Free Republic

by Gina Cassini | Top Right NewsDo you remember playing “hangman” as a child? Me too. But apparently no one among the staff of Beaverton Junior High School in Oreon ever has. Or they are so hysterical as a result of politically correct indoctrination that they have lost their collective minds: The school suspended a 13-year-old student and turned him over to police because of a “doodle” he drew showing a person being hanged, as part of the game 'Hangman', his father claims in court.

Suspected tagger found dead, hanging 9 stories up on office tower A man whose body was found hanging from a downtown Sacramento building Monday, nine stories up, appears to be a tagger who was attempting the vandalize the property, authorities say. The man had used rope to tie himself in a seated position like a rappeller, authorities said. The rope was tied off with a window washing anchor, and fire officials believe that that anchor could have held his weight. But they don't think he was a window washer.

India has 1.2 billion people, among them bankers, gurus, rag pickers, billionaires, snake charmers, software engineers, lentil farmers, rickshaw drivers, Maoist rebels, Bollywood movie stars and Vedic scholars, to name a few. Humanity runneth over. Except in one profession: India is searching for a hangman. Usually, India would not need one, given the rarity of executions. The last was in 2004. But in May, India’s president unexpectedly rejected a last-chance mercy petition from a convicted murderer in the Himalayan state of Assam. Prison officials, compelled to act, issued a call for a hangman. No one answered. Not initially.

The fascinating diaries of death penned by Britain's last hangman have been revealed today. Harry Allen, who died aged 81 in 1992, kept a log of prisoners who were executed at prisons in London, Manchester and Leeds. In his journal, he recorded details of each prisoner's age, weight, height and worked out how long the rope needed to be to ensure a swift death. He referred to one hanging with a hindsight about the rope saying: 'Very good job but should have had another two or three inches - very strong.'

... After the decision, black students at Jena High gathered under the tree in protest. Fights between blacks and whites broke out for days, and the principal ultimately called an assembly in which Dist. Atty. Walters, flanked by armed police, addressed the school. "With a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear," Walters said. In a court hearing where an attorney tried to have Walters removed from the beating case on grounds that he was biased, Walters, who is white, admitted making the statement. But he denied that he had been looking at black students when he...

Iraqi TV is now showing edited footage of the execution of Saddam.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator who spent his last years in captivity after his ruthless regime was toppled by the U.S.-led coalition in 2003, was hanged before dawn Saturday for crimes committed in a brutal crackdown during his reign. The execution took place shortly after 6 a.m. (10 p.m. Friday ET), Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told Iraqi television. "This dark page has been turned over," Rubaie said. "Saddam is gone. Today Iraq is an Iraq for all the Iraqis, and all the Iraqis are looking forward. ... The [Hussein] era has gone forever."...

Since it now seems very imminent, I decided that it was an appropriate time to start this up. Links to information and pictures (if we get them) can be posted here.

Saddam Hussein hanged, says Al Hurra TV station By Mariam Karouny 6 minutes ago U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra said Saddam Hussein had been executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday.Arabic satellite channel Arabiya also reported the execution had taken place.The former Iraqi president ousted in April 2003 by a U.S.-led invasion was convicted in November of crimes against humanity over the killings of 148 Shi'ite villagers from Dujail after a failed assassination bid in 1982.An appeals court upheld the death penalty on Tuesday and the government rushed through the procedures to hang him...

<p>The rules, I beleive, require nothing other than a headline in this case, but it is worth posting because the latest news indicates the probablity is high that Saddam won't even live long enough to swing in the new year.</p>

A bit of good old American craftsmanship will bring about Saddam Hussein's end - a specially constructed gallows that might as well be stamped "Made in the U.S.A." The custom-made gallows for Saddam is located in a highly secure U.S. military prison at Baghdad airport called Camp Cropper, where the former Iraqi dictator is currently imprisoned. One morning, sometime between today and 30 days from now, Saddam will be awakened by his American guards and told it's judgment day. There will be no prior public notification of Saddam's date with the executioner. Shortly after he is hanged, an announcement will...

"...The appeals court that will now review the verdict can undo some of the damage by taking into account some of these deficiencies. At least, it should defer the carrying out of any death penalty long enough to allow the completion of a second trial, in which Mr. Hussein is charged with ordering genocidal massacres against the Kurds.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Sri Lankan hangman Suranimala has never seen an execution, confesses the sight of the gallows makes him a little nervous and lacks the most crucial tool of his trade -- a rope. The slight, soft-spoken 24-year-old has spent his first three years in the job pushing papers in the chief jailer's office at Welikada prison in Colombo, but all that is about to change. Sri Lanka reactivated its dormant death penalty last month after a near 30-year-lull to combat a surge in grisly crimes and contract killings, which means it is now finally time for...

CALCUTTA, India (AP) - Rights activists and intellectuals are campaigning to halt capital punishment in India ahead of this week's scheduled execution of a man convicted of raping and murdering a teenager. The death penalty is rare in this country. Friday's scheduled execution of Dhananjay Chatterjee, 39, will be West Bengal state's first in 13 years. Two people were hanged in the eastern state in 1991. Chatterjee was arrested and charged with raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl in the state's capital, Calcutta, in 1990. He'd been working as a security guard at the building where she lived, and was...

KOLKATA: Tuesday morning was the first time in his life that Dhananjoy Chatterjee really knew he would die at the end of a rope. It was the day's newspapers that shattered what little hopes he nursed of escaping the hangman's death squeeze. No, he did not cry. But he showed he finally knew that his time was up; that he would have to pay with his life for a crime which shook even weather-beaten policemen and doctors. It was not Chatterjee's fault if he had started believing that he would get away with a natural death. The state government sat...