Posted on 12/03/2005 10:24:16 AM PST by cgk
Saturday, August 6, 2005
A White House council on volunteerism said Friday it's taking another look at how the President's Call to Service Award -- accompanied by a laudatory letter from President Bush -- was issued to Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a California Death Row inmate who has written a series of books warning young people against the gang life.
A spokesman for the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation said that neither the council nor Bush had any way of knowing that the person they were honoring was a condemned multiple murderer.
"We're reviewing the case," said the spokesman, Sandy Scott. "We're looking at who he is, how he got the award and what the organization is that certified him for the award.
"We've never had anything like this before," Scott said.
....The presidential citation, which arrived last week, was a lifetime award for more than 4,000 hours of volunteer service. Williams was nominated by William Harrison, an archbishop in the Old Catholic Orthodox Church in West Monroe, La.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
4,000 hours of volunteer service. Good grief.
Church of St. Moses the Black??? Sounds like the " Church of what's happening tomorrow".....geesh.
St. Moses the BlackSt. Moses the Black was a former gang leader, murderer, and thief in ancient Africa. However, he became a model of transformation. His is one of the most inspiring stories among the African saints.
Moses, an escaped slave, was the leader of a group of 75 robbers. He was a large and powerful man, who with his gang terrorized the entire region. Moses was transformed after he and his group attacked a monastery, intending to rob it. He was met by the abbot, whose peaceful and warm manner overwhelmed him. He immediately felt remorse for all his past sins, sincerely repented, and begged to remain at the monastery.
Moses was tortured by his past and for years was tempted to return to his old ways. One day, as he was confessing his sins to St. Macarius, an angel appeared with a tablet full of his sins. As he confessed, the angel began wiping the tablet clean. The more he confessed, the more the angel wiped, until by the end it was completely clean. After meeting St. Macarius and St. Isidore, he completely left his old ways behind him and became a monk.
Later, St. Moses was ordained to the priesthood -- a rare honor among the Desert Fathers -- and founded a monastery of 75 monks, the same number as his former group of thieves. He was known for his wisdom, humility, love, and non-judgment of others. Once a brother had been caught in a particular sin, and the abbot asked St. Moses to come to the church and render judgment. He came reluctantly, carrying on his back a leaking bag of sand. When he arrived, the brothers asked him why he was carrying such a thing. He simply said, "This sand is my sins which are trailing out behind me, while I go to judge the sins of another." At that reply, the brothers forgave the offender and returned to focusing on their own salvation rather than the sins of their brother.
In 405 A.D., at age 75, St. Moses suffered a martyr's death, when his monastery was attacked by a group of barbarians. He is remembered on the 28th of August. Today he is considered the patron saint of African Americans. St. Moses the Black, pray to God for us!
...in HELL? What, are the Vikings about to win the Super Bowl?
Cheers!
I haven't yet heard about the Pope calling for tookie's commutation.
Each year there are 100 to 250 nominees for each prize. Although anyone can be nominated, not everyone can nominate someone for a Nobel Prize. For example the website of the Nobel Foundation says that in the case of the peace prize the following people may nominate:
Similar requirements are in place for the other prizes. However, unlike many other awards, the Nobel Prize nominees are never publicly announced, and they are not supposed to be told that they were ever considered for the prize. These records are sealed for 50 years to avoid turning the awarding of the prize into a popularity contest.
The strictly enforced deadline for postmarking of nominations is February 1. Self-nominations are automatically disqualified. Only living persons may be nominated for the Nobel Prize. This has sometimes sparked criticism that people deserving of a Nobel Prize did not receive the award because they died before being nominated.
In two cases the prize has been awarded posthumously to people that were nominated when they were still alive. This was the case with UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld (1961, Peace Prize) and Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931, Literature) — both of whom were awarded the prize in the years they died.
I think that if Arnold grants the murderous thug clemency we will see a move to recall the Governor - and rightly so.
I second plain talk's assessment. In fact, your post wasn't just stupid, it was appallingly stupid. How would California's executing the violent thug make Bush look stupid? Bush has nothing to do with it.
This is something most had not thought of until a talkshow caller suggested that just maybe gangs are crazy enough to try revenge.
It has the potential to make Bush look like a fool because the case has become politicized. Politicized justice translates into no justice at all. When this happens it's best just to back off...
Quite simply, politically you'll never please more than about half of the populace, and you'll further alienate the other half. A populace that, I might add, has their own mix of political and moral issues.
These maters need to decided based on facts, not what's good or bad for some politician. The later is a miscarriage of justice and it ultimately harms those involved.
None of us know what the deal is with this Williams character. If you state that you do, you are a fool. Convicting someone in court does not imply that they did it, anymore than acquitting them implies that they didn't. (Would either of you suggest that OJ DIDN'T kill that woman, just because he was acquitted?) I think not. Well, it works both ways.
I personally object to the death penalty, but not because I don't believe in "An eye for an eye". My objection lies in the corruption and incompetence of our justice system.
Dozens of men have been released form death row, because of the efforts of a Nun and a pack of high school kids along with a smattering of paralegals. These men have been exonerated with DNA evidence.
There is no question that the state has executed innocent people... I find that unacceptable. If high school kids can somehow discern the truth, then the government should be able to. The state should have an overriding interest in justice... They do not.
Until that changes, I will oppose the death penalty. You should too.
More poor work by the Bush administration. They really suck at PR!
It took a bit of a search, but his Nobel nominations have come from some member of Swiss Parliament, with the rest from two professors at Notre Dame and Brown University.
It certainly does "imply" that, though there are occasional wrongly-decided cases; you cited one yourself (OJ).
Overall, I have faith in our system of justice. I think that most times, juries get it right.
Maybe you're most afraid of the death penalty because being a moron may one day be a capital offense.
In fact, I want MORE of the death penalty. Since the death penalty was restated 25 years ago, only 1,000 murdering scum have been executed in the U.S. Compare that to the approximately 375,000 murders that have taken place since then. A rough estimate tells me that we've only executed about one half of one percent of the murderers in the United States. We have literally tens of thousands of murderers being kept alive by taxpayer dollars and the rest are still roaming the streets. This is absolutely WRONG! Every murderer must die to prevent him from murdering again and to deter potential murderers.
1,000 Down, 599,000 to Go: Why America Needs More Executions
by Amanda B. Carpenter
Human Events Online
Posted Dec 2, 2005Kenneth Boyd’s execution in North Carolina this week marked only the 1,000th time the death penalty has been used since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976.
But a simple comparison of the number of murders to the number of executions shows that the murderers are winning—by a long shot.
According to the Justice Department, 32,665 people were murdered in America in 2003 and 2004. In those same two years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, 124 murderers were executed. That was 0.0037% executions per murder.
Michael Paranzino, who heads Throw Away the Key, a group supporting the death penalty, said, “During these 1,000 executions, we’ve had 600,000 murders. We’re only executing a tiny sliver of the number of murderers in this country.”
Boyd, who earned the dubious distinction of being the 1,000th person executed since 1976, was convicted of shooting his estranged wife Julie nine times and killing her father in front of his two sons.
Paranzino believes politicians who fail to enforce the death penalty despite widespread voter support for it should pay a political cost. “We will hold politicians like [Virginia Gov.] Mark Warner accountable when they side with the killers and against the working families of America.”
But he is pleased the debate between pro- and anti-death penalty groups is happening. “We’re trying to turn their milestone on its head and show in fact, the milestone is 600,000 murders and it’s those people we should be mourning and it’s for those people we should be praying for today.”
Miss Carpenter is Assistant Editor for HUMAN EVENTS.
I have mixed feelings about this... I'm not sure being on death row should disqualify him for the President's Call to Service Award.
Out of millions we can't find someone more qualified then death row convicts? What kind of craziness is this?
Has he or has he not he made an appropriate contribution? Isn't that really the question?
No it's not the question. But since you asked - his "contribution" was murdering four people. Murderers shouldn't receive Presidential honors.
Under the circumstances (unfortunately), the best thing for Bush to do would be to commute the sentence and defend the award.
Commute his sentence because his staff made a mistake and gave an award to the wrong person? Is that what you are suggesting?
The world is not going to end if this guy spends the rest of his life in prison instead of being executed. There is apparently no question that this creep has done some good in the last two decades. Perhaps he will do more. Executing him now will just make Bush look like a fool.
How? If he is guilty he should pay the consequences. His sentence for murdering four people was not a life sentence, it was a death sentence which should be carried regardless of the speechs and books he puts out and irregardless of how he may have changed. To do otherwise is not justice as what decided upon by a jury and a judge in our legal system. If you want to change that system - that's one thing - but to suggest that a sentence not be carried out because some people like you personally don't like the death penalty or because a Bush staffer made a mistake is not justice.
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