling. You should never depend on the "safety" and never keep a round under the hammer. As far as my anatomy is concerned, if you ever get a severe case of BPH you'll understand why your fears are not justified. And, at 71, I won't be fathering any children because of a vasectomy 40 years ago.

Carrying a weapon is not about ego. Ego will get you or someone around you killed.

My rookie knowledge of firearms? It's you who said that you would carry a firearm in your waistband of your pants (trousers). But if your perfectly happy to have a loaded firearm pointing at your manhood that's fine. It's your funeral!

[GreyGeek]

I'm really touched by your concern for my genitalia. Remember, however, it is the unloaded weapon that kills.

Besides, if they don't "commute" that madman's sentence then I won't be wasting money on self-defense, and your concerns will be baseless.
Thanks anyway!