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Post by Maggie on Dec 12, 2005 16:12:03 GMT -5
You political ratings worshiping ass-kissing piece of sh*t........
Curl up with this tonight:
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
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Post by Maggie on Dec 12, 2005 16:32:06 GMT -5
I think the Presidents Call to Service award that Tookie got should be read on the news over and over again.......
I want all the god-fearing christians that back Bush and his bible thumping cronies to take a nice long look.....
HYPOCRITS!!!!!!!
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Post by kathy on Dec 12, 2005 16:48:42 GMT -5
Oh Maggie, I am so very very sorry!! Please consider yourself hugged. Kathy
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sdl
New Arrival
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Post by sdl on Dec 12, 2005 17:25:32 GMT -5
Bush probably told him what to do...
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Post by kathy on Dec 12, 2005 17:35:36 GMT -5
I would imagine that Bush told him if he granted clemency that he would take his highway funding money away! That threat has been used over and over again for all sorts of things.
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Post by CCADP on Dec 12, 2005 19:12:43 GMT -5
Bill Press called him a "Girlie Man" and a coward on CNN.
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Post by skyloom on Dec 15, 2005 9:16:45 GMT -5
Bill Press called him a "Girlie Man" and a coward on CNN. The Governor just has no idea ... Sneering at Redemption Why Arnold Killed Tookie by Dave Zirin; December 14, 2005 In the end, we can only assume the decision wasn't so "agonizing" after all. Last night Stan Tookie Williams was legally lynched by the state of California, at the behest of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who denied Williams' appeal for clemency. The Governor deemed that a man who had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times and brokered gang truces from Newark to South Central was not worthy to walk and breathe among us. Stan's case for clemency was so compelling it was articulated by people from Desmond Tutu to Snoop Dogg, and yet, watching Schwarzenegger in action has been to observe the nexus of cold-hearted political calculation and cowardice. Williams' Attorney John Harris challenged the governor to meet with Tookie, saying to the San Francisco Chronicle, "It's impossible to me to believe that if you had met Stanley Williams and spent time with him, that you would not believe in his personal redemption." But that would require a courage the Governor has never demonstrated. Unlike the movie tough guy always ready to look his victims in the eye -- a quip at the ready -- before shooting, stabbing, or beheading them, Arnold made his decision at safe remove, hanging out this weekend at his son's soccer game, his face a waxy mask of carefree detachment, while Tookie's supporters organized, marched, chanted and prayed themselves hoarse. When it finally came time for Arnold to announce his personal judgment that Stan Williams should die, tragedy became farce. The Governor's office released an ugly scandalous diatribe that qualifies as nothing less than hate-speech. As he - or his script doctor - wrote, "The dedication of Williams' book Life in Prison casts significant doubt on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998 several years after Williams' redemptive experience. Specifically the book is dedicated to Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths, who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars. The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders including the killing of law enforcement. But the inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems." For Tookie, all of these folks, from Mandela, to Malcolm, to Assata, are one and the same: people of color who strove for liberation in the darkest of circumstances. For Schwarzenegger, the whole lot is the same as well: people who are his political enemies because they refused to be broken. Notice the singling out of George Jackson, author of Soledad Brother, a book for which there is no evidence Schwarzenegger has so much as skimmed. Jackson was someone who despite being framed for his political activism never stopped organizing. That is the person Schwarzenegger wants to kill by executing Tookie. Later, Arnold passes judgment on Williams' very redemption, writing, "Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise? . . . Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption." In other words, because Williams has consistently defended his own innocence, he should die. But as Tookie once said, "Many people expect me to apologize for crimes I didn't commit--just to save my life. Of course I want to live, but not by having to lie." While not surprising Arnold did not have the courage to face Tookie and spew this nonsense to his face, it certainly would have been incredible theatre. In fact, it would have been something of a reunion. In the late 1970s, Arnold and Tookie, about fifty life times ago, admired each other's biceps on Muscle Beach in Venice, California. "Your arms are like thighs!" Arnold grinned. Amazing the difference thirty years makes. In that time, Arnold rode his muscles and Teutonic good looks from Hollywood stardom to the Governor's mansion. Yes, he had a spotty past including many allegations of sexual assault and drug abuse. But he passed that off as youthful indiscretion, claimed that he had changed, and a pliant media were happy to believe that Arnold was worthy of forgiveness and redemption. Tookie, like Arnold, also fashioned an unlikely political career. But his began not with Hollywood riches but as the target of the tough-on-crime laws of the Clinton-Bush years which saw the nation's prison population balloon from more than one to two million. He was convicted of murder in a manner that would make Strom Thurmond proud, called a "Bengal tiger" by a prosecutor who engineered an all-white jury to make sure the "Crip founder" found San Quentin. While Arnold cozied up to the Bush and Kennedy clans, Tookie read dictionaries in solitary, wrote letters to gang kids in LA, and became that most dangerous of political beings: a Black leader in racist America. In one of his final interviews he said, "So, as long as I have breath, I will continue to do what I can to proliferate a positive message throughout this country and abroad to youths everywhere, of all colors or gender and geographical area, and I will continue to do what I can to help. I want to be a part of the, you know, the solution." Now another tragedy, along with the murders of Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, has taken place because Stan Tookie has been put to death. But the tragedy is not theirs to bear alone. Tonight children are being born to mothers without health insurance, in neighborhoods politicians don"t enter without SWAT teams, news cameras, and latex gloves. The political class has already branded these kids as human waste. But many of them could have found another path, because Stanley Tookie Williams would have been there to intervene in their lives and show another way. Now it's up to those of us who stood with Tookie to keep on pushing. This is Schwarzenegger's "mission accomplished" moment for his right wing, pro-death base. But his "mission" will fail. He is part of a 21st century set of rulers who have repeatedly shown, whether in Baghdad or New Orleans, that they are unfit to rule. Their brutality will be met with resistance in the tradition of Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson... and Stanley Tookie Williams. www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9327§ionID=72
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Post by kathy on Dec 15, 2005 11:38:42 GMT -5
Bill Press called him a "Girlie Man" and a coward on CNN. The Governor just has no idea ... Sneering at Redemption Why Arnold Killed Tookie by Dave Zirin; December 14, 2005 In the end, we can only assume the decision wasn't so "agonizing" after all. Last night Stan Tookie Williams was legally lynched by the state of California, at the behest of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who denied Williams' appeal for clemency. The Governor deemed that a man who had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times and brokered gang truces from Newark to South Central was not worthy to walk and breathe among us. Stan's case for clemency was so compelling it was articulated by people from Desmond Tutu to Snoop Dogg, and yet, watching Schwarzenegger in action has been to observe the nexus of cold-hearted political calculation and cowardice. Williams' Attorney John Harris challenged the governor to meet with Tookie, saying to the San Francisco Chronicle, "It's impossible to me to believe that if you had met Stanley Williams and spent time with him, that you would not believe in his personal redemption." But that would require a courage the Governor has never demonstrated. Unlike the movie tough guy always ready to look his victims in the eye -- a quip at the ready -- before shooting, stabbing, or beheading them, Arnold made his decision at safe remove, hanging out this weekend at his son's soccer game, his face a waxy mask of carefree detachment, while Tookie's supporters organized, marched, chanted and prayed themselves hoarse. When it finally came time for Arnold to announce his personal judgment that Stan Williams should die, tragedy became farce. The Governor's office released an ugly scandalous diatribe that qualifies as nothing less than hate-speech. As he - or his script doctor - wrote, "The dedication of Williams' book Life in Prison casts significant doubt on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998 several years after Williams' redemptive experience. Specifically the book is dedicated to Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths, who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars. The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders including the killing of law enforcement. But the inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems." For Tookie, all of these folks, from Mandela, to Malcolm, to Assata, are one and the same: people of color who strove for liberation in the darkest of circumstances. For Schwarzenegger, the whole lot is the same as well: people who are his political enemies because they refused to be broken. Notice the singling out of George Jackson, author of Soledad Brother, a book for which there is no evidence Schwarzenegger has so much as skimmed. Jackson was someone who despite being framed for his political activism never stopped organizing. That is the person Schwarzenegger wants to kill by executing Tookie. Later, Arnold passes judgment on Williams' very redemption, writing, "Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise? . . . Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption." In other words, because Williams has consistently defended his own innocence, he should die. But as Tookie once said, "Many people expect me to apologize for crimes I didn't commit--just to save my life. Of course I want to live, but not by having to lie." While not surprising Arnold did not have the courage to face Tookie and spew this nonsense to his face, it certainly would have been incredible theatre. In fact, it would have been something of a reunion. In the late 1970s, Arnold and Tookie, about fifty life times ago, admired each other's biceps on Muscle Beach in Venice, California. "Your arms are like thighs!" Arnold grinned. Amazing the difference thirty years makes. In that time, Arnold rode his muscles and Teutonic good looks from Hollywood stardom to the Governor's mansion. Yes, he had a spotty past including many allegations of sexual assault and drug abuse. But he passed that off as youthful indiscretion, claimed that he had changed, and a pliant media were happy to believe that Arnold was worthy of forgiveness and redemption. Tookie, like Arnold, also fashioned an unlikely political career. But his began not with Hollywood riches but as the target of the tough-on-crime laws of the Clinton-Bush years which saw the nation's prison population balloon from more than one to two million. He was convicted of murder in a manner that would make Strom Thurmond proud, called a "Bengal tiger" by a prosecutor who engineered an all-white jury to make sure the "Crip founder" found San Quentin. While Arnold cozied up to the Bush and Kennedy clans, Tookie read dictionaries in solitary, wrote letters to gang kids in LA, and became that most dangerous of political beings: a Black leader in racist America. In one of his final interviews he said, "So, as long as I have breath, I will continue to do what I can to proliferate a positive message throughout this country and abroad to youths everywhere, of all colors or gender and geographical area, and I will continue to do what I can to help. I want to be a part of the, you know, the solution." Now another tragedy, along with the murders of Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, has taken place because Stan Tookie has been put to death. But the tragedy is not theirs to bear alone. Tonight children are being born to mothers without health insurance, in neighborhoods politicians don"t enter without SWAT teams, news cameras, and latex gloves. The political class has already branded these kids as human waste. But many of them could have found another path, because Stanley Tookie Williams would have been there to intervene in their lives and show another way. Now it's up to those of us who stood with Tookie to keep on pushing. This is Schwarzenegger's "mission accomplished" moment for his right wing, pro-death base. But his "mission" will fail. He is part of a 21st century set of rulers who have repeatedly shown, whether in Baghdad or New Orleans, that they are unfit to rule. Their brutality will be met with resistance in the tradition of Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson... and Stanley Tookie Williams. www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9327§ionID=72WOW Very Well said!!!
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sdl
New Arrival
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Post by sdl on Dec 15, 2005 13:21:52 GMT -5
As I have said before, Arnold's father was a Nazi...like father, like son.
There is a story I've several times from unrelated sources...that Arnold got into a disagreement with either a black actor or a black crew member on the set...came to blows and since then, no black will work with him...
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Post by smoke52020 on Dec 15, 2005 22:02:42 GMT -5
deleted by Suzanne
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sdl
New Arrival
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Post by sdl on Dec 15, 2005 22:18:55 GMT -5
You mean the right "political" decison..after all, he has to do what Bush tells him to do...
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Post by kathy on Dec 15, 2005 22:19:30 GMT -5
What if.......there really was evidence to prove he did not kill those people? ? Do you actually think he would still be alive today? Tookie was killed for starting the Crips! These Political Asses didn't care about the "Victims" they made an example out of Tookie to the Crips and other gangs. One of these days those gangs will make an example out of MR Terminator! I wonder where he will have his Feathers scattered?
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sdl
New Arrival
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Post by sdl on Dec 16, 2005 1:38:58 GMT -5
kathy...watch Ahhnuld stop making public appearances
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Post by judywaits4u on Dec 16, 2005 8:16:40 GMT -5
Arnie hometown row over execution
Friday, December 16, 2005; Posted: 6:14 a.m. EST (11:14 GMT) VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Politicians in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian hometown collected signatures Thursday in a campaign to have his name removed from a sports stadium for supporting capital punishment.
Supporters of the California governor mounted efforts of their own to keep his name in place on the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium.
Opposition to the death penalty is strong in Austria, and Schwarzenegger has lost popularity here for refusing to spare convicted murderers on death row.
The outcry was especially sharp this week after Schwarzenegger refused to grant clemency to convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams, whom many believe had shown remorse by writing children's books warning of the dangers of gang life.
Politicians from the Greens party in the southern city of Graz, Schwarzenegger's hometown, called for his name to be removed.
The party was collecting signatures on its Web site to support the petition. A Web statement from the party said "a politician who pronounces the judgment of death cannot stand as an example and forfeits every right to being honored" by Graz.
Also Thursday, the local Social Democrats said they would support the appeal. If they do, there would likely be majority backing in the city council for renaming the stadium.
The council, which is responsible for the stadium, is expected to take up the matter on January 19.
Among those collecting signatures to oppose removing his name from the venue were members of the new party of populist Joerg Haider, the Union for Austria's Future.
The party argues that removing the name would generate unnecessary controversy and could lead to financial loss by prompting sponsors to withhold funds from sporting events there.
The conservative People's Party of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and the rightist Freedom Party also oppose renaming the stadium.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.
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Post by judywaits4u on Dec 16, 2005 8:57:58 GMT -5
Judgment Day--Arnold's star turn as a California Supreme Court justice.
When students first enter law school, they learn to read with 4 highlighters at the ready. Their casebooks are filled with neon rainbows: blue for the case's facts, pink for the reasoning, yellow for the case holding, and green for significant - but secondary - legal pronouncements, known as dicta. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 5-page statement denying clemency to Stanley "Tookie" Williams earlier this week could well be included in future criminal-law casebooks and receive the same obsessive-compulsive treatment. Chances are even the most java-jolted law student wouldn't notice it didn't come from a court.
In the world of the televised, the telegenic are kings. Thus Schwarzenegger's 1st major foray into text merits special attention.
Schwarzenegger's statement is probably the single most effective document he has produced in his Sacramento tenure.
The California governor, although armed with a broad and unreviewable power of clemency, took cover under the legal process, with its strict forms and putatively objective methods of reasoning. But here, the judicial form was being used to make judgments that no court can ever undertake. The clemency power is a blank check to governors precisely because they are supposed to take into consideration facts and arguments that courts may not - such as the personal qualities of the petitioner and the effect unfair punishments may have on the public peace. Co-opting the judicial method in order to undertake this fundamentally political task is dangerous because it masks what's really going on: a fundamentally political act. But offering them such cover may, in the end, be the best way to convince governors to consider these questions at all.
To anyone even peripherally aware of the politics of capital punishment, it will come as no surprise that Schwarzenegger's clemency statement sounds and cites just like a court opinion. Since 1978, when the Supreme Court established that juries had a very broad power to impose life terms instead of death sentences, governors have steadily retreated from using their clemency power to the tune of 87 % fewer commuted sentences per year, according to Mercy on Trial: What It Means To Stop an Execution, by professor Austin Sarat.
Clemency is designed to be arbitrary, though governors have constrained its use over the years. As Sarat explains, "The clemency power can be used for good reason, bad reason, or no reason at all." Governors, however, have recently tended to use it only when there has been a very good legal reason, in the form of an egregious error in the trial court below, such as lost evidence or a lazy lawyer. More and more, governors see themselves as superappellate courts, presuming the correctness of the legal decisions below and reversing them only in light of what courts call "clear error." Schwarzenegger contributed to this trend earlier this year when he said he would only grant clemency where there had been a "miscarriage of justice."
That's a legal notion, not a political one. Schwarzenegger's written denial of clemency is both surprising and ultimately effective for two reasons: First, it doesn't merely impose a judicial standard for determining Williams' guilt; it also uses judicial language and form, sustained for 1,656 words. President George Bush, while governor of Texas, needed only 214 words to deny Karla Faye Tucker clemency(http://www.cnn.com/US/9802/03/bush.text/) in 1997, when, like Williams, she argued for mercy on the basis of personal redemption. Schwarzenegger's statement, in contrast, works its way patiently through a statement of facts, the procedural background, and each of Williams' claims before addressing the various additional arguments - such as suspicious book dedications to violent criminals - supporting his decision to deny clemency.
The language itself is pitch-perfect in its aping of judicial style. Bush wrote his denial of clemency in the `st person ("I will not grant a stay"); Schwarzenegger prefers the judicial 3rd-person omniscient, a passive voice that conveniently denies his own agency ("Williams' request is denied").
Throughout, the statement employs legal phrases. Williams' claim "triggers an inquiry." The fact that he tried to escape from jail is "consistent with guilt."
The decision is made (by someone) "based on the totality of the circumstances." Schwarzenegger doesn't just allude to judges and the decisions they have made in this case, he seizes upon that role and makes it his own.
And like some of America's most famous judges, he uses the judicial form to hide a decidedly nonobjective argument. This is the second, and more compelling reason Schwarzenegger's statement worked as well as it did as a final ruling on the merits of Williams' claim. There was, recall, no riot in Los Angeles. There were protests, but not furor. According to the Los Angeles Times, gang members interviewed on the street didn't even mention Williams' name - though he is the fallen Adam to their modern-day Cains.
Indeed, the Bible, and not the law books, is a useful place to start when reading the Schwarzenegger statement for its moral, and even personal, content.
The governor's main argument, responding to Williams' primary argument, is that this man had not, in fact, redeemed himself. Without admitting guilt, there was no way he could have. In an austere line, crammed into the middle of a crescendo of a last paragraph, Schwarzenegger writes: "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption."
The Book of Acts is full of similar mandates. "Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that the intent of your heart may be forgiven you," says Acts 8:22. Elsewhere, as in I John 1:9, the language is more encouraging, but the mandate just as clear: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Schwarzenegger's quite religious theory of atonement is the moral and emotional crux of an argument that is styled as dispassionate legal analysis.
In fact passages of this executive opinion can barely contain their disgust for the petitioner. The statement of facts recounts the murders, closing with the haunting image of Williams laughing for six minutes straight when talking about the sound the victim made as he was shot. The statement plays up the racial animosity in the murders, recalling when Williams referred to his Chinese victims as "Buddha-heads." These details aren't necessary to the governor's point, except to set up his unspoken standard - that it's doubtful anyone could have redeemed himself from these crimes. They are designed to provoke outrage, creating the right political atmosphere to allow the state to respond to Williams' barbarism with its own.
The statement further addresses what was thought to be Williams' strongest argument - that he would do more good for society alive than dead. Courts engage in this kind of utility analysis all the time. Some judges, like Richard Posner, celebrate it. But courts never directly address the value of a person.
They may do so indirectly - rewarding battered women with a special claim to self-defense when they shoot their no-good abusive husbands, for example - but a court will rarely state, head-on, that a person does or does not have moral worth.
Schwarzenegger does so here by blatantly opining that it's unclear whether Williams actually did any good in the world. Children's books? Mentioned and dismissed. Nobel Peace Prize nominations? Relegated to a footnote that states they have no persuasive weight. Like a punch to the stomach, Schwarzenegger reasons, again in the impersonal third person, "the continued pervasiveness of gang violence leads one to question the efficacy of Williams' message."
Williams couldn't stop the war he helped to start, says the governor, and so he must die.
Through clemency, our justice system occasionally redeems itself for mistakes it has made. But it presents a philosophical dilemma: Do we think the individuals it convicts are similarly capable? Because juries cannot revisit cases 20 or 30 years after handing down death sentences, only governors (and the president) are given the power to venture the answers to these questions. By addressing such questions, as a court and not as a king, Schwarzenegger finally gave himself, and maybe other elected leaders, permission to start engaging these issues again, even if they need to don imaginary judicial robes to do so.
(source: Slate.com--Judy Coleman is a 3rd-year student at Yale Law School. She is organizing the Yale Law Journal's Symposium on Executive Power, to be held this March.
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