News and Politics

An innocent man executed in Texas

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Via Plastic:

Ruben Cantu was executed by lethal injection twenty-two minutes after midnight on August 24, 1993 by the state of Texas for the crime of murder in the first degree nearly nine years earlier. Until his death no that fateful night, Ruben maintained his innocence. Ruben wrote to the residents of San Antonio four days after the jury delivered its verdict, saying “My name is Ruben M. Cantu and I am only 18 years old. I got to the 9th grade and I have been framed in a capital murder case.” A dozen years later investigations into Ruben’s case have brought into question the chance that the state of Texas executed an innocent man.

Since the execution, Ruben’s friend and co-defendant, David Garza, has come out and signed a sworn affidavit saying he allowed his friend to be falsely accused and has said that Ruben was innocent. As well as Garza, the sole survivor of the shooting and lone witness to the shooting has recanted his original testimony saying he was pressured by police to finger Ruben for the murder. Two of the sources closest to the crime are now saying that the state of Texas executed the wrong man.

An interesting comment to this article points out that the U.S. is one of only two nations which hasn’t signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other nation is Somalia. One article of the declaration states:

States Parties shall ensure that:

(a) No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age;

(b) No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time;

(c) Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her age. In particular, every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults unless it is considered in the child’s best interest not to do so and shall have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances;

(d) Every child deprived of his or her liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance, as well as the right to challenge the legality of the deprivation of his or her liberty before a court or other competent, independent and impartial authority, and to a prompt decision on any such action.

I thought we were supposed to be a fair & civilized nation.

The New Whigs

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A very interesting item at MetaFilter (original article at NY Times) compares today’s Republican party with the Whig party of the early 19th century.

Is the modern GOP a repackaging of the old Whig party? The blend of businessmen’s aversion to government regulation, down-home cultural populism and Christian moralism that sustains today’s Republican Party is a venerable if loosely knit philosophy of government dating back to long before the right-wing upsurge that prepared the way for Reagan’s presidency. A few pundits and political insiders have likened the current Republicans to the formidable, corporate-financed political machine behind President William McKinley at the end of the 19th century. The admiration Karl Rove has expressed for the machine strengthens the historical connection.

R.I.P. Freedom of speech

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What has happened to this country? When did it become illegal to protest?

Via Daily Kos:

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect. An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

“At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others.” She says the student was upset.

“He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business,” says Jarvis. She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service. “They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!”

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted,” she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further. “I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service.”

Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: “ridiculous.”

–From The Progressive

Last night's Top Ten

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Via Daily Kos:

Top Ten Signs Your Supreme Court Pick Isn’t Qualified

10. Lost 10 grand yesterday in the ‘case’ of Jets vs. Ravens

9. Spends most of her time trying to fit the gavel into her mouth

8. Her legal mentor: Oliver Wendell Redenbacher

7. Asks courtroom stenographer to, ‘Quit that annoying tapping!’

6. Instead of Constitutional law books, consults set of ‘Garfield’ paperbacks

5. Keeps shouting, ‘When does mama get to hang somebody?!’

4. When Scalia walks by, she pretends to cough and says, ‘Rogaine’

3. Authored the book: ‘I’m Not Qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice’

2. The closest thing to courtroom experience was being an extra on ‘Matlock’

1. Glowing letter of recommendation from former FEMA director Michael Brown

—Late Show with David Letterman

The Governator Vetoes Landmark Civil Marriage Legislation

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California Governor Schwarzenegger made the wrong choice by vetoing the Civil Marriage and Religious Freedom Protection Act.

Democratic candidate for governor Phil Angelides said today in denouncing Schwarzenegger’s decision:

“By vetoing the Civil Marriage and Religious Freedom Protection Act, Governor Schwarzenegger has come down on the wrong side of history. [He] had the chance to enter the pages of history with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson; instead he has chosen to be listed alongside George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.”

In the 1940s, California was the first state to lift its ban on interracial marriage – leading other states across the nation to lift theirs as well.

This time, California could have been in the same leadership role – providing an example for states across the country to expand rights to all their citizens, too.

With his veto, Schwarzenegger missed an opportunity to do right by all Americans.

A different side of Islam

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With all of the negative portrayals of Islam in the media, it’s refreshing to read this article about the Sufi brotherhoods in Senegal. The most powerful brotherhood, the Mourides, was founded by Cheikh Amadou Bamba, who is often praised in songs. This is the side of Islam Youssou N’dour portrayed in his album “Egypt” and the article gives a good background into the meaning of that music.

As far as you can get from the extremists the media focuses on, Sufism has produced ecstatic music & poetry, such as Rumi’s poems, the whirling dervishes, and Qawwali music as made famous by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

(Via Global Voices Online; original item here)