Kucinich On State Killing

Here's a photo of one of the world's most beautiful settings for a large city. This is Rio, of course. The photo was taken from the deck of our cruise ship as we approached from the North in early March of this year. Rio is beautiful and fun, but it is also dangerous. There is a lot of crime and tourists are warned to take precautions.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich on the death penalty:

Morally, I simply do not believe that we as human beings have the right to "play
God" and take a human life -- especially since our human judgments are fallible
and often wrong...In Congress, I introduced the Federal Death Penalty Abolition
Act of 2003 to establish an end to capital punishment. At the same time,
however, I believe that criminals who take innocent life or commit other
horrific crimes should pay a severe penalty, and that we have a duty to protect
our society from danger. For that reason, I favor life imprisonment without the
possibility of parole as an acceptable moral alternative for the worst and most
violent offenders in our society

Once again, candidate Kucinich gets it right on an issue. I have always felt that the death penalty is barbaric. It lowers us as a society to the least common denominator...when we put people to death we become as bad as that which we abhor.

Jim

End State Killing

It's amazing what will grow out here on this arid, windy sand bar. Here's a delicate little wild flower that grows in the sand. It's a single stalk that stands a few inches high. The blossoms are only about 3/8 of an inch across. But it is a welcome bit of color and beauty along the walkway through the center of the island.

Now for something not so pretty, the death penalty. According to Yahoo AP news, an Ohio inmate took a long time to die during a recent execution:

The 16 minutes it took Christopher Newton to die once chemicals began
flowing into his veins was the longest stretch that any of the state's inmates
executed since 1999 has endured, an Associated Press review shows.
During
that span Thursday — more than twice as long as usual, and 5 minutes longer than
the state's previous longest on record — Newton's stomach heaved, his chin
quivered and twitched, and his 6-foot, 265-pound body twice mildly convulsed
within the restraints.

Now, some people may say that this is fine, that the criminal got what he deserved, etc. But I think that the fact that we as a country continue to officially murder people shows how barbaric our society actually is. Click on the title of this post above and read about the problems with the death penalty. I have always felt that it lowers us to the least common denominator among civilized societies in the world. I think we are about the last Western nation to employ capital punishment. We ought to stop the official killing at home and abroad.

Update on the post yesterday about the town of Brookhaven replacing the beach access stairways in Cherry Grove: they replaced ONE of the three stairways, and they did not return on Friday to replace the others, so we have two truncated ramps that represent a dangerous situation to residents and visitors as the holiday weekend is upon us!

Jim