In 1987, the body of 37-year-old Peggy Hettrick was found in a field in Fort Collins, Colorado. Investigators, led by Lt. Jim Broderick, suspected a 15-year-old boy named Tim Masters because he lived near the field and created violent artwork and writing which seemed, to some people, to match the injuries to Hettrick’s body. There was not enough evidence to charge Masters, and little happened in the investigation until 1997, when Broderick decided to have Masters’ art and writing analyzed by a forensic psychologist, who supported Broderick’s theory. Masters was then charged with murder and was convicted in 1999, at the age of 27, and sentenced to life in prison, even though there was no physical evidence against him. In 2008, DNA testing excluded his DNA from the crime scene and he was cleared and released from prison.
Now, Broderick has finally been charged with eight counts of perjury for his role in Masters’s wrongful conviction. He allegedly made false statements during the investigation, preliminary hearing, and trial and faces up to 6 years in prison plus a $500,o00 fine for each count.
I think it is about time that those responsible for Masters’s imprisonment be held responsible. He spent nine years in prison, even though the evidence shows that he is most likely completely innocent. Masters’s rights were violated, and whenever someone’s rights are violated, someone is responsible for that violation and ought to be punished. In this case, the people responsible are the law enforcement personnel who tried to pin the crime on Masters despite the lack of evidence against him. The evidence so far suggests that Broderick is chief among those people, and it’s time for Tim Masters to see justice.
On Tuesday, Missourians will vote on a ballot measure to outlaw the individual mandate, the part of health insurance reform that requires all Americans, except those who are unable to afford it, to have health insurance. From Missourians for Health Care Freedom, the organization that supports the initiative…
“Patients should have the right to pay directly for medical services with their own money. That’s because when consumers control the dollars, the patient makes the medical treatment decisions… Preserving the rights of patients to pay directly for medical care ensures that patients – not government bureaucrats – decide which doctor to see or what medical treatment to choose.”
Support Proposition C!
The Democratic National Committee decided to try to be cute and create a parody of conservatives called the Republican Tea Party Contract on America. The items on the “agenda:”
- Repeal the Affordable Health Care Act (Health Insurance Reform)
- Privatize Social Security or phase it out altogether
- End Medicare as it presently exists
- Extend the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy and big oil
- Repeal Wall Street Reform
- Protect those responsible for the oil spill and future environmental catastrophes
- Abolish the Department of Education
- Abolish the Department of Energy
- Abolish the Environmental Protection Agency
- Repeal the 17th Amendment
This list doesn’t seem half bad!
Take, for example, abolishing the “Affordable Health Care Act.” That would (gasp!) allow people to decide for themselves whether or not to buy health insurance. Contrary to what the mock Contract says, abolishing this law would not “put insurance companies back in charge” but would restore some freedom to consumers. If forcing everyone to buy health insurance doesn’t put insurance companies in charge, nothing does.
And abolishing Social Security isn’t a bad idea either. People should be able to decide for themselves how or whether to save for retirement instead of having money taken from them. People who have paid into Social Security are entitled to receive benefits, but if Social Security was phased out starting with people who are just entering the work force, then people would no longer need it because they would be able to keep their own money and save, spend, or invest it as they wish.
If the DNC was being serious with this Contract, then I would applaud them for having some good ideas. Not perfect, but good overall. It’s too bad they’re being sarcastic, because instead they just come off as ignorant and mean-spirited.
Senator John Kerry (D-MA) is facing a lot of flak for docking his and his wife’s yacht “Isabel” in Rhode Island, where he doesn’t have to pay taxes on it. I actually don’t think there is anything wrong with Kerry’s decision (and the author of this letter in the Globe agrees with me!).
Kerry is a typical Democrat who has voted for tax increases on the national level several times, so his desire to avoid the 6.75% Massachusetts sales tax does come off as inconsistent…but maybe Kerry is starting to realize how excessive taxes are in Massachusetts. I don’t agree with Kerry’s opinions about taxes if his votes are any indication, but I agree with his decision to try to avoid the sales tax (if that was, indeed, the reason behind keeping the boat in Rhode Island). When a tax is unjust, people have the right to do anything they can to avoid it.
Unfortunately, Kerry just said that he will pay the roughly $500,000 in state and local taxes that he would have owed had he kept the yacht in Massachusetts. I wish he had stuck to his guns in order to make a statement against the recent sales tax hike. Wouldn’t it be awesome if our Democratic senior senator took a stand against the ever-growing, ever-spending government of Taxachusetts?
Edit: As Jeff Jacoby points out, Kerry isn’t even doing anything illegal. He is just living his life in the way that makes the most financial sense, given the tax laws.
Famous psychiatrist Keith Ablow blogged about an advertising campaign from Final Exit Network, a pro-assisted-suicide organization, which is posting billboards along highways that read “My life. My death. My choice.” Dr. Ablow argues that these billboards could trigger people with depression to commit suicide, and that the organization should be held liable if that happened.
I disagree. All that the billboard says is that people have the right to choose whether to live or die. It doesn’t encourage anyone to kill themselves or say that dying is a better decision than living; it just says that both are valid choices. If someone decides to commit suicide, it means that at that point in time, they believed suicide to be the best option. In my opinion, people have a right to make that decision, even though it is drastic and in some cases might be rash.
People commit suicide because their lives are so miserable that they would prefer death, whether because of a terminal illness, low self-esteem, being tormented or bullied by others, or some other reason. These things are the causes of suicide that need to be solved, not some billboard proclaiming that you have the right to decide for yourself how and when to die (which is true). Billboards do not force anyone to commit suicide, nor can they truly cause suicide, and the creators of such billboards should not be held responsible for anyone’s deaths.
A Somerville woman, Carol Kingsley, 33, was recently killed by police after stabbing three of them and attacking her boyfriend. From Fox25 News…
“Police went to a home in the Boston-area city of Somerville at about 6:30 a.m. Friday after a man called to say his girlfriend lunged at him with a knife and set his clothes on fire. Authorities say when officers arrived, 33-year-old Carol Lynn Kingsley went after them with a knife. One shot was fired, killing Kingsley.”
Kingsley seems to have had many problems in her life, and her death is a tragedy. But in addition to being tragic, this incident is an example of the fact that women can be the perpetrators of domestic violence and men can be the victims, just as easily as the other way around.
Many people use phrases like “battered woman’s syndrome” and “wife beater” as if domestic abuse is something that men always do to women. But that simply isn’t true. Why do you never hear about shelters or advocacy groups for abused men? Why is the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence called Jane Doe, Inc? There is nothing about being male that automatically makes someone more likely to be an abuser, and nothing about being female that makes someone more likely to be a victim. To treat women as weak and vulnerable is just as insulting as treating men like big, violent brutes. Feminism, to me, is the belief that men and women are equal and should be treated equally. Treating domestic abuse only as something men do to women is the opposite of feminism.
I am pleasantly surprised with the TSA. Apparently they are aiming to roll out new airport security scanners that are less invasive than the full-body scanners that show people’s naked bodies through their clothes. From the Boston Globe:
“Logan International Airport is vying to become the first facility to use a less-invasive version of the full-body scanners that have been installed at hundreds of security checkpoints around the country this year…The Transportation Security Administration is working with technology companies to develop new software that shows a generic paper-doll-like figure instead of an actual image of a passenger’s body when it uses X-ray beams to scan for weapons and explosives.”
Creating and using these new scanners would mean that much less liberty is sacrificed in the name of security. While I believe that liberty should never be sacrificed in the name of security, this is still great news. Showing suspicious items on a generic outline of a human body is a big improvement over showing people’s naked bodies.
It’s sad that so many people have been subjected to the indignity of whole body scanners (according to the article, Logan has them at all of its major checkpoints!), but I look forward to the day when they will be no more.
