Does Moussaoui Deserve the Death Penalty?

The jury in the Zacarious Moussaoui trial will resume deliberations on Monday to decide whether he deserves the death penalty or life in prison. Elizabeth Hayden weighs in with her opinion in the Boston Globe, which might surprise you considering that she lost her husband when United flight 175 slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

[Hat tip to Abi at Update America/604]

If anyone is entitled to revenge, it is Elizabeth Hayden. But here is her view of a Moussaoui death sentence:

Does Zacarious Moussaoui deserve the death penalty? Absolutely...Should Moussaoui receive the death penalty? Absolutely not. [...]

It is a human response to be enraged against those who plotted to take the lives of so many innocent victims. To strike back is an instinctual human reaction toward such an outrageous violation against mankind. Yet to impose the death penalty diminishes our own humanity. Do we want to characterize ourselves as a nation committed to pure vengeance with nothing more to be gained? For we surely cannot think that imposing the death penalty will act as a deterrent against other terrorists. Cloaked in the rationalization of carrying forth the will of God, the terrorists let their fear and hatred consume their last ounce of humanity. Let us not follow in their footsteps.

Let us instead distance ourselves from the evil wrapped in their warped behavior. Let us maintain a strand of humanity that will bond us to the value of life. Let us define ourselves as principled people not acting out of fear and hatred, but a people who under the most challenging of circumstances can transcend evil and prevail with reason and justice. Let us strive to have love for one another.

What an amazing person! Elizabeth Hayden endures a personal tragedy of immense proportions, yet she can find it within herself to extend an act of grace and seek a better direction for our country. We should all be moved to act upon her words: "Let us define ourselves as principled people..."

Oh, Those Wascally Wabbits

The morality police are at it again. Blogger John LaPlante, libertarian-leaning conservative at the Detroit News, brings us the latest controversy about religion and public life:

Is the Easter Bunny an offensive endorsement of Christianity?

In, ahem, Saint Paul, Minnesota, a bureaucrat gone wild has ordered that a sign reading "Happy Easter" be removed from city hall. And that Easter bunny has to go, too. He’s much too dangerous as an expression of the Christian religion.

Perhaps in retaliation, or perhaps just to have some fun, somebody has launched a display of peeps in the city hall. A statue in the building is called "Visions of Peace." With the junk food collection nearby, it is now called "Visions of Peeps."

Maybe it's time for a sit-in: "All we are saying / is give peeps a chance.”

Exactly! These zealots are taking the fun out of traditions children have enjoyed for centuries. As my favorite Detroit News blogger Libby Spencer said:

No one is more concerned about the separation of church and state than I am, but let's leave the Easter Bunny alone. Last I looked there wasn't a Church of the Large Rabbit Bearing Colored Eggs and Chocolate Bunnies.

Set my peep-les free.

Connecticut Stands Up To The Beast

Connecticut is the latest state to stand up to Wal-Mart. They're threatening to exclude Wal-Mart pharmacies from the state insurance network - which covers 188,000 state employees - if the retailer fails to ensure distribution of the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

[The dispute began last month when] ...a Wal-Mart spokesman said the chain would maintain its "conscientious objection" policy, which allows Wal-Mart or Sam's Club pharmacists who do not feel comfortable dispensing a prescription to refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy. The policy conforms to guidelines of the American Pharmaceutical Association and is similar to the policies of several other major pharmacy chains. [...]

[State comptroller] Wyman responded to the company in a letter that she needs "an assurance that there will be someone on duty in each of your pharmacies willing to dispense Plan B." If there is no one on duty, Wyman wants specific information from Wal-Mart on how the company would ensure the patient's ability to receive the drug. [...]

A Wal-Mart spokesman said Thursday that the company could comply with the state's requirements by referring the customer to a nearby pharmacy, or by having the customer's doctor phone the prescription in somewhere else.

But Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said that sending patients to another pharmacy is not acceptable.

"They have to make the drug available at the pharmacy where the patient goes," Blumenthal said. "Patients can't be shuttled from one pharmacy to another."

The pharmacy - not the individual pharmacist - has an obligation to provide the medication "within a reasonable period of time - no later than an hour," Blumenthal said. That can be accomplished by having another pharmacist on call who could provide the medication, he said.

Steve Jensen, Wyman's spokesman, agreed. "If there's only one person on duty [at Wal-Mart], they failed that customer," he said. "We want assurance that they will have someone on duty to dispense the drug."

Good going, Connecticut. I can appreciate the fact that Wal-Mart allows employees to claim "conscientious objection" status, but they should also treat their paying customers with the same consideration. I don't know if Wal-Mart sells beer or wine (I won't shop at the chain), but I bet if a cashier refused to ring up a case of Killian the store would quickly find another employee to step in and complete the sale.

Another Crazy Attack on Free Speech

The moral police are at it again - and I do mean police. A woman in Georgia recently received a $100 ticket because she had what the officer felt was a lewd bumpersticker on her car.

Denise Grier is a nurse at Emory University hospital in Georgia.

On March 10, she was driving home from dinner when a Dekalb County police officer pulled her over.

“At least initially, I was just surprised because I hadn’t done anything wrong,” she says.

“When he approached the car, he had his hand on his weapon, and I was in my nurse’s uniform with a stethoscope around my neck. He asked for my license, and then said, ‘Any idea why I stopped you.’

“I said no.

“ ‘You have a lewd decal on your car.’ ”

Grier says she immediately thought that one of her kids had put something nasty on her bumper as a joke.

“But then he mentioned the Bush sticker,” she says. That one says: “I’m tired of all the BUSHIT.” (This story was first reported by Joe Johnson of the Athens Banner-Herald [1].)

Grier says she told the officer it wasn’t lewd, and that it was clearly a political statement. When he insisted it was lewd, she said, “I’m not going to discuss this any further. Just give me the ticket.” Which he did.

Under “offense,” it says: “Lewd decals.”

The ticket is for $100.

Grier's court date is April 18 and the ACLU is representing her because, as Grier herself says, “It’s not just a Democrat/Republican issue. Y’all need to get beyond that. It’s my right to speak, and yours.”

UPDATE: Hat tip to The Impolitic for news and comments about this case: "I'm glad to see the judge threw the case out, even though it doesn't compensate the victim of this bogus arrest for her time and aggravation. I'm not a litigious soul but I think she should now sue the stupid cop for false arrest."

Treasury Secretary's Snow Job

Falling middle class living standards have people unhappy, but the situation is improving according to Treasury Secretary John Snow(job).

"Look at the Harvard economics faculty, look at doctors over here at George Washington University . . . look at baseball players, look at football players," Snow told the Journal. "We've moved into a star system for some reason which is not fully understood."

The market, Snow explained, is rewarding the nation's most productive people with the highest compensation. And the rising tide, he argued, is lifting all boats.

Really? Not according to Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com who believes "that while hourly wages show some gains, higher-paid workers are pulling up the average. Wages for lower-income earners still trail inflation."

A great analysis of why wage gains aren't trickling down comes from Paul Krugman, who explains the snow job behind Snow's words:

I find it helpful to illustrate what's going on with a hypothetical example: say 10 middle-class guys are sitting in a bar. Then the richest guy leaves, and Bill Gates walks in. Because the richest guy in the bar is now much richer than before, the average income in the bar soars. But the income of the nine men who aren't Bill Gates hasn't increased, and no amount of repeating "But average income is up!" will convince them that they're better off.

RFID Tags Vulnerable to Viruses

The Mayor of Simpleton recently reported that RFID tags are being used by employers to monitor employees movements (raising privacy issues), millions of pets have the chips embedded under their skin, and Wal-Mart requires its top 100 suppliers to apply RFID labels to all shipments. Now comes a story about the dark side of RFID tags: Psst. Your Shiny New Passport Has A Computer Virus.

Basically, the authors say in their 10-page paper that RFID systems can be exploited; like all software, there's definite potential for vulnerabilities to be found and exploited in the software back end of the RFID system. [...]

It's interesting that the authors did not announce any specific vulnerabilities within current RFID software - they didn't even use current RFID software, they created their own. What they were able to do with their own software - and this is their point - was to demonstrate that if a vulnerability exists within the RFID software, that vulnerability could be exploited and used to inject malicious code into the back-end database. The authors were able to create an RFID virus, and previously, that was considered impossible.

Think of RFID viruses as virus-infected e-mail - same principle. As the e-mail moves from user to user, it infects files or databases that come into contact with it. An RFID-virus-infected piece of luggage, for example, could infect RFID-reader software at each airport terminal that scans the RFID label, thus crippling hundreds of airport databases in a few short hours. The same would be true of an infected RFID-enabled passport, a type of document that's set to take effect in the United States in October. Either of these events could shut down the entire system, create longer lines, and possibly delay flights. [...]

The RFID report authors also worry that corporations and governments are hastily considering merging whole databases behind RFID technology. [...] Shortly after the September 11 attacks, former Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed a megadatabase in the United States combining content from the Justice Department, the State Department, the IRS, and even health insurance companies and credit bureaus. Fortunately, Congress balked at the idea. Now, imagine if someone working on the U.S. Passport RFID system becomes disgruntled and knows how to exploit a buffer overflow on the system when it comes online this October. It's one thing to cripple or compromise the State Department's database, but it's another when you start spreading the mess to credit bureaus and such.

So what can be done to prevent problems? Technology experts have developed security precautions; however, they also point out there is little oversight of RFID systems, and often no testing requirements in place for these systems. That sure doesn't make me feel safe and secure.

Back to Reality

Our trip to England was enjoyable in spite of the fact the weather was cold and blustery (very similar to the weather here in Michigan). People kept commenting that they were having the coldest spring in 25 years. It didn't rain though, so that was a plus.

I'm still playing catch up here at home, but I wanted to post a couple of pictures from our trip. The first one is the Tower Bridge over the Thames as taken from the Thameslink train. (We rode the train after we landed at the airport to get to our destination in Bedford, which is about 70 miles north of London.)

The second picture shows my husband posing with a very congenial Bobby. In fact, I didn't meet one English person who wasn't congenial and helpful, which really stood out in contrast to some surly people we had to deal with before we even left the country. Whatever happened to American manners and courtesy, and why have so many of us become aggressive and rude? I miss the days when people treated each other with kindness and respect - even under difficult circumstances.

One final observation, many people I spoke to in England voiced their displeasure with George Bush for dragging their country into the mess in the Middle East, yet they felt the U.S. should resolve the problem by dropping a couple of nuclear bombs over there and just wiping the Muslims off the face of the earth. I found that unnerving, especially from people who live in a country that experienced the death and destruction of bombs firsthand. How does that make them any different from the terrorists? How does killing innocent people solve the problem?

Anyway, I just wanted to share these experiences with everyone. I'll be posting something new very soon.

Mental Health Tune-Up

This will be my last post till sometime after the 22nd. My hubby and I are flying to England this week to visit friends and relax a little. I'm also getting a mental health tune-up according to my husband. He thinks the internet and blogs are somehow responsible for some of the affectations I've recently developed; such as mumbling under my breath, twitching my head and blinking incessantly. Silly man, as if reading about George Bush and the other gypsies, tramps and thieves could have that effect on anyone!

In the meantime, I have some more Wal-Mart links to share since my last post. Midwestern Progressive pointed me toward conservative Kathleen Parker and her recent column about Charles Fishman's new book, The Wal-Mart Effect. (Coincidentally, Fishman is also the author of the two articles I shared below.) Parker points out that "Wal-Mart isn't just a company. It's a global market force - a nation unto itself."

Ah well, we say, so it goes in love, war and business. Competition is the engine that drives a capitalist society. But Fishman argues that Wal-Mart's power and scale hurt capitalism by strangling competition.

"It's not free-market capitalism," he says. "Wal-Mart is running the market. Choice is an illusion."

Fishman believes we - the consumers - are responsible for this lack of choice. "We vote with our wallets, and we're the ones who choose Wal-Mart over local stores. Wal-Mart, in that sense, is the ultimate model of democracy."

An example of just how much power Wal-Mart yields was provided by the Mayor of Simpleton:

Wal-Mart and the United States Department of Defense have published requirements [5] that their vendors place RFID tags on all shipments to improve supply chain management. [6]. Due to the size of these two organizations, their RFID mandates impact thousands of companies worldwide. The deadlines have been extended several times because many vendors face significant difficulties implementing RFID systems. [...]

Since January, 2005, Wal-Mart has required its top 100 suppliers to apply RFID labels to all shipments.

Wal-Mart AND the US Department of Defense mandate the use of the RFID tags? That's a lot of clout. Or, as His Honor says, "Wal-Mart says "jump", and the market asks "how high?"

Finally, here's a link to the Fast Company Blog where I learned a couple other interesting tidbits of information from Charles Fishman. Wal-Mart's frugality extends beyond lawn chairs in the V.P.'s office.

Last fall, addressing a conference of American magazine editors in Puerto Rico, Scott [CEO] finished his speech with a little story. He said Wal-Mart staff members who travel on business for the company -- literally thousands are on the road all week, Monday to Thursday -- are asked to take the pens from their hotel rooms and bring them back to the home office, to use as office supplies. [...]

They ask their employees to systematically collect the free pens from hotels and use them for work. Wal-Mart could easily be harvesting 200 dozen free pens a week -- 125,000 pens a year, or more. The company might be saving $10,000 or more on the cost of office pens. [...]

But the thing Lee Scott doesn't understand is how weird a practice that is. When I tell that story at public events, people are amused and appalled. Most of us would happily offer a friend -- or a visiting Wal-Mart executive -- a pen. [...] Indeed, shouldn't Wal-Mart buy its own pens? And heck, if you employ 1.3 million Americans, I'm betting the nation's pen makers will give you a good price.

Last, but not least, check out this shocking tidbit:

Wal-Mart's U.S. employee turnover is 50 percent. [Emphasis mine.] That means that 650,000 Wal-Mart employees quit in the U.S. every year -- Wal-Mart needs to hire 12,000 employees a week just to keep its current stores staffed -- 12,000 people a week!

What an incredibly high turnover rate. It not only costs Wal-Mart millions of dollars each year in hiring and training, but it also speaks volumes about them as an employer. The only real happy faces at Wal-Mart are apparently the ones on those bright yellow signs!

The Other Side of Wal-Mart

I haven't posted anything on Wal-Mart for awhile now, so I thought I'd pass along two interesting articles I came across discussing the relationship between Wal-Mart and their vendors. The first article, The Wal-Mart You Don't Know, is from December 2003 and it discusses what happened to Vlasic, Huffy, Levi Strauss and other companies when they decided to do business with the Beast of Bentonville.

The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line? [...]

Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every day low prices." It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart.

The second article, The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart, is about Jim Wier, CEO of Simplicity, the company that bought out Snapper lawnmowers in 2002, and his decision to stop selling Snapper mowers through Wal-Mart stores.

Selling Snapper lawn mowers at Wal-Mart wasn't just incompatible with Snapper's future--Wier thought it was hazardous to Snapper's health. Snapper is known in the outdoor-equipment business not for huge volume but for quality, reliability, durability. A well-maintained Snapper lawn mower will last decades; many customers buy the mowers as adults because their fathers used them when they were kids. But Snapper lawn mowers are not cheap, any more than a Viking range is cheap. The value isn't in the price, it's in the performance and the longevity. [...]

Wier is too judicious to describe it this way, but he looked into a future of supplying lawn mowers and snow blowers to Wal-Mart and saw a whirlpool of lower prices, collapsing profitability, offshore manufacturing, and the gradual but irresistible corrosion of the very qualities for which Snapper was known. Jim Wier looked into the future and saw a death spiral.

Read the article yourself. It's a fascinating look into the behind the scenes world of Wal-Mart. When Wier went to Bentonville to end his relationship with the retailer, he had to sit on a lawn chair in the vice-president's office. Wal-Mart apparently maximizes profits by cutting out frivolous office furniture too!

Also, surprisingly, Wier says, "I believe Wal-Mart has done a great service to the country in many ways. They offer reasonably good products at very good prices, and they've streamlined the entire distribution system. And it may be that along the way, they've driven some people out of business who shouldn't have been driven out of business."

Does he have any regrets? "I could go to my grave, and my tombstone could say, 'Here lies the dumbest CEO ever to live. He chose not to sell to Wal-Mart.'"

The Tide Has Turned Against Bush

Republican blogger Bostonian Exile and others like him have abandoned their support of President Bush, swing and independent voters are abandoning the GOP, and this past week veteran Joseph W. DuRocher returned his Lieutenant’s shoulder bars and Navy wings to President Bush, and enclosed the following letter:

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As a young man I was honored to serve our nation as a commissioned officer and helicopter pilot in the U. S. Navy. Before me in WWII, my father defended the country spending two years in the Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Hornet (CV-14). We were patriots sworn “to protect and defend”. Today I conclude that you have dishonored our service and the Constitution and principles of our oath. My dad was buried with full military honors so I cannot act for him. But for myself, I return enclosed the symbols of my years of service: the shoulder boards of my rank and my Naval Aviator’s wings.

Until your administration, I believed it was inconceivable that the United States would ever initiate an aggressive and preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to us. Until your administration, I thought it was impossible for our nation to take hundreds of persons into custody without provable charges of any kind, and to “disappear” them into holes like Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram. Until your administration, in my wildest legal fantasy I could not imagine a U.S. Attorney General seeking to justify torture or a President first stating his intent to veto an anti-torture law, and then adding a “signing statement” that he intends to ignore such law as he sees fit. I do not want these things done in my name.

As a citizen, a patriot, a parent and grandparent, a lawyer and law teacher I am left with such a feeling of loss and helplessness. I think of myself as a good American and I ask myself what can I do when I see the face of evil? Illegal and immoral war, torture and confinement for life without trial have never been part of our Constitutional tradition. But my vote has become meaningless because I live in a safe district drawn by your political party. My congressman is unresponsive to my concerns because his time is filled with lobbyists’ largess. Protests are limited to your “free speech zones”, out of sight of the parade. Even speaking openly is to risk being labeled un-American, pro-terrorist or anti-troops. And I am a disciplined pacifist, so any violent act is out of the question.

Nevertheless, to remain silent is to let you think I approve or support your actions. I do not. So, I am saddened to give up my wings and bars. They were hard won and my parents and wife were as proud as I was when I earned them over forty years ago. But I hate the torture and death you have caused more than I value their symbolism. Giving them up makes me cry for my beloved country.

I suspect more people of courage like Mr. DuRocher will be speaking out in the weeks ahead. The tide has turned against this administration.