August 2014 – Page 82

Torture-As-Execution, Ctd

This is extremely disturbing:

Documents released Friday afternoon in the case of Arizona’s botched execution of Joseph Wood—who gasped for air and struggled, according to witnesses, repeatedly during the two-hour process—show that executioners used 15 separate doses of a new drug cocktail before Wood finally died. Lawyers had warned that the combination of 50 milligrams hydromorphone (a pain killer) and 50 milligrams of midazolam (a sedative) was rife with potential problems. (The state also has a long history of failing to follow its own protocol.) The documents suggest they were right.

Ian Millhiser is stuck by the fact that “Wood received 750 milligrams of both drugs”:

To put that in perspective, an anesthesiologist told the Associated Press that patients sedated prior to surgery typically receive no more than 2 milligrams of either drug.

Midazolam is not considered a “true general anesthesia” because patients treated with this drug often retain awareness. Indeed, one anesthesiologist told the Wall Street Journal that the states that use this drug in executions “literally have no idea what they’re doing to these people.”

Karen Siberd MD backs up that anesthesiologist. Sibert declares that there’s “no mystery about why the July 23 execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona took so long”:

The convicted murderer didn’t receive one component of the usual mixture of drugs used in lethal injection: a muscle relaxant. The traditional cocktail includes a drug such as pancuronium or vecuronium, which paralyzes muscles and stops breathing. After anyone receives a large dose of one of these powerful muscle relaxants, it’s impossible to breathe at all. Death follows within minutes.

But for whatever reason, the Arizona authorities decided not to use a muscle-relaxant drug in Mr. Wood’s case. They used only drugs that produce sedation and depress breathing. Given enough of these medications, death will come in due time. But in the interim, the urge to breathe is a powerful and primitive reflex.

This sort of incompetence is all too common. Serwer talks with death penalty expert Austin Sarat about it:

Lethal injections, Sarat said, were more likely than other methods to result in botched executions. In a study of U.S. executions that took place between 1890 and 2010, Sarat said, 7% of executions by lethal injection were botched, compared to 3% for all executions.

Previous Dish on Wood’s botched execution here.

Why The Catholic Hierarchy Will Lose

This is a terrific interview of the embattled Archbishop of Minneapolis and St Paul (he is credibly accused of covering up child-abuse and having inappropriate relations with other men) that is worth watching in full as well as the extract below. But the interaction below truly reveals how morally bankrupt Church teaching on homosexuality is. In fact, even Nienstedt concedes that he understands how the church’s position – that all gays must remain celibate for life – does not make any sense when given the actual lives of actual human beings:

Here’s the transcript of that section:

N: Homosexuals need to lead chaste lives.

L: They need to lead celibate lives?

N: Well, yes.

L: Okay. Does that seem reasonable to you, that we should all lead the lives of priests?

N: Well… um…

L: Tell me, archbishop, why should I lead the life of a priest?

A: Because it is of your nature to, um, express yourself sexually through a committed relationship.

L: I am. I’ve been with the same partner and husband now for 21 years.

And there you have it. Someone who expresses their sexuality through a committed relationship of 21 years has no place in the Catholic church if they are gay. In fact, it seems that the more committed the relationship, the greater the penalty. Gay men and women who have married in a civil ceremony find themselves singled out for discrimination and expulsion. Here’s the latest example via New Ways Ministry:

Colin Collette was the beloved music director at Holy Family Church in Inverness for seventeen years, but lost that job when he became engaged to his longtime partner last week. The couple was traveling in Rome, when Collette’s partner proposed in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, and then they posted the good news on Facebook. The Daily Herald details what happened next:

“On Sunday, after leading the music for all five Masses at Holy Family, Collette said church pastor [Father] Terry Keehan asked him to come to his office. ‘He said, ‘I know this is something you’ve been longing for a long time, and in light of this I’d be happy to accept your resignation,’ ‘ Collette said, recounting what Keehan told him. Collette said at first he considered resigning, but something inside him told him he shouldn’t because he had done nothing wrong. He left Keehan’s office without resigning, but was fired Monday, he said.”

According to Collette, his relationship was never secret and his partner, who is Catholic, was an active member of the parish and known to Keehan. The music director cleared out his office on Tuesday

One reason I veer toward greater religious freedom than many of my fellow gays is that I believe that perhaps it is only through witnessing these extreme injustices and inhumanity that the people of the church will start demanding a change in these practices. These instances tell the world something about Catholicism – its continuing cruelty and disdain for gay people’s actual lives. Many, many Catholics do not think of gay people that way. It’s time their disproportionately gay clergy did the same.

Are Russian Troops In Ukraine?

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Last week, Buzzfeed reported that Russian soldier Alexander Sotkin (seen above) posted Instagram photos taken within Ukraine:

Instagram’s geolocating tool … is highly accurate. The only plausible way it could have misplaced Sotkin’s photos on the map is if he had used a trick called GPS ghosting to make his iPad think he was elsewhere.

Peter Vine throws cold water on the story:

Sotkin uploaded the first photograph ostensibly showing his location in Ukraine on June 30, after he posted two others complaining about boredom and lack of power for his tablet. The last photo was the one positioned in Ukraine. He tagged all three with #учения2014 which shows that he was on exercises when he snapped those selfies.

Most likely, the varying accuracy of cell tower triangulation meant that his device geotagged his photos with wildly different location coordinates based on whatever tower it could communicate with. At the least, the evidence is nowhere close to being reliable enough to say Sotkin was fighting in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, James Miller fears Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine:

Strong evidence suggests that a Russian-supplied and crewed Buk antiaircraft missile shot down MH17. The missile was deployed to this area in order to defend the road that links the separatists’ positions to each other and to Russia. These towns are so vital to the Russian-backed insurgents that the separatists decided to place their most advanced SAMs in the area to defend against Ukraine’s air force. This also means that the town has become one of the primary goals for both the separatists and the Ukrainian military.

How important is this area to the separatists? Earlier this week a large convoy was spotted moving toward the town. The video of the convoy, labeled “troops from Russia,” shows a large group of heavy armor—mostly BMPs, towed artillery and antiaircraft guns, troops transports… and two Strela-10 advanced antiaircraft systems. All of the vehicles have uniform paint configurations, but those paint configurations don’t match the Ukrainian military’s. These weapons very likely came from Russia.

Mark Adomanis takes a look at Ukraine’s big-picture problems:

There will likely be more deaths before everything is said and done. Just the other day 19 people died and 31 people were injured, and hundreds more have been killed since the violence began. The momentum of the conflict, which at one point seemed to lie with the Russian-backed rebels, has decisively shifted in Kyiv’s favor. The rebels’ most recent comments, accusing the Ukrainians of using chlorine gas, suggest a growing desperation, as do their ever more heated and extreme calls for Russian assistance. It looks as if Ukraine will escape one of the worst possible fates—a “frozen conflict” over a disputed territory, like those between Georgie and Russia or Armenia and Azerbaijan. Minus Crimea, it will be free of any enclaves directly controlled by Moscow.

It’s important, though, not to get too carried away. Even if, as now seems to be the case, Ukraine “wins” the war in the east, it’s in for a long, rough, and dangerous road. Regardless of what foreign policy Kyiv pursues or which agreements it signs with the European Union, there’s nothing that it can do to change Ukraine’s geographic position. And this position exposes it to all manner of direct and indirect Russian pressure, particularly in the economic realm.

Boehner’s Border Bill, Now With Cruz Control

Late Friday night, just before heading home for their August recess, House Republicans passed a bill to address the child migrant crisis. To do so they threw an abattoir of red meat to the right flank – pledging less than a fifth of the resources that Obama says he needs and simultaneously reinforcing deportation for the half a million DREAM Act kids. It won’t pass the Senate, of course, but it gives House Republicans a Potemkin vote they can cite when they face their Hannityed constituents this month. It’s hard to beat Weigel’s wit:

Just one year ago, Republicans were talking about passing their own version of the DREAM Act. Tonight, they put the party on record for the total cessation of Barack Obama’s quasi-DREAM Act. The arc of history is long, but it bends toward Steve King.

And a certain congresswoman from Minnesota, as Chait notes:

A party that began the Congressional term hoping to move left from Mitt Romney’s immigration stance has instead moved toward Michele Bachmann’s. (Bachmann — who, along with Steve King, helped draft the House bill — pronounces herself thrilled.) The party’s new dogma will potentially entangle its next nominee in an even less humane debate than the one that ensnared Romney. At the very least, it has put 216 House Republicans, many of whom will one day seek higher office, on record for a policy most Latino voters consider disqualifying. The aye votes include potential 2016 presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who is not likely to be greeted by friendly mariachi bands any time soon.

It is understandable that the party’s Congressional wing, based mostly in safe, deep-red districts, has failed to craft a national strategy for its 2016 candidate. But the House’s course of action has fallen well below “unhelpful” and instead verges on outright sabotage. How do they think this is going to work out for them?

Why the change of heart? A political system so gerrymandered and a country so demographically sorted no Republican need persuade a single Latino this fall in order to get re-elected. Nate Cohn elaborates:

Hispanic voters are all but absent from this year’s most competitive Senate battlegrounds. … Hispanic voters will have even less influence over the composition of the House, which is all but assured to remain in Republican hands. The clearest illustration of the extent to which the House G.O.P. is insulated from Hispanic voters is this: The party easily held the House in 2012, even though Republicans won only 30 percent of the Hispanic vote for Congress, and even though Hispanic turnout in that presidential year was higher than in a midterm election.

The reason is simple. In districts held by House Republicans, Hispanics represent only 6.7 percent of eligible voters. The Hispanic share of eligible voters is nearly as low in the House battlegrounds, 7.4 percent. Most of those Hispanic voters are only in a few districts; the G.O.P. could afford to lose them given their healthy edge in the House.

But Cillizza argues that their PR problem is bigger than that:

This is the latest in a string of incidents in which Republicans have been their own worst enemy — often because they simply can’t get out of their own way. Given their dismal approval ratings, the best way for Republicans to handle almost every issue — including this one — is to make as few waves as possible. Stay out of the news. Let President Obama do the heavy lifting on what the funding level ends up as. This issue is a no-win politically — people don’t like the idea of kids being shipped back to dangerous places but also don’t love people coming here illegally or spending billions of dollars that may or may not solve the problem.

And yet, Republicans found a way to make the story all about them in the dying days of this session of Congress. It’s remarkable — and not in a good way.

Cool Ad Watch

A full-page ad from Sunday’s NYT:

Jesse Walker comments:

The most striking thing about the ad is that it isn’t striking at all. It would be easy to flip past this quickly without recognizing that it’s about cannabis—and even if you do pause long enough to see what’s being advertised, the idea of an ad for a marijuana review site in The New York Times just doesn’t sound all that bizarre anymore. That’s when you know a social revolution is succeeding: when it starts to feel banal.

Did Israel Share Its Kerry Intercepts With Russia?

We know from Der Spiegel that our “number one ally” intercepted John Kerry’s phone calls during the recent peace process negotiations. But a top Israeli source tells ~~Ken~~ Richard Silverstein that Russia was also involved: “Israel provides Russia with transcripts of the Kerry calls it intercepts when his plane is within tracking distance. And Russia does the same when Kerry’s calls are intercepted by its agents.” It’s win-win for Putin and Netanyahu in trying to sabotage international efforts to restrain their respective ethnic expansionism. Money quote:

My source had this to say: “It’s a ‘fruitful ongoing joint venture’ initiated by Lieberman thanks to his Moscow connections. Israel provides Russia with recordings of intercepted calls Kerry makes flying over the Middle East, and Russia provides Israel with recordings of calls he makes flying over Central Asia, the Far East & the Pacific Ocean. The source notes this ‘joint venture’ became extremely important for Moscow since last February – because of the Ukrainian crisis.

Putin and Netanyahu: a meeting of like minds.

“Re-Purposed Bovine Waste”

John Oliver – peace be upon him – lays waste to the corruption and bullshit that is native advertising:

The piece is well worth watching in full when you get a second. And it says something that it takes a comedy show on a subscription based cable channel to lay it out. (Note to those of you who have not yet subscribed to the Dish: subscriptions are the only way the media is going to dig out of this giant, gaping, ethical hole.) Oliver targets the pimps and whores at Time Inc. with particular verve, and, as a cheery on top of the cake, Women’s Wear Daily has a hilarious gaffe today by Norman Pearlstine who has capped his illustrious career in journalism by burning down the entire house. In a Q&A, Pearlstine was bragging about a new “native advertising” lab, headed by a respected journalist:

N.P.: The Time Inc. Content Solutions model is one to follow in that it’s got some very experienced journalists working on those products but they don’t engage in magazines on editorial where they’d be covering the people that they are writing about.

WWD: So, journalists for the publications are working on native content?

N.P.: Chris is really the exception to that. He happens to be the creative director at Sports Illustrated, a magazine that doesn’t cover the people whom we’re working on. He’s a brilliant creative director with a wonderful commercial mind. The place we’ll have to be careful is if there are packages that he’s working on would somehow involve Sports Illustrated. He’s going to have to recuse himself from doing anything at the magazine itself that would raise conflict. It’s my job to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

WWD: Is native changing the culture of journalism?

I think we know the answer to that.

Dating While Disabled

Elizabeth Heideman examines how wheelchair users and others with visible disabilities navigate the world of online dating:

Because of disability trolling, some people may hesitate to disclose their differences right away. Wheelchair users may only post photos that show their bodies from the waist up, or people with visual impairments may not mention their guide dogs and white canes in bios. Only when they schedule an in-person date with someone do they mention their disability.

Tiffiny Carlson calls this “dropping the D-bomb.” Carlson, a writer who uses a wheelchair due to spinal cord injury, has been online dating since 1998. “I always disclose my disability right away in my profile and photos,” she says via email. Just like a messy divorce-in-progress or the fact that there are three kids under the age of 10 waiting at home, Carlson feels that disability is an important fact that potential partners should know from the beginning.

Unlike Woodward, who feels the Internet can bring out more negative in people than positive, Carlson thinks online dating is actually a better, less scary way for guys to approach her. For people who’ve never interacted with a wheelchair user, the first time can be intimidating (especially if you don’t know proper etiquette). Exchanging a few flirtatious messages online, though, paves the way for a smooth first date.

A Predator As Protagonist

Praising the above Kroll Show sketch about drone pilots as “smart and disturbing,” Sam Lipsyte offers a caustic take on how we might start incorporating drones into war lit:

Should we now envision drone protagonists for the new war fiction? One could portray the drone as a gung-ho robot that begins to question authority. It can work in a short satiric burst, but if it goes for too long, the technical questions (where did these feelings come from?) might overwhelm the narrative missile’s “arc.” The robots-turning-against-us motif, from Philip K. Dick’s “Second Variety” to 2001’s HAL, seems a little old hat now. Perhaps it’s time to revisit Joseph McElroy’s innovative ’70s novel Plus, which tracks the consciousness of a cyborg brain as it confronts its limits and its mortality. Maybe it’s time for a long-form meditative drone. Or something more parable-like: Jonathan Livingston Seadrone?

Or maybe not. We like to think we’re all sealed up safe in our technology, but it’s a delusion, and good war fiction tends to shred societal delusions. Drone pilots are often suicidal PTSD cases themselves, after all, and plenty of soldiers from all sides died in combat during the last few wars, not to mention the horrific slaughter of so many civilians. Even with Pentagon-issued joysticks, it’s still about boots and dead bodies on the ground. The drone as a fictional character might have some promise, but the grunt’s-eye view will continue to resonate. We’re all underpaid, overworked, underinsured first-person shooters now.

The Pro-Life Resurgence Has Peaked

But Lane Florsheim suggests that’s a measure of its success:

Though the rate of passage for restrictive laws has slowed down this year, in certain states, this is because much of the damage has already been done. In these states, it seems, the pro-life movement is winning. Reproductive rights were one of many issues for which the 2010 midterms served as a turning point, thanks to the wave of newly elected conservative state legislators taking office around the country. “We’ve seen 226 abortion restrictions enacted over the past four years,” Elizabeth Nash, State Issues Manager at Guttmacher, told me. “That speaks to some states enacting multiple restrictions, and perhaps the urgency in some of those states to adopt further restrictions is just not there.”

Meanwhile, Amanda Marcotte notes that the abortion rate in Texas – where new regulations have forced more than half of the state’s providers to stop offering the procedure – has not fallen as much as many expected:

New regulations requiring Texas abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges forced more than half of the clinics in that state to stop offering abortion services. This was expected, by both pro- and anti-choicers, to cause a significant drop in the abortion rate in the state. But as Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux reports at The Week, the drop was much less significant than expected. Research by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas at Austin found a 13 percent drop in legal abortions over the previous year, which is significant, but not nearly as big a drop as you’d expect when half the clinics in the state shut down. “In some ways, we were expecting a bigger decline,” study author Daniel Grossman told the Texas Tribune. Abortion rates have been falling on their own nationwide for decades, likely due to improved contraception use. That suggests that while most of this drop is due to the law, some of it might just be part of the larger national trend.

The findings demonstrate a fairly serious flaw behind the push for more and more restrictions on abortion laws. “If more clinics close, one might reasonably assume, the demand for abortion will also decline, either because wait times at the existing facilities are too long or because women will decide that an abortion isn’t worth the hassle or expense,” Thomson-DeVeaux writes. However, this thinking relies on the false belief that women enter into the abortion decision lightly, and that a few obstacles will deter them. Avoiding the expense and hassle of having a child when you don’t want one remains extremely motivating, more than many health care experts realized.

On that note, let’s revisit last week’s rousing reader debate over abortion regulations:

As I’m about to send this, I see you’ve posted more dissents, and you comment, “Who is making abortion impossible?” Come on. Really? Please look up how many clinics around the country have closed in the past three years due to these obstructive “standards,” check out how far women might need to travel, and tell me that’s not putting safe, legal abortion out of reach for many, many women. You also describe these laws as “a way to provide some sort of speed bump before human life is taken.” OK, if by “speed bump” you mean requirement after requirement, with new ones continually added.

Another continues:

To say that a “speed bump” is needed before choosing to have an abortion assumes that women have abortions as a lark, without prior discussions with partners, friends, family members, health care providers or clergy. Or maybe a woman doesn’t discuss her decision but just, you know, takes the time to think about it on her own. Do you think the federal or state government should put up “speed bumps” just in case a woman didn’t think about her decision long enough, or not long enough to suit you? This attitude also ignores the other “speed bumps” that already exist: getting the money, taking time off work or finding day care (most women who have abortions already have children), traveling the possible hundreds of miles to an abortion provider, much more likely now with with these disingenuous “safety” restrictions on clinics.

In fact, you bemoan later-term abortions, but there are already so many “speed bumps” in place that by the time a woman takes the time to make a decision and deal with the practical issues I listed, and then has to possibly put up with a government-imposed waiting period, more time has elapsed in her pregnancy. Wouldn’t you prefer that a woman who knows she wants to have an abortion have it as early as possible and not be forced to delay because of these “speed bumps”?

Another adds, “For most women, the speed bump doesn’t change their minds; it just pisses them off.” Another reader:

In your latest exchange with dissenters you end by saying, “I do not apologize for my belief that that there is a genuine moral issue with abortion – the fate of human life – that a fair argument would acknowledge rather than dismiss as self-evidently untrue.”

That is only one of the moral issues with the abortion issue, and I will concede that often those who fall into the pro-choice camp want to avoid talking about that. But the anti-abortion camp is equally (if not, more so) averse to acknowledging the moral implications of their position. Specifically, what are the moral implications of forcing a woman to take an unwanted pregnancy to term? What are the moral implications of bringing more unwanted children into this world, especially considering the fact that most unplanned and unwanted pregnancies occur in low-income populations? What are the moral implications of the anti-abortion camp’s objections to contraception coverage, which has been clearly demonstrated to be the most effective way to reduce unwanted pregnancies?

One more:

With regards to the abortion questions at hand, perhaps it is best to meet in the middle.

Laws requiring counseling and wait periods might be okay, but those requiring admitting privileges are not. While I disagree with both and firmly believe that abortion should be freely available, I can understand the moral concerns. The issue with adding “medical” requirements on abortion clinics, however, is not about encouraging thoughtful decision making. It is about closing clinics by way of overbearing regulation. As a conservative, I would think you would be against such tactics. Fewer clinics farther away providing more costly procedures leads to unsafe abortions which is equally morally questionable.

If people want to make abortion illegal because of their moral or religious beliefs, fine. Say that. But over regulating a business in order to kill it under the auspices of making it safer is not conservative. It’s lying.