Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
Marcus? Is that her husband's name? I didn't know. Wow.. you seem to more about her personally than I do.. strange!
Is Gov Rick Perry the best choice to replace Obama?
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Guns Guns Guns
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Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
No, you are actually pretty stupid on almost everything, going by what you post here. I just thought it was interesting how well you know Ms. Bachmann, considering she's not someone I could see you voting for. But I guess when you are a Democrat Warrior, that's your job.. to find out every personal detail of all your enemies, so you can smear and jeer, right?
Good Luck
New member
As I have stated, I would not like to see Perry get the republican nomination. However, I have a question for you. If you think Perry is putting ideology ahead of governing effectively, how do you explain the fact that he is currently presiding over one of the best state economies in the nation? Do you automatically denounce anyone who admits they pray about their decisions, or prays publicly? Exactly what has he done to support your claims? Frankly, I have been searching and have found nothing but innuendo that Perry is a puppet of the religious far right. A lot of articles criticizing him for having the gall to pray in public before meetings and such. (the horror! a religious man prays, and believes God answers in our hearts! Well, so do I.)
Considering the lack of direct quotes showing Perry to be a religious extremist, it's all starting to make me wonder: is the criticism deserved, or simply the typical overreaction of the anti-religious left?
Disillusioned
New member
It's not him praying its the "Let's all pray together in my god" bit that scares the crap outta the left, personally I consider religion in politicians to be a dont ask dont tell, they can be religious if they like, I don't care what that religion is and as long as they don't make a big deal out of it I'm fine. But when somebody wants a big prayer session for HIS god, begin to start wondering where the line gets drawn, would be nice not to have the president getting instructions from his priest on how to deal with hindu and muslim nations, might cause some problems.
And i think a number of Republican policies and basic concepts are prone to bad descisions
Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
So you are okay with freedom of religion as long as people don't make a big deal of it... okay, sure.. I mean, it's only their eternal souls, right?
Why is it, you seculars believe it's okay to silence political speech from people who have deep religious convictions? The Constitution gives them just as much right to express their views and opinions on the basis of their religious (or whatever) beliefs, as it gives every other American. Virtually EVERY law, indeed, the very idea of LAW... comes from religiously-based teachings and principles. It is plain ignorant, to presume that we can modify our laws, make laws, or function as a society, if we are to strip any and all consideration which can be related to religious beliefs. I mean... just about anything you can name that is "right" or "wrong" is something that was made such by religious teaching. So does wrong and right no longer apply when it comes to law? Do we just suspend common sense and let people do whateverthefuck they want to do?
Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
And let me address this "pray to HIS god" thing.....
I've been to NASCAR events with 150,000 people in attendance, and before the race, some man of the cloth, a minister, reverend, priest.. led the invocation. From what I saw, every person there bowed their head as that person led the prayer. I seriously doubt all 150k of them had the same religious concept of "God" as the man leading the prayer, but they bowed their heads anyway... maybe they were doing so out of respect for their own God? Maybe they were just doing it out of general respect for decorum and manners? But no one complained that he was leading a prayer to HIS God.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
You, insatiable faggot.
Conservative
Repent, America!
Governor Perry prayed "Lord, you are the source of every good thing, you are our only hope," ... "And as a nation we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us, and for that we cry out for your forgiveness."
Now, with God's help, he will make America great again.
Naturally, he will be attacked and mocked by the Godless and profane.
The community organizers hate him because they know he will end their free ride on the back of the American Tax Payer.
Now, with God's help, he will make America great again.
Naturally, he will be attacked and mocked by the Godless and profane.
The community organizers hate him because they know he will end their free ride on the back of the American Tax Payer.
SmarterthanYou
rebel
rick perry, executioner of innocent men?
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/22/is-texas-about-to-execute-anot
Henry Watkins “Hank” Skinner was supposed to be executed tomorrow, but last Tuesday a Gray County, Texas, District Court judge pushed the date back one month, to March 24. Skinner has been on Death Row in Texas since 1993, awaiting execution for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest, and investigators from the Northwestern University Journalism School’s Medill Innocence Project have shot numerous holes in the prosecution’s case. But Texas officials refuse to conduct a simple DNA test that could point to the condemned man’s innocence or cement his guilt.
Skinner's scheduled lethal injection comes shortly after Texas Gov. Rick Perry has removed sympathetic panelists from the state forensic committee's investigation into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham and replaced them with panelists critics say are stymieing the investigation. Willingham was executed in 2003 for murdering his three daughters by setting fire to his house. Nine arson experts and an investigation published in the New Yorker last year have since made a strong case that Willingham was innocent of the crime.
At the same time, Texas, a notoriously enthusiastic enforcer of the death penalty, continues to lead the nation in DNA exonerations (one county in Texas has produced more genetic exonerations than all but three states). Which makes it all the more disturbing that biological evidence from Skinner’s crime scene remains untested, at the behest of prosecutors and backed up by the courts. You’d think given recent headlines that Texas might be a bit more reluctant to execute a possibly innocent man.
Skinner doesn't dispute that he was in the house at the time his girlfriend was bludgeoned to death and her sons were stabbed to death. But he says he was unconscious at the time, knocked out by a near-lethal mix of alcohol and codeine. He was convicted because of his presence at the crime scene, because he had small spots of blood from two of the three victims on his shirt, and because of the testimony of a neighbor, Andrea Reed, who happens to be an ex-girlfriend of Skinner’s. Reed says Skinner came to her shortly after the crime and implicated himself to her. According to court records, Skinner then told Reed a number of other implausible stories about who committed the murders.
Skinner's case has been championed by the Medill Innocence Project, the team of professors and students that exposed deep flaws in the Illinois death penalty system (ultimately leading to a moratorium on executions in the state), and has freed 11 people from prison, including five who had been condemned to death. After years of investigation, the project has revealed a number of shortcomings in the state's case against skinner. Among them:
· Andrea Reed has since recanted her testimony. She now says she was pressured by police and prosecutors to falsely incriminate Skinner. In an interview with Medill students, she added that, “I did not then and do not now feel like he was physically capable of hurting anybody.”
· The untested DNA included blood taken from the murder weapons, skin taken from under the fingernails of Skinner's girlfriend, a rape test taken from her that included semen, and other blood and hair found at the scene. Skinner asked his attorney to request the evidence be tested in a letter written in 1994. The attorney never made the request, stating later that he feared doing so would implicate his client.
· Skinner's girlfriend had been stalked by an allegedly lecherous uncle, Robert Donnell. Witnesses say Donnell had approached her at a party she attended the night of her death. She left frightened, and he appeared to have followed her. A friend says the uncle had raped her in the past. Days after the murders, a neighbor reportedly saw the uncle thoroughly cleaning and repainting his truck.
· Skinner's court-appointed attorney was a former prosecutor who had actually prosecuted Skinner on a minor assault and car theft charge years earlier. Skinner's two prior crimes—which his own attorney had prosecuted—were used as aggravating factors in the death penalty portion of his trial.
· According to a new report (PDF) by toxicology specialist Harold Kalant, a moderate drinker with the levels of codeine and alcohol Skinner had in his blood would have been comatose or dead. A heavy drinker may have been rousable, but would have been "stuporous," unlikely to have the coordination necessary to carry out three murders involving multiple stabbings and bludgeonings.
It isn't difficult to see why prosecutors don't want the DNA tested. They have an unsympathetic suspect that they can place at the scene of the crime. If DNA suggests someone else bled or fought in the house that night, it doesn't conclusively prove Skinner is innocent, but it does (or at least ought to) raise enough reasonable doubt to prevent his execution. In 2000 DNA tests were conducted on blood taken from a roll of gauze and a cassette tape found in the house; that blood didn't match Skinner, his girlfriend, or her sons.
The first possible outcome of testing the remaining evidence is that the DNA will match Donnell, the allegedly lecherous, threatening uncle. Donnell has since died. If tests show Donnell's flesh under the victim's fingernails, or his blood or semen at the scene, the state is left with the strong possibility that they let a murderer go free, brought an innocent man within a week of execution, and no longer have a live body they can try, convict, and execute.
The second possibility—that the untested evidence came from other, unknown parties—wouldn't necessarily prove Skinner's innocence, but it would certainly complicate the state's case against him. But that's still no reason to refuse the tests. If we're going to execute people for particularly heinous crimes, we have a moral obligation to ensure that every reasonable possibility of the suspect's innocence has been explored and exhausted. Ignoring evidence that complicates things falls well short of that obligation.
The third possible outcome from testing the remaining biological evidence is that DNA will come back a match only to Skinner or the victims. That would go a long way toward affirming Skinner's guilt. All the more reason for conducting them.
After a conviction, the criminal justice system tends put a premium on finality, setting a high bar for reopening or retrying old cases. Given the Willingham case and the spate of exonerations across Texas, perhaps it's time the state put less emphasis on finality, and more on certainty. DNA testing in Skinner's case may not bring us closer to closing those 1993 murders, but it will bring us closer to discovering the truth about them. In a capital case especially, that alone should be reason enough to to go through with the tests.
Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/22/is-texas-about-to-execute-anot
Henry Watkins “Hank” Skinner was supposed to be executed tomorrow, but last Tuesday a Gray County, Texas, District Court judge pushed the date back one month, to March 24. Skinner has been on Death Row in Texas since 1993, awaiting execution for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest, and investigators from the Northwestern University Journalism School’s Medill Innocence Project have shot numerous holes in the prosecution’s case. But Texas officials refuse to conduct a simple DNA test that could point to the condemned man’s innocence or cement his guilt.
Skinner's scheduled lethal injection comes shortly after Texas Gov. Rick Perry has removed sympathetic panelists from the state forensic committee's investigation into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham and replaced them with panelists critics say are stymieing the investigation. Willingham was executed in 2003 for murdering his three daughters by setting fire to his house. Nine arson experts and an investigation published in the New Yorker last year have since made a strong case that Willingham was innocent of the crime.
At the same time, Texas, a notoriously enthusiastic enforcer of the death penalty, continues to lead the nation in DNA exonerations (one county in Texas has produced more genetic exonerations than all but three states). Which makes it all the more disturbing that biological evidence from Skinner’s crime scene remains untested, at the behest of prosecutors and backed up by the courts. You’d think given recent headlines that Texas might be a bit more reluctant to execute a possibly innocent man.
Skinner doesn't dispute that he was in the house at the time his girlfriend was bludgeoned to death and her sons were stabbed to death. But he says he was unconscious at the time, knocked out by a near-lethal mix of alcohol and codeine. He was convicted because of his presence at the crime scene, because he had small spots of blood from two of the three victims on his shirt, and because of the testimony of a neighbor, Andrea Reed, who happens to be an ex-girlfriend of Skinner’s. Reed says Skinner came to her shortly after the crime and implicated himself to her. According to court records, Skinner then told Reed a number of other implausible stories about who committed the murders.
Skinner's case has been championed by the Medill Innocence Project, the team of professors and students that exposed deep flaws in the Illinois death penalty system (ultimately leading to a moratorium on executions in the state), and has freed 11 people from prison, including five who had been condemned to death. After years of investigation, the project has revealed a number of shortcomings in the state's case against skinner. Among them:
· Andrea Reed has since recanted her testimony. She now says she was pressured by police and prosecutors to falsely incriminate Skinner. In an interview with Medill students, she added that, “I did not then and do not now feel like he was physically capable of hurting anybody.”
· The untested DNA included blood taken from the murder weapons, skin taken from under the fingernails of Skinner's girlfriend, a rape test taken from her that included semen, and other blood and hair found at the scene. Skinner asked his attorney to request the evidence be tested in a letter written in 1994. The attorney never made the request, stating later that he feared doing so would implicate his client.
· Skinner's girlfriend had been stalked by an allegedly lecherous uncle, Robert Donnell. Witnesses say Donnell had approached her at a party she attended the night of her death. She left frightened, and he appeared to have followed her. A friend says the uncle had raped her in the past. Days after the murders, a neighbor reportedly saw the uncle thoroughly cleaning and repainting his truck.
· Skinner's court-appointed attorney was a former prosecutor who had actually prosecuted Skinner on a minor assault and car theft charge years earlier. Skinner's two prior crimes—which his own attorney had prosecuted—were used as aggravating factors in the death penalty portion of his trial.
· According to a new report (PDF) by toxicology specialist Harold Kalant, a moderate drinker with the levels of codeine and alcohol Skinner had in his blood would have been comatose or dead. A heavy drinker may have been rousable, but would have been "stuporous," unlikely to have the coordination necessary to carry out three murders involving multiple stabbings and bludgeonings.
It isn't difficult to see why prosecutors don't want the DNA tested. They have an unsympathetic suspect that they can place at the scene of the crime. If DNA suggests someone else bled or fought in the house that night, it doesn't conclusively prove Skinner is innocent, but it does (or at least ought to) raise enough reasonable doubt to prevent his execution. In 2000 DNA tests were conducted on blood taken from a roll of gauze and a cassette tape found in the house; that blood didn't match Skinner, his girlfriend, or her sons.
The first possible outcome of testing the remaining evidence is that the DNA will match Donnell, the allegedly lecherous, threatening uncle. Donnell has since died. If tests show Donnell's flesh under the victim's fingernails, or his blood or semen at the scene, the state is left with the strong possibility that they let a murderer go free, brought an innocent man within a week of execution, and no longer have a live body they can try, convict, and execute.
The second possibility—that the untested evidence came from other, unknown parties—wouldn't necessarily prove Skinner's innocence, but it would certainly complicate the state's case against him. But that's still no reason to refuse the tests. If we're going to execute people for particularly heinous crimes, we have a moral obligation to ensure that every reasonable possibility of the suspect's innocence has been explored and exhausted. Ignoring evidence that complicates things falls well short of that obligation.
The third possible outcome from testing the remaining biological evidence is that DNA will come back a match only to Skinner or the victims. That would go a long way toward affirming Skinner's guilt. All the more reason for conducting them.
After a conviction, the criminal justice system tends put a premium on finality, setting a high bar for reopening or retrying old cases. Given the Willingham case and the spate of exonerations across Texas, perhaps it's time the state put less emphasis on finality, and more on certainty. DNA testing in Skinner's case may not bring us closer to closing those 1993 murders, but it will bring us closer to discovering the truth about them. In a capital case especially, that alone should be reason enough to to go through with the tests.
Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
Conservative
Repent, America!
Give to the least of your brethren...and give go Caesar what is Caesar's and give to Yahweh what is Yahweh's. It it is easier for a rich man to get through the eye of the needle than for him to get into heaven!
poet
Banned
A camel, actually. Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Conservative
Repent, America!
Does getting back to prosperity sound good, America?
http://www.youtube.com/user/governorrickperry#p/u/29/hmf8ZBYJXkI
http://www.youtube.com/user/governorrickperry#p/u/29/hmf8ZBYJXkI
G
Guns Guns Guns
Guest
Lies don't sound good, Teabagger.
Texas actually lost 352,500 non-farm jobs from 2008 to December 2009, according to seasonally adjusted data from the Texas Workforce Commission.
Over the past three years, the period cited in the Journal, Texas lost 61,600 jobs, according to Workforce Commission data from March 2008 to March 2011.
http://texaskaos.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=3A91518AC430B1E008E7D019DBFEBD11?diaryId=6947
Conservative
Repent, America!
I am unaware of any lies.
Texas has added jobs.
Texas has a surplus.
Texas has cut taxes and spending.
FACTS.
Texas has added jobs.
Texas has a surplus.
Texas has cut taxes and spending.
FACTS.
Conservative
Repent, America!
Of course the lamestream media distorts the facts, because they hate and fear all Conservatives. If you won't support Perry, who will you support? Someone the liberal press wants you to?
Good Luck
New member
Two of those sources are local Texas news outlets, not MSM. If there were nothing available but CNN, I would look at it with a couple shakers worth of salt. But local papers tend to put the story as it is.
What about you? Are you going to just blindly accept anything the guy says because he claims to be a conservative, and makes pretty speeches based on conservative principles? Bush claimed to be a conservative also - and he was anything but.
Actions speak louder than words, and it is easy to verify through direct perusal of government documents that the $27 billion shortfall Texas is facing for the 2011-2013 budget does, indeed, exist. It is also easy to verify the level of state debt during Perry's administration, and that it did, indeed, almost double. So much for balanced budgets. And you can also verify quite easily the content of the house bill recently passed that supposedly addresses the shortfall, and what steps were taken to do so.
http://www.texas.gov/en/Pages/default.aspx
Sorry, but Perry simply is not the paragon of conservative principles and virtue he would like us to believe.