Justice for the victims

Yesterday a friend called me upset because of having to go to a funeral. It is for a little girl, only 16, who my friend's mother used to be a foster mother for. She was in foster care because her father had sexually abused her. She left foster care after a few years and soon ended up in high school. Here she met a young boy who committed a murder in front of her. She told some friends and then her horribly beaten body was found in a dumpster. She was almost unrecognizable.

This led to a discussion about what to do with the sick little baby killer murderer who did this to her. And what to do about her sick and perverted father. Is it justice to just keep these two in prison for the next few years until they plea their way out of the prison? Is it worthwhile to keep these guys in prison for years and years?

We joked that maybe if all the murderers and rapists were allowed boxcutters and just went at each other would it save a bunch of money. We could then give this savings to the victims.

This led me to the US Department of Justice's website and a long list of tables and charts to see and learn from. I learned that there were 2,186,000 prisoners were held in Federal or State prisons or in local jails at the end of Jun 2005, the most recent I could find. It cost the Government, at all levels, $60.86 million to support all those prisoners. Which means that taxpayers spent an average of $27, 836 per prisoner per year.

Of these prisoners, 3377 are on death row. The average time on death row is more than nine years and with this many prisoners costing us $94 million a year, could not that money be better used?

If we cut off the appeals after 48 months and that can save millions a year. If we start saving this money, we can easily give each victim a million dollars. Maybe give the murderer/rapist/whatever a chance to give the victim extra cash if he would end his appeals even sooner than that.

What can we do to expedite this? How can we make this happen? This would allow our country to save millions of dollars and it would free up some of the overcrowding in the prisons. The victims would get something for their trauma. What is the downside of this?

I would like all people who think that there might be some justice in this to help with this new campaign. Now that the Republicans are out of power and honest Democrats are in who understand the rights of victims, I am sure something can be done. It will have to be quick in case the balance of power shifts again in 2008.

World's most deadly bugs... in the hands of terrorists

The Scotsman - World's most deadly bugs... in the hands of terrorists

This really scares me. Terrorists, the standard type with guns and bombs, bother me. Terrorists with bioweapons scare the snot out of me. I have studied and worried about this for years. Ever since Aum Shinrikyo's terror attacks on the Tokyo subways I have worried.

For those who do not remember, the Aum Shinrikyo cult believed that the end of the world was coming and civilized people had slowed it down. They wanted to break civilization so that the End would finally arrive. They experimented with botulin toxin and anthrax spores before settling on making sarin nerve gas and releasing it in the subways during rush hour. Fortunately, the batch was not very pure and only killed a fraction of what they had hoped.

With this new synthetic biology, the Aum would have been able to kill the thousands they had been trying to. What is worse is that the methods used previously were illegal and fell within the limits of international treaties. This is not and does not. It is legal but unethical. Ethics do not stop terrorists who think beheading innocents are justified.

Can synthetic biology be slowed or stopped? Doubtful. Once a technology is know to exist almost anyone with similar training, or intelligence, can figure out how to duplicate it. Such as what happened with nuclear weapons.

What can be done about this then? Not much. Controls must be designed and implemented. Laws will need to be passed. Monitors will have to be emplaced. All of this just to ensure that the work that is done is kept within the legal and ethical codes that are developed for the public good.

Liberals abuse of language

Arutz Sheva - Israel National News

I really enjoy the English language and here is a liberal that I can agree with about the proper use of language. I have been pressuring liberals for years about what they are trying to change and what they are liberal about. It is mainly the persecution of Judeo-Christian values.

The best part is the number of Jews who protest that they are liberals and want to persecute themselves. For example, Jews do not have a religious problem with abortion, but do not think it should happen often or after a few months. A baby is not considered to be alive until it takes its first breath. I can not argue with this. It is a religious thing. But this one issue forces them to vote against support for Israel and a Jewish state.

Christians are highly divided upon many social issues. Some are liberal and some are more conservative. Come are very liberal and some are very conservative. The Bible has a lot of information in it and is easy to interpret the way one wants to by ignoring the parts that say something one does not want to hear.

Muslims are very conservative. They greatly dislike anyone who can think without the help of an Imam. I suspect that many Imams are only there for the power and are not really that religious except as how it looks for their power base. Not all mind you. Just some. It is the same with Germany during the 1930s, Only a few are doing the bad things.

Which brings me in a round about way back to liberals and language. The liberals have gone so far to the left that they are becoming the thing they hate the most: control freaks. They are misusing the language just as the Nazis did. They are making things up and are creating many strange stories that have no real basis in fact but seem to be contrived lies based upon small bits of truth. It is those small bits that matter.

Too bad so few people seem to understand this.