– Mark Driscoll still seems problematic in all sorts of ways, but at least he understood one bad thing he did was bad. Maybe he can cool it with the homophobia and hating women next?
– Here’s wishing Justice Jim Johnson a pleasant retirement (Spokesman-Review link). He wasn’t a favorite around here, but you always hope to beat people you don’t like at the ballot not for health reasons.
– Quite a disparity on bylines by gender.
– The Strange Bedfellows of the Anti-Contraception Alliance
– KUOW is having their membership drive soon if you want to help out.
– RIP Jim Compton.
Jim Compton: old school tv journo and conscientious city council member. Damn straight I voted for him. Ok he made a few missteps. Who doesn’t?
RIP..
Wow what kind of “weak” liberal with “community organizer values” penned this stuff?
Only the former Ambassasador to the Soviet Union under Rayun and Papa Bush…
Siemens has received the notice to proceed on the multistate locomotive order. The 4400hp Diesel Electric locomotives, named Charger, will be pulling regional trains in California, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, and Washington. Final assembly will be at the Siemens Sacramento plant.
http://www.railwayage.com/inde.....channel=35
RACISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Carl,
Where did Brian Beutler get his black bona fides from? Golly he looks awfully whitey to Puddy! And you being the HA DUMMOCRETIN you are, just post any old horsesass manure from an libtard source and “call it good”!
Puddy been saying this for a long time on HA DUMMOCRETINS. Why national DNCC and DNSC DUMMOCRETINS don’t care about inner city solutions to drugs, schools, job opportunities, crime, abortions, etc. You all want to keep blacks under your thumb and just give blacks enough to think they are getting somewhere so they keep voting for National and State DUMMOCRETINS!
Paul is right and screw Brian Bueller and the horsesASS he rode in on! Paul is exposing the losing policies from DUMMOCRETINS in their politically controlled cities and Brian is scared people will wake up!
Keep on being really stooooooooooopid on racial issues Carl. You are a credit to your race!
Crocodile Tears For Ray Jasper
“I’m on death row and yet I didn’t commit the act of murder. I was convicted under the law of parties. When people read about the case, they assume I killed the victim, but the facts are undisputed that I did not kill the victim. The one who killed him plead guilty to capital murder for a life sentence. He admitted to the murder and has never denied it. Under the Texas law of parties, they say it doesn’t matter whether I killed the victim or not, I’m criminally responsible for someone else’s conduct. But I was the only one given the death penalty.” — Ray Jasper, Texas death row inmate
If things go according to plan, about a half hour from now the State of Texas will inject enough pentobarbitol into Ray Jasper, the author of a superficially poignant letter about the death penalty, to end his miserable life.
Technically, Jasper is right — he didn’t kill the victim. When he grabbed the victim from behind and yanked his head back and slashed his throat from ear to ear, he didn’t cut deep enough to sever the jugular; so one of his accomplices stabbed the victim 25 times to finish him off. The autopsy determined that the victim died from the stab wounds inflicted by the accomplice, not the throat slashing inflicting by Jasper.
But Jasper caused Alejandro’s death in all other respects. He was the ringleader who dreamed up the robbery, planned and organized it, recruited accomplices, and decided to kill the victim to prevent him from identifying the robbers.
The victim was David Alejandro, a recording engineer, and Jasper, an aspiring rapper, was one of his customers. The motive behind the murder was robbery, i.e. to steal Alejandro’s recording equipment and sell it. To carry out the crime, Jasper arranged a recording session with Alejandro, then he and an accomplice attacked Alejandro with knives. After killing him, they loaded Alejandro’s recording equipment in a van and drove off. They were caught the same day.
Jasper isn’t a poor black man who was railroaded onto Texas’ death row. His father was a career military officer and the family was middle class. Jasper was defended by a law firm hired by his family, not a public defender. The appeals court did not find the jury selection or conduct of the trial to be tainted by racial bias. In the sentencing phase, the jury considered such factors as Jasper’s prior criminal history, lack of remorse, and whether he posed a continuing threat to society. Basically, Ray Jasper was a bad kid from a good family who began committing crimes in his early teens and escalated his actions to ever-more-violent crimes. Just a few weeks before Alejandro’s murder, Jasper had assaulted an off-duty cop who caught him in the act of committing a residential burglary, and Jasper was out on bail for that crime when he robbed and murdered Alejandro.
Jasper argues he shouldn’t be executed for Alejandro’s death because he didn’t personally kill Alejandro. It’s a specious argument. An Israeli court found that Adolf Eichmann didn’t personally kill anyone, either; but Israel hanged Eichmann anyway (even though it didn’t have a death penalty), because that irrelevant fact could not absolve Eichmann of responsibility for helping organize and carry out the Holocaust. It takes both mind and hand to commit murder, and both are responsible; but between the two, the mind is more responsible because that’s where intent comes from. Between Jasper (who got death) and his accomplice (who got life), the Texas judicial system got its priorities right in this case; the state is executing the perp who deserves it most.
Because Jasper wrote a somewhat eloquent letter opposing the death penalty, his plea is getting play in the media and a sympathetic reception by people who oppose the death penalty.
The death penalty is criticized on many grounds, and with ample justification. It doesn’t deter crime; it is more expensive than incarceration; there are other ways to assure violent criminals don’t return to the streets; it is still applied unevenly, and has a sordid history of singling out minority and poor defendants; it’s irreversible, which is an issue, because we know the judicial system makes mistakes; it’s traumatic for the corrections officials and staff who carry it out; and all of the methods used to inflict it are flawed and have been botched.
Here is another letter, written by the victim’s brother. If you’ve read Ray Jasper’s letter, it’s only fair that you read Steven Alejandro’s letter, too. In it, Steven tells us that he’s personally opposed to the death penalty. But he also says this:
“After everything, I’m still opposed to the death penalty. … I have to say to my fellow death penalty opponent friends: Keep up your fight. It is an honorable one. The death penalty should be abolished because it is wrong to kill another human being. But do not use this man, Ray Jasper, as your spokesperson, as your example of why the death penalty should be abolished. Ray Jasper is not worthy of your good and kind hearts. He has never accepted culpability or expressed remorse. He is responsible for viciously ending the life of ‘the nicest man he ever met,’ David Mendoza Alejandro.”
http://www.kens5.com/news/hold.....99551.html
By all means, let us have a vigorous debate over whether we should abolish the death penalty. Up to now, I’ve supported keeping it in reserve for exceptionally vicious killers who commit exceptionally heinous murders. I’m against using the death penalty any way but sparingly, but I’m personally not yet convinced that it should never be used at all, although I’m willing to keep an open mind on this.
For what it’s worth, after Ray Jasper is put to death this afternoon, Texas’s next scheduled execution is Tommy Sells, a throat-slasher convicted of killing a 13-year-old girl and wounding a 10-year-old girl. Sells is a self-proclaimed serial killer who asserts he has killed 70 people, although law enforcement considers him a suspect in 13 killings.
Everyone deserves a fair trial, including the Jaspers and Sells of the world, because it’s important that we convict and punish only the guilty and not extract society’s justice from innocent people for these horrible crimes. When the state kills these killers in our name, perhaps that demeans and diminishes us all, and that too should be part of our death penalty debates. But Jasper doesn’t deserve the fawning attention his letter is getting him. If Texas puts him to death this afternoon as planned, you should shed no tears for him. Rather, cry for us and our civilization.
The right has run out of
ideascrazy bullshit and (un)SP shows it.In other news, two workers were killed in the Belgian village of Ypres today when a World War 1 shell exploded at a construction site.
@7 Does it even exist? Nothing’s been posted for a week.
Update: A San Antonio TV station reports that Ray Jasper has been executed. A San Antonio newspaper says no witnesses from either Jasper’s family or the victim’s family attended the execution.
Judging from the number of people who saw Flight 370 on its trip to the Twilight Zone, the plane must have split like an amoeba into half a dozen planes that went flying off in different directions.
Either that, or you can’t trust eyewitness testimony.
Meanwhile, loved ones of the missing passengers are increasingly taking out their angst and frustration on airline and government officials — as if they know where the plane is and are hiding it somewhere.
Well, you can’t expect upset people to act rationally, which maybe is an argument against allowing armed citizens to take the law into their own hands. If this happened in the US, some of our wingers might be shooting airline employees and government press secretaries by now.
Hmmm… Australia thinks it found something on MH370.
Search Update
An Australian satellite has spotted two objects bobbing up and down in the Indian Ocean about 1,550 miles southwest of Perth.
The Australian prime minister told parliament that “specialist analysis” of the satellite images indicate the objects may be “plane parts.” He cautioned the images are indistinct and the objects may not be debris from the missing plane, but said this is “the best lead we have right now.”
The largest object was estimated to be about 79 feet long. By comparison, a Boeing 777-200’s tail is 61 feet high.
U.S. officials told ABC News that “refined” analysis of the jet’s hourly pings heard by satellites have yielded “far more clues than expected” and “dramatically narrowed” the search to two flight paths heading toward the South Pole. The floating objects are near where these paths predict the plane might have gone down.
CNN says the objects are “in the heart of what is known as the Indian Ocean Gyre. There is little to no oceanic current movement in the region and the area is notorious for trapping debris. It’s one of the five major gyres in the world’s oceans and is known to contain a ‘garbage patch.'” This suggests the objects may be flotsam and not plane debris.
At least 4 aircraft, including a U.S. P-8 surveillance plane, and 6 ships are heading to the scene. In addition, commercial satellites are being repositioned to get a better look at the area. However, visibility in the area is described as “poor” and the prime minister warned that finding the objects will be “difficult.”
The site is described as “far away” and distant from the main search area.
Search Update 2
A U.S. P-8 search plane reported “significant” radar hits on something below the water surface. No visual sighting or identification has been reported yet.
Search Update 3
BBC reports that “scores of police” and “five ambulances” have arrived at the hotel where the families are waiting, so it sure sounds like they’ve found something and have definite information now.
Search Update 4
ABC News reports the radar hits are not related to the plane.
The Swiss Government has suspended free trade talks with Russia and it’s customs union.
http://www.thelocal.ch/2014031.....ith-russia
A little of the Australian media’s coverage on the latest search developments.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201.....an/5334314
Meanwhile at CNN this is what they discussed around MH370. CNN a favorite Bush Bashing “news” location of HA DUMMOCRETINS when Bush was in the white house!
And why is that jerk Ryan singling out inner city peeps? Didn’t he know that most poor household are white?
Oh shit it’s all a dog whistle to the base for Nov 2014 about the masta plan!