Push to abolish death penalty moves forward

There’s a continued push here in Colorado to abolish the death penalty:

The bill to abolish the death penalty in Colorado and create a cold case unit is moving forward in the state legislature.In a 7-4 vote, the House Judiciary Committee approved the measure Wednesday. State Representative Paul Weissman, a Democrat from Louisville, says abolishing the death penalty could save millions of dollars which could go elsewhere.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am morally opposed to the death penalty. I don’t see any difference between the state killing someone or a citizen killing someone. Both are wrong.

The issue is being debated in a different way here in Colorado, though. Instead of debating the morality of the issue, it is being approached from a financial point-of-view. That is just different enough that it might pass!

Report: Women misled on abortion risks

This is absolutely disgusting, assuming that the report is accurate. According to Boston.com, a report by “Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee, women are being given false, alarmist information regarding abortion risks. From the article:

Care Net, an umbrella group for evangelical pregnancy centers across the country, instructs its affiliates to tell callers there is a possibility that abortion can lead to greater risk of breast cancer, according to Molly Ford, an official with the organization. She said there have been several studies that say it does, and several that say it doesn’t.

“I know the report is wanting to say that it’s conclusive, but it isn’t,” Ford said.

None of the pregnancy centers the committee staff called was identified, and it could not be determined if any were linked to Care Net, which has helped about a quarter of the nation’s pregnancy centers begin operations.

One pregnancy center told a congressional aide the risk of cancer after an abortion could be 80 percent higher, the report noted. Ford said she doubted a pregnancy center would go that far, but the Web site for a pregnancy center in Albuquerque says the risk for cancer after an abortion is 50 percent or greater.

In February 2003, a National Cancer Institute workshop concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer. [Emphasis mine]

How disgusting is this? Are anti-choice groups really so desparate that they would flat-out like to a woman, trying to both scare her and not give her the information she needs to make an informed decision? How can one justify this? It’s a horrible practice, and a horrible thing to do to someone who is trying to face one of the hardest decisions of her life.

If you have to lie to someone to justify your beliefs, then your beliefs are probably wrong.

Flag-burning amendment

Okay, so now that the anti-flag-burning amendment has failed (by only a single vote? WTF?), could someone convince the senate to start working on things that really matter, and quit getting distracted by this election-year pandering? It’s not like this is a new debate. This has been settled for a decade!

“The First Amendment never needs defending when it comes to popular speech,” Leahy said. “It’s when it comes to unpopular speech that it needs defending.”

[..]The Texas v. Johnson case came to the court five years after Gregory Lee Johnson burned a flag at City Hall during a political demonstration at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.

Johnson was convicted of violating state law, sentenced to a year in prison and fined $2,000. The Supreme Court ruled his arrest was unconstitutional.

Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan stated, “Johnson was not, we add, prosecuted for the expression of just any idea; he was prosecuted for his expression of dissatisfaction with the policies of this country, expression situated at the core of our First Amendment values.”

Kudos to the Republican senators who voted against this amendment, no matter what their reasons. And big time boos to all the Democrats who voted for this. Show some spine, Senators!

Qwest refused to turn over records!

Hooray for Qwest! When the NSA came knocking, asking for phone records on all of their customers, Qwest was the only major telecom carrier that refused to turn over those records!

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Denver-based Qwest refused to help the National Security Agency, sources tell USA TODAY.According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer calling information to the government without warrants.

I cannot understand why more people aren’t up-in-arms over the NSA spying. But I do hope that more people thank Qwest for daring to stand up against this invasion of our civil liberties.

Immigration reform: the will of the people

Hmmm… I think this is telling of more than people want to admit:

About 250 opponents of the immigration march, with the group Defend Colorado Now, staged their own protest on the south side of Civic Center Park.

Their protest began as the thousands of other protestors left the area.

So there were 250 people who wanted to oppose immigration reform, while 75,000 gathered in support. Do I really need to say more? No matter what some would like us to believe, public opinion seems to be overwhelmingly in support of immigration reform. Rally’s like today’s rally show that it’s only a matter of time before the will of the people is heard.

Erosion of Freedoms x 2

There are places where you expect to see people lashing out against the Bush administration’s civil liberties abuses, including DailyKos. And then there are places where you don’t expect it, such as on PC guru John C. Dvorak’s blog, Dvorak Uncensored. Dvorak takes the Bush administration to task in an entry titled “Erosion of Freedoms x 2”:

We old folks used to talk about Nixon and his imperial presidency. He was a lightweight in comparison to whats going on these days.Erosion #1: DOJ: NSA Couldve Monitored Lawyers Calls

The National Security Agency could have legally monitored ordinarily confidential communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients, the Justice Department said Friday of its controversial warrantless surveillance program.

Responding to questions from Congress, the department also said that it sees no prohibition to using information collected under the NSAs program in court.

Erosion #2: The Job of the FBI

On March 14, [Common Cause President Chellie] Pingree participated on a panel on open government sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

A week after the panel, an FBI agent contacted the local League president, Susan Gilbert, to raise questions about Pingrees published remarks at the panel.

For some reason, Roger Waters “The Tide Is Turning” keeps playing over and over in my head. I don’t know whether that gives me hope or makes me sad, though…