They executed the guy I blogged about a few days ago.

Turns out that he couldn't have donated his liver to his sister, anyway.

"More than 400 convicted sex offenders in New York and Florida were reimbursed for the drugs. The Medicaid agency issued its directive after New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi announced Sunday that from 2000 through March, 198 rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions."

Have you ever had one of those moments where you ask yourself, "What were they thinking?"

So, according to this article, the state of New York has been providing impotence drugs to convicted sex offenders for, at least, 5 years.

The story is really about Senate Republicans sponsoring a procedural rule for the Senate that outlaws filibustering during votes on judicial nominees.

They better think twice about this one. This is one of those things that cuts both ways. Sure, it allows Republicans, now, to keep Senate Democrats from interminably holding up the President's judicial nominees. The bad thing is that, in the foreseeable future, there could be a Democrat in the White House, and a Senate that is dominated by the Democrats. (The exact opposite of the current situation.) The Republicans will then ccry foul when they run afoot of the rule that they themselves put in place.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Not meaning to mix metaphors, but it is possible in the not too distant future for the Republican party to be hoist by it's own petard.

Some people just don't get it.

First, let me say that I am all in favor of capital punishment. Crimes like rape, murder, etc., especially if the criminal is a repeat offender, are appropriate uses of it. I believe that the case should be reviewed and appealed to insure that justice is appropriately served. Let's face it, there are some people that just need to be put down like rabid dogs.

This guy, basically, admits that he is one of those people. He doesn't want a pardon. He just wants a delay to the execution.

Why?

His sister is going to die without a liver transplant. He is a possible donor. Livers for transplant are rare. Without a liver, a person will die, quickly. Johnson wants to see if his sister can use his liver. The medical tests to determine that will take more time than his current execution date allows for. He wants more time to see if his liver will work.

He doesn't want a pardon. He wants some more time to see if he can help his sister.

Whic brings me to my point.

Remember where I said, "Without a liver, a person will die, quickly."? To give his sister his liver, he has to die. You can't donate your liver without being dead. The state is not granting him some extraordinary privilege, like a pardon, by allowing him time to see if he can give his sister his liver. In fact, if the state grants his wish, they are insuring that they can follow through on the death penalty.

Besides, what is more appropriate? This guy beat and stomped an 85 year old woman to death. He confessed to it. Ironically, by executing him, the government is making a statement about the sanctity of life. But, the statement is a negative one. Negative reinforcement of behavior, if you will. The government has the opportunity to expand it's commitment to the sanctity of life by allowing this murderer's death to save another life.

Or they can continue to appear like callous and uncaring bureaucrats that have no regard for anything but governmental procedure.

I've noticed this particular phenomenon before. I've always found it irritating. Today, once again, I was brought face to face with it.

I was in a meeting this afternoon, at work. The person was supposed to brief us on the "Safe Neighborhood Awareness Program", or "SNAP". (You know how the military loves acronyms.) This program is the equivalent of the civilian Neighborhood Watch program. The briefer was the person in charge of SNAP for all of the housing units that are under the supervision of the post here in Bamberg.

Both he, and the person that introduced him, kept on referring to the SNAP program.

Correct me if I am wrong, but, wouldn't the make what they were talking about the "Safe Neighborhood Awareness Program" program?

Wouldn't that be the program that sets up SNAP on various posts, and not SNAP, itself?

People, People, People! If you are ever in the place to give a program an acronym, either put "program" in the name and refer to it by the acronym, only, or don't put "program" in the acronym!

This message has been brought to you by the Committee to Wipe Out, Eliminate, and Remove Redundancy Council.

Okay, so, let me see if I have this right.

Mom is a SFC (Sergeant First Class) in the Army. She is deployed to Iraq. Son is in school in one of the schools right off post at Fort Benning, GA.

There is approximately a 9 hour time difference between Iraq and Georgia.

Having run a facility that housed the local ATT phone center, I know how often they work, and what the lines outside of them are like. (Basically, if you don't call home when your chance comes up, you don't know when you will get to call again.)

So, Mom calls kid from Iraq. He takes the call, even though he is at school. (The school allows kids to carry cellphones at schools, but not use them during school hours.)

A teacher calls the kid on the carpet for breaking the rules. Because he, finally, has a chance to talk to mom, he is less than polite with the teacher.

Kid gets a 10 day suspension.

The local community goes nuts. It gets to the point where the calls coming in to the school's switchboard overwhelm the secretary. So, in a gesture of "graciousness", they reduce the kid's suspension from 10 days to 3.

How nice.

You want my opinion?

Suspend the teacher, and the jerk who came up with that rule in the first place, reinstate the kid, give him and his mother official written apologies that are published in the local paper ... for a start.

No school that has as large of a population of military kids has any business acting that way. Not if they want to begin to appear to care for their students.

It might be time to start suing teachers and schools for malpractice.

Nicholas Berg died over a year ago.

He was a supposed "contractor" in Iraq.

I was in a Iraq for a year. I knew, there, many legitimate government contractors. Most of them lived on the base where I did.

Nicholas Berg was an American in Iraq. While he claimed to be a "contractor" in Iraq, the US government has NEVER acknowledged that he worked for them. ALSO, none of the major firms that are contractors for the US government in Iraq have EVER acknowledged that he worked for them.

If you read any of the news stories that came out around the time that he died, then you know, that he was kind a "handyman", working whereever he could to get by, and that he didn't have steady work for anyone. He did not live in any US compound, because he had never acquired a contracting job that would give him that privilege. He lived, on his own means, out on the local economy.

NOT ONLY THAT! But, the FBI offices in the country, not only warned him that what he was doing was dangerous. They informed him that they could not protect him.

It gets even better! On several occasions, they detained him and offered him a free ticket to the US, because of the danger that he was placing himself in, and that they could not protect him.

To recap:

Bozo goes to Iraq (war zone) as a "contractor", but he doesn't, actually, have a contract to work for anyone. Therefore, he doesn't have the right to live on a US compound. He is living out among the Iraqis, for good, or bad. He might as well be a tourist, in a war zone. The US authorities in the area give him several warnings that he is in danger, and that they, given their mission and resources, cannot protect him. They even go so far as to offer him free plane tickets home. Yet, Bozo refuses. He ignores multiple warnings of danger, and offers of FREE transport, not only away from danger, but home. And then, after all of this, Bozo finds out, in the worst way possible, that all of those warnings were true and that he should have taken the multiple offers to get out of harms way.

Conclusion:

Now, I am supposed to feel sorry for him, or relate to his father's anti-war sentiments?

Give me break.

War is not a place for tourists.

I'm sorry he died.

But, you know what? He doesn't deserve a memorial, a news story or whatever .... I take that back. He does deserve something. A Darwin Award.

"A poll published by RTL television on Friday showed that only 49 percent of Dutch are grateful to the United States for freedom and democracy in the Netherlands, while 51 percent said Dutch troops should never have been sent to Iraq."

Apparently, most of the Dutch have not. Maybe they need to relearn the German lyrics to "Deutscheland Uber Alles" (the Nazi national anthem).