Sunday, August 24, 2008

Ghost...

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Texas...really this isn't a good image

That's right even if you are mentally ill and didn't even take part of the crime...you still get to visit death row...


Texas to execute mentally ill man in controversial case
Aug 21 05:43 AM US/Eastern



Texas To Execute Mentally Ill Man Who Was Accomplice In Murder

Texas is scheduled Thursday to execute a mentally ill man for conspiracy to murder in a case that death penalty opponents say illustrates why the practice is deeply flawed.

Jeffery Lee Wood, 35, "has never taken a human life by his own hands," and "was outside the building in a car at the time of the murder," his attorneys said in a statement.

Wood's partner in crime, Daniel Reneau, was executed in 2002 for killing a store manager during a robbery.

"At Reneau's trial, the prosecution had argued that Reneau was the person chiefly responsible for the crime and that Wood's role was secondary," the Death Penalty Information Center said.

"Wood was involved in the robbery in this case because of his longstanding mental illness that allowed him to be easily manipulated by the principal actor, Daniel Reneau," his lawyers argued.

Texas is the top executioner in the United States, having conducted 413 executions over the last 30 years, out of a national total of 1,119 for that period.

It is also one of the few US states that permit capital punishment in a case involving conspiracy to murder, not murder itself.

Seven people were executed for conspiracy after 1976, when the death penalty was re-authorized in the United States, but Wood will be the first to die since 1996.

"Executing someone who didn't kill violates the most basic principles of justice," David Fathi, US program director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

In right-leaning Texas, support for the death penalty and the state's tough "law-and-order" approach remains high, with advocates arguing the punishment is just, deters crime and provides comfort to victims' families.

Ambiguity surrounding mental illness also makes Wood's case controversial.

Wood's lawyers asked the governor of Texas to delay Wood's execution by one month, after he had been in solitary confinement on Death Row for ten years, 23 hours a day, to evaluate his mental health.

In 1986, the Supreme Court effectively banned executing anyone too mentally ill to understand what was to happen to them and why. But it did not establish criteria for evaluating mental competency.

"If a person is only mentally ill and not incompetent, the decisions are less clear and are up to individual judgments by the governor or the jury," Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information center, told AFP.

In March 2008, Richard Taylor, condemned to death for murdering a prison guard 27 years earlier when he was gravely afflicted with schizophrenia, saw his death penalty commuted to life in prison in the southern state of Tennessee.

But Kelsey Patterson was executed in Texas in May 2004 despite having been diagnosed with paranoia and schizophrenia prior to his criminal act.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently authorized the state penal system to administer, by force if necessary, psychotropic medicine to two convicts on Death Row, to render them mentally competent and subject to execution.

"It is awkward and quite strange to see states force inmates to take medication so they can be killed, but this is the hateful nature of our capital punishment system," Rick Halperin of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty told AFP.

"It has very little to do with logic, and certainly nothing to do with compassion."

The case of Raymond Riles, on death row since April 2, 1976 -- more than 32 years -- is emblematic of the ambiguity surrounding mentally ill inmates.

His execution was delayed three times, and after 1986 the Texas Department of Criminal Justice never set a new date for it. But he is still on Death Row.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

He gets it!

The WSJ writer gets it...the Jets screwed up.
Is Brett a Bad Bet for the Jets?
By ALLEN BARRA
August 12, 2008; Page D7

Arriving in New York last Friday, Brett Favre sounded as if he had taken a page from Bull Durham's Nuke LaLoosh. "I'm here for one reason," he told reporters. "I'm here to help the Jets win."

It would have been refreshing if at least one of the worshipful media folk at the press conference had replied, "Well, actually, Brett, you're here because after months of vacillating on your retirement and putting the Packers through hell -- and forcing them into using a valuable draft pick on an extra quarterback because they didn't know whether you'd be playing for them this season -- you tried to bully them into either making you the starter or trading you to a team of your choice. Like a prima donna, you put your own desires ahead of the welfare of the organization to which you professed loyalty. Now you've been dumped on one of the NFL's most desperate franchises because no one else wanted you."
[Brett Farve]
Associated Press
Brett Favre

Instead, we're getting gush from a New York media that really ought to know better. Here's the Daily News's Mike Lupica on August 8: "The Jets became a viable franchise [by signing Favre], made you finally notice and talk about them and care about them." As if talking and caring translates into winning football games. And here's CBS's Phil Simms, former New York Giants quarterback and Super Bowl winner: "This is bigger than when Joe Montana left the Forty-Niners to go to Kansas City in 1993."

It would be if Brett Favre were as good as Joe Montana. Mr. Montana won four Super Bowls and was arguably the greatest quarterback in football history; Mr. Favre has won just one Super Bowl and is probably the most overrated, or at the very least overhyped, quarterback in the modern NFL.

Let's strip the Brett-to-the-Jets deal of the illusions the media has wrapped it in. What we have is a 4-12 team that has signed a 38-year-old quarterback who, though he made something of a comeback last season, hasn't otherwise finished in the top five of the league's passers since 2001. (In 2006 he was ranked 25th; in 2005, 31st.).

From 2005 to 2007, Mr. Favre has thrown 66 touchdown passes and 62 interceptions. If any other NFL quarterback had put up those numbers, his job would be on the line; instead, the New York Jets have chosen to delay the inevitable process of breaking in a new young quarterback -- and in fact have released Chad Pennington, who, according to Kerry Byrne of the Web site Cold Hard Football Facts, is "maybe the most underrated quarterback in the NFL."


Brett Favre is one of the most exciting pro quarterbacks ever -- "gun slinger" is the description most often associated with his go-for-broke style of passing. For the most part, the style has been successful: He has guided the Packers to the postseason 11 times in 16 seasons, and he is the NFL's all-time leader in passing attempts, completions, yards and touchdowns. There is no argument that he is a future Hall of Famer.

But there is also considerable evidence that he is nowhere near, as his admirers claim, the greatest passer ever to play the game or that he even ranks in the top 25. Mr. Favre's trademark has always been productivity over quality. He's been remarkably durable with the daring to throw the ball more than any other passer, but he hasn't always thrown it better. He has never, for instance, led the NFL in the league's passer-rating system, which measures effectiveness with various statistics. (In comparison, Joe Montana led the league twice; Mr. Montana's successor at San Francisco, Steve Young, was first six times, and Peyton Manning three times.)

Mr. Favre has probably been excused by fans for not winning a passer-rating title because its formula is so complex most fans don't understand it. However, in the single most important passing stat, yards per attempt (YPA), he has also never led the league and finished as high as second only once (in 1995 with a 7.7 average). Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger currently leads the league in active players at over 8.1 yards per throw.

It's true that Mr. Favre holds the all-time record for TD passes (442), but what isn't as well known is that he also holds the record for most interceptions (288). Perhaps the best way of understanding Mr. Favre's effectiveness is to compare him to baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan, who holds the all-time record for strikeouts but also for walks. Everyone concedes that Mr. Ryan was a legitimate Hall of Famer, but with a lifetime winning percentage of .526, no one argues that he was the best ever or even among his own contemporaries.

Nor, it must be admitted, has Mr. Favre been a particularly good big game performer. His career postseason is a mediocre 12-10, including an embarrassing 23-20 loss to the underdog New York Giants in the NFC conference championship this past January. On his own home field Mr. Favre was outdueled by the previously unheralded Eli Manning. In fact, as a postseason passer Mr. Favre has never approached the record of the Packers' Bart Starr, who won five NFL championships from 1961 to 1967.

Football historian T.J. Troup feels that Mr. Favre's place among the all-time greats is difficult to assess: "In the modern NFL, the rules favor passing over defense, so statistics alone can't tell the story. Put it this way: Favre has won three MVP awards, but except maybe in 1995, he has never really been the best and not as good as many passers from 'the dead ball era,' like Otto Graham, Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr and Roger Staubach were in theirs."

However good Mr. Favre was, though, is beside the point to the 2008 New York Jets, who may have bet their future on a Hail Mary pass.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Credit...where credit is due

I have to give props to her. This is good. I might even vote for her cause she's like totally hot.
See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Sunday, August 03, 2008

4 my hommies in lycra

Keeps it real...every pimp needs a horn section...and my hommies in lycra need their horn section