A few links to some issues related to criminal justice…
– At 7PM this evening, our friends at Washblog are having an online discussion about Washington State’s 3-strikes law which will include family members of those affected by the law.
– This past weekend was the 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans. One of my favorite bloggers, Pete Guither, blogged throughout the conference, including the session led by 45th District State Representative Roger Goodman, who is one of the most knowledgeable elected officials in the nation on drug policy.
– Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that sentencing guidelines that established a 100:1 imbalance between crack and powder cocaine penalties can be overruled by judges at their discretion. The Sentencing Law and Policy blog has some background here and here.
– Finally, Radley Balko has a tremendous post reflecting on the time he’s spent in Mississippi working on the Cory Maye case. Maye was a young man with no criminal record and a young daughter in rural Mississippi whose house was accidentally raided by cops who weren’t aware that his apartment was a separate unit from the one they were looking for (where an actual drug dealer was living). Believing he was being robbed (the raid was conducted at night), Maye fired on the intruder, killing a very well-respected officer by the name of Ron Jones. He wound up on death row before Balko discovered the case and led an effort to have his death sentence repealed (although Maye is still in jail serving a life sentence). The full compendium of posts on Cory Maye are here.
Maye is in jail because it’s still illegal for a black guy to shoot a white cop in self-defense in Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi. You won’t find that law on the books, but trust me, it’s the law. They moved the trial from Jefferson Davis County, where the jury pool is 67% black, to another county where the jury pool is 12% black, to make sure it would be enforced.
On the other hand, it’s perfectly legal in Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi, for white cops to beat up a black suspect after he’s been arrested, handcuffed, and can’t defend himself.
I wonder if it’s still legal for Mississippi cops to abduct and murder white guys who try to register black people to vote?
Why the hell they ever let the south join the Union in the first place, much less why they fought a war to keep these assholes from quitting the Union, is beyond me.
Yes, I had heard of the Cory Maye story but I forgot about it. Thanks Lee for bringing it back up.
Lee, when I scrape a few coins together I will send money down to his lawyer.
All Pelletizer (TM) posted is political horseshit.
Thanks for the link, Lee, to the Washblog story. There is some good discussion there — lots to follow up on. I like Drug War Rant — will go back to it.
I wonder what happened to the sock puppet who posted this crap: “Indeed most of the commenters on this liberal blog are conservatives”
As I remember it was 62 Moonbat!s – 18 Conservatives.
Nicole Broodinghen farted, like most liberals here.
@5 I’m a Democratic party hack and liberal propagandist. It’s what I do. Get over it.
Mark The Redneck Is Full Of Shit
Tax cuts don’t always increase revenue.
Hey, you don’t have to take my word for it, or even believe the official statistics; even the Busheviks admit it:
“Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts of the past six years haven’t paid for themselves.” — Time Magazine, Dec. 6, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/magaz.....27,00.html
Hey Lee, did that online chat about the three strikes law involve family members of victims of crimes committed by third strikers?
If Democrats want to lose their majority in Olympia, amending the three strikes law is a great way to do it…
Bax:
victims? Victims? VICTIMS?
The only thing a liberal cares about are victims of their causes! Come on Bax, do you think Lee has any other position, incredible as that may be?
You know there were two special elections yesterday. Because the Moonbat! candidate lost, not much is posted in the MSM.
“Republicans retained two House seats in special elections Tuesday, including a hotly contested Ohio race that the two parties spent nearly $700,000 trying to win. …
State legislator Bob Latta decisively defeated Democrat Robin Weirauch in Ohio’s 5th District, leading by 56 to 43 percent with 90 percent of the vote in. The special election was held to replace the late Rep. Paul Gillmor (R).
In Virginia’s 1st District, GOP state Del. Rob Wittman won a landslide victory over Iraq war veteran Phil Forgit (D) in the race to succeed the late Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R).
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Wittman had 61 percent of the vote, while Forgit had only tallied 37 percent.
The story of the evening was Latta’s victory, however, given signs in recent weeks that the reliably Republican district, based in Bowling Green, was in danger of falling into Democratic hands.
This campaign became a cause célèbre for national Democrats and liberal activists nationwide” -[awwww toooo bad libbies]
Fair use claws and copyleft: http://www.politico.com/news/s...../7343.html
So I guess this “referendum” on Republicans has been repudiated so far HorsesASSWipes?
Puddy Commentary: Katie Couric and her SEE My BS News broadcast have had this as the lead story. Brian Williams and his Nothing but Bull Crap News would have had great graphics. Charlie Gibson and the All Bullcrap Collective would have had reporters in the field. Well they probably did but had to kill the story. And finally the Clinton News Network would have trumpeted on how this helps Hilary.
Imagine what the liberal MSM (remember MSNBC has it 9:1 democrat supported) newspapers would have led with as their headlines (I bet they already had them ready to go) and Goldy here would have drank their sticky white kool-aid too.
In other words they told Forgit to forgiddabout it!
Wow someone actually printed this article.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/925
“Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year.” – [What?]
Of course to those on the Al Gore side, no one thinks the increasing sun activity has anything to do with the heating of the earth. Ever read Revelation?
Ekim: You asked about scientists on the other side. I thought I posted this earlier this year. Here are some prominent scientists who have reversed their positions on man-made global warming.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/i.....cb00b51a12
Oh my Ekim: This will explode your mind:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/i.....5d0842fed8
“New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears”
Yes Ekim, your side is so open-minded like “K” claims to be:
“EPA Chief Vows to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy’ Career of Climate Skeptic”
http://epw.senate.gov/public/i.....f02278f4cf
Yes open minded.
Puddy:
Sorry – you are just plain wrong on global warming. The scietific consensus is in – and the earth is warming, the polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate and it is due to human activity.
You can cite your few scientists who argue otherwise – but they are a small minority and are not respected because they haven’t published anything worthwhile to disprove the consensus on global warming.
You could also find the same type of “scientists” to support oppostion to the theory of evolution and those who claim the earth is flat. Big deal.
What you (and the other global warming deniers) can’t do is refute the scientific consensus – and trying to do this just makes you look foolish and shows your lack of understanding of science.
don’t need an e-mail to destroy the career of the global warming skeptic – just the facts will do that….a scientist who ignores the facts are interprets them to the exclusion of the whole picture is not going to be respected anyways…
Nevercorrectandagainnotright: Where did I say it’s not warming up? You continue to mix up your brain with your ASS. I am not a denier. Suppress your idiot gene for a moment and review what I have personally said. I and others contend it’s the sun not just CO2 emissions. I also contend methane plays a part. I said man is not the major culprit. I lean on Revelation which God says he will make the sun burn hotter as the return of His Son draws nearer.
Regarding your specious argument. They have published, they are the ones who don’t care if they get “funding”. They are being suppressed like the EPA article I posted.
My lack of science. No I study both sides and don’t jump on the “bandwagon” just because it looks like a big snowball going downhill.
Daddy Love asked who is promoting a carbon-like tax.
Baba Boxer:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/i.....6f21acf013
FACT: A new MIT study concludes that the Sanders-Boxer approach would impose a tax-equivalent of $366 billion annually, or more than $4,500 per family of four, by 2015. And the annual costs will grow after 2015.
Now how is Goldy gonna pay dis tax too?
@10
If Democrats want to lose their majority in Olympia, amending the three strikes law is a great way to do it…
If the Democrats have no interest in fixing the prison overcrowding problem, then there’s no real reason for them to have a majority.
The scietific consensus
You do understand that’s an oxymoron, don’t you?
SCIENCE is based upon indisputable FACTS, not models, not harmony of opinions based on big fat $$$ for research.
Let me explain it in a way your midget mind
willmight understand: A CONSENSUS of conservative thinkers are of the opinion that Hillary is a power whore who personally killed Vince Foster… does that make it a FACT?A CONSENSUS of right thinkers who post here think Goldstein is a whore for Darcy, who we beleive swallows instead of spits…. does that make it a FACT?
Moron
Noted earlier that George McGovern and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. despised Jimmy Carter, a mean little man. McGovern voted for Ford, ASJ for none of the above. George Packer has more about this, and about liberal lunacy, at the New Yorker blog, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker. Here’s a tease: “In this long record of speeches, conferences, lunches at the Century, and dinners at Mortimer’s, there’s an unmistakable sense that liberal politics belonged to a small group of the rich and famous who all knew one another and knew what was best for the rest of the country, while knowing less and less about the rest of the country.”
Not only SHOULD three strikes stay as is, violent crimes against children need to be 1 strike…
Prison overcrowding? Build more.
A liberal loon in yesterday’s liberal, loony P-I, and another liberal loon today on liberal Dave Ross’s little-big-mouth show, assert without proof that last week’s rain was caused by Global Warming. If it rains, blame Warming. If it doesn’t rain, blame Warming. If Katrina happens, blame Warming. If two years pass without another Katrina, blame Warming. If some glaciers melt, blame Warming. If the Antarctic ice sheet expands, blame … you know.
All this is final proof not of warming but of the danger of ignorance. The loons are using a vanishingly small data base of little more than a century to extrapolate crisis and catastrophe. If Rainier does its overdue blow tomorrow, green left-wing wackos will drive their Yugos to the top of Queen Anne Hill and, while watching lava roil on either side, will blame Global Warming.
Tell them first to back off and learn to read. They can start with Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2002 article, Ice Memory, that pushes back the climate baseline by about 100,000 years. Real climate catastrophes (ice ages, occasional interludes of warmth in which civilization happens) are the norm. Climate flips suddenly and violently, over and over, through tens of thousands of pre-SUV years.
(As for those rare and pleasurable warm periods? They are usually followed, not preceded, by spikes of atmospheric carbon.)
A Baby Blethen editorial from Monday pats our BobbeBridge Court on its pointed head for ruling against Our Right to have free lawyers. At last a court has discovered a discovered right we’re not entitled to, but they found the wrong one.
Everybody knows we have a right to health care and/or subsidized socialized single-payer insurance. Which means that everybody knows lawyers have a right to run medicine. And that’s because lawyers run everything else.
And because lawyers run everything else, and will soon run everything, it’s not fair that rich people get to buy lawyers while real people can’t. Fairness and equity require that no person for any reason shall be excluded for any reason from access to America’s pasttime, litigation. If equity, Hillary, and Paul Krugman demand socialized doctors, we the real people demand socialized lawyers. (And if the whiny buggers riot, as they did in Pakistan, shoot a few hundred or a few thousand as an example. There’s millions more to take up the slack, and they’ll eventually get the point.)
More from Monday’s Times: Two good columns (Goldberg and Krauthammer) and many bad letters about bad religion.
Harry from Bellevue writes that “religious belief is not the only contributor to good character.” For proof he cites Dr. Martin Luther King. I believe that’s The Reverend Martin Luther King whose crusade was impelled by religious belief.
Rev. Peg the Unitarian writes that we can be “spiritual without the Christology mythos,” whatever the hell that means. (I think it means that Rev. Peg and every other letter writer who wrote about bad religion will dump on only one monotheistic mythos, Christianity. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about? The freedom to dump freely on the Solstice-time not-holi-day that every misfit can dump on with impunity while taking the day off and while taking the money for not working? Isn’t it droll that Christmas subsidizes the War on Christmas?)
Anyway, every schoolboy now knows that freedom of religion means freedom from religion which means freedom to slime and malign the mythos, the Christology one, that, by definition, turns a cheek, rolls over, and rarely fights back.
And every American schoolboy knows there’s another mythos that must never be disrespected, and that thousands of adherents of the religion of peace will demand your slow death if you misname your teddy bear.
To repeat: When fundy evangelicals voted en masse for Jimmy Peanut, nobody worried. It was only when the Religious Left realized its mistake in voting for Carter, and started voting Republican, that you wankers and poufters started mewling about the dangerous Religious Right.
Meanwhile, the Religious Left Auxilliary just kept on keeping on. Not only The Reverend Al and The Reverend Jesse, but also The Reverend Algore, lapsing into down-home cadence from a black Baptist pulpit, or the Reverend Blue Dress Bill, waving a big Baptist Bible in the Breeze every time he got caught with his pants down, or The Reverend Shrill Hillary, who was born a poor black child, sounding like she wandered off the plantation: “I done come too farrrrrr …..”
So you lib secular fundamentalists have slept with original sin, hypocrisy. You use churches as cash machines and stuffed ballot boxes. You give hypocrisy a bad name and very bad odor. It’s the stink of Rabbit turds.
Bax @10:
Why do you assume that liberals don’t care about crime victims? All people have the same vulnerability to being robbed, attacked. Crime doesn’t affect people unequally along partisan lines.
Why do you assume only liberals would like our criminal justice system to be fair? Desire for justice doesn’t affect people unequally across partisan lines.
The inclusion on Robbery 2 (a crime involving no weapons and no injuries) in the list of 3-strike offenses violates both RCW 9.94.010‘s requirement that the punishment for a criminal offense must be proportionate to the seriousness of the offense — and WA’s Sentencing Guidelines Commission recommendation to remove that offense in its 200/2001 Sentencing Reform Act Review.
Robbery 2 is known by some as “shoplifts gone bad.”
Including crimes that are not heinous and that have resulted in no injuries in the list of the “worst of the worst” — diminishes public safety. It does not enhance it.
To act in a truly caring way — toward everyone in society — we have an obligation to try to make our policies reflect the evidence on what works for public safety — rather than our emotions. It may feel good to self-indulge in anger against people you think way inferior to you: liberals, criminals, etc. But that kind of self-indulgence leads to more pain, more crime, more crime victims.
And Lee is correct @ #22 — most people would prefer a system that uses public resources to their best effect — and will vote that way if they understand the issue.
“It may feel good to self-indulge in anger against people you think way inferior to you: liberals, criminals, etc.”
Self-indulgence is what HorsesAss (.com and its obscene knock-off, .org) is all about.
It’s good to know that the debate about 3 Strikes now happens at the margin. You’ve made a good start of a good case that Robbery 2 should be off the list; that’s a great leap forward from the liberal canard, before voters approved 3 Strikes, that there should have been no list. Even the reactionary Blethen Times made dire predictions of doom that didn’t happen.
Lee implies that prison “overcrowding” is a dire consequence that came true, but somebody farther up the thread had already prescribed the solution: Build more prisons.
A recent no-name book, The Deporter, shows that public resources would be put to their highest and best use by putting many more men and a few more women in prison. (The book’s badly written; the author’s excesses make me cringe. But its message is important and disturbing.)
Here’s one for you from my home town of Philly. It’s the other side of justice. Do you know the story of Wesley Cook?
Yep. Took classes at Kop Killer Kommunity Kollege, of which NPR’s excellent Mr. Cook is patron saint.
Okay #33. For the ignorant lefties this is cause celebre Mumia Abu-Jamal.
He admitted to pulling the trigger and killing the cop right between the eyes! Yet your heroes: Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, Mike Farrell, and Jesse Jackson have done their Free Mumia chants and this scum needs to die!
In this case using Pelletizer’s (TM) multiple entry technique which he perfected (the only thing he could perfect), a racially mixed jury based unanimously convicted Mumia Abu-Jamal (Wesley Cook) of the crime based on: his ownership of the murder weapon, Abu-Jamal’s own confession, the testimony of several eyewitnesses, and matching ballistics.
I think my Nuff SAID moniker works here.
Did you know Jacques Chirac named Mumia an “Honorary Citizen of France”?
Freedom Fries anyone?
Puddy:
If you actually read what I wrote – instead of pontificating – you would read that I said you denied global warming was caused by humans – and global warming DUE TO HUMANS is the scientific consensus.
Now I see why people get exasperated with you – you don’t read and go off on tangents without scientific or factual backing.
Uhh- talk about specious arguments – if this groups has published – then by definition they are not being suppressed.
Where are all the confirming articles on this?
Is this a top level journal? – I’ll answer this one – NO.
Are there any others who can verify this data or theory?
Where are the review articles that take this one sample of data into account?
You see – mindless idiots who claim to “know” really can’t answer difficult, real questions. So I will be attacked for…who knows what…because these questions can’t be answered.
Yes – this group published A paper. How many papers have been published that contradict this? What do the majority of scientists say?
Why does Puddy know more than all of them? He reads the right wingnut blogs – of course.
Right wingnuts: So sure they are right they don’t care about the facts. Besides – Rove said he could create the facts in the media. Is Rove paying you puddy – or do you spout this nonsense on your own?
@23:
Dear troll:
A consensus of right wingers thinks….
right there you have a problem – they don’t think.
Maybe I need to explain a theory to you. Let’s start with gravity and move on to evolution. A consensus of scientist agree that scientists have tested these theories, and therefore they best explain the results.
A consensus of scientists have done the same for the theory that global warming is caused by humans. Does that make it a fact? No more so than gravity or the theory of evolution – but also no less so than the other theories accepted by a consensus.
A consensus of right wingnuts thinking something does not make it so and is not a theory unless they have tested it and published on it in a peer-reviewed journal. So unless you have more than a bunch of ramblings from ill-informed right wing blogs – you have no theory.
Bad analogies yield bad resulting conclusions.
@34: For other ignorant lefties, Kop Killer Kommunity Kollege = SCCC.
If the Democrats have no interest in fixing the prison overcrowding problem, then there’s no real reason for them to have a majority.
Dumping Rob 2 and Assault 2 off of the third strikes list won’t solve prison overcrowding. All it will do is let criminals walk out of prison and get Republicans elected. I’m a Democrat. I also recognize lunacy when I see it.
You’re confused again. We have the neocons. You have the cons. 4 of 5 doctors agree that 9 of 10 cons vote Democrat. That’s why Cruella Rodham Clinton leads cheers for giving felons the franchise.
The inclusion on Robbery 2 (a crime involving no weapons and no injuries) in the list of 3-strike offenses violates both RCW 9.94.010’s requirement that the punishment for a criminal offense must be proportionate to the seriousness of the offense — and WA’s Sentencing Guidelines Commission recommendation to remove that offense in its 200/2001 Sentencing Reform Act Review.
Who says it violates the RCW? You? Because the courts don’t agree with you. I’ll take their opinion over yours.
Robbery 2 is known by some as “shoplifts gone bad.”
I’m sure criminal defense attorneys minimizing the conduct of their clients always feel that way. Sometimes Rob 2s are shoplifts gone bad. Sometimes they’re not.
Including crimes that are not heinous and that have resulted in no injuries in the list of the “worst of the worst” — diminishes public safety. It does not enhance it.
With all due respect, the blog that was having the conversation advocates removing Assault 2 from the list of strike offenses. Assault 2 cannot be defined by any rational person as a “not heinous” crime. If I break your leg, that’s Assault 2. If I shoot at you and miss, that’s Assault 2. Leaving people that commit three of these crimes on the street doesn’t enhance public safety.
Besides, a guy who commits three Rob 2s knows damn well what the potential consequences are. Anybody who has three strikes has to follow the following sequence: commit strike 1, be convicted, be released. Commit strike 2, be convicted, be released. Finally, commit strike 3, be convicted, go to prison for life. Remember, when those first and second convictions happen, it is made abundantly clear what the potential consequences will be if the criminal behavior continues.
How about you put the responsibility for their plight squarely where it belongs: on the criminals that commit three strike offenses. They make choices. There are consequence to those choices that they are well aware of. There’s a very simple way to avoid going to prison for life: quit committing crimes!!!!!
It’s been 3 or 4 hours, and Chopper Lee hasn’t whacked me yet. Someone better check De(Lee)te’s pulse to see if he has one. Bring amyls.
#31 Silver Hammer
Well, we all fall into the self-indulgence thing from time to time — best to try to keep clear of it, though, when talking about public policy – as the welfare of the community, including that of the innocent and powerless — definitely is affected by the rhetoric flying around everywhere. Words are a form of action.
Personally, on a philosophical level, I don’t like 3-strikes. I’m with arch-conservative Robert Bork with that — though I’m sure for different reasons. I don’t like the idea of removing discretion from prosecutors and judges. And I don’t think that retributive justice works — I think that justice based on public safety works much better. The theological arguments as to how bad a person is or how much he or she deserves or doesn’t deserve punishment — well, I don’t think that should be in the realm of public policy. That’s more like religion. But it seems to me that this is how the rhetoric goes… on the basis of religious-type considerations.
But regardless of my subjective feelings about crime and punishment, retribution and redemption, and the politics of fear, I think that I see an objective problem with including non-violent offenses on the list of “worst of worst” crimes that trigger life in prison. They ain’t the worst of the worst. And so we’re dishonoring our system, creating great pain and even desperation in the people and families who are affected, and spending limited resources in the wrong places.
You counter, in part I believe, that it’s possible that locking up tons more people will increase public safety even further. I think that, short of locking almost everyone up… with a few jailers controlling the whole thing (another form of government and another conversation altogether) it’s been shown by pretty sober analysis that there’s a point where the lock-em-up approach gets you a diminishing return.
Washington State’s legislatively mandated Institute for Public Policy has done a number of very rigorous studies on our state’s criminal justice practices. You can find a list here: WSIPP: : Criminal Justice.
This study, from 2003, is the one I have reviewed more carefully. And I believe it shows, as other studies do, that there is a place where increasing punishment/incarceration actually starts losing you money: The Criminal Justice System in Washington State: Incarceration Rates, Taxpayer Costs, Crime Rates, and Prison Economics.
I would not go so far as to say a straight-up cost-benefit analysis should be the sole basis of public policy. In addition, when looking at the costs of incarceration vs crime — the field of inquiry can be extended quite broadly to look at less direct costs and benefits.
For example, lead is toxic to children especially and homes, particularly older homes and homes in poorer neighborhoods (old carpets, old paint, etc) have more of it. There is a federal mandate to test all Medicaid children in WA for lead toxicity — but that law is being ignored. Lead toxicity causes a drop in IQ and increased impulsivity. Can we reduce crime by protecting children against toxic substances? How do you measure those costs and benefits? And how do you measure the benefit of a step that prevents crime before it happens (therefore you don’t have the price paid by all the victims and family members of the perpetrators) .. versus a step that locks someone up only after they’ve ruined or ended someone’s life.
So, that’s just one random thing I pulled out of the air. Generally speaking, there’s quite a bit of research that has been done and needs to be integrated into public policy of the effect of social justice measures — really common sense measures — on public safety.
Bax makes the necessary point that your softening the edges of Robbery 2 may be hyperbolic. But for those instances in which Robbery 2 is indeed low-impact ‘aggravated’ shoplifting, then you and Judge Bork are correct: discretion is needed and required.
The problem of disparate impact to which you allude is a problem I witness daily, but from a perspective you may not understand. I and my rowdy low-life friends from the lower depths know that the issues of crime and punishment, issues that may be no more than passionate abstractions to you, are immediate and in our faces. Crime perpetrators mostly are from my milieu; crime victims are too.
I didn’t run the numbers, but I’m very sure that street crime isn’t a big deal on the streets of Mercer Island or Medina. It’s a real big deal on my streets. Every chronic felon you want to release probably comes my way, probably not yours. Think about it. If there are 2 Americas, as John Edwards says, then they’re yours and mine.
I mentioned locking up tons of people in the context of a book written by a defrocked INS/ICE officer. Our attempts to extradite non-citizen violent felons to their countries of origin are trashed by many of those countries of origin, about half the countries of the world. At that point of refusal to accept repatriation, our regs require catch-and-release onto our streets. For this criminal subset, 3 Strikes don’t apply. Discretion doesn’t apply. Minimum sentencing doesn’t apply.
This is a problem that you’re not going to hear from a year of NPR, which softens the edges of the ‘illegal alien’ debate by calling them ‘undocumented workers.’ It’s a problem you’ll hear about from ACLU, but only because they (you?) are greasing the skids of the release part of catch-and-release.
Sen. Guidelines Commission says: the behaviors associated with Robbery 2 pose “little risk of physical injury.”
This doesn’t make R2 a good thing. But it does make it wrong to lock people away for life for it. It’s simply not the worst of the worst.
Why would you assume that someone speaking against keeping Robbery 2 on the list of most serious offenses lives in Medina and is abstractly passionate?
I happen to understand on a visceral level the physical and emotional experience of being physically powerless, frightened, forced. I’m from a middle class family but I was on the margin for a good decade as an adult – including the food banks, heating assistance route, living places for years where there was no central heat, no shower, some scary people around but mostly just people hurt by substance abuse, mostly alcohol. I was a scared, homeless teen for several months. I know what it’s like to hide in the dark and cold outside as you hear people pass you, see the lighted windows around you, not knowing who to trust, to walk alone at night in dangerous places because there’s no where else to go and you know you’re a target. I also know what it’s like to be afraid of the police, to see police who seemed completely high, bizarro behavior, to see a cop kick a woman to the floor who was standing right next to me and scream obscenities at her. I know what it’s like to be physically assaulted, to be home and the window is smashed in and people start climbing through, to have things stolen, to be grabbed and threatened, to have used condoms outside my front door every morning, etc. And to have the police chuckle indulgently at me because I expect help from them. I have friends who have died from drug abuse. I’ve had my purse snatched. I’ve had someone threaten to shoot me. I worked in a job where I saw what it was like in the shelters, on the street, how hard it is to get housing.
Being poor makes you vulnerable. It makes you as vulnerable to the injustices and abuses of the legal system as it does to the assaults of people around you who will use their power against you. I’m no more afraid of people who commit individual crimes than I am of crimes of the state and corporate crimes.
This doesn’t make R2 a good thing. But it does make it wrong to lock people away for life for it. It’s simply not the worst of the worst.
You have to draw the line somewhere. No matter what, there will always be some crime that is perceived to be the “lowest” level strike offense.
Look, it’s awfully simple: if you don’t want to go to prison for life, don’t commit strike offenses. The vast majority of people in this state manage to get through their lives without ever being charged with a crime. Politically, this is such a no-brainer that I don’t even know why we’re discussing it. Amending the three strikes law will elect Republicans.
Notcorrectneverright: I posted three articles with different people from different universities and countries and you didn’t read them.
UofRoch, UofAla, UofVir, UofAlberta, UofOttawa, UofAuckland, Durham Univ.
Scientists from America, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Israel and Poland.
Oh well but is your answer. And I exasperate you?
WTF?
Peer Reviewed “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” but … says Correctnotright
As more scientists realize their integrity is at stake more scientists will start questioning the Gorbasm.
Maybe notcorrectneverright it’s the sun?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....wsun18.xml
About crime and penalties.
As a black man it sickens me Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton argue for the reduction of penalties of drug crimes and the like but will not lead marches to drive crack dealers and pimps from their neighborhoods. They cry about the plight of blacks but don’t look st the systemic issue of drugs and the hip-hop culture. They don’t take on the 50 Cents, Russell Simmons, etc who glamorize this culture. They don’t tell the masses to stay in school as an education gets you a good job, a good job pays your way to a better lifestyle and a better lifestyle prepares your children for a better life.
Amazing…
Nevercorrectnotrightagain:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=8641
Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
“Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”
The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.”
Fair use claws and copyleft to the URL.
Now when you enter the blogosphere on Schulte, your side immediately attacks him for evaluating the articles as not credible. Well why is that nevercorrectnotright. Having someone review the data and placing this for the whole world to see is scary to your side? Why? Is someone hiding something?
http://canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
Fair use claws and copyleft to the URL.
“No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. “Climate experts” is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore’s “majority of scientists” think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.”
For you evolutionists out there:
“Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, “There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.” Patterson asked the committee, “On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century’s modest warming?””
Wow the Earth Times. This has to be a right leaning cadre of whack-jobs right nevercorrectorrightstillwrong?
http://www.earthtimes.org/arti.....6495.shtml
“Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears”
Nevercorrectstillnotright: I said it was the sun increasing in intensity. So did others whom think right.
From Earth Times. “A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun’s irradiance.”
What you say. sun irradiance?
So the next question is why isn’t this getting out. Well as I stated before the liberal MSM has an agenda.
Puddy says about the liberal MSM agenda and try to find this on any web site.
1) Get a democrat into white house
2) Get congress democrat
3) Tax you ad nauseum
4) Make America pay
5) Emulate Europe in it’s failures
Nevercorrectnotveryright: The European view:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=110107A
“Proliferation of Climate Scepticism in Europe”
Many links to other sites.
Time to go to work.
#46: I thought your worldview was formed on the mean streets of Medina or Mercer Island. Instead you have street cred to spare.
#47 How glib.
A law that, in itself, violates the law promotes more lawlessness, not less.
We are seeing more instability and much less security in the US and locally because the rule of law in this country is being undermined in so many ways. Asking individuals to obey the law — while govt and corporations increasingly violate it at its foundations… a losing proposition.