Kansas Is Wacky

The Kansas Legislature is debating a possible death penalty repeal. In recent years, Kansas has not been famous for its progressiveness, even though it's the historical birthplace of Progressivism.

My family moved to Kansas when I was nine years old. At the time, the Kansas governor was John Carlin, a Democrat (and Lutheran! my dad liked to point out), and he vetoed several death penalty bills that came across his desk. Mike Hayden, a Republican, followed him into office, saying he would sign a death penalty bill (at least that's how I remember it). But then the legislature got cold feet and didn't pass a bill.

The legislature finally passed a bill in 1994, under Democratic Governor Joan Finney. According to the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Finney neither vetoed nor signed the bill. So that's weird. And it became law. No one has actually been put to death in Kansas, and seven people are currently on death row.

The New York Times recently reported that the American Law Institute had given up its death penalty work. That's the group that provided the original legal rationale the Supreme Court of the United States cited in its decision that allowed capital punishment again. That they've declared their project to be a failure seems like it must be a huge deal, that maybe it's an acknowledgment that sentiment against the death penalty is rising again. But hey, I'm no legal expert.

Naturally, the primary argument that states seem to be making against sentencing people to death row is that it costs too damned much, not that, say, state-sanctioned murder is immoral. Still, I suppose if high costs and tight budgets are what it takes...

But I don't have my finger on the pulse of Kansas politics at all anymore. Do any of my Kansas-dwelling readers (both of you) have any sense about how this debate will go? Could the death penalty in Kansas actually be overturned?

I'm telling you: Kansas is a totally wacky place.

The Controversy of Compassion

A very interesting and controversial thing happened in Scotland last week.

Kenny MacAskill, Scotland's Justice Minister, released, on grounds of compassion, the convicted bomber of the PanAm flight that blew up over Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people. The convicted bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, has prostrate cancer and, according to British doctors, has about three months to live.

A portion of MacAskill's statement and a pretty hard-hitting BBC interview can be found here. I urge you to watch both videos. It's a glimpse at justice in terms we don't usually hear in this country.

So... Uh, yes... Release of a convicted terrorist on compassionate grounds is, well, pretty ballsy.

And when al-Megrahi returned to a very public hero's welcome in Libya, people already angry about his release got even angrier. Even people in support of his release - and indeed MacAskill himself - were pretty angry about that display.

In our country, i.e. the United States, we don't have the element of compassion as part of our justice system. We have a "fuck 'em" attitude toward our prison population, embodied most clearly and cynically in the death penalty. In Scotland, however, compassion is a requisite part of the justice system.

President Obama denounced the decision, and FBI director Robert Mueller accused the Scottish government of giving comfort to terrorists.

So it's no surprise that there's a movement in the U.S. to boycott Scotland. Don't visit. Don't take advantage of its legendary golf courses. Don't drink its fine whisky. As someone who enjoys Scotland, its beauty, its food, its drink, and its women (or at least one particular woman), I think that taking this sort of action is really only punishing the people who participate in the boycott.

My heart goes out and always will go out to the victims of the bombing of PanAm Flight 103. It's incredibly painful to lose someone anyway, and losing someone through an act of violence, terrorism, or other means in which someone else can be fairly blamed must cause tremendous anger. Assuming justice was done and that al-Megrahi did indeed blow up Flight 103, I will never defend his horrific act of murder.

But by releasing al-Megrahi so that he can die with his family at home, MacAskill has said something about our humanity that you don't hear very often. We can rise above people who do us harm. We can recognize that people who commit horrific acts are still human, if not humane. We can value something larger than punishment and firmly grasp the moral high ground.

As the missus asked rhetorically and succinctly over the weekend, "Why is compassion controversial?"

I expect that the missus and I are in a small minority of people in this country who think the Scottish Justice Minister performed a beautiful, profoundly spiritual act of humanity.

The Head of Mercenaries a Murderer? No!

Remember Blackwater (a.k.a. Xe)?

Oh, man. Man, oh man, oh Manischewitz.

Investigative reporter and Blackwater/Xe expert Jeremy Scahill is now reporting in The Nation that Erik Prince may have murdered or facilitated the murder of cooperative witnesses in government investigations of the company.

This is one of those explosive stories that's likely to get lost while the crazies/assholes are out screaming at the lawmakers attempting to reform health care.

It's also one of those stories that while surprising also feels inevitable. I'm somewhere between exclaiming, "I can't fucking believe it!" and "That makes a whole lot of sense."

It's like a really good movie when that twist really works. Except this is real and seriously deadly.

Of Death and Mets

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson died this week. (As if you hadn't heard.) Those are three major icons, and I suppose I have thoughts about all three.

My strongest feelings are certainly around Michael Jackson, but the coverage has been so overwhelming, I'm not going to bother to enter the fray. But yes, I've been listening to Thriller and Off The Wall for the past couple of days.

I think I was just a year or two too young to go through a major Farrah phase. It was Farrah's replacement Cheryl Ladd that I thought was the real looker, and that they thought they could replace her with Shelley Hack... well, that's just insulting.

Ed McMahon... I mean, he's Ed McMahon. It's a little weird to me that two of the three announcers in those New York Lottery commercials are now dead. Look out Jeopardy guy, if these things do in fact happen in threes.

I was avoiding thinking about these three dead icons this morning and instead put my focus on this weekend's Subway Series. And as I put on my Mets cap, I got to thinking (again) about why I'm a Mets fan. I very much had a choice in the matter. I didn't grow up rooting for the Mets.

As I've mentioned before, I was a massive baseball fan in grade school, got distracted by girls and theater in high school, decided I was too cool for sports in college, and realized that I missed the hell out of baseball once I was an independent adult.

I was in a city with two teams. The Yankees were about to go on a run of four World Series Championships in five years. The Yanks were experiencing a renaissance. The Mets were not. Their best player was Todd Hundley, for crying out loud. It was a hard time to be a Mets fan. And the Mets broke my 1986 heart, when they unexpectedly beat my beloved Houston Astros. The cards were stacked against the Mets.

Visits to both stadiums really should've put the Yankees over the top. Yankee Stadium (the old one - haven't yet seen the new one) was a stellar place for baseball. You were close to the action; you could eat the history.

Shea was Shea. Holy crap that was a fucking terrible stadium in which to see a baseball game. You were far from the action; you felt like you were sitting in a giant mistake.

But at Yankee Stadium, I always felt surrounded by entitlement. Wall Street pricks got jacked up on coke and came to the game to take that edge off with several dozen beers. The combination was lethal. They suffered from massively inflated egos, and were aggressive to everyone around them, even their friends.

On the other hand, my god, Shea felt like home. Mets fans felt like a family, actually. They were lovable losers. These were my lovable losers. I too was a lovable loser. However long we'd been alive, we'd taken a drubbing for the duration. We woke up every day and had to live with ourselves, in a world where we worked too fucking hard for too fucking little pay.

Obviously, that is a simplification beyond simplification. I've come across some massively dickheaded Mets fans. And clearly not every Yankees fan fits the Wall Street stereotype. Most of the guys who work at the bagel store near my office are Yankees fans, and a nicer bunch of baseball fans you won't meet.

But instead of celebrity death this is what I was thinking about on the subway this morning, as I took the 7 train (this weekend's subway line in the Subway Series) on my way to work.

And there he was: the purest embodiment of the Mets fan. A portly, somewhat disheveled fellow wearing a Mets cap and t-shirt. His mouth hung open just a bit. The AC in the train car dripped every so often. It was landing on his thigh and sometimes on the hand he rested on his thigh.

Did he move? No. Did he wipe the water off his hand? No. He sat there and took it. It was everything he deserved. Just like that team from Queens. It's all he deserves. The meltdowns. The heartbreak. The leaky air-conditioning.

We take it. We were born to take it. We love these guys some call the Mets.

A Couple of Approaches

The death penalty, or the abolishing thereof, has once again (twice again?) been in the news this week.

First, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whose office is being investigated by the FBI to such a degree that he withdrew his nomination for commerce secretary, abolished the death penalty in his state. He called it the toughest political decision he's ever had to make (although it almost had to have been harder to go with that Obama endorsement over Hillary in the primary).

In his announcement he said that he'd visited the prison where people serve life without the chance for parole and deemed it worse than death. So that's good enough. No more death penalty in New Mexico.

Meanwhile, B&E man-crush Russell "Damn, you" Feingold of the great state of Wisconsin, pulled his long-time favorite death penalty abolishing bill out of his back pocket, just for the pure fun of it. He cited that only China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran put to death more people than the United States. That's some good company!

Long-time B&E readers already know that I'm an anti-death penaltier. I'm a pretty cynical person, but nothing is more cynical than the death penalty. I believe in the power of redemption. I believe that even a person who's committed a terrible, terrible act has the potential to come to terms with that terrible, terrible act, and feel genuine remorse over it. And even if they have to stay in prison and live with that, the potential for redemption makes saving the life necessary.

Oh, and of course, sometimes justice screws up, and people on death row are innocent. Yeah, and the state shouldn't be in the business of murder.

So props to Governor Bill for getting rid of the death penalty and all, but what's with this, "Life without parole is worse than death"? Why you gotta make the death penalty sound like it's all weak on crime? Get outta here. That's just stupid. Get rid of the death penalty because it's wrong, Guv. Don't cop out on the issue, for crying out loud.

And real props to the stunningly and substantively attractive Russ "Your Policies Are" Feingold for putting up a good bill without any need to make excuses for it. God knows it won't pass, mostly because politicians are cowards. But it's nice to get the issue back on the table for discussion.

It's time, America. Let's grow up here.

Good Night, Horton

A fond farewell goes to Horton Foote, who died yesterday at 92. Playwright and screenwriter, the man expressed with a simple elegance.

He won two well-deserved screenwriting Oscars. The first was for his adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. And as great as that film turned out, it's the spare yet powerful emotion built into his script for Tender Mercies that I tend to look to when I need a little touch of minimalist beauty. Every time I've watched it, I can't help asking, "How in the hell does something so simple work so well?"

Some of his plays are pretty good, too.

Thank you for writing, Horton Foote.

I Am Not a Number! I Am a FREE MAN!

I never read comic books, never did any gaming, and was never obsessed with the books of J.R.R. Tolkien. So when I need to remind myself that I am deep down a total geek, I reach toward the complete collection of The Prisoner on DVD, which yes, I own.

Oh, it's geeky. And it's tasty.

The Prisoner was the brainchild of Patrick McGoohan. It was, in some ways, the surreal sequel to his previous TV series Secret Agent (called Danger Man in the UK), which was a rather straightforward spy show. The Prisoner begins with a brilliant opening sequence in which a secret agent resigns forcefully, packs for a trip, gets gassed, and wakes up in The Village. He is henceforth known only as Number 6 and goes head-to-head with a new Number 2 each week. While Number 2 tries to find out why Number 6 resigned, Number 6 is trying to figure out who Number 1 is and simultaneously attempting to escape.

And that summary is tip of the iceberg for the wackiness that ensues.

Patrick McGoohan died today. But The Prisoner is some kind of geektastic legacy. It's being remade, of course, starring Jim Cavazaliezelvaliel (the dude who played the title role - Passion - in The Passion of the Christ a few years back) and Ian McKellen (who is apparently determined to be associated with as many uber-geek brands as possible). Part of me is like, "Oh for fuck's sake, leave well enough alone." The other part of me can't wait to check it out.

Either way, I'm sad to see Patrick McGoohan go, even though he only rarely came out of retirement. The less geeky among you might remember him as Longshanks, the English king who wanted to kill off and breed out the Scots in Braveheart.

I never thought I'd drop two Mel Gibson movie names in one post. Patrick McGoohan can really surprise you that way.

Be seeing you.

Grr... Health Care Industry... Grr...

I'm a fortunate American with health insurance. One of the benefits of my job is that my employer kicks in to the kitty for a health plan for the lot of us. I'm very pleased with my doctor and have no complaints about my care.

It's also expensive. Even with the employer contribution, the missus and I are paying a bunch of money per month for our coverage. We had our annual meeting with the insurance rep, who consistently delivers bad news about costs. This coming year prices are going up more than 11%. So now the missus and I will be paying even more than a bunch of money per month.

The insurance rep told us that this increase is comparable to the 10-12% annual increases in costs for health care.

Imagine that: Health insurance costs are rising faster than the rate of inflation. I wonder if the for-profit model has anything to do with that.

So part of this Obama Mandate for Change includes reforming the health care industry. To continue the fun of his grassroots support system, the Obama campaign/administration is hosting Health Care House Parties! Woo-HOO! Par-TAY! I'm totally fucked up on health care!

Naturally, the health care industry wants in on these House Parties, so they're crashing, sending employees and satisfied customers to get in on the action.

If you love things the way they are and want to continue to pay more and more for less and less coverage so that shareholders get a bigger return on investment, join the health care industry's movement to crash the house parties!

I guess if these jokers want to argue for the status quo at Health Care House Parties, more power to them.

But this system is fucking bullshit. Mixing profit with matters of life and death... uh... not right.

Last year, when the missus and I had to take her father for an overnight visit to the hospital in Scotland, he had to fill out two forms that asked for name and address. That's it. Yes, he shared his room, but the care was outstanding and the facilities terrific. I tell you what: socialized medicine looked pretty goddamn good to me. No one profits off the man's unfortunate health.

Can we finally get a single-payer health care system in this country? Especially now that insurance plays such a large role in the demise of, say, the auto companies?

A Stay With Two Hours To Go

The Troy Davis case down in Georgia is getting some national and international attention, but not nearly enough.

In short, Troy Davis (an African American) was convicted of killing a (white) police officer in 1991 and sentenced to death. Since the trial, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, some claiming that the prosecutor threatened to charge them with perjury if they had recanted at the time.

Yesterday, after various parole board and court denials, Troy was two hours from lethal injection when his last channel of hope, the Supreme Court of the United States, put a stay on his execution until they review the case next week.

I freely admit that I don't know much about the case except that there's no physical evidence and that the prosecution won its conviction based on the testimony of the witnesses.

As we know, in recent years, SCOTUS has taken a sharp turn to the right (activist judges, indeed), so I have little faith that they'll overturn the conviction, order a new trial, etc. Call me cynical.

But if there's any doubt at all, how can capital punishment be used to put this man to death?

Wait. Scratch that. How can the state sanction the murder of any individual, whatever the crime? It's fucking medieval.

Naturally, both of our major party candidates for president support the death penalty. That makes both of them more cynical than I am. After all, putting someone to death denies the possibility of redemption on any level.

If you want to read more about Troy and his case, this is his website. I've heard interviews with his sister (the radio program Democracy Now is following the case), and she's fighting this battle and a recurrence of cancer. Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway), she's impressive.

Liddy Hates Jesse

North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole made an attempt to honor the late Senator Jesse Helms by adding his name to an HIV/AIDS bill.

Those of us paying attention in the 80s and 90s might remember Jesse Helms as the man who fought tooth and nail against any bill that provided any sort of funding for any sort of HIV/AIDS research, care, education, etc. Jesse Helms believed that the gays deserved the AIDS plague and fuck them for screwing monkeys. Or something like that. It was hard to figure out how that twisted mind of his worked.

So when Liddy Dole added an amendment to the recent HIV/AIDS bill to have it named after Jesse Helms, there was really only one possible explanation: Elizabeth Dole hates Jesse Helms and wants him to spend eternity spinning in his grave.

The bill passed without Jesse's name attached.

I'm Just So Sad All the Time

I don't know how much more I can take. The sadness is all-encompassing. The sorrow unrelenting.

How much longer must I mourn Gerald Ford?

Niekro's Knucklers

kniekro
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Once the Mets lost in the National League Championship Series to the Cardinals, I tried to claim that baseball was dead to me. Apparently, Joe Niekro took me literally.

Having spent my fan-influenced years in the Houston area, I spent much of my life rooting for the Astros. It was only when I became too cool for baseball (in college) that I finally let them (and the sport) go. By the time I rediscovered the pure genius of the sport, I was a New Yorker with a National League history. Naturally, I turned toward the Mets. (I'm probably one of the few Mets fans today, who wishes the Mets hadn't won the '86 World Series.)

Those Astros players of the late 70s and early 80s will always have a reservation at the restaurant of my heart. So it was with great sadness that my sister shared the news that former Astros pitcher Joe Niekro passed away on Friday at age 61. Sis, too, was a big Astros fan (we were "Astros Buddies"!)

Joe was one part of a pair of knuckleballing Niekro brothers. Phil had a longer, more successful career and ended up in the Hall of Fame. Joe was no slouch himself with over 200 wins, and his two best seasons were at the peak of my passion for the Astros.

Rumor has it, when Joe pitched, they turned the AC up at the Astrodome to blow toward the mound. The air currents caused his knuckleball to flutter like a butterfly. He was also once busted on the mound with having an emory board in his pocket, which he was apprently using to doctor baseballs. A little scuff on a non-spinning knuckler can make an enormous difference in its unpredictable trajectory. Nice work, Joe.

The obits I've read have talked about Joe's clubhouse presence and sense of humor. That's not really something I was aware of at age 7. But I loved watching the knuckleball. I think Joe is largely responsible for why I taught myself to throw a knuckleball. I can't throw it all that well, but it sure is fun to try, and every once in a while, I toss a good one, making all the lousy ones worthwhile.

Thanks, Joe, for introducing me to a much under-utilized pitch. Thanks for making those Astros teams so damned close to great (the franchise still hasn't won a World Series). And thanks for making that Astros uniform look so sharp.

Rest In Party!

My Uncle Walt was always the life of the party. For my time in Columbus, Ohio, however, he's in the role of death of the party.

Walt pretty much ruled. He taught my sister how to make a martini when she was five, so that he didn't have to get up to refill his glass. If you made him go get it himself, he made such a production of getting out of his chair, that you usually broke down and got it for him anyway. He traveled with bowling ball bags filled with liquor. At a cousin's wedding a few years ago, he mixed me a drink without asking me what I wanted. When I apologized and told him that I'm allergic to alcohol, he looked at me horrified for a second before shouting, "Life's not worth LIVING!"

The only thing in Walt's life debatably more sacred than cocktail hour(s) was the Sacred itself. Walt was an incredibly well-respected theologian who taught in Lutheran seminaries for decades. His politics were hard-line Democratic, and I can think of few people who accepted social change over the course of a lifetime better than Walt, from feminism to gay rights. The War in Iraq caused him genuine heartbreak.

I don't want to imply that Walt didn't have his flaws. He did. Boy, did he. But I will be eternally grateful to Uncle Walt for two of the more significant events of my life. First, he gave a beautiful eulogy at my dad's funeral. Second... My wife and I asked Walt to stand in for my father and bless our marriage, in what was otherwise a secular ceremony. Walt managed to do that beautifully, as well, and did it without mentioning God, which we didn't even request.

Since I've always intended B&E to be more of an anger and laughter destination, rather than an overly personal experience about my innermost feelings, I'll sign off with this...

While I wait for my mom and sister to arrive, I am sans car. When I asked the hotel's front desk where I could get food within walking distance, the woman looked at me blankly for a moment (similar to Walt's expression upon learning I can't really drink), then winced and sent me to East of Chicago Pizza. Columbus is, in fact, East of Chicago. But the pizza they were serving wasn't Chicago-style at all, and best I can tell, the national chain website bears little resemblance to the creature I frequented. And I say "creature" because, for reasons I still haven't figured out, the decor was Jurassic themed.

A Death Worth Noting

cook
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Over the weekend, Robin Cook died while walking (that's "hiking" to us in the U.S.) in Scotland.

A long-time Labour Party leader, he resigned from the government in 2003 to protest British involvement in the Iraq War.

The Guardian's obituary summarizes his career nicely, and his resignation speech demonstrates the power of conscience, when so few politicians seem to have one.