Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
An American woman is fighting for her life today after suffering horrific burns in an arson attack which killed her fiance and three other members of his family.
Kate Donohue, 25, had been visiting Puerto Rico with Jesus Sanchez to celebrate their recent engagement and had been invited to a family party by one of his uncles.
They had just sat down for dinner when Sanchez Diaz went berserk with a blowtorch and set light to the walls he had doused in kerosene. He had also placed fuel canisters under the table.
He had invited 14 people to the welcoming party he was throwing in his two-storey house in the mountain town of Florida on January 1.
‘He planned the party so that everyone would show up,’ said police spokesman, Lt Reinaldo Jimenez.
When everyone was seated, Mr Diaz emerged from his room armed with a 9kg container of propane gas and then doused them with kerosene, he said.
Sanchez Diaz then set them on fire using a stick wrapped with a towel soaked in fuel.
A witness described seeing members of the family fleeing the house in flames and neighbours desperately trying to douse them down.
It’s necessary to take note of stories like this. We’re told the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” has to be subject to evolving standards of decency, written as it is within a living, breathing document. And, of course, as the prohibition evolves, it always has to evolve downward…toward kinder, gentler punishment, toward that ultimate pussy definition of “cruel/unusual”: If it’s something I wouldn’t want to have done to me, and you wouldn’t have done to you, then it’s something we can’t do to anybody no matter what. Yeah, we’ll ultimately reach the point where punishment itself becomes unconstitutional.
What happens to this elastic definition of “cruel” punishment when the crimes that are to be punished, become so deplorable and heinous? There’s something wrong when an arsonist is taken into custody who would subject fourteen members of his own family to such an excruciating demise, apparently for no reason whatsoever…and then, if his jailhouse mattress is found to be a little bit too lumpy, or the teevee set is missing a channel, then his constitutional rights have been somehow violated.
Would America really cease to exist, as we know her, if this creep was to be subjected to so much as a nipple-twist?
Ever see kerosene burn?
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For cases like this I’m sure fine with a firing squad, or a .45 to the brain, gas chamber, electric chair, lethal injection.
If it hurts a little… meh.
If his bed is lumpy, remove the matress.
- philmon | 01/06/2011 @ 10:07I guess I’m getting old. I can remember when people were afraid to commit murder for fear of “getting the chair.” Did it stop all murder? Of course not, but I’m sure it reduced the number of murders committed. This was during prehistoric times, when police officers didn’t have to wear bullet resistant vests and you could leave your back door unlocked without fear of waking up to a knife to your throat and no, I did not grow up in a wealthy or exclusive area.
- groman | 01/06/2011 @ 16:32Morgan,
Note the headline from Seattle:
http://www.queenanneview.com/2011/01/07/queen-anne-couple-die-after-tragic-new-years-day-incident-in-puerto-rico/
“Queen Anne couple die from severe injuries after tragic New Year’s Day incident in Puerto Rico.”
“Tragic.” “Incident.”
Like 9/11, nobody’s responsible. “It just….happened.”
- rob | 01/07/2011 @ 15:49