Daily Archives: Dec. 26, 2007

Texas is like a whole other country on executions

Dec. 26, 20071:19 p.m.

Lethal_injectionTexas accounted for 62 percent of all executions in America this year — up from its typical average of about 37 percent. The reason for the increase isn’t that Texas is doing more executions. Rather, it’s that the rest of the country is doing fewer. As a result, of the nation’s 42 executions in the past year, 26 were in Texas. The remaining 16 were spread across nine other states, none of which executed more than three people, the New York Times reported.
The Texas judicial system apparently does not share in the rest of the country’s growing concern about the biased and possibly incorrect application of the death penalty. On the contrary, what separates Texas from other states is its aggressiveness in carrying out executions once a death sentence is imposed.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Crime | Comments (39)

No President Petraeus

Dec. 26, 20071:09 p.m.

PetraeusWhen American generals have success in war, somebody inevitably asks whether they want to try politics. But Army Gen. David Petraeus showed zero interest in going the way of Dwight Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant and George Washington in a “Fox News Sunday” interview. “I have great respect for those who do choose to serve our country in that way. I’ve chosen to serve our country in uniform,” Petraeus said from Baghdad. He went so far as to refer to Gen. William Sherman’s famous telegram to the 1884 GOP convention: “I will not accept if nominated, and I will not serve if elected.”
Posted by Rhonda Holman

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Presidential race | Comments (8)

Open thread 12/26

Dec. 26, 20071:05 a.m.

Thread_2

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Open thread | Comments (69)

Any room at the inn for immigrants?

Dec. 26, 20071:04 a.m.

No_vacancy The Christmas season illuminated the jarring contrast between the public piety of some conservative Christians and their intense anger toward illegal immigrants, noted Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Cynthia Tucker. “After all,” she wrote, “the Bible, which conservative Christians hold out as the inerrant word of God, includes several admonitions to practice kindness toward ‘strangers.’”
Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, said: “We welcome the stranger because the Savior himself was not welcomed in mainstream society. The whole teaching of ‘no room in the inn’ was about someone poor and marginalized and pushed off to a stable.”
Posted by Kristin Mehler

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Immigration | Comments (150)

Iraq Awakening could lay seeds of future chaos

Dec. 26, 20071:03 a.m.

Iraqisoldiersflags The “Awakening” militias flourishing among Iraq’s Sunni population — and organized and bankrolled by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida insurgents — are largely credited with the striking security gains made in the past year.
But the groups are fighting among themselves, too, over tribal loyalties and territory. And they could at some point pose a potent threat to the central Shiite-led government, which refuses to recognize them.
According to a New York Times article: “The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Iraq | Comments (20)

Will doctors police their own?

Dec. 26, 20071:02 a.m.

Doctorwithpatient The recent federal indictment against a local doctor for allegedly dispensing medicine illegally, and the sluggish response of the Kansas Board of Healing Arts to the case, has revived questions about the willingness of the medical profession to police its own.
Nationally, a recent survey of 1,700 doctors by Massachusetts General Hospital gives some cause for concern. Most doctors — 93 percent — agreed that physicians should report all serious medical errors and incompetent colleagues to authorities. But when it came to their own experience, almost half of the doctors said that they had direct knowledge of medical mistakes and bad doctors that they had not reported.
“The vast majority believe in the tenets of professionalism, and the majority of physicians observe those tenets in most respects,” said David Blumenthal, lead author of the report. “There are significant and worrisome departures that need attention from the profession and regulatory authorities.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Health and safety | Comments (22)

Why Brownback backs McCain

Dec. 26, 20071:00 a.m.

Brownbackmccain “This guy’s a legitimate war hero, the most qualified person to be president. He’s ideologically acceptable; he’s electable. And I think those are the two doors our candidate has to get through.” — Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who is urging primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire to give Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., another look
Posted by Rhonda Holman

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Presidential race | Comments (6)