SHEHEKIANU V’KIMANU V’HIGIANU…
1017 by Jeff Hess
26 June 2008
26 June 2008
KENNEDY V. LOUISIANA; RIGHT BUT WRONG…
0823 by Jeff HessA divided U.S. Supreme Court (5-4) yesterday ruled in Kennedy v. Louisiana that executing a felon for the crime of raping a child under the age of 12 is unconstitutional under the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said:
Consistent with those evolving standards and the teachings of its precedents, the Court concludes that there is a distinction between intentional firstdegree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individuals, even including child rape, on the other. The latter crimes may be devastating in their harm, as here, but “in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public,” they cannot compare to murder in their “severity and irrevocability,”
First, let me reiterate my position on the death penalty in general.
As a tool for eliminating individuals who present a grave threat to society and relieving society from the cost of decades of confinement, I fully support the death penalty. However, my faith in our present criminal justice system to find, prosecute and convict the guilty is so lacking, I cannot presently support the death penalty.
As a matter of principle I do not believe th law should be influenced by any particular religious faith. Law must be a matter of reason, not ethnic groups’ ancient superstitions. Having said that, I have to throw in a bit of Jewish Law.
There are three crimes for which there can be no forgiveness: murder, rape and idolatry. Leaving the third aside, the first two are set apart from all other crimes against humanity specifically for the reason that no restoration is possible. Both murder and rape are, to use Justice Kennedy’s words, severe and irrevocable.
I could even go a step further to argue that rape is even more severe than murder because in the latter case the victim is dead and can suffer no more, but in the former case, this eight-year-girl will have to live with her step-father’s crime for six, seven, maybe eight or nine decades.
If The Court and society once again decide that capital punishment is not permissible under the 8th Amendment, I’ll be fine with that. But this splitting of hairs, and decisions, unnecessarily prolongs the debate.
25 June 2008
MY COMMENTS…
1902 by Jeff Hess25 June 2008
WAL-MART WEDNESDAY…
1030 by Jeff Hess
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman, Peter Sayles and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.
STOP PICKING ON WAL-MART…! Dave Colomb thinks we”re all picking on Wal-Mart and that we should stop because it”s not fair, and stuff. It”s not right to pick on the world”s largest corporation. Colomb”s standard Libertarian stance falls apart right in his opening paragraph: Keep reading…
REMEMBER CHECKING THOSE RECIEPTS…? So Ben Stansfield gets detained while this guy saunters out the door?. Keep reading…
IS THIS HOW CHINA CLEANS UP ITS DUMPS…? After reading this latest recall notice from U.S. Product Safety Commission I have to begin to wonder if China isn”t being cheap and stupid by shipping us products contaminated with lead, but is rather using Wal-Mart to ship all of its toxic materials out of the country. Keep reading…
DID SMARTCARE GET SMARTER IN COLORADO…? During the past year we”ve written about the coming of in-store healthcare clinics like Take Care, Quick Health, Quick Care and Smart Care. The concept seems good, but the execution has not been what the clincs or Wal-Mart had hoped it would be. Keep reading…
WILD LEAVES WAL-MART”S MARKETSIDE… DAVID Top executives move around among corporate jobs like water skeeters on a creek in July, but it”s not good when a vice president in charge of a new risky venture for a company decides to leave the country to take a better job. Keep reading…
WE NEED TO BE OCCASIONALLY REMINDED… In the day-in-and-day-out work of posting to The Writing On The Wal (1,366 posts for me, a total of 3,935 for the team across more than three years) it may seem that we lose sight of the bigger picture of why we do what we do. Keep reading…
PLEASE… MAKE… IT… STOP…! I wanted to feel the blogger at Blogaholic”s pain, I really did. His long tale of woe in dealing with buying contact lenses at Wal-Mart started the rage rising in my gut. He was well and truly fecked by customer service from hell. Then I read this: Keep reading…
WAL-MART”S URBAN WATERLOOS…? The Washington Post yesterday looked at how the Wal-Mart Effect has played out in suburban Landover Hills, Maryland, a suburb of Washinton D.C. The news there is good with local retailers reporting little or no change in their business. Keep reading…
WHAT ARE WE ALL WILLING TO DO…? Because I spent most of the “90s editing environmental magazines, I”m more encouraging when corporations attempt to improve their bottom line by cutting costs associated with procurement, distribution, energy consumption and waste management. Keep reading…
MARKETSIDE”S PROMISES… The Financial Times notes that Wal-Mart has formally confirmed the locations of the first four Marketside boutique grocery stores around Phoenix, Arizona. The words on the website promise great things. But then flacks always do. Keep reading…
25 June 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
0859 by Jeff HessOver and over again, people in communities have asked me, “How communities can get the leaders they need to make public life and communities work?” My response: We must stand by our good leaders when they come under fire, even when we do not agree with their positions or political party when, to vouch for their principles and values.
That”s what Bloomberg did last Friday for Obama. Instead of standing on the sidelines watching people take pot shots at Obama, he stepped forward. He did so because he knew that he held special credibility on this issue with fellow Jews; and he knew that many of the people now living in South Florida once lived in his beloved New York City.
Hat tip to Jill.
24 June 2008
MY COMMENTS…
1715 by Jeff Hess24 June 2008
23 June 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
1748 by Jeff HessBut about those down-and-out customers: If you want to see the underside of the unregulated capitalist economy, the people who can’t find the non-existent escape ladder from poverty and its pathologies, visit the Martinsburg, West Virginia Wal-Mart. Morbid obesity; spontaneous, public bouts of corporal punishment directed against dirty children; ten-year girls dressed as whores; tattoos running up necks and down legs; smoking like you only see these days in Baku; it’s all here. I considered myself a socialist until I was about 23 (that was when I fled my kibbutz for the final time) but a visit to the Martinsburg Wal-Mart reawakens my distaste for steroidal capitalism.
23 June 2008
GOING OUT FROM EGYPT… NO. 19
1731 by Jeff HessToday was a different kind of project, the cleaning out and inventorying of my refrigerator and pantry. For those worried about my health, please note that the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables merely reflects that I’m going shopping tomorrow.
There is something about this that feels nearly as intimate as letting people peek into my medicine cabinet. What does this list say about me?
In my refrigerator:
1 large bottle of ketchup
1 bottle of sake
1 medium jar of Giardiniera
1 medium bottle of olive oil
1 bottle of Vermouth
2 medium bottles of grapefruit juice
1 medium bottle of Worcestershire sauce Continue Reading »
23 June 2008
23 June 2008
23 June 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
1028 by Jeff HessTo recognize this change as not only good, but worth dumping public financing, is not a flip flop. It is an incredible sea change to politics that was completely unimaginable before Barack Obama accomplished it. The current public finance system for presidential elections never envisioned a world in which average Americans could control a campaign with tiny amounts of money. That system is the new one, and any candidate who cannot make that happen, after 2008, will never be seen as free from special interest money, let alone seen as viable. That is a change worth celebrating, and which will reverberate for decades.
23 June 2008
23 June 2008
22 June 2008
22 June 2008
WHY ARE WE STILL HERE…?
0735 by Jeff Hess
There is an unusually — for me — number of telling Post Secrets this morning. The one above was only the first to catch my eye, but I did find it the most disturbing. If no one, and I mean men and women, ever had sexual contact of any kind outside of marriage then proving rape in court would not be as complicated as it is in today’s society. But we don’t live in that world (if we ever did) anymore. So why, 40 years into the second wave of feminism are we still where we are?
Then there was this Post Secret that actually made me feel angry. Is there anyone out there who hasn’t had their love not returned? This is one of those cards where I want to shake the sender and tell them that’s it’s not OK to just put it on the card.
Another person put their heart on the table and you kindly or cruelly crushed it. Tell them how you feel. The worst that can happen is you learn what it’s like to be on the other end of the experience; a good thing to learn because it will help you deal with the situation in the future.
This third card, for me, is a bookend to the first. Sometimes I think we expect society too move to quickly; that we are impatient with change.
Then I remember a quote from one of my personal heroes, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover who once said:
Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.
The world needs more courageous impatience.
21 June 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
1715 by Jeff HessTheir target was the Church of Scientology – and this was an altogether new way of protesting. It was all so different from how it used to be. For more than a decade, a small group had gathered opposite the Church’s London offices to stage lonely demonstrations. Some were former Scientologists, some just angered by an organisation that they claimed split up families, extorted money and employed its followers as slave labour. Leafleting passers-by, explaining themselves to the police and countering – they claimed – the harassment of the Scientologists, they were happy if a dozen turned out.
Then, earlier this year, something odd happened. Simultaneously and apparently without warning, in London, Toronto, Sydney, New York and other cities worldwide, young men and women began protesting en masse. They wore strange clothes, spoke their own dialect, distributed cake and operated under the name of Anonymous. They returned the next month – and the month after.
21 June 2008
21 June 2008
MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…
1430 by Jeff Hess
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Web Warrior Tools.
