I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

Mary - congrats on all clear

Does anyone else want to WELCOME the newest DEMOCRATIC SENATOR from North Dakota:

Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp

YEAH!!!!  Women in the Senate....DEMOCRATIC women in the Senate...happy dancing...with a very VERY special Welcome for Tammy Baldwin - more happy dancing...

Great news in ND -- and also Montana.

Love Canada!!!  If only it wasn't so cold....   brrrrrr

My thanks to everyone.  My father-in-law is in a very nice hospice now.  My husband says it is beautiful and they are treating Pops like a king.  More importantly they are controlling his pain now.  The doctors don't believe he will linger long and believe they can continue to keep him comfortable.  We are all very reassured by that.

As to other matters I will never figure out people who think the way that has been discussed, and boy the good news continues to roll in for Democrats, doesn't it?!

One other thing, I don't want them to do away with the filibuster.  It has its uses.  But it is in desperate need of reform.  It was never intended to put a stop to all business.  If they want to filibuster make them freaking filibuster - and don't stop things from coming up for discussion, that's just stupid.

Here is a link to Obama's victory speech. I was asleep when it happened, but just reading it brings tears to my eyes:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/06/us/politics/06-obama-election-night-speech.html?ref=politics

I hope rules are tightened to make the filibuster a rare parliamentary maneuver - not a form of government, which was what the GOP was doing.

Remember Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"?  Now THAT was proper filibustering!

Yes, I'm so grateful that our banking system is set up in such a way that regulations absolutely forbid the nonsense and tragic consequences we saw in the U.S. 4 years ago.  We're also fortunate that our resource-rich nation has the ability to sell to emerging nations.  Oh yes, and Ontario and the federal government also helped keep our auto industry alive.  No way were we going to let it go bankrupt!

Just heard Howard Dean on NPR state that he expects Florida to be declared for Obama within the next few hours.  Again, hats off to those wonderful folks with the stamina and the WILL to vote while standing in line for hour after hour.

RR, so sorry about your FIL. We've lost my MIL and both my parents since we were married. DH's father died before we met. Anyway, even though they were all very old, it is still so hard. As my DH said, it's like losing a part of your history. Pieces cut out of your life, leaving only memories of what was. Hugs to you and your DH.

Been running around and just seeing that there is some ignorance being spread on other thread pertaining to FEMA. I don't want to read over there for good reason. However, I stated my opinion for the record and they can use the information, or not, as they see fit.

Athena, I respect your point of view.  Having been intimately involved with this issue, I will say that you're not incorrect that those people deserve to die.  Yet the other problems I mentioned with it still exist, and it is so hard to limit the death penalty to particularly henious crimes.  Justice Blackmun, I recall, tried to do so and finally gave up in frustration, saying he would no longer tinker with the mechanism of death.

Europe has experienced mass murders.  The guy in Norway who shot and murdered some 90 odd people.  Bombing.  And serial killers do not know national boundaries.  It's easier to kill here in the US because of the culture of guns, but we're not alone in terrible crimes.

BTW, I don't consider Osama Bin Laden an example of the death penalty. He was killed in the course of action and in a war. I am against the dp, but I'm not a quaker.  I believe in self-defense.

I'll believe Boehner is willing to accept new revenue when I see it.

I had to "mute" Boehner because he actually started talking about Reagan and George Schultz - puleeeeeze just stay on the damned golf course and off the TV Mr. Boehner - no one cares anymore.

Do you know that the state of Israel only allows the death penalty for genocide, and crimes against humanity. Only one person - Adolph Eichmann - was ever civilly executed in Israel.  I will say that I could probably support an Israeli style death penalty.

As an attorney whose done some criminal law, I agree that the justice system is very flawed. But the death penalty is unique, in that it is irreversible.

Just an aside, I respect your privacy and your reasons for believing as you do, but I did want to mention that the founder of our New Jersey group here was Lorry Post, a lovely older gentleman whose daughter was murdered by her husband.  Everyone reacts differently to such tragedies, though.  Lorry found some peace in trying to help a man in Florida on death row whom Lorry believed to be innocent  but who was nevertheless executed.  Lorry then with four other people started the group New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Alexandria, That is a touching story. If I had a loved one murdered I have no idea how I would react. Perhaps with mercy - who knows. My own views on crime and punishment are entirely shaped by my professional and general observational life, though, so in that sense they are "clean."

But the act of murder itself should never be an automatic death sentence. Some people who kill are good and some are evil.

Israel has had some proud moments as a nation/justice system in its handling of Nazi criminals. The execution of Eichmann is a tough one, but one that I would support for another reason that may strike some here as controversial:

Retribution.

Eichmann, like many Nazi criminals, may have lived a fairly quiet, innocuous existence with no harm to anyone once the war was over. Most of these people "retired" and did not go on to do anything one could consider criminal (although some did). Therefore, even though their crimes were monstrous, they would not meet the second of the two conditions I outlined earlier as deserving of the death penalty - that the person be dangerous even in prison.

But crimes against humanity are public crimes, and they are committed in the name of a nation or a set of ideas. They are therefore acts that could be perpetrated by just about anyone who happens to be of that ideology. In this sense, the Nazis created thousands upon thousands of criminals. People who might not have raised a hand ended up leaving a mark on history that had to be avenged.

I do believe that a civilized society can reasonably and humanely accommodate the idea of retribution as partial justification for punishment. In the case of Eichmann, the retribution belonged not only to Israel but also to humanity. But in the case of Israel, the existence of such a man represents what would have been a threat to the nation's existence and his continued survival would have, IMO, made it appear that his crimes have an iota of acceptability.

Many peacenicks just don't get these things, IMO. I'm sounding like such a conservative here. Alexandria, I am loving this discussion -conversations about the death penalty so often get trapped up in the immediate politics of who was accused when that it is often hard to debate the topic in a more philosophical way.

I basically agree. With Eichman, it wasn't the man that continued to be dangerous.  It was the idea, the idea that one could murder millions of people simply because of their religion or nationality.  It was particularly important that it be Jews who did it because of the slander that Jews wouldn't or couldn't fight - and to set a precedent.  Throughout history, Jews have been slaughtered, and nobody did anything about it.  Jews historically rarely fought or resisted. Israel has changed that, in so many ways.  The execution of Eichman sent a message that those who commit genocide against the Jews will be hunted down and killed.

I do believe that reasonable people of good will can differ on this topic.  I do understand the desire to rid the world of certain dangerous people.  But very dangerous people can be imprisoned in ways that prevent their hurting others, even other prisoners.  That has to be done at times with people not on death row.  I still maintain that the downsides of having a death penalty generally, (I will exempt genocide), i.e. risk of executing the innocence, expense, psychological damage to those who carry it out, are greater than any benefit of ridding the world of certain very evil individuals. 

Given that death is such special punishment, it's possible to argue that it should be governed by stricter rules of evidence and that some uniformity should be applied across the land. There would be constitutional problems with doing that - but I so wish it could be done. Death should require more crimes, more evidence but it should also happen more quickly. Unfortunately, if it became a federal policy issue, I could see it becoming an election one as well.

I am against scrapping a policy because of how it is mismanaged, though. And there have been some tragic and outrageous cases of injustice and mismanagement of the death penalty in the United States. Blacks have borne a disproportionate amount of such punishment, for one - but that to me does not argue against the death penalty, but against racism. 

I'm afraid I am a hopeless idealist - I support or oppose policies based on their intrinsic value. I prefer to concentrate on changing the actual management if that is where the problem lies. Many people support the legalization of hard drugs because they claim we are losing the so-called war on drugs. To me, the reasoning there doesn't follow and is rather morally shallow. If we're "losing" we have to win - not capitulate. Only capitulate if you believe drugs should be legalized. That is like saying "let's legalize murder because it still happens."

Wishing everyone a glorious evening.  I'm just a mite exhausted by having stayed up late to hear the final speeches.  I do have high hopes that we will get the business of this country moving in the right direction.......of course that is something every one knows would have happened so much smoother and easier had Mitch McConnell ( smirking idiot that he is ) restrained just a couple of is baser instincts. 

I feel like due to many people -- R. Limbaugh Faux News T Partiers, and all those of the ilk have done so much to foster outright refusal to listen to truth and reason, and as well to attempt to work together in any way at all unless like the recent storm, there is no choice. 

I also feel at some point all that refusal will become un-sustainable. I mean you can spend hours and days about what is wrong with something, but how much more productive to take what is right and build on it.  There will always be out points and things that are not liked --- after all none of us are clones and if something really doesn't fit.....then sane reason will tend to find the proper way to eliminate it and move on. 

I know there is much work ahead.....and I think the coming time is going to be so very interesting and I am so glad to be here to share it with so many articulate minds far, far better than mine. 

As to death penalty.....I think I am still on the fence.  On the one hand, two wrongs usually doesn't make a right.  So killing someone because they killed someone is not I think always the answer.  I thought about this for a long, long time and felt those who have loved ones murdured ( and I so often have heard the word closure ) never I think really get over it. I mean, so what if the state takes some one's life for it, now it is really over, but I think you won't miss your loved one less.  You won't think sometimes of the grand children you might miss having less, or the joy you would see in the accomplishments your loved one might have made, less.  You will sill have all the same thoughts and feelings, but hopefully time will remove enough sting from them that you can also have times when happy memories present themselves.  So sometimes I think we don't do much when we demand an eye for an eye, and think until we have all found something satisfactory we will probably keep doing things just the way we do them now.

Jackie