There is a possibility of another round of rebate checks from the government to stimulate the economy. I disagree with this kind of thinking due to the fact that the feds will have to borrow tens of billions of dollars to pay for the package, just as they did earlier this year. In fact, they had to borrow $191 billion.
Going further into debt to China and other international lenders is a TERRIBLE idea, and I renew my objections to it. This proposal should not see the light of day.
No government should spend more money than it takes in. There's a reason that the economy is in the condition that it's in: we are $10 trillion in debt, our dollars are devaluing on the international market, which is also helping to drive up the price of fuel, which is driving up the cost of everything else.
This is NUTS, and we have to put our collective foot down somewhere to break this vicious cycle.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Conservatives Have it Wrong on Two Key Issues: the Death Penalty and Habeas Corpus
I am again at odds with mainstream conservatism over two stands that they've decided to continue this election year. And I'm not sure how this will affect my vote in the fall.
The first issue is the death penalty. When the Supreme Court ruled--correctly--on the proportionality of the death penalty to heinous crimes (such as the child rape case) where the victim survives, the conservatives loudly denounced the decision and blasted the majority opinion.
The holier-than-thou attitude toward employing the death penalty that has been coming from conservatives is wearing more than a little thin. At the very least, they should be denouncing the error-riddled death penalty system and leading the charge to investigate every case to make certain that they are going to execute the right person for the right crime. DNA evidence is responsible for clearing at least one death row inmate every month. Until this evidence is considered, there should be a moratorium on executions across the country.
The other problem I see with the conservative movement is the unwillingness to extend the Writ of Habeas Corpus to captured enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military prisons around the world.
The media wrote that the Supreme Court "granted" the writ to Gitmo detainees. How can they "grant" the writ to detainees when they already have habeas corpus rights as determined by international law? The American and British governments made sure that it was written into the United Nations charter back in 1948.
Habeas Corpus (the right to challenge unlawful detention and petition for relief) is not just an American custom, as some people seem to think. If a detainee is a citizen of a UN signatory nation, then they have habeas corpus automatically. They don't need to be American citizens to have that basic human right. But the U.S. government has systematically ignored this little point.
What concerns me is the fact that a government that is unwilling to extend basic human rights to non-citizens is only a few steps away from engaging in this kind of conduct against it's own people too. All one has to do is look at what happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II to see that this has already happened in our history.
And the conservatives were braying like elephants when the Supreme Court decided in favor of making sure that the government follows the rules which it is bound to follow, both within the framework of our own Constitution, and with the United Nations charter.
I can't ignore either of these issues in the fall.
The first issue is the death penalty. When the Supreme Court ruled--correctly--on the proportionality of the death penalty to heinous crimes (such as the child rape case) where the victim survives, the conservatives loudly denounced the decision and blasted the majority opinion.
The holier-than-thou attitude toward employing the death penalty that has been coming from conservatives is wearing more than a little thin. At the very least, they should be denouncing the error-riddled death penalty system and leading the charge to investigate every case to make certain that they are going to execute the right person for the right crime. DNA evidence is responsible for clearing at least one death row inmate every month. Until this evidence is considered, there should be a moratorium on executions across the country.
The other problem I see with the conservative movement is the unwillingness to extend the Writ of Habeas Corpus to captured enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military prisons around the world.
The media wrote that the Supreme Court "granted" the writ to Gitmo detainees. How can they "grant" the writ to detainees when they already have habeas corpus rights as determined by international law? The American and British governments made sure that it was written into the United Nations charter back in 1948.
Habeas Corpus (the right to challenge unlawful detention and petition for relief) is not just an American custom, as some people seem to think. If a detainee is a citizen of a UN signatory nation, then they have habeas corpus automatically. They don't need to be American citizens to have that basic human right. But the U.S. government has systematically ignored this little point.
What concerns me is the fact that a government that is unwilling to extend basic human rights to non-citizens is only a few steps away from engaging in this kind of conduct against it's own people too. All one has to do is look at what happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II to see that this has already happened in our history.
And the conservatives were braying like elephants when the Supreme Court decided in favor of making sure that the government follows the rules which it is bound to follow, both within the framework of our own Constitution, and with the United Nations charter.
I can't ignore either of these issues in the fall.
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