Right Wing Nation

It seems the morons running the Peoples’ Republik of New Jersey have decided to abolish the death penalty. I guess they figured they didn’t need one as long as their criminals crossed into Pennsylvania.

Another revisionist historical myth bites the dust:

The archbishop likened the violence against German Jews to a “parallel crucifixion” in Spain, where thousands of clergy had recently been murdered during the Spanish Civil War. He asked whether something like that “monstrous story whose record was written month after month in human blood” might be repeated.

Bishop Gannon then continued from Erie, Pa., speaking about the importance of standing with the Jews in protest. “In the face of such injustice toward the Jews of Germany, I express my revulsion, disgust and grief,” he said.

For his part, former Gov. Smith asked if the great country of Germany had fallen into the hands of a band of ruffians, and “If that be true, what about the future of Germany?”

Listening to the speeches, Mazzenga felt the rush of an archivist who has stumbled onto a new sliver of history. She had spent the past two decades studying World War II and the Holocaust, and she had never heard of anything like this early show of indignant solidarity and support that pulsed from the speakers. An expert on America’s perceptions of and reactions to World War II as it was being fought, Mazzenga in 2000 wrote her CUA doctoral dissertation on that subject. Like others with in-depth knowledge of American perceptions of the Nazis, she had held the generally accepted view that U.S. Catholics and the American Catholic Church itself had not paid much attention to Germany’s pre-war persecution of the Jews.

The broadcast she was listening to turned that view on its head. Catholic moral outrage on behalf of a beleaguered group — not indifference — was what the resurrected recording revealed.

The radio broadcast was November 16, 1938, only six days after Kristallnacht, and a year before Germany invaded Poland and began WW2.

Story — and the recording — here.

From the Arkansas News Bureau, via Race42008, via Ace, Huckabee’s statement wrt his clemencies and pardons:

And I don’t know that I can apologize for that because I would hate to think of the kind of human I would be if I thought people were beyond forgiveness and beyond reformation and beyond some sense of improvement.

This is where Christian socialists and liberals jump the track. Forgiveness isn’t relevant to the justice system (or the Governor). The surviving families and friends of crime victims may forgive the criminals whose actions destroyed their lives and loved ones, but neither the justice system nor the governor can forgive a criminal. Human beings may forgive; institutions may not. Anthropomorphizing the justice system in this way, as Huckabee and apparently several clergy in Arkansas do, undermines justice.

Forgive the criminal, but don’t commute the sentence. For justice to be blind, it must be blind to forgiveness. There is no forgiveness in releasing criminals. There is only an insult to the families of the victims.

We see the same anthropomorphism when Huckabee and liberals call for a compassionate government. Human being may be compassionate; institutions cannot. Forcing compassionate behavior with government force is not compassion, but a perversion of compassion. The only compassion is that which is freely felt and freely offered.

Church leaders should understand this, yet many do not. A call for compassion (or forgiveness) seems always to be a call not for compassion (or forgiveness), but a call for government action, be it stealing other peoples’ money to fund a “compassionate” program, or slapping the families of crime victims in the face.

Charity is the domain of the church. I often wonder why so many in the church are pushing their duties onto the government, and God forgive me if I’m being cynical, but I wonder if it’s because they’d rather not be bothered. I might add that the government really needs to stop interfering with churches and charitable organizations (the recent action against the Salvation Army is only one of many examples) so they can do charitable work.

(In Huckabee’s case, there’s a lot more than just this confusion. The anthropomorphism doesn’t explain his arrogance, or his utter disregard for the families of the victims.)

Very PI of me, but I’m with Ace and Rusty on this one (sorry, Don).

John Scalzi, sci-fi author, has a very entertaining rant about an idiot reviewer who thinks comparing Scalzi to Heinlein is some kind of devastating blow. He makes many excellent points, though this is perhaps the best, only because I’d never thought of it:

As an aside, the writer’s pointing up Philip K. Dick’s pre-eminence in movies over Heinlein misses a few points as well, not the least of which is, to put it bluntly, no one cares when a filmmaker radically modifies Dick’s work to make it fit into a movie, whereas people care very much when filmmakers fiddle with Heinlein’s text. If a filmmaker tried to overhaul wholesale a Heinlein novel the way that Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples did with Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep? he’d be burned in effigy; just ask all the Heinlein fans who still spit on the ground when the name Paul Verhoeven crops up.

<spit!>

“Romney has just launched an ad attacking Huckabee as soft on illegal immigration. Huckabee is being defended by … John McCain. Which is a little like being defended against a charge of marital infidelity by Bill Clinton.”

Hat tip to BAR. This Arkasas Leader story can’t get enough exposure (emphases mine — no commentary needed):

Sunday, December 9, 2007

Why parole a monster like Green (2004)
Garrick Feldman
The Arkansas Leader
07-21-04

Gov. Huckabee probably never read the confession of a demented killer named Glen Green before he made the monster eligible for parole.

Green’s confession is so depraved, its sadistic details so scary that no sane, responsible adult would consider him for parole.

If the governor didn’t read the confession, he is guilty of dereliction of duty.

But if he read the confession and still considers Green deserving of parole, he’s certainly unfit to hold office. Who would free a madman who beat an 18-year-old woman with Chinese martial-arts sticks, raped her as she barely clung to life, ran over her with his car, then dumped her in the bayou, her hand reaching up, as if begging for mercy?

We’re publishing the gruesome picture of Green’s victim on the front page because we believe her hand is reaching up to demand justice.

In usual fashion, Huckabee’s office didn’t even contact the victim’s family about the clemency.

Although he’s required to by the Constitution, the governor, as is his custom, won’t say why he granted clemency to this crazed killer (over the unanimous objections of the Post-Prison Transfer Board).

Huckabee apparently listened to Green’s minister (and a friend of the governor), who thinks the murder was an accident and Green was forced to confess.

The Jacksonville police, who arrested Green in 1974 after a witness linked him to the crime, think the minister and Huckabee are both delusional, which is the mildest epitaph we can print.

This old police reporter knows a genuine confession when he sees one, and Green’s depravity has the ring of truth.

Green, a 22-year-old sergeant, kidnapped Helen Lynette Spencer on Little Rock Air Force Base, where he beat and kicked her as he tried to rape her in a secluded area. She broke loose and ran toward the barracks’ parking lot, where he caught up with her and beat her with a pair of nunchucks.

He then stuffed her into the trunk of his car and left her there while he cleaned up. Several hours later, he drove down Graham Road, past Loop Road and stopped near a bridge in Lonoke County. Green told investigators he put her body in the front seat and raped her because her body was still warm.

He dragged Spencer out of his vehicle and put her in front of the car and ran over her several times, going back and forth. He then collected himself long enough to dump her body in Twin Prairie Bayou.

This is what the Rev. Johnny Jackson, interim pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in Jacksonville, calls an accident, and apparently Huckabee believes him.

“There is no doubt in my mind that he could kill again,” warns Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley.

The crime started out in his jurisdiction and ended in Lonoke County, where Prosecutor Lona McCastlain has also spoken out against the clemency.

“Life means life,” she said, referring to Green’s sentence after he plead guilty to Spencer’s kidnapping, rape and murder.

As he grants clemency to scores of violent criminals, Huckabee’s motives are the subject of speculation: Why, people are asking, is he doing it? After studying the record for several weeks, all one can say is that his actions perhaps reflect a combination of arrogance and avarice and ignorance.

While his fellow governors keep electing him to top positions in their little club, he has alienated Arkansans of both parties. They’re shocked at not only the amazing number of clemencies but also at the way he ignores the suffering of the victims’ families, who are always the last to know when their loved one’s killer is up for parole.

Bilenda Harris-Ritter, an attorney who now lives in California, is one of those people who worry all the time that Huckabee might free the man who killed their relatives. Harris-Ritter’s parents were murdered in north Arkansas, and she has had to deal with heartless state bureaucrats as she fights to keep the killer locked up.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently named Harris-Ritter chairman of the Public Employees Board, which oversees collective-bargaining agreements among 7,000 employers and 2 million employees.

She is upset that our governor has not been more forthright about his clemencies.

“Huckabee is required by law to make certain notifications. When he does not, the pardon should be voidable,” she told us.

She continued, “The people of the good state of Arkansas (and I really mean that) need to think seriously about impeachment.”

When told that many people consider Huckabee our worst governor in recent memory, Harris-Ritter replied, “No argument from me, and I am a Republican!”

Ace:

“I’m sorry, but Arkansas is located on Planet Earth isn’t it?”

The woman who took out the scumbag was not a security guard, as the MSM claimed. She was just a parishioner who was carrying a handgun.

America’s North Shore has more. Glenn Reynolds yet more (follow the links).

Don’t expect to see this detail in the MSM. That would get in the way of their gun-grabbing liberal narrative.

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