This country is fucking monstrous sometimes.
The same people who claim not to trust the government get absolutely livid when anyone suggests that maybe, just maybe, our justice system hasnât proven itself trustworthy enough to grant it the power to execute people. Better to murder an innocent convict once in a while than risk looking âsoft on crime.â
I always point to Illinois, where a Republican governor was the one to say âenough is enoughâ and repealed the death penalty in the state because there had been so many people on death row proven innocent (and not always before being killed). Itâs not only about âbleeding heartsâ (not that thereâs anything wrong with compassion), itâs also cold, hard fact that we shouldnât do what we canât undo if there is even the shadow of a doubt.
Also the rationale (âwe need to put them down before they kill again!â) isnât even based in fact. Even if we took âlife without paroleâ off the table entirely, murder has one of the lowest recidivism rate of any crime so the odds of any given killer killing again after their release is pretty low.
Evidence-based crime policy has shown again and again that harsher treatment of convicts does nothing to reduce the crime rate. Meanwhile Norway has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and the maximum prison sentence under Norwegian law is 21 years.
Shots were fired into Vice President Harrisâ campaign office in Tempe, Arizona, on Monday, but no one was injured, her campaign confirmed to Axios.
Why it matters: Political threats have become an undertone of the presidential election cycle, with assassination attempts against former President Trump and violent rhetoric.
- âWe are grateful to Tempe Police for coming quickly to the scene and are fortunate no one was present or injured,â said Sean McEnerney, Arizona Democratic Party coordinated campaign manager.
Zoom in: Tempe police said in an emailed statement Tuesday this is the second time criminal damage occurred at the office and that the front windows were shot with what appeared to be a BB or pellet gun just after midnight on Sept. 16.
- Police are âactively investigating,â analyzing evidence and implementing additional safety measures, the police department said.
- âNo one was inside the office during the overnight hours, but this raises concerns about the safety of those who work in that building, as well as those nearby,â Sgt. Ryan Cook said.
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/24/arizona-democrat-campaign-office-shot
Unfortunately, I doubt itâs ever really been about that. Itâs about cruelty, culpability, and costs. The first two are the reason they donât care how much evidence is presented of someoneâs innocence. Too many in the criminal injustice system will never admit they made a mistake, because they donât want to be blamed for anything. The third reason (based on right-wing talking points about how much taxpayer money is spent to support a single prisoner for a year) leads them to the conclusion that itâs cheaper to execute people. Itâs why conservatives fast-track that by making it very difficult or impossible to appeal wrongful convictions.
Now of course communities have enacted the penalty of death for many offences far lighter than this: still hope leads men to venture, and no one ever yet put himself in peril without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design ⌠It is probable that in early times the penalties for the greatest offences were less severe, and that, as these were disregarded, the penalty of death has been by degrees in most cases arrived at, which is itself disregarded in like manner. Either then some means of terror more terrible than this must be discovered, or it must be owned that this restraint is useless; and that as long as poverty gives men the courage of necessity, or plenty fills them with the ambition which belongs to insolence and pride, and the other conditions of life remain each under the thraldom of some fatal and master passion, so long will the impulse never be wanting to drive men into danger.
â Thucydides on how the death penalty apparently does not prevent crimes, 2400 years ago
Itâs only been 2400 years, we might need more data⌠/s
They waited until weeks before the election to file a suit.
Itâs a Michigan lawsuit about absentee ballots.
Michigan Republicans are suing Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for allegedly violating Michigan election security law, Republican leaders announced Tuesday.
The Michigan RNC and MIGOP allege that Benson failed to follow Michigan laws that require implementation of ballot number matching on the ballot, poll book, and ballot return envelope to ensure that ballots are accurately cast and counted.
https://www.wlns.com/news/michigan-republicans-sue-secretary-of-state-over-absentee-ballot-security/
They really have given up on winning in state and nation-wide elections, havenât they?
Nope, they have just given up on winning votes. They plan to win the election by post-vote fuckery. Pure and simple, end of democracy, âyou will never have to vote againâ dystopian fuckery.
In an ongoing outreach effort to young male voters, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harrisâs campaign bought advertising space on IGN, the worldâs biggest games media outlet.
Static and video ads will appear on the site beginning Wednesday. Two static ads promote Kamala Harris as âfighting for a new way forwardâ and âa fighter for the American people,â presented in pixelized fonts and imagery. Two of the ads raise alarms about Project 2025, a policy tome created by the conservative Heritage Foundation whose wish list of far-right policies have made it a central target of the Democratic campaign â including in its outreach to young voters.
Another 15-second ad spot highlights how Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used racially insensitive words tying the pandemic to Asian Americans, and that the former Republican president âunleashed a wave of hateâ with those words. IGN attracts about 35 million Asian American visitors a month**,** and about 80 percent of the siteâs audience is male, according to the Harris-Walz campaign. These ads will display only in battleground states.
The ads, and a separate âNerds for Harrisâ fundraiser held online Tuesday night, highlight a tussle â played out across streaming, social and gaming platforms â over a potentially decisive slice of young male voters. The Trump campaign has courted them aggressively as it lags with women voters. (The Trump campaign said it was not immediately available for comment but would respond later.)
Nothing will come of this but at least theyâre trying.
I hope youâre wrong about nothing coming out of this, because theyâre putting peopleâs lives in jeopardy⌠Iâm afraid youâre right, though. 
Trump wants Biden to bomb Iran for him.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: If I were president, and a former president and leading candidate to be the next president was under threat, I would inform the threatening country, in this case Iran, that if they do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.
Vance has blamed the media for reporting the bomb threats, as though itâs somehow the fault of reporters for informing people about what happened. He also said all the threats were hoaxes. That may be true but a fake bomb threat still has very real consequences.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/17/vance-trump-springfield-ohio-threats/
Or - send them a fruit basket.
Michael Harriot reports on the candidates for a congressional seat in Alabama:
His statement is complete word-salad.
