Grounds For Murder

First, I should say that capital punishment has become increasingly questionable as increasing numbers of wrongful convictions are discovered by DNA evidence. The continuation of death sentences in this society is a black mark on any claims we as a society have to decency. In the case of Jose Medellin, though, the use of execution violates our own laws.

The crime is horrible, and is guaranteed to prevent any possibility of sympathy with the criminal. Gang rape and murder of teenaged girls - by Jose Medellin. Our Justice Department has either bungled or purposely 'thrown' the case. With the amount of politicization that has been performed on the Justice Department, my vote is for purposeful protection of the White House.

Medellin was executed yesterday, and Mexico has protested. As formerly explicated here, Medellin was convicted in a trial that offered him no access to his own, Mexican, government. His is not the only case in which this occurred. Our treaty with Mexico guarantees the access. That has reciprocity, offering the same access to any U.S. citizen arrested in Mexico. The violation of our treaty with Mexico puts our own citizens in Mexico in the position of having questionable access to their own government if they are jailed.

The stories abound of U.S. citizens arrested, wrongfully, imprisoned, without access to counsel or our government, and occasionally having to be ransomed out by relatives. The treaty that Medellin's execution has violated is intended to prevent these abuses. It hasn't been safe enough to my mind for some time to travel in some areas of Mexico, but it would be much less attractive now.

The execution came after a divided US Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal from Medellin's lawyers for a reprieve that would give the US Congress and Texas legislature time to pass legislation allowing the state to comply with ICJ orders.

The US House of Representatives took up such a bill after an ICJ ruling on July 16 to postpone the execution. But Congress is now in recess until September.

The US State Department said the federal government was powerless to stop the execution, citing a the March Supreme Court decision.

"This case presents a difficult situation," said Kurtis Cooper, a Department spokesman.

"We have an indisputable international law obligation that conflicts with state law," he said.

"The Supreme Court has ruled the president has neither the constitutional power nor the legislative authority to overturn the state rules."

Medellin's execution was delayed for more than three hours while the Supreme Court wrestled with his petition.

In a 5-4 decision, the majority wrote that the chance for the legislatures to take action was "too remote" to justify a stay of execution.

The majority added that the US Justice Department never asked it to intervene in the case.

"Its silence is no surprise: The United States has not wavered in its position that petitioner was not prejudiced by his lack of consular access," read the ruling.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that Medellin's execution "will place this nation in violation of international law."

Amnesty International had urged Governor Rick Perry to stay the execution.

"Even President Bush, who signed scores of death warrants as Texas governor, concurred some time ago that the United States must honor its international obligations in this case," said Larry Cox, executive director for Amnesty in the US.

"There will be no clearer sign that Texas will have gone beyond the pale than if Jose Medellin's execution goes forward."

In Mexico City, the foreign ministry said it had sent a protest letter to the US State Department, arguing that Medellin's execution was a treaty violation.

Mexico said it was concerned "for the precedent it could set for the rights of Mexican nationals that could be detained" in the United States. (Emphasis added.)

From what I have seen of this executive branch, it is no surprise the Justice Department did not enter a plea. This way, the occupied White House shows two faces, one that goes along with the treaty - while the Justice Department throws the case away by improper and inadequate procedures. The other face is its support of death penalties, by use of that politicized Justice Department to satisfy the recidivist taste for official murder, called execution. In this instance, the really vile crime has given a boost to anti-immigrant forces and put them in conflict with international treaty supporters. It gives more sympathy to the U.S. imprisoning illegal immigrants and putting them in for-profit prisons.

Once again the executive branch has involved itself in a violation of the rule of law. Once again, the Justice Department effectively counters the function it was created to serve.

Executive Omnipotence Under Court Review

The order given to the State of Texas by its former governor, now Cretin-1 in the White House, hasn't gone down easily, if at all. As I mentioned in an earlier post about the attempts to exceed his constitutional powers, the occupier of the White House has chosen to act as if the law is for other folks.

Texas' challenge of the right of the national executive to tell the state to follow the orders of the International Court of Justice is now bringing it before the Supreme Court. There is an execution at stake.

Yesterday the court let the 60 minutes alloted to hearing attorney argument to 90 minutes. When a life hangs in the balance, 30 minutes was not deemed a big whoop? Okay, it's not really funny that Texas likes killing people.

The admitted killer, Jose Medellin, was not informed of his right to contact the Mexican consulate. Cretin-1 took the unprecedented step of telling Texas to follow the ICJ's order that the court review its death sentence.

Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz conceded that police violated the 1963 Vienna Convention in denying Jose Medellin, a Mexican citizen, the chance to contact the Mexican Consulate for legal help after his 1993 arrest in the gang rape and murder of two Houston teenagers.

But he said President Bush's remedy for the treaty violation — making state courts review the convictions and death sentences of Medellin and 50 other Mexican inmates — would give the president unprecedented power over the judiciary and give the "World Court" authority over U.S. law.

The treaty dispute, which the World Court decided in Mexico's favor after that country sued the U.S., should be resolved through political and diplomatic channels, Cruz told the justices. No other nation, including Mexico, would allow U.S. inmates in their countries to use their court systems to enforce the World Court's ruling, he said.

He said that long before the World Court's involvement, state and federal courts had rejected Medellin's consular claim and decided that since he failed to raise it at his original trial, he had waived it.

Even if Medellin had been represented by his countrymen, he still would have been convicted and sentenced to death, Cruz said.

Mexican officials, whose country has no death penalty, had argued that if they had been informed of Medellin's arrest, they would have advised him not to speak to police without a lawyer present.
(snip)
Scalia said he had a problem with giving the World Court any say in U.S. domestic law.

"I am rather jealous of that power," he said.

But Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg indicated they were leaning toward cooperation.

"The United States gave its promise," Ginsburg said.

Outside on the courthouse steps, Donovan [Medellin's attorney] agreed.

"The United States did not have to go to this court, but once we agree to go, we abide by its decision because we are a country of laws," he said. "A deal is a deal."

The trial that is being conducted now is a trial of laws. It is the actions of the executive that have skirted laws and brought about a crisis. Normal courses of actions and normal remedies are available. That Cretin-1 hurled his stupid defiance of the available recourse against due process has turned a routine into a mash pit.

The sense of relief when this reign of power-hungry morons is over will be intense everywhere.

Who's Protecting U.S. Citizens?

The right wing has made one of its talking points that an 'activist judiciary' threatens the country's health, specifically because it lets women hold sway over their own decisions about their own bodies. That has come back to haunt them as judges appointed by the officials they've elected under that ruse have ruled against the right in instances such as the Medellin case.

Briefly, in Medellin, the cretin in chief represented by his judiciary, argued against the State of Texas for failing to advise a murderer that he could have his consulate join in his defense. A Mexican national, Jose Medellin, stands condemned to death in Texas and his attorneys have argued all the way to the Supreme Court not that he was innocent but that his rights were violated in that failure to let him have access to his consulate. A treaty was breached, specifically the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

Today, the Mexican Ambassador pleads that case, in which Medellin was condemned to death.

In Medellín v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that a binding decision of the International Court of Justice upholding the consular rights of Mexico and its citizens cannot be invoked in U.S. courts. Furthermore, the Supreme Court held that the president does not possess the constitutional authority to enforce the court of justice judgment and that only Congress has the power through enactment of legislation to implement binding international adjudication.

At issue in this case was the refusal of the Texas courts to grant a new hearing to José Medellín, a Mexican citizen who everyone concedes was arrested, tried and sentenced without being advised by Texan authorities of his right to contact his consulate for assistance.
(snip)
While Mexico acknowledges President Bush's efforts to ensure that the U.S. "will discharge its international obligations" under the ruling, my government is deeply disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision. Indeed, the ruling has produced the destabilizing paradox of a decision that is binding under international law but that, under the terms of the Supreme Court's opinion, is unenforceable without congressional action. This legal vacuum has potentially global consequences that can only be seen as deeply troubling.

Great nations lead by their deeds, and not by their words alone. Just as this nation has consistently invoked international obligations to protect U.S. citizens abroad, it should abide by that same rule of law when the treaty rights of Mexican citizens in the United States are at stake.

It's tempting to take pleasure in the anomaly that the occupied White House has been forced to oppose the death penalty it usually revels in, to aspire to enlarging its own powers. Even more fun to be had in that it lost. That the decision of the Supreme Court threatens the safety of citizens of the U.S. in foreign countries, and the war cabal defended them, though, is altogether ribald humor. Torture of accused terrorists threatens our citizens, especially captured troops, more than any failure to give them access to representation. Its own contradictions become every day more of a threat to the U.S. from this worst administration ever - in this instance its right wing appointees to the court carried out that threat while the White House tried to thwart it.

What damage has already been done by this winger executive branch would only be worsened by a McCain administration. While he has voted for executive appointments to the bench before, now in an attempt to win favor with the wingers, he's throwing fuel on their fire.

...Mr. McCain's red-meat rhetoric surely did not disappoint his base. He bemoaned the "common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power," adding, "Assured of lifetime tenures, these judges show little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states. They display even less interest in the will of the people."

The country is disserved by catering to a right wing that insists its own moral stands be represented above the rule of law. If they do succeed in electing representatives like Rick Santorum, for instance, who will embody in law their own principles, we need a judiciary with enough moral fiber to rule against them.

Another right wing administration could well so stack our courts that law becomes secondary to dogma. That would be a tragedy of incredible magnitude.

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On a brighter note: the U.S. is turning into DFHs.

A new poll by International Communications Research found 68% of Americans want Congress to use the power of the purse to bring all troops home from Iraq within the next six months. This is up from 54% last September.

All those arguments that we broke it and we have the power to fix it by keeping on making the same mistakes and build a great vacation resort in the middle of it somehow are failing to persuade any but the seriously unbalanced minds that now hold this country in their benighted grasp.

More than Hot Air

While the Schiavo wingers put on a spectacle that calls on us taxpayers to drill in pristine areas rather than use a tire gauge, there are people of real merit out there working to give us sustainable energy. One group has come up with inexpensive solar units that presently they are teaching needy people in S.America to build and use.

There is a great deal of concern about heating northern houses this winter, and this would go a lot farther than all the wingers' hot air.

In spring 2007, University of California Berkeley Energy and Resources Group professor Ashok Gadgil challenged students in his Design for Sustainable Communities class to come up with an affordable and efficient solar water heater that could be used in low-income households.

The heaters installed in Guatemala have made an important impact on peoples' lives, student says.

The heaters installed in Guatemala have made an important impact on peoples' lives, student says.

Now, a little more than a year later, one team of students has already installed solar water heaters on the roofs of several homes in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

They have been so beneficial to the recipients that there are already plans to mass produce the heaters locally.

The team of UC Berkeley graduate students and alumni said they are planning to enter their heater design into a national competition in October.

Though the heater has only been tested in middle- and lower-class residential homes in Quetzaltenango, the team hopes to extend the technology to other developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Southern Asia, said Kenneth Armijo, a mechanical engineering doctoral student currently in Guatemala.

"The more we advance with the project, the more we realize it has an important impact on the life of people and it has a great potential to be replicated in other places around the world," said team member Ernesto Rodriguez, who is working toward a masters in business administration.

Armijo said the team hopes the heaters will stimulate local economies.

"This is a crucial step to not only integrate technologies into the third world for beneficial resources, but to make these resources available sustainably," said Armijo.

Energy can be produced by many ways, and the technology is ready when obstructionists stop promoting the oil industry.

Healthy sources can be found, and are ready and waiting, while the winger reps are still desperately trying to convince the public that they need to keep using the tried and untrue methods that have led us into the present disaster. Listening to Washington Journal this morning, I was amused to hear Rep. Musgrave, (R-CO), insist that the 60 vote requirement in the Senate had been frustrating her for the past 7+ years. She must not have been around much, since we are all well aware that only when Dems took control in 2006 did that 60-vote rule, tantamount to a filibuster, become operative.

As I pointed out yesterday, and previously, lies are all the right wingers have to offer, since the facts refute all their talking points. At one point I did say that leasing increased amounts of land for drilling was the problem, not the solution. Add to that, the right wing too, it's the problem and, most definitely, not the solution. So far they haven't been able to open their minds to the solutions that exist.

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Today is the scheduled date for execution of Jose Medellin.

Why Doesn't the U.S. Accept the International Criminal Court?

The case of José Medellin, who didn't get access to the Mexican consulate so had his execution sentence ruled against by the Supremes, still stews. Texas continues to push for the death of a convicted criminal, and depends on the brutality of the crime to whitewash the damage it does to treaties and those protected by them. Someday, I may be traveling abroad. If I am arrested I might want access to my country's representatives. The precedent this sets may keep me from having it.

Despite the horrific nature of the crime, defense attorney Donovan said it "would be fundamentally unjust" for Gov. Perry to not respect the commitment made under the treaty "by the American people as a whole."

"In Texas, like the rest of the United States, a deal is a deal," he said.

And, he added, Americans overseas could face consequences. "I think the people of Texas, just like the rest of the American people, would not want Texas to do anything that would jeopardize the safety of Americans living, traveling, and working abroad."

'Profoundly wrong'

Despite Mr. Perry's determination not to halt the execution, Mr. Donovan seems confident the lethal injection will be stopped. "For Texas to go forward would be profoundly wrong," he said. "And we believe if Texas insists on going forward with this execution that a Texas court or a federal court will step in, including the Supreme Court."

Others doubt the political pressure or legal maneuvers will have much effect at either the state or national level.

The status of a treaty in conflict with a state's findings may be a difficult decision, but with its history of wrongful convictions, Texas should be very, very careful how it proceeds. The very ugly head of racism has been obvious in the discussion of this case, and the references to illegals often contain mention of crime against U.S. citizens. Killing to satisfy anti-immigration feelings is a threat to all justice.

Escalating War

Not Afghanistan, Mexico. Recently President Calderon sent in the army to carry on a fight that has totally gotten beyond the capacity of police to manage. For the first time, a bombing occurred, two blocks from the police station in Mexico City

No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, which sent shock waves through the heart of the Mexican capital. But officials on the case have said they are investigating whether it could be the work of drug cartels reeling from a crackdown by President Felipe Calderon. Leftist guerrilla groups also have a history of bombing in Mexico, but they have normally hit political or commercial buildings at night without leaving casualties.

If drug gangs are proven to be behind the blast, it would show a worrying escalation in the battle between organized crime and the government. Since Jan. 1, drug cartel gunmen armed with huge arsenals of automatic rifles and grenade launchers have slain more than 30 police, soldiers and judges in ambushes and assassinations. The attacks come as Calderon has made record drug busts, sent 25,000 police and soldiers against the gangs, and extradited alleged kingpins to the United States.

While the Mexican crime families do not have a history of using bombs, explosive devices used to be a favored tactic of their associates in Colombia. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Medellin cartel responded to a government crackdown with bombs on street corners, cars and even one passenger jet, killing hundreds. Colombian gangsters have long been selling cocaine to the Mexican cartels, who smuggle it into the United States. "The cartels could be turning to this Colombian tactic of using terror to pressure the government to back off," said Mexican drug expert Jorge Chabat. "They may be trying to raise the political cost for Calderon of carrying out his campaign."

Police say the man killed in the blast was probably himself carrying the bomb because the device went off about a three feet from the ground, blowing out surrounding car windows but not causing a crater. "The man completely lost his hand. He surely did this when he was handling the explosive device," Mexico City Police Chief Joel Ortega told reporters.

The occupation by army forces has been protested in Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa by hundreds of people blocking the bridges and stopping traffic. Of course, murders have been constant, gruesome beheadings among them.

The drug wars are supported by the U.S., and recently that war was condemned by a panel formed by Latin American governments alarmed at the violence.

As drug violence spirals out of control in Mexico, a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point.

"The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war," said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. "We have to move from this approach to another one."

The commission, headed by Mr. Cardoso and former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia, says Latin American governments as well as the U.S. must break what they say is a policy "taboo" and re-examine U.S.-inspired antidrugs efforts. The panel recommends that governments consider measures including decriminalizing the use of marijuana.

Such sanity seems far removed from any action that our government took over the previous eight years. With a large community still holding control of seats in Congress who would never let sanity break out, my optimism is somewhat constrained. Yes, that's unusual for me. This is a growing situation on the border of the U.S. that were we not in over our ears in the Middle East, our government might provide some help with. As it is, I think we will give our Latin American neighbors more grounds to despair of us.

For now, I will repeat a friend's advice when I left her home on Padre Island for a trip to the Big Bend area, planning to make a quick trip over into Mexico. Her advice: Go in a rural area, stay away from the big cities, only go by day. I had a lovely visit and went on my way to Alpine, where I was delighted to see the Marfa lights. No hallucinogens involved, just forget you thought that.