Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Courts to Review Lethal Injection

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Last week, the Supreme Court announced that it will review the use of lethal injections for executions. This was brought to the attention of the Court by four Death Row inmates, one of which has since been executed. The irony in his execution is that he was executed using the very same drugs he and his fellow inmates were challenging before the Supreme Court. His death was also reported as being excruciating, even saying that his body "felt like it was on fire" and that the injections "felt like acid." Until the case is heard, though, executions by lethal injection will be halted.

Overall, I think it's a good thing that the Supreme Court is reviewing the inmates' case because no one, no matter how evil they seem, should have to suffer that much before they die. With that said, I think that we should abolish the death penalty all together. Sure most criminals on death row seem to be the spawn of Satan, but how is killing them going to solve anything and how is killing them even constitutional? Shouldn't everyone have the right to life and isn't death considered a "cruel or unusual punishment"? If we are going to have capital punishment, we might as well give the inmate a choice which method they want to be executed whether it be firing squad, electric chair, hanging, lethal injection, or the classic bullet to the head.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Obama wants authorization to make war with ISIS

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In President Obama's State of the Union Address on Tuesday, he stated that he wanted authorization to combat ISIS but sources say that he is unlikely to send any language to Congress to get full approval to do so. Many Congressmen are saying that him not sending language to Congress is a sign that his administration just does not know what their strategy is and how they will combat the militants. What will happen if Obama gets authorization from Congress to combat ISIS? What will it look like? Well, judging from the fact that in just the five months we have been bombing them we have spent more than a billion dollars, done more than 1,700 airstrikes, and sent more than 2,000 U.S. troops to Iraq, it will probably look a lot like the situation in Afghanistan a year or two ago, resulting in the deaths of thousands of U.S. servicemen and thousands of Iraqi civilians, not to mention economic devastation for Iraq.

I think the way that the U.S. is handling the ISIS threat is reckless and unnecessary. If we want to create a permanent peace in the Middle East, we should not invade Iraq or any other Middle Eastern nation for that matter. When we invade any nation, it results in thousands of civilian deaths. When these innocent civilians die, it just creates more anti-American sentiment and thus more people are likely to join the ISIS cause to combat what they see as violent occupying force. If a foreign power invaded the United States to combat a few thousand terrorists, killing thousands of innocent Americans in the process, would you not be outraged? Would you not be tempted to join the terrorists to try and defend your families and friends? It's the same situation in the Middle East right now, except we are the invading force. The point is, invasion and increased troops numbers in Iraq is not the solution to achieve peace. If we want peace, we need to try something else.