I’m not sure if the issue of the death penalty is even worth debating here anymore as I do believe that the argument has been beaten to death before, but this is still a pretty significant story. Long story short: Texas almost certainly executed an innocent man in 2004. Cameron Willingham was found guilty of three counts of murder for trapping his three children (aged 2 years and 1 year-old twins) in his home and setting fire to it, but virtually all pieces of evidence that led to his conviction have been refuted: arson investigators concluding the fire was arson based on completely dated and inaccurate methods, conflicting witness reports, no credible motive (the prosecution cited Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden posters hanging in Willingham’s home as evidence of him being evil and thus completely capable of committing such a heinous act), a phone call from a mentally unstable prison mate of Willingham’s who claimed he did it, among many other things.
Admittedly, my views of the death penalty have mostly been lukewarm opposition. While I’ve always thought of myself as anti-death penalty, I think the only reason I ever really felt that way was because it agrees with my generally liberal dispositions. Timothy McVeigh was executed and that never bothered me. Ted Bundy was executed and he certainly had it coming. China executed over 5000 people in 2008 and in Indonesia people get executed for marijuana possession – this never really bothered me and I’ve also never really been bothered by U.S. states that carry out capital punishment. These are the laws of these specific jurisdictions which I have absolutely no involvement in and affect me in no way whatsoever, so who am I to question how they choose to prosecute their criminals? But the fact a completely innocent man was executed definitely strengthens my opinion that the death penalty should be abolished based on the pure risk of the state killing an innocent person. This is the first time I've ever really put a human face to the issue, and it's so tragic and unjust that it affects me deeply. In the article the author quotes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s decision to vote to uphold the death penalty in a Kansas case. He said that there is not "a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops." Is it about time for Willingham’s name to be shouted from the rooftops?
Limited time offers, of course... and with DRM, but for this price you can't complain.
It's in the third week now, but a bunch of the titles from the first two weeks are still available, and there are still several more weeks to go, with new titles each week.
I'm seriously thinking of getting Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Drakensang, NWN2: Storm of Zehir, and maybe but probably not Elven Legacy... lots of good stuff there though. The original NWN2 I'd particularly recommend for anyone who likes PC RPGs at all!
Yes, the first episode of Telltale Games' new Monkey Island series is free as a gift for Talk Like A Pirate Day today, Sept. 19th. Awesome stuff... go get it now, it IS today only!
The art style isn't so great really (the 3d style...), but hey, it's Monkey Island. I can't complain. :)
Quote:Nation’s ill-advised to follow Mass. plan
By Michael Graham | Thursday, September 17, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed
The canary is dead.
Massachusetts, the model for the ObamaCare universal insurance plan, is the canary in the health care coal mine. Yesterday, its obit appeared on the front page of both The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe-Democrat.
Both papers reported that our Commonwealth Care reform isn’t working as planned. A new law that was supposed to control costs and drive prices down (sound familiar?) has instead sent costs soaring.
Under the “beta” version of ObamaCare here in Massachusetts, premiums have jumped 7 to 12 percent just this year. That’s about twice the national average - and it’s bad news for Bay State families who were already paying the nation’s highest premiums. If the swine flu season turns ugly, our premiums could go even higher.
As Tim O’Brien of Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Boston office put it, “Reform has had some unexpected results.”
I wonder if this guy’s covered for Chronic Understatement Syndrome.
And it’s not just premiums that are rising. Massachusetts has accomplished the president’s goal of insuring the uninsured. More than 400,000 have joined the ranks of the insured (half under free or subsidized plans), leaving merely 3 percent of our population uninsured. That’s the good news.
But the hair-on-fire bad news is how much this is costing taxpayers. A plan that in 2006 was projected to cost “a small amount of new money in the first few years” according to the Globe-Democrat (Chronic Understatement Syndrome strikes again!) is costing more than $1 billion today.
Why? Because as Massachusetts discovered, when you give people taxpayer-subsidized insurance, they buy it! And they’re going to do the same at the national level. Only it will be worse for ObamaCare because about 15 percent of the country is uninsured - a far higher percentage than we had in Massachusetts.
Just check this math from health policy expert James C. Capretta: A family at 200 percent of the federal poverty line - $44,100 for a family of four in 2009 - would be required to sign up with insurance costing about $13,375. Under the plan put forth by Sen. Max Baucus, the family’s premium would be capped at about 8 percent of their income, or $3,538. The rest of of the cost - nearly $10,000 - would be paid by the federal government.
That’s 10K per year, per family. And by “federal government” he of course means “The Department Of Grab Your Wallet And Cough.”
Massachusetts passed health care reform to bring down our costs, but families who were paying $650 a month three years ago are paying close to $1,000 now.
Reform was supposed to help taxpayers. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the state’s “overall costs on health programs have increased by 42 percent (!) since 2006.”
Reform was supposed to get more people insured, and it has. But it has also made insurance so expensive for non-subsidized middle-class families that they’re forced to drop coverage.
That’s what’s actually happening here in the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Lab. So why would anyone want to replicate this mess at the national level?
The reason coal miners got canaries was so if the poor thing keeled over, they could save themselves. Please, Mr. President, check the canary before it’s too late.
Anyone up for a fiscal disaster?
Of course, I believe national health care could work. I propose that it be funded by taxing the incomes of all supporters of the concept at about 75%.
But of course, as you expect from Lucasarts this decade, it's broken and worthless. They removed the soundtrack. In a game with an amazing one. Evidently figuring out how to make the CD audio soundtrack work without a CD in was far too hard for poor Lucasarts...
Oh, they didn't fix any bugs at all either, so if you have any problems running it on your modern computer (and many people are, even though my disc-based copy works okay), tough luck.
