“What’s the Point?”

I saw this story of Robert Brian Waterhouse on Facebook this morning with the comment “What’s the point?” and I’m inclined to agree. He was on Death Row in Florida for 31 years and was finally executed this week.

I can only assume that almost no one in the Florida legal system working on his case, from the judges to his lawyers, are the same today as they were in 1980. Many of them are probably retired or dead. I wonder if Waterhouse even remembered why he was on Death Row by the time he was executed. How do you put this into context for new guards in the prison, many of whom weren’t even born when Waterhouse was convicted?

While the crime was certainly horrendous, how can we measure the costs and the benefits of the death penalty? I wonder if the damage to society was worth the estimated $24 million it takes to execute criminals in Florida? The average length of time executed prisoners in Florida spent on Death Row since 1976 is a little more than 13 years. American justice is clearly not addressing the problems of crime, and the death penalty is one of the worst examples of this. It’s highly inefficient from an economic standpoint.

With regard to the death penalty in particular, it makes no sense. Let’s grant the position that the state should have the right to decide who lives or dies. I’m not interested in discussing that, so take it for granted. Let’s also pretend that the state never makes a mistake when it executes someone. What sort of restitution is granted by keeping someone on death row for 32 years for raping and killing someone? The victims, or in this case the family of the victims, is forced to pay (through taxation) for the incarceration of their aggressor. How is that fair? How are the victims made whole? Where is the justice?

All we know is that a man was executed for a crime no one remembers through a process which took an innumerable amount of human and financial resources to carry out.

Alien vs. Predator, and the hypocrisy of Allen West

(guest post from my friend Roman Skaskiw)

The battle lines are forming in Washington DC.  Barring any tricks which the embattled (racist, redneck, kooky, backward, radical, unelectable) libertarian wing of the Republican Party may still have up its sleeve, it seems to be another contest between Marxist-Leninist Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of social welfare, and National Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of national security.  Much like in Alien vs. Predator, whoever wins, we lose.

I think we’ve crossed the Rubicon toward tyranny and fiscal ruin long ago, and the important thing now is to brace for calamity.  A fiscally conservative friend of mine is appalled by my cynicism.  He invokes America’s greatness and my veteran status in an attempt to bring me back to the noble cause of shutting up and blindly supporting the Republican Party.  He recently encouraged me to watch Allen West’s speech at CPAC 2012.  He wants, presumably, for me to give people like Allen West my time, money, attention and respect, because nothing is more important that defeating Obama (. . . says the Predator about the Alien).

In the speech, Allen West goes on at length about the virtues of the Constitution.  He said, “[The founders] laid out in no uncertain terms the types of things government would have the right to do, and the types of things it wouldn’t.”  I’d love to hear him reconcile this with his discussion of “a Chamberlin-Churchill moment,” and “kinetic solutions” to Iran’s nuclear research, and “the precipice of World War Three.”  Does he know the Constitution requires presidents to seek congressional declarations of war?  Or does he, like most politicians, only believes in the Constitution when it foils his political opponents.

He said, “The founders knew that if government were allowed to restrict the freedom of the people . . . freedom would not long survive,” yet he voted in favor of renewing Patriot Act provisions.

He decries reckless spending: “We’ve allowed the federal bureaucracy to balloon out of control,” yet he voted in raise the debt ceiling.  When questioned by Young America’s Foundation’s Ron Meyer, he asked for the thing all politicians have always requested: unity and support.  Presumably, Allen West’s rapid betrayal of the principles he invoked in his campaign would be remedied if only I gave him more money, time, attention and respect.

Allen West asked the CPAC audience, “Will we re-dedicate ourselves to the values upon which the United States was founded?”  Yet he voted in favor of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes military arrest and detention “without trial until the end of the hostilities” of American citizens.#

His attempt to explain how indefinite detention of American citizens was not indefinite detention of American citizens tried to substitute volume and bold gesticulation for content.  It didn’t address the bill’s most damning part.  As detailed by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, NDAA explicitly “‘affirms that the authority of the President’ under the AUMF  ’includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons.’”  Also, “It expressly empowers the President — with regard to anyone accused of the acts in section (b) – to detain them ‘without trial until the end of the hostilities.’”

Pointing out the hypocrisy of a politician is like shooting a very big fish in a very small barrel (with a 12-guage shotgun).  Allen West gets my attention only because of how aggressively he is marketed to people who believe in individual liberty, the Constitution, and fiscal prudence.

War in incompatible with all of these things, and Allen West is just another neo-con in a tea bag, the latest rebranding of the philosophy of endless war.