Comments on: Rhetorical Appropriation

By: floyd

floyd — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 16:06:21 +0000

steve ; for your best arguement, look at illinois, more than a dozen wrongfully convicted death row inmates have been released, leading to a moratorium on the death penalty.the problem is incompetent government and bad public defenders. as for the "creationist"reference; aren't you sorta "beating a dead......uh dinosaur?"

By: Steve Verdon

Steve Verdon — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 19:15:03 +0000

Well look at the Creationist style arguments. "I don't know of anybody who was wrongfully executed by the State, therefore nobody has been wrongfully executed by the State." Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet's research indicates that as many as 23 people have been wrongfully executed. From their 1996 paper on the topic of miscarriage of justice they suggest that about 1.2% of the death sentences between 1972 and 1998 were in error (i.e., those prisoners on death row were released from death row due to serious doubts about their guilt). This article by Radelet and Bedau point to the Jacobs-Tafero incident. Tafero was executed, Jacobs who was facing the death penalty on exactly the same evidence was later released due to the suppression of exculpatory evidence and perjury by a prosecution witness. In other words, Tafero would have likely been released and not executed if similar evidence had not been supressed. So, until I find other evidence I stand by my comments.

By: McGehee

McGehee — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:18:07 +0000

Steve, you wreck your own argument when you veer into âthe state has executed the wrong personâ non-argument. Every time someone says this, someone (today itâs my turn) responds âWho? When?â and of course you canât answer that.

Thank you, M. Murcek -- I was about to ask that very question.

By: M. Murcek

M. Murcek — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:59:07 +0000

Steve, you wreck your own argument when you veer into "the state has executed the wrong person" non-argument. Every time someone says this, someone (today it's my turn) responds "Who? When?" and of course you can't answer that. It's a generic assertion, which, whether true or not, falls on its face when you can't provide specifics. Shame on you...

By: floyd

floyd — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:51:44 +0000

steve; you pass the consistency test on this one,eventhough it is hard to drive with a deployed airbag or a passenger in your lap[lol]i support the use of belts but not the law. now on the right to die; i say if you support this idea, you should not support the involvement of a physician since this would change hippocratic to hypocritic.just open a dieoria right next to the pizzaria and offer employment opportunities to serial killers.even at fifty bucks a pop it would be easy to give a lifetime guarantee for your work,don't you think?

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:38:51 +0000

Personally, I oppose helmet laws, but support seat belt laws (but only for the driver). Sounds contradictory, but it has to do with what happens after a car crash vs. what happens after a motorcycle crash. If you get into a relatively minor car crash, and don't a seat belt on, you could be thrown from your seat. You could lose control of the car and cause a secondary accident. In this way, driving without a seat belt is dangerous to others, just as rubbing your hands down with vaseline before driving would be dangerous to others. With a motorcycle, the helmet just protects your head. It doesn't help you keep control of the car. It only comes into play when you crash, and let's face it: when a motorcycle crashes, you're not going to regain control. So if you want your head splattered across the asphalt, more power to you... because it doesn't affect anyone else.

By: floyd

floyd — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:06:18 +0000

steve , where do you stand on the mandatory use of seatbelts? how about helmet laws?