Road Rage - Pistol Drawn

How rare is it?

On the Philly Dot Com site the other day we can read the report of an Upper Darby man who drew down on a woman for honking the horn at him.

A 24-year-old Upper Darby man, infuriated that a woman had honked at him in an intersection, pulled a gun on her and her 2-year-old daughter and said, "You're dead," police said yesterday.

Deaone McNeal, of the 1600 block of Garrett Road, was arrested near his home Saturday after the victim called 911 from her car, Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said. McNeal denied having a gun, but when police searched his vehicle, Chitwood said, they found a .45-caliber, semiautomatic pistol loaded with 16 hollow-point bullets.

Police also found McNeal's 7-year-old daughter terrified in the backseat, Chitwood said.

McNeal was granted a permit in January to carry a concealed weapon, Chitwood said. McNeal stated self-defense as his reason for needing the permit.

The article goes on to recount another incident in which a driver was actually shot. Maybe it's not as rare as some people say. It makes me wonder about the wisdom of allowing certain people to carry guns. What gets me even more, is the way responsible gun owners seem to delineate between themselves and the irresponsible ones, the same way they do between the good guys and the bad guys.

Isn't it true that in any large group, take for example, gun owners, a certain percentage will have problems like any other group? What do you propose we do about that? I put the question to the gun proponents. I personally do not favor gun bans, but I also don't favor gun folks talking like this is not their problem. I say it is.

What's your opinion.

The Innocence Project

In the comments yesterday, Patrick Collins left us a link to The Innocence Project.

The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, 222 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 12 years in prison before exoneration and release.

Patrick said the Death Penalty should be abolished. "If even one person is wrongly convicted and executed that should be reason enough to get rid of it. There is ample substantiation this happens." I agree absolutely. It doesn't take a statistician to extrapolate from the figures above and work backwards. Innocent people have been executed.

Another thing The Innocence Project lawyers are working on is proper compensation for the exonerated people. Twenty-five states have no benefits at all, many of the other 25 offer inadequate compensation.

But how do you compensate people whose lives have been disrupted by a wrongful conviction? Are the errors that produced those convictions being examined for wrongdoing on the part of prosecutors, judges and law enforcement personnel? Remember the case in Texas, a Capital case in which the female judge was having an affair with the district attorney? Nothing wrong there, they decided.

Another question I have is this: if somehow we could be certain that no wrongful conviction would ever take place, would we then be in favor of the Death Penalty? I say no. I oppose Capital Punishment because it's wrong, morally wrong. Never executing innocent people would be a side benefit of abolition. By abolishing the Death Penalty we eliminate the awful moral inconsistency of telling people that shouldn't kill one another, but if they do, sanctioning the government to do just that.

What do you think?

The British Invasion of the 1970s

When Freddie sang, "Or just find me an open car I'll make the speed of light outa this place," man, could I relate. And that's not all I could relate to in this song.

For me, Queen, Bowie, the Who, Led Zeppelin, they were the real British Invasion.




Tenement Funster
Words and music by Roger Taylor

My new purple shoes
Bin amazin' the people next door
And my rock'n'roll forty fives
Bin enragin' the folks on the lower floor

I got a way with the girls on my block
Try my best to be a real individual
And when we go down to smokies and rock
They line up like it's some kind of ritual
Oh give me a good guitar
And you can say that my hair's a disgrace
Or just find me an open car
I'll make the speed of light outa this place

I like the good things in life
But most of the best things ain't free
It's the same situation just cuts like a knife
When you're young and you're poor and you're crazy
Young and you're crazy...

Oh give me a good guitar
And you can say that my hair's a disgrace
Or just find me an open car
I'll make the speed of light outa this place

The Old Double Standard

On the wonderfully informative site called The Cognoscenti, Graham asks a very pointed question.

Why does Sarah Palin get a free pass?

This question is in reference to her membership in the Alaska Independence Party. I've read about this here and there, but frankly didn't pay much attention. But, while reading what Graham has to say about it, I realized there's a major double standard going on. Imagine if Obama had selected a VP running mate who had said the un-American things Sarah Palin has said? Do you think the Republican mud-slingers would have been so quite about it? Examples:

"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

"And I won’t be buried under their damn flag. I’ll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home.”

I'll answer my own question. If Joe Biden had ever said things like that, we would have been bombarded with it like there's no tomorrow. Look at what they've done with the Ayers business, the desperate, straw-clutching Republicans.

The explanation is obvious. Obama must have instructed his advisors to try, as much as is possible in a presidential campaign, to maintain some dignity, to not stoop to using every low blow they could. And the reason for that is also obvious. He could afford to do it. He's the better candidate. People are ready for a change.

What do you think?

Richard Cooey Not Too Fat to Execute

CNN reported the story today that the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio decided the convicted murderer Richard Cooey is not too fat to execute. We discussed this case before when the motion was made. The commenting got fairly heated.

The 41-year-old is scheduled to be executed Tuesday for killing two University of Akron students in 1986.

He would be the first person to be put to death in the state since the end of a de facto moratorium on lethal injection.

I will consider Tuesday a sad day for Ohio and for America. To me it's inconceivable that in the United States of America in the 21st century we cannot come up with a more humane manner of dealing with these dangerous men. And what surprises me is the venom with which people talk about these guys. It's as if doing inhuman things causes them to stop being human beings in the eyes of many.

I say Richard Cooey is a human being, perhaps a sick and damaged one, but human nevertheless, and for no other reason is worthy of respect and humane treatment.

What's your opinion? Is there no better way to deal with convicted murderers? Does the death penalty deter others from committing atrocities? Is the furious killing of a blood thirsty man with seemingly no conscience as bad as the calculated killing of the mafia hit man?

Precious Doe Killer, Harrell Johnson, Convicted

Harrell Johnson was convicted of First Degree Murder in the death of the 3-year old daughter of his wife known as Precious Doe. CNN reports that in exchange for agreeing to allow the trial to take place in Kansas City, the prosecution asked for Life in Prison without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty.

During closing arguments, prosecutors told jurors a guilty verdict would finally bring justice in a case that brought an outpouring of public grief after a police officer found Erica's naked, headless body in a wooded area of Kansas City in April 2001.

Do you think the guilty verdict will really bring justice to this case? Would the death penalty have accomplished that if they'd sought it?

While high on drugs, according to the mother of the victim, Johnson kicked the little girl. The couple decided not to seek help because they had outstanding warrants and were afraid of being arrested. Michelle Johnson, 33, testified against her husband Tuesday after she pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder in Erica's death.

A pediatric neurosurgeon testified Monday that if the couple had quickly sought medical attention for Erica, doctors probably could have reversed the damage.

On the Rush of Time blog, Jim takes issue with the prosecutor.

On the Pearl's Window site, there's a heartbreaking picture of the little girl, but no opinions that I could see.

What's your opinion? Does the fact that he was high on drugs mitigate the gravity at all? What about that exchange? Is it right for the prosecutor to trade the death penalty for an agreement to keep the case in his own jurisdiction? And, what do you think about the mother? Isn't it a bit severe to charge her with murder when she just failed to get medical help out of fear?

A-Ha Video - Take On Me

Via Matthew Yglesias via Jason Kottke.



To me the 1980s were a wonderful decade. I turned 27 in 1980 and was to have the best times of my life during those years. How was it for you? Do you agree with the famous Austin Powers' line, "The 70s and the 80s? You're not missing anything, believe me. I've looked into it. There's a gas shortage and A Flock of Seagulls. That's about it."