Archive → November, 2011
Kitzhaber decides his values trump Oregon voters
Apparently Democratic Oregon governor John Kitzhaber doesn’t intend to run for re-election.
That’s the only way to explain why the incumbent governor would defy the will of Oregon voters, who overwhelmingly approved the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1984, when he announced this week that he would not allow the death penalty to be carried out on Gary Dwayne Haugen, who had rejected all further appeals and was set for execution on December 6. Kitzhaber said he would disallow now only Haugen’s execution, but any other executions during the remainder of his term as Oregon governor, which expires in 2015.
Currently serving his third term in office, Kitzhaber had previously allowed two death penalty cases to be brought to execution in previous terms of office. Now, he’s decided to block the execution of Haugen and all other Oregon death row inmates during his term. Maybe he’s the recipient of Spine surgery Dallas-style? Hard to know. More likely, he just doesn’t care what voters think since he’s unlikely to run for a fourth term and won’t have to answer to voters for his actions.
Kitzhaber narrowly defeated former NBA star, Republican Chris Dudley, to win his third term a year ago. Kitzhaber, 64 currently, is probably unlikely to run again in 2014.
Whether one agrees with Kitzhaber’s insistence that he knows better than Oregon voters or not, what’s getting overlooked is what is in the interest of justice for Haugen’s victims.
Haugen was initially convicted of murder and sentences to life in prison in 1981, three years before Oregonians reinstated the death penalty by an overwhelming majority. His conviction was for the beating death of his ex-girlfriend’s grandmother, Mary Archer. Lovely guy.
Then, in 2007, he was convicted for the bludgeoning and stabbing death of a fellow inmate, David Polin, an act he committed with the help of one other inmate. Prior to being sentences to death, Haugen was a major rule-breaker in the prison system, and his state rap sheet includes the following:
“…in violation of Possession of Drugs four times, Drug Smuggling once, Contraband five times, Disrespect twice, Unauthorized Property once, Unauthorized Area once and Disobedience of an Order, three times. His last major rule violation was in 2006.”
With two violent murders and 17 major prison rules violations under his belt, one should not be distracted by his so-called “clean prison service record” since his transfer to death row; that’s more a result of the increased security on Death Row, and the decreased freedoms to be found there.
This is the man Governor Kitzhaber believes is undeserving of the ultimate penalty. This is the guy our graduate of the I Know Better Than Oregon Voters School of Law and Politics is willing to go to the mat for.
Decide for yourself, Oregon.
ClimateGate, Take 2
Anyone still on the fence about the questionable validity of global warming should find of interest 500 new emails released publicly, exchanged among some of the top climate scientists in the movement, an event that is coming to be referred to as ClimateGate 2.0.
The overwhelming themes of the emails are that the scientists involved are more interested in concealing the underlying data they rely on, rather than transparency; that they view global warming as a political movement rather than unbiased scientific inquiry; and that the underlying science involved in the conclusions reached is weak, and depends upon a deliberate manipulation of the facts and data involved.
Some of the more scientifically damning emails were written by Peter Thorne, who will of course now be made a pariah by the movement at large, which will claim he was never “part of them.” Anyway, here’s a selection from emails attributed to Thorne:
“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest …I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.”
Maybe some of these conspiratorial global warming scientists can get jobs from Algore when he invents Internet 4.0 and starts selling Earth In the Balance dashboard products.
Politically Correct Gay Bashing?
While this is the season for beginning to think about unusual personalized gifts for the holidays, there’s a few folks in Dallas who earned nothing better than coal in their stockings.
Reality TV star and out-and-open homosexual Taylor Garrett, who stars in LOGO TV’s The A-List: Dallas, was “was punched to the ground and bloodied Friday night by someone vandalizing his car because he’s a gay conservative associated with conservative commentator Ann Coulter,” according to a report on The Daily Caller.
The beating came as he discovered someone defacing his car with the words “F*** Coulter!”
Said Garrett, ““The Democrats want me to live on their plantation as their slave, because I’m a gay person. And I refuse to do that.”
When he confronted the vandal, the man stood up and punched Garrett in the left eye before fleeing the scene. Garrett fell and was scraped up as well by some broken glass spread near his car.
It’s not the only time Garrett has been targeted by the left for being a conservative gay man; he recently had a rock thrown through his home window with an anti-conservative message attached; but the reports have drawn criticism from the left who are skeptical of his veracity.
“I would’ve thought people would have been a little more tolerant considering that our community advocates for tolerance, but it has been nothing but mean spirited attacks, especially after the Ann Coulter scene,” Garrett said. Explaining his lunch with Coulter, Garrett added he wanted to show people that “just because you don’t support gay marriage doesn’t make you a bigot, doesn’t mean you hate gay people, it just means you disagree on gay issues … The left has turned on anyone that might not agree with gay marriage, they have demonized them.”
