Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
National Museum of African American History and Culture ...
A People’s Journey, A Nation’s Story Welcome to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
The Grand Opening will be September 24th
The 2016 Democratic Platform calls for the abolition of the death penalty.
Criminal Justice
“We will abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. It has no place in the United States of America. The application of the death penalty is arbitrary and unjust. The cost to taxpayers far exceeds those of life imprisonment. It does not deter crime. And, exonerations show a dangerous lack of reliability for what is an irreversible punishment.”
Emphasizing Diversity Instead of Unity Is Pathway to Chaos
Real Clear Politics -- Victor David Hanson
Emphasizing diversity has been the pitfall, not the strength, of nations throughout history....For some reason, contemporary America believes that it can reject its uniquely successful melting pot to embrace a historically dangerous and discredited salad-bowl separatism….America's melting pot is history's sole exception of E pluribus unum inclusivity: a successful multiracial society bound by a common culture, language and values. But this is a historic aberration with a future that is now in doubt.
The simple chart below from the American Enterprise Institute beautifully illustrates the absurd inflation of college tuition and textbooks over the past 20 years. In real terms, the cost of college has effectively doubled over that time period.
Now what would cause such massive inflation? Could it be our government tripping over itself to provide cheap student loans for children to spend on vacations, iPads and kegs (i.e. "college"; see "What Student Loans Are Used For: Vacations, iPads, Kegs, Entertainment"). Or, per the Daily Caller, perhaps the issue is administrative bloat at our institutions of higher education: The exact reason prices have increased so much has been hotly debated, but one critical factor at most schools is administrative bloat. While student to faculty ratios have remained relatively steady over time, the number of administrators and other non-teaching staff has exploded at schools across the country.
Obama and Iran: A Misguided Messianic Mission
Real Clear Politics -- Peter Berkowitz
Desperate to strike a deal to avoid the embarrassment of betraying the president’s promise to employ military force to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, the administration acquiesced to a cascading series of Iranian demands. Instead of requiring the complete dismantlement of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, the administration agreed to their reduction and regulation. Instead of banning the development of ballistic missiles, whose main purpose could only be the delivery of nuclear weapons, administration permitted it. Instead of barring weapons trading, the administration allowed it.
The New York Times -- The Associated Press, Aug 28, 2016
Syrian Rebels Advance on Kurds as Turkish Strikes Kill 35
Turkey-Backed Rebels Expel Kurdish Forces From Syrian Towns
Rebels backed by Turkey made major gains Sunday in northern Syria, expelling Kurdish-led forces from towns and villages as part of a determined campaign by Ankara to push the militants east of the Euphrates River.
The operation, labeled Euphrates Shield, is also aimed at pushing back U.S.-allied Kurdish forces. The fighting pits a NATO ally against a U.S.-backed proxy that is the most effective ground force battling IS in Syria.
The New York Times -- Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsuaug, Aug 17, 2016
Turkey to Release Tens of Thousands of Prisoners to Make Room for Coup Suspects
Since the failed coup, Turkey has once again become the world’s leading jailer of journalists.
Why the U.S. Still Can't Track Visitors Who Overstay Their Visas
The Atlantic -- Steven Brill
Proposed “entry-exit” systems seem simple but have succumbed to real-world complications.
Even if the airport and seaport problems could be resolved, the inability to deal with the higher percentage of people exiting the U.S. over land whose exits could not be recorded would make any alarm system targeting those not reported to have left on time subjec to false alarm rates of 50 percent or more.
So despite spending $600 million on failed pilot projects, there is still no Entry-Exit system.
In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015, 527,000 overstayed their visas.
Rather than staying with a strong hand on some of the issues, Trump is in the process of imploding all on his own. Hubris is his tragic flaw.
Atarurk Versus Erdogan: Turkey’s Long Struggle
The New Yorker - Elliot Ackerman
Erdoğan views himself as the father of a new Turkish identity, one aligned more closely with its Ottoman past.
The tension between secularism and religious fundamentalism is as essential to understanding today’s Turkish political life.
Erdogan’s revenge
The Economist
Turkey’s president is destroying the democracy that Turks risked their lives to defend.
Handled more wisely, the failure of the coup might have been the dying kick of Turkey’s militarists. Mr Erdogan could have become the magnanimous unifier of a divided nation, unmuzzling the press, restarting peace talks with Kurds and building lasting, independent institutions. Instead he is falling into paranoid intolerance: more like the Arab despots he claims to despise than the democratic statesman he might have become.
WSJ - DANIEL HENNINGER - The Trumpen Proletariat
Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger says Barack Obama’s presidency of moral condescension has produced an electoral backlash, as seen in the rise of Donald Trump and the “Trumpen proletariat.”
Barack Obama’s presidency of moral condescension has produced an electoral backlash.
Political correctness added something new to the cultural divide: moral condescension.
What has really “angered” so many more millions who now feel drawn into the Trump camp isn’t just PC itself but that its proponents show such relentless moral contempt and superiority toward everyone else. People in America can take a lot, but not that. Marx would have a field day with how progressivism’s cultural elites have reordered social classes between the right-minded and everyone else.
“What a revolting development this is.”
-- William Bendix (“Life with Father” radio show)
"Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."
-- Oliver Hardy (Laurel and Hardy)
The Historical Downside of Hubris.
Hubris, a popular nationalism, and the rise of Mussolini -- Video
Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses his Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate.
Hillary's erratic uncontrollable ways in the White House -- Text
Ohio.com
An Innocent Man Deserves a Hearing
As Carrie Wood, an attorney for Noling from the Ohio Innocence Project, puts it, “Someone who has been sentenced to a term of probation on the streets has more protection than someone sentenced to death.” When non-capital defendants are denied post-conviction DNA testing, they have access to appellate court review. That is not so for capital defendants. They are shut out. Which means that state law does not provide equal protection to the range of defendants seeking DNA testing.
What since has been discovered is how the confessions were coerced, an investigator for the Portage County prosecutor’s office using familiar and nefarious interrogation tactics. He started with the 16-year-old. The friends have recanted their testimony, one before the trial began.
WSJ
“There was a young man from Ankara …”
Teasing a certain sensitive authoritarian with the President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition.
“The very possibility of putting someone on trial for being rude about Erdogan is as illiberal or rather anti-liberal as these things come,” Mr. Murray wrote in the Spectator magazine. And so a few weeks ago he launched a devilish protest, the President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition, the ruder the poem (limericks preferred), the better. His aim, he said, was to contrast Britain with both Turkey and Germany—and to show the futility of authoritarian efforts to ban criticism.
Al-Monitor.com
What’s left of Turkish democracy?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stepped up his no-holds-barred offensive on Turkey’s sagging democratic traditions and institutions.
The option of getting the votes needed in the current parliament "could develop from the cooperation with the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), whose leader, Devlet Bahceli, has lately been flirting with the AKP to suppress the political rebels in his own party. Or it could develop from the jailing of a few dozen deputies of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), for links with terrorism and running a mini-election for the emptied seats, which the AKP is likely to win.
"The second option, yet another early general election, is what those in Ankara consider possible also. Accordingly, early elections at the right time — perhaps this autumn — could push both the pro-Kurdish HDP and the nationalist MHP below the 10% threshold, giving the AKP more than enough seats to present its new constitution, and the 'presidential system,' overnight."
WP - Mark Berman
Florida weighs whether to overturn death sentences for nearly 400 inmates
Florida has more death row inmates than nearly any other state in the country, and it remains a bastion of capital punishment as fewer executions are carried out nationwide. But after a frantic few months that saw Florida’s system of imposing death sentences struck down and rewritten, it remains an open question what will happen to the hundreds who remain on the state’s death row — and how much longer any of them will stay there.
On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could lead to nearly 400 death-row prisoners receiving life sentences, a move experts say could be the country’s single biggest jettisoning of death sentences in years.
The first full human genome was sequenced in 2007.
We are thus now in the midst of a revolution in genetic information and technology as well as a revolution in the internet and cultural information.
WP - Joel Achenbach
Pondering ‘what it means to be human’ on the frontier of gene editing
“CRISPR is not the first method for manipulating genes, but it’s by far the cheapest, easiest, most versatile. Its many attributes have generated incredible excitement as well as apprehension. While the approach hasn’t been applied yet in humans for therapeutic purposes, that’s on the horizon. So are worrisome scenarios involving genetic enhancements and purely cosmetic applications.”
WP - Joel Achenbach
Pondering ‘what it means to be human’ on the frontier of gene editing
“CRISPR is not the first method for manipulating genes, but it’s by far the cheapest, easiest, most versatile. Its many attributes have generated incredible excitement as well as apprehension. While the approach hasn’t been applied yet in humans for therapeutic purposes, that’s on the horizon. So are worrisome scenarios involving genetic enhancements and purely cosmetic applications.”
I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.
AMA Declaration of Professional Responsibility:
Preamble
Never in the history of human civilization has the well-being of each individual been so inextricably linked to that of every other. Plagues and pandemics respect no national borders in a world of global commerce and travel. Wars and acts of terrorism enlist innocents as combatants and mark civilians as targets. Advances in medical science and genetics, while promising great good, may also be harnessed as agents of evil. The unprecedented scope and immediacy of these universal challenges demand concerted action and response by all. As physicians, we are bound in our response by a common heritage of caring for the sick and the suffering. Through the centuries, individual physicians have fulfilled this obligation by applying their skills and knowledge competently, selflessly, and at times heroically. Today, our profession must reaffirm its historical commitment to combat natural and man-made assaults on the health and well-being of humankind. Only by acting together across geographic and ideological divides can we overcome such powerful threats. Humanity is our patient.
Declaration
We, the members of the world community of physicians, solemnly commit ourselves to:
We make these promises solemnly, freely, and upon our personal and professional honor.
CNN -- Ralph Ellis, Eliott C. McLaughlin and Dave Alsup
Pfizer moves to block its drugs from being used in lethal injections
"Pfizer makes its products solely to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve. We strongly object to the use of any of our products in the lethal injection process for capital punishment.
"States have to decide: Are they going to try to break the law in order to carry out executions, are they going to rely on questionable compounding sources or are they going to change their method of executions or abandon the death penalty altogether?" he said.
WP - Mark Berman
Florida weighs whether to overturn death sentences for nearly 400 inmates
Florida has more death row inmates than nearly any other state in the country, and it remains a bastion of capital punishment as fewer executions are carried out nationwide. But after a frantic few months that saw Florida’s system of imposing death sentences struck down and rewritten, it remains an open question what will happen to the hundreds who remain on the state’s death row — and how much longer any of them will stay there.
On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could lead to nearly 400 death-row prisoners receiving life sentences, a move experts say could be the country’s single biggest jettisoning of death sentences in decades.
U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High
“Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.”
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
We need to abolish the death penalty as a matter of foreign policy.
USA TODAY - Kim Hjelmgaard
Dramatic rise in number of global executions
"At least 1,634 civilians were executed by governments last year using various methods, an increase of 50% compared to the year before, Amnesty said. Although 90% of those killings took place in just three countries: Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia."
"The numbers exclude China, where these data remain a state secret, although Amnesty said thousands were almost certainly killed there in 2015 by the government."
"The top five places where executions occurred last year — in order by volume — were China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States."
See also an older article on Abolishing the Death Penalty in Ohio
WSJ -- DANIEL HENNINGER
Obama’s Greatest Triumph
He is six months away from destroying both the Republican Party and Reagan’s legacy.
“Today, the last men standing amidst the debris of the Republican presidential competition are Donald Trump, a political independent who is using the Republican Party like an Uber car; Ted Cruz, who used the Republican Party as a footstool; and John Kasich, a remnant of the Reagan revolution, who is being told by Republicans to quit.”
USA Today
Kirsten Powers: The Republican blame game
“The dissatisfaction among a large cohort of GOP voters is directly attributable to their unhappiness with a party that they believe does not represent their interests. In exit polls, high percentages of GOP voters registered displeasure with their leadership. In Tennessee, 58% of Republican voters said they felt “betrayed” by their leaders, as did 47% in New Hampshire, 52% in South Carolina and 54% in Ohio.”
Hubris was one of the tragic flaws of the characters in the Greek plays.
It often led to individual or communal tragedy.
WP -- Attacking Cruz’s wife could hurt Trump with female voters
In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 70 percent of women had a negative opinion of Trump. Nearly three quarters of women overall, and 39 percent of Republican women, had an unfavorable view of him in a recent CNN poll.
How the Epidemic of Drug Overdose Deaths Ripples Across America
The number of these deaths reached a new peak in 2014:47,055 people, or the equivalent of about 125 Americans every day.