The Bush administration has violated the sanctity of human life at the most basic level. Throughout his administration, despite their proclamations of how life begins at conception and how the life of the fetus is sacred, it is amazing how they no longer regard the fetus as worthy of their attention once it becomes a real, live baby. This evening, I will take a walk through the pages of the New York Times and show how the Bush administration has systematically violated the sanctity of human life at every level, treating some as expendable and denying the power of human redemption that Jesus and the early Christians taught.
The Bible teaches that anybody can be redeemed. The only "unforgivable sin" is one where religious hypocrites, who think they have it made, shut their eyes and ears out to the light of truth. It teaches forgiveness for even mass-murderers like Paul, who attempted the genocide of the early Christians. But after his repentance, the early Christian leaders showed their forgiveness by taking him under their wing. Paul went on to become one of the church's most eloquent spokesman.
On the other hand, the Bush administration denies human redemption at its most basic level. They refuse to commute life without parole (LWP) sentences for people who commit crimes when they are under 18 for the rest of their lives, while they make decisions such as the Iraq War, which kill hundreds of thousands of people. The front page of the New York Times today (October 3, 2005) profiles three of these people.
One such person was Rebecca Falcon, imprisoned for murder at 15:
Ms. Falcon faults her choice of friends. "I tried cheerleaders, heavy metal people, a little bit of country, and, you know, it never felt right," she said. "I started listening to rap music and wearing my pants baggy. I hung out with the wrong crowd."
She is in jail for the rest of her life:
"A certain amount of time incarcerated was what I needed," she said. "But the law I fell under was for people who had no hope of being rehabilitated, that are career criminals and habitually break the law, and there's no hope for them in society...They put you in and then they forget."
The US has 2,200 such people under 18, of which 55% are Black according to the article. More than 350 were under 15. The next-highest country for juvenile incarceration has seven. And this outrageously high rate of life imprisonment for juveniles only increases crime. As an example, where no youths are imprisoned for life, it is big national news in Sweden any time there is a murder. These numbers are from Human Rights Watch.
Tim Kane was 14 at the time he and two of his friends broke into someone's house and murdered two people. Despite the fact that he hid behind a dining room table and did not participate in the murder, he was given life imprisonment without the chance of parole for 25 years.
"I watched two people die that night," he says. "I regret that every day of my life, being any part of that, and seeing that...You have no hope of getting out. You have no family. You have no moral support here. This can be hard."
Another such person is Donald Lambert, a man who pleaded guilty not knowing he would get LWP:
"He [the lawyer] didn't go into, like I know now, that it was my whole life. None of my family was in the courtroom. I was on my own.
A federal judge threw out the case, saying that Lambert's lawyer's conduct was "unprofessional, egregious, and a dereliction of duty." In addition:
"Mr. Lambert had everything to lose by entering the guilty plea," wrote Judge Fremming Nelson, appointed by the first George Bush. The decision to plead guilty to first-degree murder "was the most important decision of his life, and he was forced to make it without essential information."
The lawyer has since been disbarred. But the 9th circuit (Is Janice Rogers Brown on this one? -- EH) overruled Nelson with the excuse that Lambert knew what he was doing. The problem with this ruling is that these judges didn't take into account the possibility that a teenager might not know that what they were doing was signing away their life. Many people have the most shocking inability to grasp certain basic facts, and he was no different than many of us. If there is another SCOTUS vacancy, I would gladly support the nomination of Nelson, since he is a man who has a conscience as well as an excellent legal mind.
And death rates in prisons, at least in the Seattle area, have increased in recent years, as reported by the alternative Seattle Weekly in the September 21-27th issue on page 18. Many of them are suicides, like 3-time felon Ronald Hicks who asked, "Hook me up to something and let me go. Don't make me wait to die." Or Sabrina Owens, a woman who critically injured a mother and three-year-old son, ripped the cord off a TV to hang herself, pronounced dead on the scene, and then showed life signs. She lingered on for another two days before dying.
The Katrina disaster will only put more teens like the ones I mentioned at risk for being locked in the slammer for life. The Times editorial page and Paul Krugman have an all-out assault against the Bush administration's mismanagement of the Katrina crisis, which puts more people at risk for losing their life savings, more people at the mercy of their creditors, and more people at the risk of developing health problems due to increased pollution.
The Times was so outraged at the GOP exploitation of human life in the wake of Katrina, they ran two separate editorials (Page A24). In the first one, Robert Lawless of the Nevada Law Journal found that bankruptcy filings increase by 50% in states badly affected by hurricanes. Given the massive scope of Katrina and Rita, these numbers will only increase. In response to this crisis, James Sensenbrenner, the man notorious for abusive behavior towards John Conyers and his constituents earlier this year, told critics of the bankruptcy bill to "get over it." Those were his exact words. This will only increase bankruptcies, which means more of our children will fall through the cracks and wind up imprisoned for life or commit suicide in jail.
In a totally separate editorial, the Times highlighted GOP attempts to gut environmental laws. Richard Pombo, the man who wrote the bill to open up ANWR drilling, is proposing legislation to sell off national parks and wilderness areas to oil companies for drilling in the wake of Katrina. Joe Barton is working to pass laws which would gut clean-air rules for hundreds of oil refineries and coal plants. This will lead to more pollution, which will lead to more lung cancers and other diseases for families, which would gut people's lifetime savings, which would lead to more children falling in with the wrong crowd and getting thrown in jail for life, and possibly committing suicide there.
Paul Krugman (A25) is also on the warpath against the GOP's attack on the sanctity of human life. Acting on the direction of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, the GOP Congress is blocking legislation making Medicaid available for all low-income victims affected by Katrina. Before I continue, don't be fooled by Leavitt's promises of "Medicaid waivers." These waivers only make people eligible for state coverage, which is a fraction of the amount they need.
Krugman quotes Leavitt as calling making Medicaid available for low-income victims of Katrina an "entitlement." By the same logic, I guess Leavitt is saying that Jesus somehow believes in entitlements when he pronounces judgment on so-called Christians who refuse to help people in need.
In fact, there are many gaps in Medicaid coverage for people:
As the Center for Policy and Budget Priorities points out, many needy victims won't qualify for aid. For example, Medicaid doesn't cover childless adults of working age. In fact, studies show that many destitute survivors of Katrina are being denied Medicaid and some are going without medicines they need.
But like they do Ms. Falcon, the Bush administration forgets all about such people. Apparently, if I were single, diabetic, and low-income, and I lost all my life savings to Katrina, Leavitt would accuse me of wanting an entitlement when all I want is money for my insulin shots.
And the Bush administration is trying to hide the victims of Katrina in trailer-house ghettos, out of sight of most people. Even Newt Gingrich thinks this idea is awful:
But the administration, instead, has chosen to focus its efforts on the creation of public housing in the form of trailer parks, which have been slow to take place, will almost surely be more expensive than a voucher program, and may create long-term refugee ghettos.
Not only is Bush so wedded to ideology that they prefer ghetto-style trailer housing that would blow away anytime a tornado struck the area, he wants these people out of the way where nobody will see or care about them. This is the Bush administration's view of human life. They believe it to be expendable, and they place a huge price (all your life savings) on it. How many people will be killed because Mike Leavitt thinks insulin is an entitlement for low-income diabetics? How many will be killed because a tornado sweeps through one of these trailer-style houses? Will the poor then be blamed for living in an area with tornadoes?
Hundreds of thousands have already been killed thanks to the Bush administration's lack of regard for the sanctity of human life. We now turn to Bob Herbert's column (A25) on Iraq, who says that our men have died in Iraq for no good reason:
It's finally becoming clear on Capitol Hill, and maybe even in the White House, that the US cannot win the war in Iraq. Even Freidman is starting to get it, as I diaried earlier. He wrote a later column admitting that the training of the Iraqis is going painfully slow -EH. The only question to be decided is how many more American lives will be wasted in Bush's grand debacle.
Even John "I'm not knowledgeable" McCain is starting to get it, all but accusing General Richard Meyers of lying:
Senator McCain bluntly declared that "things have not gone as we had planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, General Myers."
Herbert then gives a long list of insurgent attacks which have only increased in sophistication, taking over 100 lives a day at times. He goes on:
The president who slept through the early days of the agony of New Orleans is sleepwalking through the never-ending agony of Iraq. During an appearance at a naval base in California, Bush characterized the war that he started in Iraq as the moral equivalent of World War II.
If that is true, the entire nation should be mobilized. But, of course, it is not true. This is a reckless, indefensible war that has been avoided like the plague by the children of the privileged classes.
I suggest that Bush is creating an environment in which our lower-class youth only have one choice - sign up for the military and die for the wars of the rich and powerful, so they can have their leisure time, their SUV's, their cozy confines in the exurbs where they never have to meet someone not like them. That is why they are making the largest cut of student aid in history, cutting $9 billion from federal student aid. That is why they are letting health care costs go amok. That is why they allow creditors to prey like vultures on people who file for bankruptcy. From the Times editorial:
What most bankruptcy filers have in common is a huge setback beyond their control, like illness, the death of a loved one, divorce, or layoffs. Most Americans view bankruptcy as a last resort, even after a traumatic event. Mr. Lawless' study [mentioned above] found that the peak of bankruptcy filings was 2-3 years after a storm. That means victims made every effort to rebuild their lives before seeking help.
So, was the noble cause our men died for that the GOP could violate the sanctity of human life so they could gut our bankruptcy laws, pollute our environment, refuse to lift a finger for Katrina victims like the Pharisees of old, so that only the rich and privileged could attend one of the top schools in the country like mine is? Or pay for their health care? Or live away from all the polluters?
And Herbert closes with the fact that if you're an Athiest (my observation), death is not the worst thing that could happen to our men in uniform:
And what about all these men and women, some barely out of childhood, who are lying awake hardly able to make their broken, burned, and paralyzed bodies? What do we tell them as they lie there, unable to curb the pain or fight off the depression, or even begin to understand the terrible thing that happened to them? What do we tell them about this war that we inflicted on them for no good reason?
We cannot put it any better ourselves. As Democrats and Progressives, we must build a society which does not place a price on human life. We must always believe in the power of human redemption, like the Christians of old. And we believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should always be able to get back on your feet after a traumatic event like a medical emergency or a hurricane.