know tomorrow
tpmtv by joshua micah marshall (he who brings us Talking Points Memo and the TPM Cafe has this amazing piece on how MSNBC quoted the spoof site whitehouse.org rather than whitehouse.gov when talking about the influence of jerry falwell on the white house. take a look for yourself.
i assume this will make it on the daily show.
i recently had a conversation about the jury system in the US with a friend who had gotten her invitation to jury duty. as usually i made my point that while the idea of a jury system is nice i think that in today’s world with 24/7 media and with juries being picked and not randomly appointed is just not a just institution.
and this opinion was just only strengthened after watching the amazing frontline report when kids get life. it is an incredibly well made documentary that is troubling but should be a must see tv.
in it frontline document the cases of five men who committed crimes in their teens and are now serving life without parole prison sentences. what makes some of these cases even more troubling is that in several of these cases the convicted was not even the murderer, received extremely poor lawyers, was convicted based on evidence from co-suspects, or as in one case was sexually harassed for years by his parents (who he killed).
in all cases juries (who in some parts had to decide on these cases just weeks after other events like columbine) left the judges no other option but to sentence these juveniles to life without parole, providing no second chance, no chance for rehabilitation.
while i can understand the pain of the families of the victims i also believe that we as humans, living in social groups, have to remove ourselves from revenge and ensure a just framework for co-existance. and an eye-for-an-eye is just not the way to ensure this. if we go that route we are capitulating and are saying that certain people should not live. i think as an educated society we have to try to help these people and the first step is forgiveness, a second is to work with these people. and life without parole is just the complete opposite.
at the end of the report frontline states that currently the US has more than 2,000 juveniles in prison serving life without parole sentences … in the rest of the world there are only 12 (according to human rights watch). another sad statistic in which the US is number one.
so i walk by the washington post this morning and on the front cover is a picture of an american woman (i don’t know who … it was taken at the queen’s arrival in virginia) bowing infront of the queen.
this made me wonder, why would someone bow infront of the queen? i guess if the person is in or from the UK or the commonwealth it make some sense to me. but here we are in the US, not part of the commonwealth, and on top of it, a country that fought to get rid of king and queen. so why not just shake the queen’s hand? she is not the queen of the US.
