law: January 2007 Archives
End to death penalty is urged - Los Angeles Times
A blue-ribbon commission recommended Tuesday that New Jersey abolish the death penalty and urged legislators to replace it with the sentence of life without parole.
The 13-member commission said the costs of the death penalty are greater than the costs of life in prison without parole and concluded that abolition of the death penalty "will eliminate the risk" of uneven sentencing in capital cases.
In addition, the commission said "the penological interest in executing a small number of persons guilty of murder is not sufficiently compelling to justify the risk of making an irreversible mistake."
Marc Ash | Puppet Kills Puppet
Shortly after Saddam Hussein was hanged at a US installation in Baghdad, the New York Times called him a "Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence." The Washington Post dubbed Hussein an "Architect of ruthless Iraqi dictatorship." President Bush said, "Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial."
Curiously absent from US mainstream media accounts were a few additional details. Saddam was indeed a ruthless dictator, true, but specifically ruthless on behalf of his benefactors: US multinational petroleum and arms dealers and their patrons well-placed in Washington.
Why?
