Boston’s favorite hack writer and shock jock took this opportunity to shamelessly exploit a terrible tragedy and advance a terrible public policy. Never let a good tragedy go to waste as the saying goes…
Progressives must be VIGILANT in the face of extremism. Not just from these terrible heinous individuals that committed a horrible criminal act, but also from those forces that will seize upon this to advance their own agenda. Already the NY Post and Fox News and Murdoch, INC. have been found advancing the false story that a Muslim male was a suspect. We have seen the Globe all over the place about whether or not a suspect was arrested, and we will hear calls to take away liberties, modify or cancel the Marathon, turn the city into a police state, etc. Please Donate to the victims fund that the Governor and Mayor set up, go to the vigils, wear a Boston themed outfit on Friday, and stay calm. But we should remain mindful that our great city and region, the cradle of liberty for this very country, does not allow terrible changes advanced in our name to go forward without a fight.
I don’t listen to his radio show, I never read his crap in the Herald. Other than throwing rotten eggs at his stupid head, I don’t know what more I can do.
Meet up in Wellesley at 9 tonite!
If anything, I want to say my rotten eggs for the Westboro Nutjobs if they actually dare to showup and protest any of the funerals.
He makes too much money being an a$$hole. He’s gotten wealthy pretending to be a common man, and people just lap it up. I did, however, contribute to the victim’s fund, and my wonderful company is matching the donations of all employees.
However, this is probably a federal case and I believe there is a federal death penalty, and this is an example of case wherein I would be comfortable at least considering the death penalty.
The fatalities are not even buried yet, the blood has barely dried on the streets. In my view, it’s untimely for Howie Carr OR YOU to be talking about the death penalty. I am truly mystified by how you come to the conclusion that the critical remarks about Margaret Thatcher days after her death were wrong but talk of the death penalty for perpetrators of Monday’s attack on the following Thursday is ok.
Can we please bury the dead, grieve their loss and ours, and face the real and terrifying emotion that grips each one of us before we talk about more brutality?
Monday’s attack was about terror. Terror is about violence. Using violence and fear/terror to manipulate behavior is what people do when consensus, rationality, and diplomacy fail. When we allow ourselves to be sucked into the vortex of fear, anger and revenge, then we become both part of the problem and accomplices to the terrorist’s act. Speculating about the death penalty is just one more step forward into that vortex.
I suggest that we will be a safer and healthier community when we join England, Norway, Australia, and the rest of the civilized world in ruling out capital punishment altogether.
A long time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom vs. a terrorist – seriously!? I didn’t bring it up – just pointing out that such an outcome isn’t THAT unreasonable.
And I like both of you, but you are both wrong on this. The death penalty is certainly inappropriate Christopher, as I believe, in all cases, and I disagree Tom with calling these people terrorists. It was a useful and meaningful term prior to 9/11, but in the post 9/11 world “terrorist” implies a foreign policy motive and implies a military response. Nothing would shame me or sadden me more than a military response to this.
We already have McConnell calling for military style tribunals. Now I’ve seen pictures of “suspicious” people leaked on the internet, some ‘look’ brown and one ‘looks’ white, so who knows who was behind this. But I honestly hope, regardless if it’s a right wing coot or an Islamic fundamentalist or someone else entirely, that whomever is responsible is treated like the common criminal they are, given a fair and speedy trial with full constitutional protections, and locked away and forgotten forever. Anything else elevates this act, makes a martyr and celebrity out of the perpetrator, and elevates a common criminal into some existential supervillain. I am tired of that. Holmes, Lanza, even bin laden, are average mortal men capable of terrible things, but they should not be elevated above that.
…recognizing the most extreme kind and I can respect absolute opposition to the death penalty, but Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist and given that it was Patriot’s Day my first thoughts on who the Marathon bomber might be tended toward a right-wing militia type rather than Islamicist type. I don’t believe anyone here is arguing for anything less than full due process and constitutional rights.
I am simply stating that even calling the person(s) responsible “terrorists” suddenly elevates them into existential threats that require extraordinary (and extrajudicial) responses. Don’t be surprised if Obama gets pushed into an extrajudicial military tribunal on this by the Republican House and Republican* Senate.
*after yesterday claiming the Democrats control the Senate is a fallacy
Whether someone is a terrorist or not is very loosely defined by the public/media (usually the person has to be a non-American or at least not a Christian). And, very distressingly, the very term “War on Terror” suggests that terrorists do not deserve the same legal protections as “criminals.” In that sense, I comepletely agree that it is very dangerous to our civil liberties to allow the term to be thrown about.
But, under federal law (18 USC sect 2331), a “terrorist” is someone who commits an act of violence where their intent is to (1) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (2 )to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.
Under this law, McVeigh was a terrorist. Under the law, we don’t yet know why the marathon bombings were committed. Until we know that, we don’t know whether the person was a terrorist.
To me, I still think terrorists deserve due process. And, to me, the death penalty inherently violates the guarantees of due process of law.
for mass deaths are not exonerated because foolish people elected them to office.
It seems I managed to uprate this comment twice. I’m happy to know it’s occasionally possible for those rare occasions (like this) when I really really agree — closest thing to “Six 6’s” we can do here.
For the editors — the site has been slow (I see notices for some “statCounter” flying by). When I tried to uprate the first time, I got the little spinning wheel long enough to leave the page and come back. I reloaded and the wheel continued to spin. Somewhere in that sequence, I clicked a second time with no apparent effect. When I clicked the “View voters” button the first time, it was unresponsive (while the wheel was spinning). I reloaded the page, the wheel stopped spinning, and the “View voters” button reported that nobody had voted (while the up-count was “2+”). A little while later, it stayed at “2+”, but showed just my name.
The joys of using today’s web.
Now when you click view voters it says recommened by SomervilleTom and SomervilleTom.
Really, it sounds like you are lumping her in with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, etc. She executed the Falklands War to defend British territory (whether they should have been British is another issue) and she was still PM in the beginning of discussions of how to confront Saddam when he first invaded Kuwait. I am not aware of other wars in which she was involved. Her domestic policies might not be our cup of tea, though as has been pointed out they were still better in many ways than so-called American liberals often propose, but she was hardly a thug. Throwing around words like that so gratuitously decreases their impact and value, so regarding laying mass death at her feet put up or shut up!
You can read the O’Neil and Teddy memoirs to get a clear picture on how abysmal she was on Northern Ireland, we could’ve had Good Friday under Reagan (which he’d have loved politically) if it wasn’t for her intransigence. Luckily Teddy got to live to see it, unfortunately Tip did not. Instead she let Bobby Sands and the other activists starve rather than negotiate and had the Cardinal-primate of Ireland’s offices bugged.
She helped shield Pinochet from international criminal court charges, was a stout friend of his, and was well aware he tortured all dissenters. She also credited him with ‘economic miracles’ that were non-existent at the expense of human rights. Before the flare up over the Falklands she was a key ally of the same Argentine junta, in some respects her renouncing of their support and moving assets over to Chile helped goad them into action. And she also violated international and British law to get needed weapons to Saddam, and was the first to propose stabbing him after the war with Iran ended, well before he invaded Kuwait. And we won’t get into how nasty she was domestically.
She gave a medal to the RUC dirtbag who shot my cousin’s 17-year-old next-door neighbor.
Who says they don’t believe in “society” is a sociopath and probably a terrorist.
I was tempted to say the terrorist comparison is insensitive, particularly in light of Monday’s events, but the people of Northern Ireland, the victims of Pinochet and Saddam, and the striking workers killed by her police force would disagree. I am glad her funeral got scant press attention and was sparsely attended. And luckily Thatcher 2.0 under Cameron has a clear expiration date, and ‘retro Labour’ is making a comeback under Miliband. So if she proudly considers Blair her legacy, it looks like much of it will be undone. Clegg is Britain’s Obama, a young and great sounding centrist who compromised with conservatives too much and will now be a lameduck.
The US has much to my chagrin supported some pretty bad actors too, especially in the name of what I call out ABC foreign policy (Anybody But a Communist), but I will still honor the passing of our Presidents. I still think that bashing her so close to her passing and implying that she is little better than terrorists or world leaders everyone agrees epitomize evil are out of line.
who were black and lived in the South, to use an analogy, and one particular president was closely aligned with the most racist of sheriffs and gave a wink, nudge to the plan, leading to the type of racial violence that happened back in the 60s, you might not honor that president’s passing. And that, to me, is Thatcher. Without even touching the impact of her domestic policies on Scotland and the north of England.
I, for one, shed no tears at all for Ronald Reagan. I recently read one of Studs Terkel’s books from the end of the Reagan years, and it reflects how much of what ails us today started under Reagan. I was five when he was elected, I’ve never known an America in which these sick trends were not present and I’m angry about that. You seem to have more respect for the office, qua office, than I do.
I remember telling a friend at the time of Reagan’s passing that I would have preferred a different prime minister, but he made a pretty good king. I doubt I appreciate Reagan’s policy, legacy, and the consequences thereof anymore than you do, but because I am an American I saluted the passing of his coffin since I had the opportunity to do so, being in school in DC at the time. I’m not asking anyone to cheerlead and falsely say what a wonderful person anyone was, just to honor the if-you-can’t-say-something-nice rule for a little while. I did the same for Nixon and will for Bush 43 despite some pretty horrendous legacies in some respects. Anyway, I think we made our points and I contributed to the tangent. Bringing up Thatcher on this thread was the biggest red herring I’ve seen on BMG in a long time.
on either point. I don’t salute people whose legacy is to destroy much of what I found good in my country. And I don’t think it’s out of line to compare your statement about the death penalty in this case, with a reluctance even to countenance harsh statements about Thatcher when she died. That’, in my book, is too much respect for the trappings of office.
I made a passing reference to Ms. Thatcher that you’ve gone to the races with. You’ve made no comment about the other three paragraphs I wrote, or even about the rest of the first paragraph that contained the reference.
I think that talking about executing the perpetrators was untimely. I think such talk only added gasoline to an already-raging inferno.