Nebraska Reconsidering the Death Penalty

Townhall.com -- Nebraska Legislature’s Vote Signals Growing Conservative Support for Ending Death Penalty

“If there is one thing conservatives hate, it’s a failed government program that gives the state power it shouldn’t have. In recent years, however, there is one government policy many conservatives continue to rally behind even though it wastes millions in tax payers’ hard-earned dollars, puts innocent lives at risk and fails to keep Americans safe: the death penalty.”

“Fortunately, the tide is beginning to turn, and more and more lawmakers, scholars and pundits on the right side of the aisle now recognize that its bad policy to give an all-too-fallible government the power to execute its own citizens.”

Hillary, Bill, and the Clinton Foundation

International NY Times -- Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company

“Uranium investors’ efforts to buy mining assets in Kazakhstan and the United States led to a takeover bid by a Russian state-owned energy company. The investors gave millions to the Clinton Foundation over the same period, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s office was involved with approving the Russian bid.”

“Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.”

NYmag.com -- The Disastrous Clinton Post-Presidency

All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy.

Are there double standards?

Stealing $500 is a felony. Defrauding the public of billions of dollars and paying a large settlement or fine is just the cost of doing business.

Jon Stewart -- Fraud City

The Fiscal Times - The Biggest Outrage in Atlanta’s Crazy Teacher Cheating Case

“If you don’t remember these kinds of creative prosecution strategies during the financial crisis, that’s probably because no prosecutor ever used them. Teachers ordered to falsify tests and the superiors who demanded it, amid desperation to save schools from destruction, deserve no mercy from the court. Bankers who ran a criminal enterprise to engage in the largest consumer and investing fraud in world history deserve our thanks.”

Religious Persecution of Christians and the Silence of Obama

Consider that Kirsten Powers is a liberal columnist who usually supports Obama. Obama refuses to recognize radical Islamic terrorism by name but has near silence on the tragedy of the persecution and ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere.

USA Today -- Kirsten Powers: Christians thrown overboard left to drown by Obama

“If a Christian mob on a ship bound for Italy threw 12 Muslims to their death for praying to Allah, does anyone think the president would have been so disinterested? When three North Carolina Muslims were gunned down by a virulent atheist, Obama rightly spoke out against the horrifying killings. But he just can't seem to find any passion for the mass persecution of Middle Eastern Christians or the eradication of Christianity from its birthplace.”

“Religious persecution of Christians is rampant worldwide, as Pew has noted, but nowhere is it more prevalent than in the Middle East and Northern Africa, where followers of Jesus are the targets of religious cleansing. Pope Francis has repeatedly decried the persecution and begged the world for help, but it has had little impact. Western leaders — including Obama — will be remembered for their near silence as this human rights tragedy unfolded.”

Victims ask that Tsarnaev’s life be spared

LATimes -- Victims ask that Tsarnaev’s life be spared

Death or life in prison for convicted Boston Marathon bomber

“They say they worry that long death-row appeals will only remind them of the bombings and block their healing process as victims.”

“Among those asking that Tsarnaev's life be spared are Martin Richard's family; Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, two newlyweds who each lost legs in the explosions; and the sister of MIT police Officer Sean Collier, who was killed in the manhunt leading to Tsarnaev's capture two years ago.”

"If there is anyone who deserves the ultimate punishment, it is the defendant," Kensky and Downes said in a statement Sunday. "However, we must overcome the impulse for vengeance."

ISIS -- an essential article for understanding this terrorist organization

Spiegel Online -- The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State

An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State's takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating.

“Thousands of well-trained Sunni officers were robbed of their livelihood with the stroke of a pen. In doing so, America created its most bitter and intelligent enemies.”

Bakr was merely modifying what he had learned in the past: Saddam Hussein's omnipresent security apparatus, in which no one, not even generals in the intelligence service, could be certain they weren't being spied on.

“The plan would always begin with the same detail: The group recruited followers under the pretense of opening a Dawah office, an Islamic missionary center. Of those who came to listen to lectures and attend courses on Islamic life, one or two men were selected and instructed to spy on their village and obtain a wide range of information.”

“IS has little in common with predecessors like al-Qaida aside from its jihadist label. There is essentially nothing religious in its actions, its strategic planning, its unscrupulous changing of alliances and its precisely implemented propaganda narratives. Faith, even in its most extreme form, is just one of many means to an end. Islamic State's only constant maxim is the expansion of power at any price.”

“True to Haji Bakr's plan, the phase of infiltration was followed by the elimination of every person who might have been a potential leader or opponent.”

“As the West's attention is primarily focused on the possibility of terrorist attacks, a different scenario has been underestimated: the approaching intra-Muslim war between Shiites and Sunnis. Such a conflict would allow IS to graduate from being a hated terror organization to a central power.”

“In such a case, IS propaganda about the approaching apocalypse could become a reality. In its slipstream, an absolutist dictatorship in the name of God could be established.”

Islamic State militants in Libya shot and beheaded groups of captive Ethiopian Christians.

Fox News -- White House condemns ISIS video that purportedly shows killing of Ethiopian Christians in Libya

“In the video released Sunday, Islamic State militants in Libya shot and beheaded groups of captive Ethiopian Christians. The attack widens the circle of nations affected by the group's atrocities while showing its growth beyond a self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq.”

Yet more reasons to reconsider the death penalty

Yet more reasons to reconsider the death penalty

Boston Globe Op-ed -- Denise and Bill Richard - To end the anguish, drop the death penalty

“But now that the tireless and committed prosecution team has ensured that justice will be served, we urge the Department of Justice to bring the case to a close. We are in favor of and would support the Department of Justice in taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for the defendant spending the rest of his life in prison without any possibility of release and waiving all of his rights to appeal.”

‘We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty, but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives. We hope our two remaining children do not have to grow up with the lingering, painful reminder of what the defendant took from them, which years of appeals would undoubtedly bring.”

“We believe that now is the time to turn the page, end the anguish, and look toward a better future — for us, for Boston, and for the country.”

WP -- FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000

“The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”

The Far Center -- Reconsidering the Death Penalty in Ohio

Republicans push for a permanent aristocracy

WP -- Republicans push for a permanent aristocracy

“On Tuesday afternoon, the House Rules Committee took up H.R. 1105, the “Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015,” with plans to bring it to a vote on the chamber floor Wednesday — Tax Day. It is an extraordinarily candid expression of the majority’s priorities: A tax cut costing the treasury $269 billion over a decade that would exclusively benefit individuals with wealth of more than $5.4 million and couples with wealth of more than $10.9 million.”

Never underestimate the ability of the Republicans to shoot themselves in the foot. There is no chance this would survive a veto and it just reinforces the Democrats campaign argument that they are the party concerned about the middle class and income inequality. The Republicans position should instead be that the Democratic policies over the last six years have not helped the middle class and even lead to more income inequality.

Hillary and the Liberal Way of Lying

WSJ -- Hillary and the Liberal Way of Lying

How the Clintons pioneered the methods by which Obama sold his Iran deal.

“To you and me, the Clinton lies were statements demonstrably at variance with the truth, and therefore wrong and shameful. But to the initiated they were an invitation to an intoxicating secret knowledge.”

“What was this knowledge? That the lying was for the greater good, usually to fend off some form of Republican malevolence. What was so intoxicating? That the initiated were smart enough to see through it all. Why be scandalized when they could be amused? Why moralize when they could collude?”

Iran deal. An honest president might sell the current deal roughly as follows.

“My fellow Americans, the deal we have negotiated will not, I am afraid, prevent Iran from getting a bomb, should its leaders decide to build one. And eventually they will. Fatwa or no fatwa, everything we know about their nuclear program tells us it is geared toward building a bomb. And frankly, if you lived in a neighborhood like theirs—70 million Shiites surrounded by hundreds of millions of Sunnis—you’d want a bomb, too.”

“Yes, we could, in theory, stop Iran from getting the bomb. Sanctions won’t do it. Extreme privation didn’t stop Maoist China or Bhutto’s Pakistan or Kim’s North Korea from building a bomb. It won’t stop Iran, either.”

Remember, however, that every single republican candidate in the last presidential election also stated they would not let Iran get a nuclear weapon with no explanation about the risks or how they would do that. They also all stated that they would not accept raising even a dollar of taxes even if this was offset by 10 dollars of cost savings in the budget. Pandering in politics is not constrained to only one party.

WSJ - Terrorists and Their Quranic Delusions

Wall Street Journal - Terrorists and Their Quranic Delusions

Egypt’s grand mufti on ugly distortions of Islam masking a hunger for power and bloodshed.

“These groups have the audacity to dismiss any Quranic verses that don’t fit their claims. They declare unilateral war against both Muslims and non-Muslims who don’t share their barbarous mentality. They completely disregard the Quranic conception of human brotherhood and peaceful relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.”

More reasons to reconsider the death penalty

NY Times -- The Supreme Court’s Death Trap

“The number of death sentences imposed last year, 72, was the lowest in 40 years. The number of executions, 35, was the lowest since 1994, less than half the modern peak of 98, reached in 1999. Seven states, the fewest in 25 years, carried out executions.”

“California has the country’s biggest death row, with more than 700 inmates. Many more of them die of natural causes — two since mid-March — than by execution. Last July, a federal district judge, Cormac J. Carney, concluding that California’s death penalty had become “dysfunctional,” “random” and devoid of “penological purpose,” declared it unconstitutional; the state is appealing.”

Washington Post - Alabama inmate free after 30 years on death row. How the case against him unraveled.

Why Reconstructions Matters

New York Times -- Eric Foner Why Reconstructions Matters

Americans will probably devote little attention to the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, the turbulent era that followed the conflict. This is unfortunate, for if any historical period deserves the label “relevant,” it is Reconstruction.

Issues that agitate American politics today — access to citizenship and voting rights, the relative powers of the national and state governments, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism — all of these are Reconstruction questions. But that era has long been misunderstood.

Israel - Four Different Views

1. The Globe and Mail -- One Misstep Closer to a Palestinian State

   When Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted earlier this week saying there would be no Palestinian state on his watch, he may have thought he was consolidating right-wing support for his Likud party and keeping those irresponsible lefties in the Labour Party from coming to power.

   The impact of his tactics, however, has been to trigger a potentially debilitating backlash from the U.S. administration and to jump-start a Palestinian campaign for international recognition. Rather than set back the cause of a Palestinian state, his measures have brought such a state closer.

2. WP - Fareed Zakaria -- Israel’s threat from within

   “But put aside the word games. Khamenei has recognized that the greatest vulnerability for Israel is that it has legal jurisdiction over 4.5 million Arab people who have neither a state nor a vote. That condition is virtually unique in the modern world and cannot last in a democratic society.”

3. Real Clear Politics -- Fox News Video -- Charles Krauthammer

   "If Only Obama Would Address As Warmly The Israelis As He Does The Iranians And Their Leaders"

4. Huffington Post -- John McCain Tells Obama To Get Over 'Temper Tantrum' On Israel

   "The president should get over it. Get over your temper tantrum, Mr. President, it's time that we work together with our Israeli friends and try to stem this tide of ISIS and Iranian movement throughout the region, which is threatening the very fabric of the region. The least of your problems is what Bibi Netanyahu said during an election campaign," McCain said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Reconsidering the Death Penalty

Washington Post - Missouri executed an inmate who had asked for a stay because part of his brain was removed

This argument has its origins in an accident that occurred in 1972. Clayton, who was a logger and sawmill operator, was working at his sawmill when a piece of wood broke off and stabbed into his skull. He was taken to a hospital, where he stayed for nine days, and he ultimately lost 7.7 percent of his brain and 20 percent of his frontal lobe, according to his attorneys.

Washington Post - How the death penalty continued its slow, steady decline in 2014

As a sign of how much of the country has shifted away from the practice, four out of five executions were carried out in just three states: Texas, Missouri and Florida. A total of seven states carried out executions, which is also significantly down from the 20 states that executed inmates in 1999.

Earlier this year, a federal judge called the California death penalty system unconstitutional, saying that the system is riddled with so many delays that it is “completely dysfunctional.”.

The Far Center - Reconsidering the Death Penalty in Ohio

In 2007, 88% of the executions worldwide occurred in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. This is the company that we keep...

The Cuban Missile Crisis

Clouds over Cuba Documentary
(For those who are too young to remember)

The response time to a nuclear attack is less than 10 minutes; it thus depends to a large extent on computerized information; and multiple warheads make any defense problematical. A nuclear conflagration has the capacity to not only destroy most of life on earth, but also the foundations for most of life on earth. Power politics reaches the absurdity of a foreign policy of mutual assured destruction in which nuclear power cannot be used without threatening one’s own existence and the existence of life as we know it on earth.

Why now?
(From the Introduction of Moral and Political Philosophy)

“It is difficult to imagine an adequate resolution of the global problems which have resulted from technology without a concept of universal equality and a respect for human life and our common humanity.”

“This is important, for survival, well-being, the enjoyment of individual freedom and the progress of human liberty are not inevitable. They are contingent to a large degree, on our willingness and ability as moral agents to place our free will within ethical constraints. It is indeed the self-imposed ethical or moral foundations of government that change mere obedience to the coercive powers of government into a sense of consensual responsibility for a moral duty, a just order, the common good and human rights. The coercive powers of government are also needed less when those moral values and ethical constraints are incorporated into the culture and our intermediary social institutions, such as voluntary associations, education, law, medicine, economics, science, religion, and philosophy.”

The First Two Rules of Economics

1. Politics precedes economics.
2. Property is initially determined politically.

Obama’s Speech from Selma Alabama

President Obama's Selma Speech

Obama’s speech in Selma will be part of what defines him and his presidency. It is worth reading based on its own merits of eloquence and what will be its place in American history. One would wish that President Obama would project American values this well on the international stage. How much moral perfection does one need to engage in a battle of ideas and lead against genocide, ethnic cleansing, inhumanity, tyranny and terrorism without equivocation. Martin Luther King also stated that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Netanyahu's Speech Before Congress

Fox News -- Full Speech

“To be clear, it’s not just the Jews that the Iranians want to see eradicated. As Netanyahu explained, the philosophy of the Iranian regime is deeply rooted in radical Islam. 'The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn’t turn Iran into a friend of America – they’re competing for the crown of militant Islam. Both [groups] want to impose a militant Islamic empire. [They] just disagree amongst themselves who will rule the empire.'”

Different views of the speech

NY Times -- Mr. Netanyahu’s Unconvincing Speech to Congress

“Mr. Netanyahu’s speech offered nothing of substance that was new, making it clear that this performance was all about proving his toughness on security issues ahead of the parliamentary election he faces on March 17.”

WP - Charles Krauthammer - Netanyahu’s Churchillian Warning

“Like the Bourbons, however, Obama learns nothing. He persists in believing that Iran’s radical Islamist regime can be turned by sweet reason and fine parchment into a force for stability. It’s akin to his refusal to face the true nature of the Islamic State, Iran’s Sunni counterpart. He simply can’t believe that such people actually believe what they say.”

Presidential Election 2016(demographics and polling)

The demographics (see here) indicate that it would be very difficult for Republicans to win the 2016 presidential election without winning the swing states of Florida and Ohio. The only Republicans who come even close to Hillary Clinton in a Quinnipiac poll in these states are Jeb Bush and John Kasich.

Ohio: Bush vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 47, Bush 36	Clinton +11
Ohio: Christie vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 47, Christie 34	Clinton +13
Ohio: Paul vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 48, Paul 36	Clinton +12
Ohio: Huckabee vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 49, Huckabee 34	Clinton +15
Ohio: Kasich vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 44, Kasich 43	Clinton +1
Florida: Bush vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 44, Bush 43	Clinton +1
Florida: Christie vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 51, Christie 33	Clinton +18
Florida: Paul vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 50, Paul 38	Clinton +12
Florida: Huckabee vs. Clinton	Quinnipiac	Clinton 51, Huckabee 34	Clinton +17

Jeb Bush -- Two views

Time - Jeb Bush’s Sense and Sensibility

“The candidate’s grown-up tone is a breath of fresh air amid so many strident conservative voices.

Bush makes no false, egregious claims, on issues foreign or domestic. He resists the partisan hyperbole that has coarsened our politics.”

Washington Post - Jeb Bush’s foreign policy team is eerily familiar

“If Bush's goal is to present himself as his "own man," that list of advisers undermines the point somewhat: 19 of the 21 people on it worked in the administrations of his father or brother.”

A Letter Concerning Muslim Toleration

NYTimes -- Mustafa Akyol -- A Letter Concerning Muslim Toleration

“...a Lockean tradition has long existed in Islam, buried in the late seventh century, in a largely forgotten school of theologians called the Murjites. They arose at a time of strife, when proto-Sunnis and proto-Shiites were fighting over who the rightful heir to the Prophet Muhammad was, and a fanatical group called the Kharijites, or “Dissenters,” deemed all Muslims but themselves to be apostates and started killing them off.

To counter this zealotry, the more urbane Murjites presented a brilliantly simple argument: No Muslim had the right to judge others on matters of faith; only God had that ultimate authority. Thus, they reasoned, all doctrinal disputes should be postponed to the afterlife, to be resolved by God. (The Quran itself supports this view: “Had God willed, He would have made you a single community”; “Every one of you will return to God and He will inform you regarding the things about which you differed.”) This is why they were called “Murjites,” which means, 'the Postponers.'”

Countering Violent Extremism

The State Department has requested from the public ideas for countering violent extremism. I have written extensively on this and the following is a paper of mine that will be presented at the UN sponsored International Conference on The Evolution of Human Rights Concepts on March 1, 2015, in Tehran, Iran.

The paper has several parts:

What Medical Ethics Have to Offer both Moral and Political Philosophy
(Entire Paper)

• Equality as an Affirmation of Our Common Humanity
• United States Constitutional Democracy and American Exceptionalism
• Intermediary Institutions and Civil Society
• Moral and Political Philosophy
• Why now?

“At the time of a clash of civilizations it is not unusual for both sides to re-examine, define, and even sometimes codify their basic values and cultural institutions in order to both preserve and convey their basic values and traditions. At the time of the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, the United States did this poorly. It appears that we are making a similar mistake in our war against terrorism, which is very much a battle of ideas and ideologies and will have to be understood as such for any chance of a long-term resolution and reconciliation. We are missing a defining opportunity in the history of the moral and political philosophy of the liberal tradition; first, by not defining our primary moral value as equality, understood as a respect for the dignity and worth of our common humanity; and second, by not defining our government as a constitutional democracy, which is the only way to convey both the substantive and the procedural concepts of equality that it incorporates.”

“Medical ethics have a lot to offer the larger fields of moral and political philosophy at this particular time in history, in part, because they have the capacity to accommodate pluralism in a global community without alienation or coercion.”

Two Views on ISIS

Peggy Noonan points out the importance of the essay on The Atlantic on ISIS -- “What ISIS Really Wants” (See previous blog)

WSJ -- Peggy Noonan -- An Administration Adrift on Denial

“Why won’t the president think clearly about the nature of the Islamic State?”

“Great essays tell big truths. A deeply reported piece in next month’s Atlantic magazine does precisely that, and in a way devastating to the Obama administration’s thinking on ISIS.”

“What ISIS Really Wants,” by contributing editor Graeme Wood, is going to change the debate.

Fareed Zakaria defends the president’s deliberate language of “violent extremism”

WP -- Fareed Zakaria -- The limits of the “Islamic” label

President Obama stands accused of political correctness for his unwillingness to accuse groups such as the Islamic State of “Islamic extremism,” choosing a more generic term, “violent extremism.”

"But far from being a scholar concerned with describing the phenomenon accurately, the president is deliberately choosing not to emphasize the Islamic State’s religious dimension for political and strategic reasons. After all, what would be the practical consequence of describing the group, also known as ISIS, as Islamic? Would the West drop more bombs on it? Send in more soldiers to fight it? No, but it would make many Muslims feel that their religion had been unfairly maligned. And it would dishearten Muslim leaders who have continually denounced the Islamic State as a group that does not represent Islam."