Cottonmouth Press

In Alabama, Daniel Lee Siebert, 53, is facing the death penalty for strangling two women and two young boys in 1986. He was scheduled to be put to death yesterday, Oct. 25. But a court has intervened, and he’s alive on death row where he’s been for more than 20 years.
Siebert is dying of pancreatic cancer. His life expectancy is a month, give or take.
Alabama’s Gov. Bob Riley had refused to stay the execution, saying that the fact of Siebert’s terminal cancer is irrelevant. “To not go ahead with the execution (by lethal injection) would mean we had commuted his sentence to life in prison,” Gov. Riley said.It took me a while for that logic to sink in. It had to permeate several layers of brain cells, the outer layer of which is sternly guarded by my bullshit alarm. Then Riley’s sentence was parsed by my left brain, then handed off to my cerebellum which, in its animal memory, stores the same type of reasoning in a primitive cell mass called the POLITICO-FECALIS-MEDIATORUS.

“Ohhhh! I understand,” my animal brain relayed back. “What he means is, ‘We ain’t gonna let no stinkin’ cancer trump our right to snuff him.’”

Daniel Siebert committed a heinous crime 21 years ago when he killed two children and their mom and neighbor. He is no one we need feel sorry for. (His death row drawings are highly pornographic, by the way,  and are for sale.)
The fact that he is still alive is due to a Kentucky case about the nature of lethal injection, on the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court. And until THAT case is decided, Siebert’s execution has been stayed by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Alabama’s attorney general, Troy King,  and the Goober are pissed off at that. They want to shoot the death cocktail into Siebert’s cancer-ridden body pronto. They say that, by the time the Kentucky case is decided, Siebert will be dead.

Let me reiterate: Siebert will be dead before they have a chance to make him dead.

This is not a blog about the correctness of the death penalty, one way or another. It is about the pigheadedness of politicians who —- what? Want to give the victims’ families closure?
Pancreatic cancer will do that.
Want to teach Siebert a lesson? I think that dying of cancer in prison is doing that.  After all, how much painkiller do you think a convicted murderer with a terminal illness gets? Less than you and I, be sure of that.

No, I think this case just demonstrates how the death penalty plays out politically, at least in Dixie. It is about seeming to be tough and full of righteous indignation, despite the facts of a situation. It is about seeming punitive, at least publicly, because that is what the politicos think the public expects from them.
But I believe if you polled 100 ordinary Alabamians right now, better than 90 of them would say, “Aw, hell, let the man die his natural death. It ain’t like he’s gonna live to see the Super Bowl.”

That’s Alabama logic. And I can’t argue with it. Let it lay.

Posted by Gita under Alabama & Regional | 3 Comments »

In a nation that is unparalleled for PR and marketing, it is small wonder that someone came up with a euphemism for the unthinkable treatment of another human.
It’s called “Rendition,” a word that used to mean a way of performing music.
“He gave his rendition of  a Bach cantata.”
“She gave her rendition of a Verdi aria.”

A movie opening this week in most cities tells the real story of how the U.S. treats those it wants to make disappear. We do not call it kidnapping with torture and endless imprisonment. That would be too upsetting to the gentle voters who still think that the war in Iraq is about freedom. We call it “Rendition,” you see. But inhumanity by any other name stinks as bad.

I find it interesting that one of the tortures seen in the movie, a technique called “waterboarding,” was a topic in  this week’s real-life hearings to confirm Bush’s latest nominee for U.S. Attorney General.
Michael Mukasey, a longtime federal judge known to both parties in Washington, was questioned about torture as follows:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Mukasey whether an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, known as waterboarding, is constitutional. We all hoped he would say “Hell, No.”
Instead, the nominee did not take the bait. He sidestepped the issue of whether waterboarding actually is torture.
“IF it amounts to torture,” Mukasey said carefully, “then it is not constitutional.”

Tell that to a man who is repeatedly submerged in water until unconscious but brought back up just short of drowning.
We do that, you know. Yes, we, this country, this government, WE do that among other things to people and some other things even worse.
I refuse to call the imprisonment and torture of “suspicious persons” for years, without showing them the light of day by a tricked out new name. We have to call it what it is. UNACCEPTABLE.
Calling it “Rendition” is a cover story.
Don’t let anyone fool you.

A Canadian citizen detained by U.S. authorities in 2002 on suspicion of having links to al-Qaida, and sent to Syria where he was tortured, has testified for the first time before a congressional committee. Maher Arar addressed a panel examining extraordinary rendition, in which U.S. authorities have sent terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation.

Posted by Gita under Uncategorized | No Comments »

You know what? I am glad that the SCHIP program was vetoed.

Bush gave the voters a chance to see what our Congresspeople are really made of when he vetoed that puppy. I am talking about who is going to vote to override the president and provide more health care to children. Or who is going to risk his political career, sticking by the Prez.

Here in Alabama, Land of the Dumb, little Mike Rogers is willing to risk his 3rd Congressional District seat. He is playing right into the Democrats’ hands because the one thing we Alabamians love even more than football is our children.

And, considering that a lot of families here need help with health insurance for their kids, SCHIP is popular and Bush’s veto is not popular. Mike Rogers, who hails from Calhoun County not far from me, was elected by a fairly conservative, fairly blue collar district. He is a Republican-without-portfolio (no real ideas or plans of his own),  and the fact that he got elected speaks more to the fact that the Democrats didn’t fund a candidate to adequately run against him. (Alabama was written off as a lost cause by the DNCC in the past three elections, don’tcha know?) We had a terrific candidate in the person of Joe Turnham, but the DNCC in its wisdom sent big hunks of money to OTHER states with closely contested Congressional seats.

Mikey Rogers did not win based on his ability to go it alone as a popular lawmaker. He will absolutely drive a nail into his coffin when he doesn’t override the health plan veto.

All we need in this state is for ONE GOOD FAIRLY DYNAMIC Democrat to get some money and run against him. It would be so easy to take that seat away from the GOP.

Go on, Mike Rogers and all the rest of the Alabama gang. GO on and vote against children’s health care.  Let that veto stand.
Make my g-damn day.

Posted by Gita under Alabama & National | No Comments »

It has been a nine-year legal battle, but the forces of “I’m gonna tell you what to do with your genitals” have won. Today the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn Alabama’s ban on the sale of sex toys. So now, adults in this state must shop for personal pleasure items across state lines. It isn’t the worst thing that could happen to people. Just the most needless and stupid. I mean, with all the serious crime in this state, why does the attorney general have to enforce a vibrator law?

 Sherri Williams, owner of Pleasures stores in Huntsville and Decatur, Ala.,
had sued the state after it banned the sale of sex toys in 1998 as an anti-obscenity measure. She now says she plans to sue again on First Amendment free speech grounds.

In an Associated Press report, she told a reporter, “My motto has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand. I refuse to give up.”
Hmm. Somehow that motto doesn’t quite appeal to me. I’d rethink that position.

Alabama’s  law bans the sale of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”  The law does not ban the possession of sex toys, an important distinction, and Alabamians may purchase sex toys out of state for use in Alabama. Also, they may buy sexual devices in Alabama that have a “bona fide medical” purpose — another important distinction.

So, to review the options, as I see them, one could cross state lines with a plain brown wrapper or two in the trunk. Or one could conceivably put together a line of  “medically assistive devices” that would pass the test of “bona fide-ness.”  Until then, Alabama’s attorney general, the Right Honorable Troy King, is giving store owners fair warning to remove from inventory any playful (not medical) vibrating, penetrating or exciting devices that could be used to bring a person to the peak of pleasure.

The penalty for selling a mere plaything and not a bona fide medical device is steep! Up to a year in jail and a $10,000 fine for a first offense. A second offense carries a prison sentence of one to 10 years.

Sherri Williams predicts future court battles over which sexual devices are
legal to sell as medical devices. Whoa, nelly. Can you see your average Baptist granny with a vibrating heating pad in court to insist she used it just for her “arthur-itis?” 

Go ahead. Make fun of Alabama.  Laugh if you will. It’s not like it will be the first time. Or the last.

Posted by Gita under Alabama | No Comments »