Is the War on women an organized effort?

[jamminj]

are you serious?

Share This

[redblack]

you can’t pick and choose what you support and what you don’t, then send a check.

exactly right! i want poor people to have safe access to abortion when it’s necessary – on the taxpayers’ dime if need be.

so why does your morality trump mine?

here’s the bottom line. roe v. wade is spot on, legally.

it’s none of your business what happens to other people’s fetuses, even if they’re on the public dole. they’re not yours, and you have no – none – zero – right to make laws about it.

same goes for those weird sodomy laws whose intent is to punish homosexual activity.

i thought you guys were the party of individual privacy and personal liberty.

Share This

[JV]

Maybe I missed the part where James Madison discussed abortion.

It wasn’t in the Constitution, therefore it’s a state issue.

Share This

[redblack]

yeah? well, i live in a state, too. and your morality doesn’t trump mine there, either.

oh, and when i said “necessary” regarding abortion, that’s not your call, either. it’s between the doctor and the patient – in this case, the patient being the person carrying the fetus.

Share This

[waterworld]

Kootch, et al.: We don’t have a de facto ban on the death penalty in this state, although I wish we did. Washington reinstated the death penalty in 1977, after the US Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia. Since then, there have been five executions here. Right now, there are, I think, eight guys on death row. Each of those cases is in some stage of post-sentence review, a process that can take several years, unless the defendant waives his right to the appeals process that is required by law.

The majority of death penalty verdicts in this state end up being reversed on appeal. I think the number right now is 21 or 22 reversals. At this rate, six of the eight men on death row should end up with sentences of life without parole instead of death. (I say “should” only because of the rate of reversals so far, which is over 80% and is obviously statistically inaccurate. I don’t know the likelihood of reversal on any of the pending cases.)

In addition, three of the five men who have been executed since the late 1970s were volunteers. Only two have litigated their cases all the way to the end and lost.

If the Attorney General wins any of the pending death penalty cases, I am confident he will seek death warrants as soon as possible. And Governor Gregoire will almost undoubtedly sign those death warrants. Both McKenna and Gregoire fundamentally support the death penalty, or, at a minimum, are not opposed to it.

Although I am firmly opposed to capital punishment, I think it is very difficult to make the case that it is unconstitutional. I would even agree that we provide defendants now with greater protection from wrongful execution than the legal systems in place at the time our nation was founded. Thankfully, that’s not the constitutional test, and our courts have long recognized that we are obligated to be very, very careful before we sentence someone to death. But the sad reality, still, is that many innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn’t commit, and many of those are sentenced to death.

Someone asked earlier for an accounting of the number of innocent people who have been executed. The Death Penalty Information Center lists nine people, and explains that it is very hard to determine that number, because no one has historically investigated claims of innocence after someone has been executed. In fact, relatives of men who have been executed are routinely denied access to DNA that they would like to have tested to determine if their loved ones were wrongly killed — even if they are doing so at their own expense. The typical argument against post-execution testing is that it would undermine the “finality” of the case, as though it could bring someone back to life.

It is the number of exonerations in the past ten or fifteen years that tells the real story. There have been over 140 exonerations so far, a large fraction of which are from a handful of states known for their readiness to kill. Many of those exonerations are due to DNA, but many are also due to the discovery of erroneous eyewitness identifications, police and judicial misconduct, and bad forensic evidence.

It would be helpful to know how many people have been wrongfully executed, but there’s little reason to doubt that it is far higher than the number of exonerations to date. Whatever the number is, it has no correlation at all with the numbers of prison guards who are murdered by prisoners, or to the numbers of murders committed by men who have been released after serving their sentences. No one could seriously argue that we should kill more innocent men to save the lives of prison staff.

How does this relate to the abortion issue you all have been discussing? Beats me, although the two are often raised at the same time, with some of us noting the hypocrisy of asserting an absolute “right to life” while supporting state-sponsored intentional killing, and others of us pointing out that a convicted murderer or rapist is not “innocent” and therefore we are entitled to kill him, whereas we are not entitled to kill the presumably innocent life growing in the womb. But who are we kidding — no one who has formed an opinion on either the death penalty or abortion has ever been swayed by either of these arguments. It hardly matters what the truth is or where the truth can be found, because in reality, people hold very different views on these issues, and it is always possible to find some underlying inconsistency. We are bundles of contradictions, even where life and death are concerned.

Moreover, it was exactly this way at the time of our nation’s founding, when the constitution was written. Abortion was legal in some colonies, illegal in others, and widely practiced in all of them. The death penalty was legal almost everywhere, but denounced by the same religions as today. No one at that time would have read the credo regarding the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as referring to either an unborn child or a convicted murderer.

Share This

[JoB]

dyn99

i would like to know exactly what it is you think we won 50 years ago..

i will agree.. there are more opportunities for women now than there were 50 years ago…

but we didn’t win a single legal right

Contrary to popular opinion

the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified

and is NOT part of the US Constitution

if it was.. this conversation would be moot.

Share This

[JoB]

JV..

I was just wondering

if you realize

that not a single fetus will survive

without a woman willing to carry it to term

the same woman who will carry the legal, moral and financial burden for that child until it is of age…

single mothers raising children in the United States have an average of 2 children and raise them on an average of under $25 thousand a year..

40% of those women are white.

about the same percentage of those women are educated.

and.. the majority weren’t single mothers when they had their children.

I personally am anti-abortion

but i am also pro-choice

and choice is what is now on the political chopping block

Share This

[JoB]

JV..

also..

did you really justify putting innocent men to death

because not innocent men kill prison guards?

Share This

[JoB]

kootch..

why oh why

did you have to go and prove my point?

“If there is someone intent on finding evil and nefarious intent in my handle.. they will find it. Even the offense is ignorance.”

sigh……

Share This

[kootchman]

If the trendline stays on the same trajectory…. as it was 2009 CDC Comprehensive Birth Study. We are getting very close to to single mothers, not married, being half of all live births. That which the government subsidizes will increase. Right or wrong, is irrelevant. We are carrying a good portion of that financial burden… in fact, most of it.

Number of live births to unmarried women: 1,693,658

Birth rate for unmarried women: 50.5 births per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-44 years

Percent of all births to unmarried women: 41.0%

and

Nearly 72 percent of the births to black women were out of wedlock. Mothers were unmarried in about 51 percent of Hispanic births and 28 percent of non-Hispanic white births.

Given that universal BC and abortion are the law of the land now… and these are the stats… seems to me both are societal and economic failures…. sumpin’ nots working here Lucy….

Since 1970, out-of-wedlock birth rates have soared. In 1965, 24 percent of black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990 the rates had risen to 64 percent for black infants, 18 percent for whites. Every year about one million more children are born into fatherless families. If we have learned any policy lesson well over the past 25 years, it is that for children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in poverty are great. The policy implications of the increase in out-of-wedlock births are staggering

That is a huge number and unsustainable. 41% makes me in part the legal and financial burden holder. This is not result of a war on women.. these are some very bad choices. In the most liberal European countries….

Between 1990 and 2000, Norway’s out-of-wedlock birthrate rose from 39 to 50 percent, while Sweden’s rose from 47 to 55 percent. Do thy sustain a higher level of state support? Yes. But is that our national objective… to have most children born out of wedlock? Their birth rate is lower…we are a more fertile culture, so it is more sustainable in Scandenavian countries… I am not surprised that the culture war is this intense.. these are the results. Do we want to be a nation that subsidizes unmarried, births as the majority number of births? We have tossed personal accountability and consequence for behaviors out the window.

Share This

[JoB]

kootch…

wouldn’t those statistics lead you to the conclusion that giving birth should be a very carefully thought out choice for women?

do you think men are going to give up having sex with any willing or unwilling woman because pregnancy might result?

think again..

we are the product of our parent’s and grandparent’s oops method.

ever hear of the rumble seat?

it replaced joy rides in the family carriage

which replaced the local hay pile

which replaced?

Share This

[dyn99]

Waterworld – nice summary.

JV – the point was that the ultimate deprivation of freedom is to be deprived of one’s ability to live by the state/federal government. That should not even be possible under our system. So why allow the death penalty when the system is fallible? It makes no sense.

JoB – I was referring to Brown v. Board of Education and the elimination of segregation. Some of the religious right are ardently trying to amend the constitution to deprive gays/lesbians of their right to marry (which is really a religious issue anyway, and the state/federal governments should simply create and recognize a legal framework for any two people to have a legally binding union – regardless of sex or sexual orientation and leave churches to “marry” whoever they want to). Some states are passing “separate but equal” legislation to try and give them “equivalent” rights. Now that the Obama administration is no longer defending DOMA, separate but equal will fail a second time. We’ve tried this before, and true equality will win.

And JoB you do have equal rights, regardless of the ERA. You have all the same rights that men do. You may not have the same opportunities, and discrimination does exist, but you have the same legal rights. If you are being deprived of your rights somehow, you need to sue to re-establish them. Unfortunately, that seems to be the only way to prevent the deprivation of rights in this society.

Share This

[JV]

JoB, once again, you hear what you want to hear, twist it to fit inside your vision of the world and ignore the rest.

You asked, “did you really justify putting innocent men to death because not innocent men kill prison guards?”

I’ll explain it again. No, I don’t justify killing innocent men. And the facts show that very very few innocent men have been put to death in the modern era.

The facts ALSO show that many convicted murders go on to kill again when given a second chance. (They can’t do that when they are dead.)

You and I both have to choose which one is on our conscience;

A.) less than 10 “wrongfully exicuted” in the last hundred years, or

B.) the guards/inmates/or other innocent people who were killed by a convicted murderer. (I’d bet that number is more than 10 so far this month.)

You and I both have compassion, we just show it to different groups.

Share This

[dyn99]

Prison guards know what they are signing up for when they take a job at a maximum security prison. They trade risk for reward in the form of significant compensation and benefits.

The state should never execute someone under the assumption that they “may” try to kill someone else. They should simply secure them and prevent them from being able to do so again.

You’re truly insane if you believe we should execute all people that are convicted of murder, regardless of whether or not they are actually guilty, just because they have the potential to re-offend.

And you have no idea how many people were wrongly convicted and executed. Nor do I. But I GUARANTEE you that it’s WAY more than 10 over the last 100 years.

You’re not providing compassion to anyone – you believe in state-sponsored killing with or without cause, and I can’t think of any more egregious deprivation of individual rights than that.

Share This

[JV]

dyn99, apparently you are only reading the first sentence, then you start typing, something brilliant like “so you are saying…killing everybody who speeds or parks illegally is good????”

OR equally brilliant,

“you believe in state-sponsored killing with or without cause…”

[heavy sarcasm font] Yep, that’s exactly what I said, I believe in killing with or without cause! Including j-walkers, or those SUSPECTED of j-walking! [end heavy sarcasm font]

I’m not trying to get you to agree with me. I know we are way beyond that. I just want to clarify where we disagree. So try this, and let’s see if we can find an area of agreement.

Wrongfully putting a man to death = bad. (Agree or disagree?)

After being given leniency, murderer kills several more people = worse. (Agree or disagree?)

Share This

[dyn99]

1) Wrongful dealth is bad – agreed.

2) Murderers should not be given leniency, not should they be murdered by the state. Therefore this should be a non-issue.

Share This

[dyn99]

Clarification – non-mentally ill premeditated murderers should not be given leniency under any circumstance. They should be jailed for the rest of their lives with no possibility of parol.

However, the decisions should be subject the standard review of our legal system, so the convictions can be overturned in the case that someone is wrongfully convicted.

Share This

[JoB]

JV..

I didn’t twist anything

we have a fundamental difference

you indicate that it is ok to execute an innocent person as long as you punish those who are guilty

you indicate that just because very few executed men are legally exonerated after their death that very few innocent people are executed.

You completely ignore the fact that very few people of means ever end up on death row.

You ignore the fact that means are pretty much essential to receiving a vigorous defense… both before and after execution.

You ignore the fact that DNA evidence was not present at many of the trials of those sentenced to death.

You ignore the fact that even when that evidence has been available prior to execution, many states have refused to stay the execution for due process.

and you drive home your point by saying that you don’t want murderers let loose on society

and that those who lose their lives due to executions for crimes they didn’t commit are inconsequential because you believe more prison guard lives are lost than innocent people executed.

I believe that if we execute one man who could be innocent without fully exploring the possibilities of his innocence, we have committed murder.

I don’t believe we have to execute anyone to keep society safe from them.

I believe that there are people on death row now who definately shouldn’t be there.

I believe their lives matter as much as yours.

Share This

[JV]

Okay, dyn99, (not JoB) we are making progress, and we have our first point of agreement!

So then, if murderers shouldn’t be given leniency, what should we do with them?

Currently we leave them in prison and let them lift weights, watch Comcast, have a love life and a sex life, play cards, read books, read porn, get a law degree. Sounds like some people’s college days, but without all of the loans! Because we pay for all of that.

(I left off the part about gang fights, prison riots, and killing more people so we can stay on the topic of, what should we do with them?)

Share This

[JoB]

dyn99..

“And JoB you do have equal rights, regardless of the ERA.”

well. .no.. women aren’t guaranteed the same federal rights that men enjoy.

if you check state laws you will find that there are still laws on the books that discriminate against women.

States can and do pass laws that discriminate against women.

states are passing laws that make it legal to invade a woman’s medical privacy…

that is what this whole conversation is about…

your assertion that gay marriage is a religious issue is equally naive.

Can you explain to me how property rights, child custody rights, taxable exemptions and a host of other financial and legal issues that face gay partners have anything at all to do with religion?

they don’t. But they have a great deal to do with the rights of gay partners who are engaged in relationships and make a commitment to raising children within the framework of that relationship.

the devil really is in the details

Share This

[JoB]

JV..

LOL..

you do make my case for me…

you are all about retribution

and too bad if there is a little collateral damage…

unless, of course.. you or someone you care about

ends up as collateral damage

and you obviously think your odds are pretty good on that one

no.. i don’t think you and i are going to agree about this one…

Share This

[dyn99]

JoB – you missed my point. “Marriage” is a religious concept that pre-dates the state or really any form of modern government.

The government’s job should be to provide any two people a legal framework to have all the rights you mentioned. This should not be discriminated upon based on sex or sexual orientation. But it should be limited to two people.

“Marriage” can be done by the church for those who believe in a religious marriage. Whatever “church” you choose to participate in.

The government would provide any two people who want it a “civil union” but would cease to conduct or regulate “marriages”. Any partnership of two consenting adults could receive the status of the “union”. Someone who chooses to get “married” would still have to get the state’s “union” separately.

“Marriage” would simply be left to whatever religious institution you chose to participate in on an optional basis. And it would simply be a title, and would not be given any different legal rights. If you don’t want to get married by a church (whatever church that may be), then don’t. It provides no benefit other than the traditional religious title, ceremony, and rights in a church.

A church could then choose to marry or not marry whoever it wants, based on its chosen criteria. That way people like me who want to get married in a church in a religious ceremony could do so in accordance with the tradition of their faith.

And churches could choose not to marry people based on sexual orientation if they want, so the government is not telling them how to practice their religion.

That would be a true separation of church and state.

JV – convicted murderers should sit in an uncomfortable dark cell where society is protected from them for the rest of their lives, but have the legal right to appeal, so if they were wrongly convicted, they can be freed.

They should have a right to physical exercise, nutrition, education and entertainment within reason. In my opinion, they should also have the right to work and receive a minimal wage for prison jobs. Maybe their prison job wages could “buy” their access to entertainment and educational materials. Maybe even better quality food. Then the system partially funds itself, while reducing the cost to provide necessary services to the prison.

I’m not sure about conjugal visits or porn on taxpayer dollars. I can tell you that I don’t think that I should have to pay for those. But I suppose if they want to use their prison wages to pay for those things, as long as it doesn’t further negatively impact their ability to be rehabilitated, then I don’t think it’s really the state’s job to prevent them from buying that. But I sure as hell don’t want to pay for it.

In some respects, I’m sure it’s functional to allow conjugal visits and porn. Otherwise there is no outlet for the sexual energy, which would undoubtedly cause greater problems (think sexually frustrated 16 year old), so there would need to be some way of letting that energy out in a way that doesn’t harm others or cost the state more money.

And yes, we would pay for all of that as a society. That would be the cost to keep society “safe”. If we didn’t think someone needed to be locked up to keep society “safe”, then we should release them, as we’d just be wasting society’s money.

But paying for that for the rest of their lives is still less expensive than killing them. And killing them provides no benefit to society. Rehabilitating them does – if that is possible. For those that commit aggravated first degree murder, I really don’t think that the possibility of release should exist.

Share This

[dyn99]

And JoB – name a state law that provides reduced legal rights for women vs. men. I’d love to research it.

Share This

[JV]

JoB, “collateral damage” happens either way. It just boils down to a numbers game.

I’m choosing the option that leads to less collateral damage.

Again, the Conservative argument comes down to numbers and the Progressive argumet comes down to feelings.

Happy to agree to disagree about this one.

Share This

[WorldCitizen]

dyn99 Said:

“”Marriage” is a religious concept that pre-dates the state or really any form of modern government.”

Oh yeah? Prove it.

Share This

[Author]

Posts