Excellent Links
Death Penalty News
New Jersey has banned the death penalty!
In signing the bill, Gov. Jon Corzine called it a “momentous day” and made the Garden State the first state to ban capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976.
Corzine on Sunday commuted the sentences of eight men sitting on the state’s death row. They will now serve life in prison without parole, according to the governor’s office.
“It’s a day of progress for the state of New Jersey and for the millions of people across our nation and around the globe who reject the death penalty as a moral or practical response to the grievous, even heinous, crime of murder,” Corzine said.
Wonderful news. Can’t wait to see the zealots on the Right (to life?) side react!
A Good Cause
There are thousands of readers here, so it is worth a shot. Can you help Michael?
**Update** Not that you need a holiday to do good for people, but I think this is a good time of year to get tested to see if you would be a suitable donor for someone who needs you. Michael is one case but, as you are aware, there are tens of thousands of Michaels. One of the coolest things I have ever done is to put myself on a bone marrow registry. I have a fairly rare blood type, and I figured it would be a great idea. No calls yet, but I’ll go wherever I need to go if that call comes. That would be the coolest gift I could ever give someone.
Give A Hand
If you have a few extra bucks, go give Gary Farber a hand.
Tortured Hypotheticals
Sebastian Holsclaw at ObWi responds to Pattterico’s torture hypothetical (that many of you brought up in the comments) here and here. The most important part, of course, is precisely what I have stated over and over until I am blue in the face:
Let me say that again. Bush’s administration has tortured men who were factually innocent.
Not men who got off on technicalities. Factually Innocent.
Your hypothetical demands that the government be CERTAIN of the following things:
This man is who we think he is.
This man knows what we think he knows.
No non-torture technique will work.
Patterico, you work with the government. You know for a fact that it gets things wrong all the time. Even when we go through the huge and complicated process of a trial, it gets things wrong. And we aren’t talking anything like a trial here. In reality, we are talking about torturing *suspects*. That is not a power to be given to the government.
Your hypothetical doesn’t speak to the question of what the policy of our government ought to be, because no important part of the hypothetical actually has anything to do with the empirical reality of governmental torture. You pride yourself at not being distracted by stated intentions which have bad consequences in areas like rent control, housing policy, and education policy. Don’t let Bush wave the national security flag and make you forget everything you know about how the government actually operates.
Following Patterico’s lead, I have my own hypothetical:
If a right wing blogger is about to write another stupid post attempting to justify the use of torture, would it be ok for me to run over and kick them in the junk, rendering them unable to blog?
Foodie Tips From Anthony Bourdain
Just got back from seeing Anthony Bourdain in in the city, and it was an absolute treat. He is every bit as much fun as you would imagine him to be. Lots of good and useful stuff in the talk, but two stick in my mind:
1. Truffle oil is the ketchup of the newly affluent.
2. To find good places to eat, provoke the nerds.#2 showed a remarkably precise understanding of the internet. The question at hand was how to find good restaurants, and his answer was to take the city you want to go to and just google up some restaurant names that serve the dish you’re after. Then got to chowhound or another foodie site, and rather than asking about restaurants, you put up an enthusiastic post talking about how you just had the best whatever you’re looking for at one of these restaurants.
At that point, what drivingblind likes to call the nerdfury will begin. Posters will show up from nowhere to shower you with disdain, tell you how that place used to be good but has now totally sold out and – most important to your quest – will tell you where you would have gone if you were not some sort of mouth breathing water buffalo.
The post title is also pretty funny.
***Update***
Hat tip to John via IM, who clearly neglected to tell me that he read about this at Jim Henley’s. Tsk.
Also, don’t waste any more votes on us at the Webbies. As per Michael’s orders, vote for the Jawa guys instead.
Jim Henley Hates America
Watch as Jim Henley uses history to prove that he hates America:
Absent a terrorist assault on Turkish territory from within an American protectorate, the resolution would be merely galling. Barely 20 years before the 1915-17 ethnic cleansing of Turkey’s Armenians, the US was still wrapping up its own comprehensive forced march of its indigenous enemies. The spectacular arrogance of the Armenian genocide resolution would probably be a transitory offense, one more in a long example of America’s “do as we say, not as we do” pedagogy to the world. The bizarre notion that the American government has to render judgment on every historical event would still count as a warning, to pretty much everyone, but not necessarily a pressing one.
When will the leftist assaults on this country stop? I bet he only wrote that because he hates Bush.