January 12, 2016


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-florida-death-penalty-system-is-unconstitutional/

Supreme Court: Florida death penalty system is unconstitutional
CBS/AP
January 12, 2016


WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Florida's system for sentencing people to death is unconstitutional because it gives too much power to judges - and not enough to juries - to decide capital sentences.

The 8-1 ruling said that the state's sentencing procedure is flawed because juries play only an advisory role in recommending death while the judge can reach a different decision.

The court sided with Timothy Lee Hurst, who was convicted of the 1998 murder of his manager at a Popeye's restaurant in Pensacola. A jury divided 7-5 in favor of death, but a judge imposed the sentence.

Florida's solicitor general argued that the system was acceptable because a jury first decides if the defendant is eligible for the death penalty.

Writing for the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said a jury's "mere recommendation is not enough." She said the court was overruling previous decisions upholding the state's sentencing process.

"The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death," Sotomayor said.

The justices sent the case back to the Florida Supreme Court to determine whether the error in sentencing Hurst was harmless, or whether he should get a new sentencing hearing.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, saying that the trial judge in Florida simply performs a reviewing function that duplicates what the jury has done.

Under Florida law, the state requires juries in capital sentencing hearings to weigh factors for and against imposing a death sentence. But the judge is not bound by those findings and can reach a different conclusion. The judge can also weigh other factors independently. So a jury could base its decision on one particular aggravating factor, but a judge could then rely on a different factor the jury never considered.

In Hurst's case, prosecutors asked the jury to consider two aggravating factors: the murder was committed during a robbery and it was "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel." But Florida law did not require the jury to say how it voted on each factor. Hurst's attorney argued that it was possible only four jurors agreed with one, while three agreed with the other.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that a defendant has the right to have a jury decide whether the circumstances of a crime warrant a sentence of death.

Florida is one of only three states that do not require a unanimous jury verdict when sentencing someone to death. The others are Alabama and Delaware.

Last week, Oscar Ray Bolin became the state's first inmate to be executed in Florida in 2016.



“The 8-1 ruling said that the state's sentencing procedure is flawed because juries play only an advisory role in recommending death while the judge can reach a different decision. …. A jury divided 7-5 in favor of death, but a judge imposed the sentence. Florida's solicitor general argued that the system was acceptable because a jury first decides if the defendant is eligible for the death penalty. …. She said the court was overruling previous decisions upholding the state's sentencing process. "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death," Sotomayor said. …. Under Florida law, the state requires juries in capital sentencing hearings to weigh factors for and against imposing a death sentence. But the judge is not bound by those findings and can reach a different conclusion. The judge can also weigh other factors independently. So a jury could base its decision on one particular aggravating factor, but a judge could then rely on a different factor the jury never considered. …. Florida is one of only three states that do not require a unanimous jury verdict when sentencing someone to death. The others are Alabama and Delaware. Last week, Oscar Ray Bolin became the state's first inmate to be executed in Florida in 2016.”


A unanimous jury verdict is required in all but two other states, and the judge should not be able to act on his own, discounting the jury’s findings, so says the Supreme Court. According to Wikipedia, Delaware leans toward conservative ideas in the rural south and liberalism in the more urban north. These state based laws on certain important subjects, and I do think this is important, are too variable in general in my opinion.

The federal Constitution leaves many things up to the states, leaving a confusing and difficult legal background for a citizen to maneuver within, and numerous areas of injustice. Policing, justice, education, voting procedures and registration, for instance. I am unhappy with a number of Florida’s laws on these subjects, as they tend to disadvantage the poor and ethnically diverse even more than their lack of money alone does. The state’s practice of allowing cities and local courts to pile on financial penalties for minor traffic violations which, if the driver can’t pay them, can be the cause of a stay in jail at the word of the judge. “Debtors prison” is not allowed under current law, I thought. See the 2013 NPR article on that subject: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/21/313118629/supreme-court-ruling-not-enough-to-prevent-debtors-prisons. There is a bevy of articles by people who are concerned about that.

The death penalty is of course even more serious, and it also has a tendency to be tainted by racial politics. These disparate laws of various kinds make some areas of the country a haven for radical rightist attitudes and issues to be played out in the courts, causing injustice where there should be fairness to all. If the death penalty and prison sentences weren’t so skewed by race already, it would at least be fair, but as the situation is most prisoners under the death penalty are black or Hispanic. If enough Islamic people do move into Florida, I feel sure they will feel the bite of the same injustice as well.



http://news.yahoo.com/obama-accuses-donald-trump-campaigning-scapegoating-123439777--election.html

Obama accuses Donald Trump of campaigning by 'scapegoating'
Associated Press
January 12, 2016

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says Donald Trump is waging a White House campaign based on "simplistic solutions and scapegoating."

In an interview broadcast Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show, Obama said Trump "is putting out a message that has had adherents through history."

He charged that the billionaire real estate mogul and TV celebrity has been appealing to people's fears and uncertainty about the future.

"Talk to me if he wins," Obama told anchorman Matt Lauer, when asked how seriously Trump should be viewed.

When asked what he thinks about the possibility of a Trump presidency, Obama replied, "I can imagine it in a Saturday night skit."

But Obama also conceded in the interview that the country is more divided than he promised when he ran for the White House. When asked if he felt responsible for that, he said, "It's a regret."

Obama did say, however, that he "could not be prouder" of his accomplishments, citing among other things the country's emergence from the Great Recession of 2009.

Vice President Joe Biden, who also appeared on the show originating from the White House, said "I think it's possible" that Trump could win the presidency.

If that happens, Biden added, "I hope that he gets a lot more serious about the issues, a lot more serious about gaining knowledge about how this nation functions in foreign policy and domestic policy."

"I think he is divisive," the vice president said. ".. I think he would acknowledge he is very divisive ... and we always do poorly when we play to our fears and our differences."



"Talk to me if he wins," Obama told anchorman Matt Lauer, when asked how seriously Trump should be viewed. When asked what he thinks about the possibility of a Trump presidency, Obama replied, "I can imagine it in a Saturday night skit." …. Vice President Joe Biden, who also appeared on the show originating from the White House, said "I think it's possible" that Trump could win the presidency. If that happens, Biden added, "I hope that he gets a lot more serious about the issues, a lot more serious about gaining knowledge about how this nation functions in foreign policy and domestic policy."


As Biden said, it is possible that Trump could win, but I don’t believe he will. Too many people absolutely despise him, even in his own party. The truth is that Trump isn’t a true Republican, but an Independent, as Sanders classifies himself as well. A number of the Tea Party candidates are also not by the book party members. This election year is not only “divided,” it is a free for all in an Irish pub.

I’m less worried about division than about sheer radicalism and social chaos. I’m worried about people who have only fierce personal ambition and greed, such as Trump, without conscience, logic or civilization. Are we moving to a new civil war? This recent call for a constitutional convention from the right is, I think, a call to arms. I wonder how many Republican voters actually want a massive change in the way we live and govern – a theocracy, perhaps. There has been more rash talk of that kind in the last 10 years than in my whole lifetime, and it is concerning.



http://news.yahoo.com/refugee-workers-urge-germany-learn-past-mistakes-201908167.html?nhp=1

Refugee workers urge Germany to learn from past mistakes
AFP -- Frank Zeller
January 11, 2016

View Photos -- Iranian-born refugee aid worker Behshid Najafi (left) sits next to her colleague at the counselling centre she runs for female migrants in Cologne, on January 10, 2016 (AFP Photo/Frank Zeller)


Cologne (Germany) (AFP) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's mantra on Germany's record migrant influx has been "we can do it", which Cologne refugee worker Behshid Najafi heartily agrees with -- but would add a qualifying "if".

With 23 years of experience in helping migrant women navigate bureaucracy and find language courses, social welfare and jobs, Najafi says Germany, in its crash course on globalisation, must learn from the mistakes of the past.

"We can do it, as Mrs Merkel has said – IF. If we get affordable housing, legal certainty for refugees, education, jobs training, German courses –- those are just the main points," she said.

No-one, including Merkel, has pretended that taking in 1.1 million asylum-seekers last year alone would be easy.

But Najafi warned that Germany must learn lessons from decades past when waves of migrants were recruited for labour but largely excluded from mainstream society, trapped in immigrant 'ghettos' battling prejudice and red tape.

Iranian-born Najafi, 59, praised the new goodwill toward refugees but cautioned that after the initial rush to house and feed them, the hard and crucial work was only just beginning.

"Otherwise they will be pushed to the margins of society," she warned.

"We will not manage it if they just stay in sports halls, without work, without a future, without language skills.

"Seventy percent of them are men. I fear within a year many could turn to crime. The drug mafias and criminal gangs are just waiting to recruit them."

Such fears have flared in Germany, especially since New Year's Eve in Cologne when hundreds of women have said they were groped, harassed and robbed in a 1,000-strong crowd of men described as being of Arab and North African appearance. Two rapes have been reported.

The unprecedented scenes outside the city's iconic Gothic cathedral have raised deep-seated fears in Germany of more crime and racial tensions to come.

- 'Guest workers' -

Political leaders have said for the past decade that immigration was a key part of German society, long after this was self-evident to Europe's former colonial powers, or the United States and Australia.

Merkel has at times told her wavering nation that the global export power must accept more aspects of globalisation than a huge trade surplus.

Such realisations are welcome, but have been a long time coming, said Najafi, who runs Cologne's Agisra Information and Counselling Centre for Female Migrants and Refugees.

She said when post-war Germany first invited Turkish and other "guest workers" to fuel its economic miracle years, "Germany thought they'll come, work for a few years, and go home again.

"The migrants worked in factories during the day and lived in ghettos at night."

A Cologne Turkish community leader, Hakan Aydin, agreed and said "nothing changed for 20 years. Of course that caused problems.

"As one writer put it, Germany recruited labourers and got human beings."

When the recruitment programme stopped in 1979, many single workers wanted to stay and brought over their families.

"And Germany wasn't ready -- for the families, for putting their children into schools and child care," Najafi said.

- 'Mixed mood' -

German citizenship was based on blood lineage until as recently as 2000, when it started being awarded also to children of at least one parent with permanent residency status.

"It's an important point in integration: this picture of what does 'German' mean?" said Najafi's colleague Denise Klein.

"For many, it is still tied closely to this traditional idea of German blood, that you can only be German if you're white," she said, adding that this sense of exclusion cuts both ways.

"Working in schools, I was shocked to see that many girls, often second or third generation migrants and with German passports, do not identify themselves as Germans."

Over the past year, both women said they were heartened to witness a new "welcome culture" and unprecedented volunteer effort.

The big question now since the ugly start to 2016 has been, will the goodwill last?

After the New Year's Eve attacks, "there has been a mixed mood," said Aydin, 42.

"Many who supported the refugees may have worried, what have we done? Did we bring this problem upon ourselves?"



"We can do it, as Mrs Merkel has said – IF. If we get affordable housing, legal certainty for refugees, education, jobs training, German courses –- those are just the main points," she said. No-one, including Merkel, has pretended that taking in 1.1 million asylum-seekers last year alone would be easy. But Najafi warned that Germany must learn lessons from decades past when waves of migrants were recruited for labour but largely excluded from mainstream society, trapped in immigrant 'ghettos' battling prejudice and red tape. …. "Otherwise they will be pushed to the margins of society," she warned. "We will not manage it if they just stay in sports halls, without work, without a future, without language skills. "Seventy percent of them are men. I fear within a year many could turn to crime. The drug mafias and criminal gangs are just waiting to recruit them." …. The unprecedented scenes outside the city's iconic Gothic cathedral have raised deep-seated fears in Germany of more crime and racial tensions to come. …. Political leaders have said for the past decade that immigration was a key part of German society, long after this was self-evident to Europe's former colonial powers, or the United States and Australia. Merkel has at times told her wavering nation that the global export power must accept more aspects of globalisation than a huge trade surplus. ….


"Germany thought they'll come, work for a few years, and go home again. "The migrants worked in factories during the day and lived in ghettos at night." A Cologne Turkish community leader, Hakan Aydin, agreed and said "nothing changed for 20 years. Of course that caused problems. "As one writer put it, Germany recruited labourers and got human beings." Governments unfortunately do tend to care much more about trade and military strength than they do about human level needs of all kinds. Man’s inhumanity to man in a highly competitive world is the problem everywhere since 9/11, and it produces amorphous anger and a kind of insanity in the abused populace. I’m saying 9/11 because the situation does seem worse now, but the opening of the nation of Israel in the last 100 years or so has been an equal cause of turmoil, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the (so shocking!) election of a black president -- no matter how well qualified and gentlemanly he is. As a result of some of these things, not to mention the Great Recession of 2008, there is an increasingly dangerous state of mind among the human race right now, including across the Western world. It’s not unlike the periods before WWI and WWII.

One specific kind of problem is happening to Europe as well as to other long established and highly developed parts of the world – a new kind of “barbarian” is being created by the downfall of stable governments all over the Middle East and Africa. It’s disturbingly similar to the “Mongol hoardes” pouring into Europe when Rome’s power could no longer hold their civilization together and a strong new social structure of kingships was not yet in place. Order simply broke down. That’s why those misguided and angry men in Cologne last week were from regions of disrupted governments and societies, which “civilized” Europe tends to disdain. They are jobless, unsuitable for many European jobs, angry and afraid. They are striking out wildly in all directions. In this case it was aimed toward women, the favorite scapegoat of the Islamic world in too many cases.

Uncivilized behavior toward women of the kind that happened in Cologne, though on a lesser scale, is not at all a new phenomenon, even in the USA, of course, but it is part of some disturbing patterns including a newly emerging fascism and other threats to long established nations, not the least of which is economic failure and personal distress. Having no place to live and nothing to eat is very, very distressing. In some people that will produce sadness, and in others it will produce rage. Just today an article about a gang rape trial in Brooklyn, NY is featured in the news. Many poor people of color in the US are reacting in rage. Harassment from police officers doesn’t help. The actions they committed, however, are inexcusable. Those attackers were very young men ranging from 14 to 17 years old. They’re nothing but street gangs who have dipped into adult level crime, but it is in my opinion right that such criminals should be tried as adults. They are committing adult level sin.

The rash of rapes in India in recent years is another example. One of those boys who raped the woman on a bus was also a teenager, and all of them were no older than twenty or so. Young men are being allowed to grow into sexual maturity without any proper training in right and wrong. This is disastrous to our culture. How can people like these face the threatening future of global warming, possible race war, and increasing economic stresses with any sort of intelligence?

One of the most disturbing parts of the situation in Cologne, however, is that at least one witness stated she saw a number of men “giving orders” to others, who then merged into the crowd and assaulted women, giving the impression of some organization and instigation. The mere fact that 1000 men had showed up to that location to join in the rape, robbery and assault looks like it was planned and executed, probably through the Internet like the ISIS radicalizations. Rape as a form of warfare, unfortunately, is also nothing new. I just really hate to see the world apparently breaking apart nowadays into chaos and what I can only call evil.

I grew up in high school being taught about America as “the melting pot” which is a beautiful thing which engenders progress and greater wealth, with the interactions of one group to another being carefully idealized -- so the textbook would make pretty reading. Unfortunately, that was “the American Dream” to me, rather than owning several houses, a garage full of cars and a yacht or two. The Dream, not unlike Martin Luther King’s Dream, was one of peace and love, but above all, justice. That has not happened in the US to anything like the level that we need for it to. There is much too much conflict between people and groups for a stable and idyllic society.

Of course the world has always been like this – it’s how PEOPLE are. The lovely age of knighthood and noblesse oblige was a fiction. The people of that time were divided up into small warring groups under one ambitious duke or lord or another. It was pretty much constant carnage, and knights were much like the hired guns of the American West. They went from group to group to follow the money – some overlords were better providers than others, after all. And I have no doubt that many of the “courtly love” relationships were in fact, rape, especially when a young woman who was not wealthy was involved. Maybe one of the most important things we need to do is to cast aside our illusions.

When poor migrants who don’t speak the language, who look different and behave differently, flood into any city and country without decent affordable housing or even enough food -- well, the result will be massive hostility and to some level urban warfare. That is what that mob scene of 1000 dark skinned men from a basically primitive society appears to me to be, and that probably won’t be the last time something like that happens. I salute Angela Merkel for wanting to follow the higher moral path and try to incorporate them, however. I hope that Germany can work the situation out.