We all know about the infamous Willie Horton ad that helped George HW Bush to the White House in 1988. But as this piece from “Sociological Images” makes clear, racially-charged political ads are very much with us.
Author: Alan Bean
Supreme Court agrees to hear Skinner case
As this excellent article from the Texas Tribune makes clear, the Hank Skinner case is a head-on collision between two interest groups: inmates looking to have DNA evidence tested, and overworked state officials who fear they will be buried in frivolous requests for DNA testing.
As this summary shows, the state’s case against Hank Skinner looks pretty damning: (more…)
Mississippi parole board takes up the Scott Sisters case
Supporters of Jamie and Gladys Scott are beginning to believe that this legal travesty will soon be rectified.
An October 12th column by Bob Herbert of the New York Times appears to have ruffled feathers in the Magnolia State. Herbert suggested that double life sentences for a robbery netting $11 might sound ludicrous but “This is Mississippi we’re talking about, a place that in many ways has not advanced much beyond the Middle Ages.”
Will Herbert’s comments make the Mississippi Parole Board more or less likely to do the right thing? According to an even-handed article in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the attorneys and activists calling for justice in the Scott sisters case take a more hopeful view.
Is Mississippi captive to a medieval mentality? (more…)
Mark Osler: Four Hard Truths about the Drug War
The policies of the drug war failed, but ignoring the problem certainly won’t make it go away. Here are four steps we need to take:
By MARK OSLER
October 11, 2010
Though it is out of the spotlight in a bad economy, the United States still has a drug problem, and it may be getting worse. The use of methamphetamine, a particularly pernicious narcotic, is increasing again. Few things can harm a family or community like meth.
It shouldn’t be surprising that drug use is on the rise. The federal government, in particular, has turned its attention to something else: immigration. Just 14 years ago, about 40 percent of federal defendants who received a sentence were charged with drug crimes, while just 12 percent were up on immigration charges. For the 2009 fiscal year, 32 percent of federal defendants faced immigration charges, while only 30 percent were narcotics violators.
In highlighting this shift, I am not arguing that we go back to what we did at the height of the drug war. Those policies largely failed. If we choose to take drug interdiction seriously, we must try new approaches and take real-world facts into account, including four hard truths: (more…)
Texas Judge gets off on a technicality
This story probably won’t get the attention it deserves. It’s too complicated. Here’s the simple version:Michael Wayne Richard was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 27, 2007. Earlier that day, the federal Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving the claim that Kentucky’s three-drug lethal injection protocol constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Since Texas uses a similar method of execution, Michael Richard’s attorneys wanted to file a federal writ asking that their client’s execution be stayed until the Kentucky case was decided. A stay would have allowed Richard’s attorneys to make an “Atkins claim” or mental retardation defense. Unfortunately, they couldn’t file at the federal level until all state remedies had been exhausted. They had two complicated writs to write and only a few hours to get the work done. That’s where Texas Judge Sharon Keller enters the picture. (more…)
Pimping the Culture War
Ann Coulter says that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim; he’s an atheist.
How does she know that? Because Obama is a liberal, and all liberals are atheists.
Glenn Beck says Jim Wallis of Sojourners is a Marxist. How does he know that? Because Wallis believes in economic justice, liberation theologians talk about economic justice, and liberation theologians have been influenced by Marxist thought.
Beck’s real target isn’t Jim Wallis, it’s Barack Obama. Jim Wallis is Jeremiah Wright and Jeremiah Wright is Barack Obama, hence, the president is a Marxist.
Are Beck and Coulter serious? Do they believe their own rhetoric?
Yes and no. Yes, because their most bizarre statements “feel” right. No, because Beck and Coulter are so concerned about getting the fans on the red side of the stadium cheering and the fans in the blue seats leaping in alarm that they don’t really care about the rightness or wrongness of their statements. Or, to put it another way, a remark that gets the fans up and hollering is a good statement, and if the fans are sitting on their hands the message needs to be tweaked.
According to the New York Times, Ann Coulter recently shifted in a more gay-friendly direction (conservatives love gays; we just don’t like gay marriage) because she couldn’t compete with conservatives who are even more extreme than she is.
The culture war is a marketing gimmick designed to keep the contributions rolling in. It’s like one of those funny mirrors on the circus midway; what you see shouldn’t be mistaken for reality. (more…)
Prophetic Imagination, The Greatest Prayer, and Mass Incarceration
By Charles Kiker
This is something of a response to and expansion of Alan Bean’s recent post, “Marcus Borg’s radical Christianity.” In this post Dr. Bean mentioned Walter Brueggemann and John Dominic Crossan in passing. I respond by expanding on the thought of those two scholars, and relate their perspectives to the issue of mass incarceration.
Walter Brueggemann is the author of The Prophetic Imagination. The second edition was copyrighted in 2001, so it does not qualify as a recent contribution. But it only recently came to my attention.
Brueggemann presents the Hebrew culture as represented by Moses as an alternative community to the royal, person negating culture of Egypt. The culture of Egypt was anti-freedom not only for humanity, but also for God. This counterculture to royalty and the perks of royalty persisted in Hebrew life for a couple of centuries or so before a new royalty, a counter-counterculture, took root under David and thrived under Solomon and his successors in both Hebrew kingdoms. The prophets beginning in the 8th century BCE, some of them at least, broke free from tradition to provide a new counter voice to the royal consciousness of privilege and power that had arisen in the Hebrew kingdoms.
Jeremiah was the prophet of pain; Deutero-Isaiah the prophet of hope. Pain is a necessary predecessor to hope, lament a predecessor to praise in the confrontation between the royal consciousness of privilege and power and the radical freedom of and in God. I have this quote from Brueggemann written in the margin of my Bible at Psalm 23, “It is precisely those who know death most painfully who can speak hope most vigorously” (The Prophetic Imagination, p. 67). Brueggemann cautions that social policy is not necessarily in the purview of the prophet, and that anguish is more fitting than anger as prophetic attitude. (more…)
Marcus Borg’s Radical Christianity
Nancy Bean didn’t have a wish list for her birthday this year; she issued a birthday decree. All five Beans were to purchase a copy of Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith and read at least the first five chapters. We would then meet at our daughter Lydia’s home in Waco to discuss the book over birthday cake.
The discussion was loud, lively and long. Sons Adam and Amos suspected that Borg’s version of Christianity existed primarily inside his own head. Lydia gave the book thumbs up, but said she favored the more evangelical theology of NT Wright.
Marcus Borg is part of an emerging cadre of Christian intellectuals calling for a new understanding of Christian theology, spirituality and ethics. Anglican Bishop NT Wright, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, Roman Catholic theologian John Dominic Crossan and the “emerging church” writer Brian McLaren have also contributed to this project.
They don’t agree on all points, of course, but Borg’s The Heart of Christianity comes as close to a consensus statement as you are likely to find. Conservative scholars may quibble with Borg’s assertion that the Bible is “a human product;” but, increasingly, leading Christian thinkers are being drawn to similar conclusions. (more…)
Thomas Merton: “the saint is never offended”
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who spent his later years at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Merton’s mature thought combined insights from western and eastern spirituality.
Some men seem to think that a saint cannot possibly take a natural interest in anything created. They imagine that any form of spontaneity or enjoyment is a sinful gratification of “fallen nature”. That to be “supernatural” means obstructing all spontaneity with clichés and arbitrary references to God. The purpose of these clichés is, so to speak, to hold everything at arms length, to frustrate spontaneous reactions, to exorcise feelings of guilt. Or perhaps to cultivate such feelings! One wonders sometimes if such morality is not after all a love of guilt!
(more…)
Montana Governor says he is conflicted about the death penalty
Montana’s Governor must decide whether Ronald Smith will live or die.
Smith is from Red Deer, Alberta, a midsize city located midway between Calgary and Edmonton. He was drunk and high at the time of the murders and, the evidence would suggest, also mentally unbalanced. Initially, he turned down a plea deal that would have taken the death penalty off the table. Then he pled guilty and asked for the death penalty, telling a jury that he committed the crime because he wanted to know how it felt to kill. Ultimately, he decided he didn’t want to die after all. The case has been bouncing around in the legal system for a quarter century.
Stephen Harper, Canada’s conservative Prime Minister, had no intention of interceding on Ronald Smith’s behalf, but the Canadian courts forced his hand. Canada, like virtually every other western democracy, abolished capital punishment long ago. As in the United Kingdom, the death penalty died in Canada without much public clamor. Most Canadians supported capital punishment in 1976 (as they still do), but leading public figures didn’t think public support made the ultimate punishment moral or even an effective deterrent. (more…)
Friends of Justice 