Westboro Baptists (sic), the cretins who go to the funerals of our dead troops and protest American not killing gays or something akin to that perhaps serve a purpose. They are a group who are universally hated and despised by both the right, left and middle. They are right up there with 9-11 in that they are a great unifier.
Having a big mouth just doesn’t pay sometimes. Powell stupidly shot off his mouth in a letter to Commonwealth Attorney Paul Ebert and confessed to raping and brutally killing Stacie Reed, thinking that he couldn’t be tried twice. It didn’t work out so well for him. He got a stay of execution at the last minute back in July and his case headed for the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will not stop his execution. The wheels of justice sometimes grind very slowly.
Hot off the press from Manassas News and Messenger:
The United States Supreme Court will not stop the execution of a man charged with killing a 16-year-old girl at her Yorkshire home in 1999.
Paul Warner Powell was set to be executed for the murder of Stacie Reed in July but the Supreme Court postponed the execution, saying they needed more time to decide if they would review the case.
The Supreme Court decided this week not to intervene.
A new execution date has not yet been set.
Powell was convicted of capital murder for killing and attempting to rape Stacie at the family’s Yorkshire home on Jan. 29, 1999. He was also convicted of raping and attempting to kill Kristie, who survived.
Powell said he killed Stacie because she was dating a black man. He is a self avowed white supremacist.
Now Powell only has 2 things to ponder: Old Sparky or the Big Drip in the Sky. I hope he choses to ride the lightning bolt out of here. It should be painful to be both evil and stupid. The links below include an interview with News and Messenger reporter Uriah Kiser when he thought the Powell execution was a go. The News and Messenger has an excellent timeline.
Links
Background from News and Messenger (U. Kiser)
UPDATE FROM MANASSAS NEWS AND MESSENGER
Today the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission which overturned a hundred years of campaign finance laws, including part of the McCain FeingoldAct. Corporations and Unions can now spend money directly on the support of candidates. According to Michael Waldman of the Washington Post:
This far-reaching ruling augurs a significant power struggle. For the first time since 1937, an increasingly conservative federal judiciary faces a progressive and activist Congress and president. Until now, it was unclear how the justices would accommodate the new political alignment. The Citizens United decision suggests an assertive court, eager to overturn precedent, looming as a challenge to President Obama’s agenda.
The Atlantic explains the decision:
Justice Kennedy, in the majority opinion, reasoned that the government can’t discriminate against speakers based on their corporate identities, and that “all speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.”
This basically eliminates a middleman: before today, corporations and unions had to set up PACs (political action committees), filed separately with the IRS, that would receive donations. And they did. Corporations and unions spend millions of dollars on elections. Now, however, the accounting firewall is gone, and Wal-Mart or the Service Employees International Union, for instance, can spend their corporate/union money directly on candidates.
Today the Supreme Court heard the case of the Desert Cross. Some background: In 1934, some veterans of WWI got together and erected a cross, made of white metal pipes, in the Mojave Desert. The desert has since become national park land. The cross has been covered up as a result of the court cases. An older couple kept the cross up for the now deceased vets. According to the Washington Post:
In 1934, veterans erected a cross on a rock in a remote part of the Mojave Desert on what is now national park land — and for the next 65 years, pretty much nobody but the odd rattlesnake noticed. But over the past decade, this 6 1/2 -foot-high cross, made from four-inch white metal pipe, has become the subject of no fewer than four acts of Congress, two district court rulings, three appellate court actions — and Wednesday, arguments before the nine justices of the Supreme Court.
The case was heard and gave an opportunity for Justice Anthony Scalia and Attorney Peter Eliasberg of the American Civil Liberties Union to get in the proverbial pissing contest with each other. It went something like this:
“The cross doesn’t honor non-Christians who fought in the war?” the Catholic justice asked with incredulity.
“I believe that’s actually correct,” said Peter Eliasberg of the American Civil Liberties Union, the son and grandson of Jewish war Pveterans.
“Where does it say that?” Scalia demanded to know.
“It doesn’t say that,” Eliasberg admitted, “but a cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity, and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.”
This news enraged Scalia. “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead,” he declared. “What would you have them erect . . . some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half-moon and star?”
“The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians,” Eliasberg corrected. “I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”
The audience laughed. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion,” Scalia hissed
.
I am embarrassed for Justice Scalia. How ….unseemly.
How will the case be settled? Will the cross have to taken down? After all, it is out in the middle of nowhere, erected by men who are now dead; to honor those who died over 80 years ago, in a war barely remembered. Who is it hurting? Does it show state supported religion? What of the crosses on tombstones in federal cemetaries here and abroad?
Solutions have been suggested. One that seems to make the most sense is to give the land the cross is erected on to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and let them put the cross back up. That works. Or we could not worry about a lone cross, honoring soldiers from a century ago. Sometimes we just have to suck it up and not be so ‘correct.’
Washington Post: Court Wades Shallowly Into Church and State
The Supreme Court reconvenes on Monday after summer recess. To mark this occassion, C-Span will air its documentary The Supreme Court: Home to America’s Highest Court giving us an inside look at internal workings of the US Supreme Court.
According to the Washington Post:
Supreme fanatics will learn something new here about justices’ chambers and the busts, interior artwork and exterior features of the 1935 court building.
Most interesting, this marks the first time that all the current and retired justices (including Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter and newcomer Sonia Sotomayor) have given individual interviews on camera for the same film. If nothing else, it’s rare to see some of them move and speak up close. (Longer individual interviews will be aired later in the week, and full transcripts, natch, will go up on C-SPAN’s Web site.)
That the justices say almost nothing revealing and stick squarely to their respect and reverence for the job is fine with me, as is the fact that you’d have to go to a funeral home to find a more hushed edifice. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg most giddily shows off the hallowed halls. There is discussion of pecking order and chamber offices that face street protesters and offices that don’t. There is the never-before-filmed robing room, where one treats one’s colleagues with utmost kindness and respect, even when “you may be temporarily miffed because you received a spicy dissenting opinion,” she says.
The show airs at 9 pm Sunday night for 90 minutes on CSPAN. Sunday night is getting some better TV for those willing to leave the standard networks.
