AdamSmith

Any route would suit me. State-by-state followed by a SCOTUS pronouncement, if possible. As the immortal Sen. Ervin put it, on some other issue: The argument of my good friend from Maine that what this amendment is designed to accomplish has already been accomplished by the Byrd amendment reminds me of a story of the man in a distant part of the country who received a telegram from an undertaker informing him that his mother-in-law had died. The telegram of the undertaker closed with the inquiry, "Shall we cremate or bury?" The man wired back and said, "Take no chances. Cremate and bury." Solitary?

Well, let's see. Total U.S. prison population 2,266,832 as of Dec. 31, 2010 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate) Total U.S. death row population 3,108, or 0.14% of total prison population (http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=86) Even shooting everybody on death row today would make no material difference in the problems you rightly identify. Never mind that the length of time many spend on death row already amounts to just about a life sentence in effect. Reasonable solutions, as have been discussed here and elsewhere, would seem to lie in such directions as reforming minimum-sentencing guidelines (hopeful signs now starting to appear), shifting drug policy from criminalization to the legislate/tax/treat-as-public-health-issue, as now beginning with marijuana in some states, and so on.

Pope Francis sends e-mail on Holocaust to American Jewish leader By Elizabeth Tenety, The Washington Post October 18 at 12:35 pm Pope Francis reached out to an American Jewish leader, the son of two Holocaust survivors, in a recent e-mail exchange. The pope contacted Menachem Rosensaft, an American professor specializing in the law of genocide and war crimes trials at Columbia and Cornell, after Rosensaft sent a sermon he delivered in September on believing in God after the Holocaust, along with a personal note, to the Vatican. Vatican officials confirmed the e-mail. In the short note, Francis alluded to Rosensaft’s reflection on the possibility of God’s presence during the Holocaust, which the professor believes gave his father strength to pray even during his imprisonment and torture, and his mother the courage to rescue and tend to 149 children, largely orphans, inside a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Francis wrote to Rosensaft, translated by The Post from Spanish: “When you, with humility, are telling us where God was in that moment, I felt within me that you had transcended all possible explanations and that, after a long pilgrimage — sometimes sad, tedious or dull – you came to discover a certain logic and it is from there that you were speaking to us; the logic of First Kings 19:12, the logic of that “gentle breeze” (I know that it is a very poor translation of the rich Hebrew expression) that constitutes the only possible hermeneutic interpretation. “Thank you from my heart. And, please, do not forget to pray for me. May the Lord bless you.” In Jewish circles, the response to the theological questions raised by the Holocaust has ranged from a rejection of God’s existence to a teaching in some ultra-Orthodox circles that sees the Holocaust as divine punishment. But for others, like Rosensaft, the Holocaust gave rise to a new way of thinking about God’s faithfulness amidst profound suffering. Rosensaft said that the pope’s acknowledgement that God was present even during the time of genocide through acts of courage and kindness “is a tremendous spiritual gift” that gives meaning to survivors of any act of violence. “What I have tried to say in my sermon, which is why it is so gratifying to have Pope Francis validate this, was that God was not the perpetrator of the horrors but God’s divine presence is in the continued humanity of the victims, that the divine presence was within those who rescued, who saved, who helped,” Rosensaft said. The outreach of the leader of the Catholic Church to the Jewish community in the context of the Holocaust and its fallout is also historically consequential. The legacy of the Catholic Church’s actions and inactions during the genocide that led to the death of 6 million Jews, and 5 million others targeted by Nazis, continues to shadow Catholic-Jewish relations. The church council known as Vatican II, which took place in the early 1960s, is often pointed to as a turning point in relations between the two groups, in particular the generation of Nostra Aetate, a Catholic document which formally denounced anti-Semitism and acknowledged the common spiritual heritage between the faiths. Since assuming the papacy, Francis, who as Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina was known to be close with Jewish leaders, has continued to cultivate relationships with Jewish groups. In early September, Francis welcomed Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, to the Vatican and, according to AP reports of their meeting, spoke of a need for the church to look into the controversial Polish ban on the Kosher practice of slaughtering animals. After their meeting, Lauder said in a statement that “in the past 2,000 years, ties between the Catholic Church and Jews had never been this good.” In the last week, the Vatican denied the request by the family of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke for a funeral Mass. The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a breakaway Catholic sect still in dialogue with Rome, apparently offered to host the funeral, but then delayed the event due to outside pressure. On Friday, the Vatican announced plans for Francis to visit Israel, perhaps as early as 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal. Rosensaft sees Francis’s outreach to him as part of an ongoing evolution of understanding between the two religious traditions. “I think having the pope raise the issue to this level means that we are going to hopefully have an integration of Holocaust memory not just into the Jewish theological framework but also into the Catholic teachings. Perhaps then we can move forward together.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/10/18/pope-francis-sends-e-mail-on-holocaust-to-american-jewish-leader/ Because You Never Know When Pope Francis Might Send You An E-Mail October 19, 2013 By Frank Weathers,Why I Am Catholic Didn’t know I could do that, did you? First it was phone calls, then it was letters and interviews. And now il Papa just might e-mail you like he did Menachem Rosensaft. Rosensaft is an American professor who specializes in genocide and war crimes trial law at Cornell and Columbia universities. He wrote Pope Francis to share a sermon he had delivered that centered around keeping faith in God throughout the dark days of the Holocaust. In her article at the Washington Post, Elizabeth Tenety says the Vatican confirms that Pope Francis e-mailed Rosensaft, and she supplied the following excerpt from it. “When you, with humility, are telling us where God was in that moment, I felt within me that you had transcended all possible explanations and that, after a long pilgrimage — sometimes sad, tedious or dull – you came to discover a certain logic and it is from there that you were speaking to us; the logic of First Kings 19:12 , the logic of that “gentle breeze” (I know that it is a very poor translation of the rich Hebrew expression) that constitutes the only possible hermeneutic interpretation. “Thank you from my heart. And, please, do not forget to pray for me. May the Lord bless you.” Read the rest of the article. I like that Tenety references, and provides a link to, Nostra Aetate, the Church’s Declaration On the Relation Of The Church To Non-Christian Religions. In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship. One is the community of all peoples, one their origin , for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God. His providence, His manifestations of goodness, His saving design extend to all men,( Wis. 8:1 ; Acts 14:17 ; Rom. 2:6-7 ; 1 Tim. 2:4 ) until that time when the elect will be united in the Holy City, the city ablaze with the glory of God, where the nations will walk in His light. (Rev. 21:23 ) Men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men: What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going? Perhaps you think you know the answers to all of these questions. Perhaps, like me, you believe the answers to these mysteries are found in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Perhaps you don’t. What cannot be denied is that the Church has thought long and hard on these issues, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So when she says, We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” ( 1 John 4:8 ). No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned. The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” ( 1 Peter 2:12 ), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men,( Rom. 12:18 ) so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.( Matt. 5:45 ) and you feel like running away because you have to change in order to conform to the mind of Christ (and his Church), think before you leap. Remember the words of the first Captain of the Barque, Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory through Christ Jesus will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little. To him be dominion forever. Amen. In the wise words of Chef from Apocalypse Now, “never get off the boat.” And if you ever write to Pope Francis, and you don’t want to give him your phone number, make sure you give him your e-mail address. He loves using every possible method to keep in touch with God’s children. Because he puts the “new” in New Evangelization. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2013/10/because-you-never-know-when-pope-francis-might-send-you-an-e-mail.html

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out… Abigail Haworth investigates Abigail Haworth The Observer, Saturday 19 October 2013 Arm’s length: 45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 are ‘not interested in or despise sexual contact’. More than a quarter of men feel the same way. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome". Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault. The sign outside her building says "Clinic". She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn't say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn't judge. Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. "It will be quiet in here," she says. Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence". The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way. Learning to love: sex counsellor Ai Aoyama, with one of her clients and her dog Marilyn. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Picture Many people who seek her out, says Aoyama, are deeply confused. "Some want a partner, some prefer being single, but few relate to normal love and marriage." However, the pressure to conform to Japan's anachronistic family model of salaryman husband and stay-at-home wife remains. "People don't know where to turn. They're coming to me because they think that, by wanting something different, there's something wrong with them." Official alarmism doesn't help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.) Kunio Kitamura, head of the JFPA, claims the demographic crisis is so serious that Japan "might eventually perish into extinction". Japan's under-40s won't go forth and multiply out of duty, as postwar generations did. The country is undergoing major social transition after 20 years of economic stagnation. It is also battling against the effects on its already nuclear-destruction-scarred psyche of 2011's earthquake, tsunami and radioactive meltdown. There is no going back. "Both men and women say to me they don't see the point of love. They don't believe it can lead anywhere," says Aoyama. "Relationships have become too hard." Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan's punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval. Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan's giant cities, are "spiralling away from each other". Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms "Pot Noodle love" – easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality "girlfriends", anime cartoons. Or else they're opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes. Some of Aoyama's clients are among the small minority who have taken social withdrawal to a pathological extreme. They are recovering hikikomori ("shut-ins" or recluses) taking the first steps to rejoining the outside world, otaku (geeks), and long-term parasaito shingurus (parasite singles) who have reached their mid-30s without managing to move out of home. (Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.) "A few people can't relate to the opposite sex physically or in any other way. They flinch if I touch them," she says. "Most are men, but I'm starting to see more women." No sex in the city: (from left) friends Emi Kuwahata, 23, and Eri Asada, 22, shopping in Tokyo. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Pictures Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers. "I use therapies, such as yoga and hypnosis, to relax him and help him to understand the way that real human bodies work." Sometimes, for an extra fee, she gets naked with her male clients – "strictly no intercourse" – to physically guide them around the female form. Keen to see her nation thrive, she likens her role in these cases to that of the Edo period courtesans, or oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into the art of erotic pleasure. Aversion to marriage and intimacy in modern life is not unique to Japan. Nor is growing preoccupation with digital technology. But what endless Japanese committees have failed to grasp when they stew over the country's procreation-shy youth is that, thanks to official shortsightedness, the decision to stay single often makes perfect sense. This is true for both sexes, but it's especially true for women. "Marriage is a woman's grave," goes an old Japanese saying that refers to wives being ignored in favour of mistresses. For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers. I meet Eri Tomita, 32, over Saturday morning coffee in the smart Tokyo district of Ebisu. Tomita has a job she loves in the human resources department of a French-owned bank. A fluent French speaker with two university degrees, she avoids romantic attachments so she can focus on work. "A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up." Tomita says a woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. "The bosses assume you will get pregnant." Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. "You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It's not an option for women like me." Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world's worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don't help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or "devil wives". In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty. Prime minister Shinzo Abe recently trumpeted long-overdue plans to increase female economic participation by improving conditions and daycare, but Tomita says things would have to improve "dramatically" to compel her to become a working wife and mother. "I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends – career women like me – to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence." Tomita sometimes has one-night stands with men she meets in bars, but she says sex is not a priority, either. "I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair. They assume I'm desperate because I'm single." She grimaces, then shrugs. "Mendokusai." Mendokusai translates loosely as "Too troublesome" or "I can't be bothered". It's the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia. Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws. And the centuries-old belief that the purpose of marriage is to produce children endures. Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is "preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like". 'I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair as I am single. But I can’t be bothered': Eri Tomita, 32. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Pictures The sense of crushing obligation affects men just as much. Satoru Kishino, 31, belongs to a large tribe of men under 40 who are engaging in a kind of passive rebellion against traditional Japanese masculinity. Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men like Kishino feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success. "It's too troublesome," says Kishino, when I ask why he's not interested in having a girlfriend. "I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage." Japan's media, which has a name for every social kink, refers to men like Kishino as "herbivores" or soshoku danshi (literally, "grass-eating men"). Kishino says he doesn't mind the label because it's become so commonplace. He defines it as "a heterosexual man for whom relationships and sex are unimportant". The phenomenon emerged a few years ago with the airing of a Japanese manga-turned-TV show. The lead character in Otomen ("Girly Men") was a tall martial arts champion, the king of tough-guy cool. Secretly, he loved baking cakes, collecting "pink sparkly things" and knitting clothes for his stuffed animals. To the tooth-sucking horror of Japan's corporate elders, the show struck a powerful chord with the generation they spawned. ‘I find women attractive but I’ve learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated’: Satoru Kishino, 31. Photograph: Eric Rechsteiner/Panos Pictures Kishino, who works at a fashion accessories company as a designer and manager, doesn't knit. But he does like cooking and cycling, and platonic friendships. "I find some of my female friends attractive but I've learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated," he says. "I can't be bothered." Romantic apathy aside, Kishino, like Tomita, says he enjoys his active single life. Ironically, the salaryman system that produced such segregated marital roles – wives inside the home, husbands at work for 20 hours a day – also created an ideal environment for solo living. Japan's cities are full of conveniences made for one, from stand-up noodle bars to capsule hotels to the ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores), with their shelves of individually wrapped rice balls and disposable underwear. These things originally evolved for salarymen on the go, but there are now female-only cafés, hotel floors and even the odd apartment block. And Japan's cities are extraordinarily crime-free. Some experts believe the flight from marriage is not merely a rejection of outdated norms and gender roles. It could be a long-term state of affairs. "Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure," says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. "But more people are finding they prefer it." Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, "a new reality". Is Japan providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home. But demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argues that a distinctive set of factors is accelerating these trends in Japan. These factors include the lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family, the country's precarious earthquake-prone ecology that engenders feelings of futility, and the high cost of living and raising children. "Gradually but relentlessly, Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction," Eberstadt wrote last year. With a vast army of older people and an ever-dwindling younger generation, Japan may become a "pioneer people" where individuals who never marry exist in significant numbers, he said. Japan's 20-somethings are the age group to watch. Most are still too young to have concrete future plans, but projections for them are already laid out. According to the government's population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%. They don't seem concerned. Emi Kuwahata, 23, and her friend, Eri Asada, 22, meet me in the shopping district of Shibuya. The café they choose is beneath an art gallery near the train station, wedged in an alley between pachinko pinball parlours and adult video shops. Kuwahata, a fashion graduate, is in a casual relationship with a man 13 years her senior. "We meet once a week to go clubbing," she says. "I don't have time for a regular boyfriend. I'm trying to become a fashion designer." Asada, who studied economics, has no interest in love. "I gave up dating three years ago. I don't miss boyfriends or sex. I don't even like holding hands." Asada insists nothing happened to put her off physical contact. She just doesn't want a relationship and casual sex is not a good option, she says, because "girls can't have flings without being judged". Although Japan is sexually permissive, the current fantasy ideal for women under 25 is impossibly cute and virginal. Double standards abound. In the Japan Family Planning Association's 2013 study on sex among young people, there was far more data on men than women. I asked the association's head, Kunio Kitamura, why. "Sexual drive comes from males," said the man who advises the government. "Females do not experience the same levels of desire." Over iced tea served by skinny-jeaned boys with meticulously tousled hair, Asada and Kuwahata say they share the usual singleton passions of clothes, music and shopping, and have hectic social lives. But, smart phones in hand, they also admit they spend far more time communicating with their friends via online social networks than seeing them in the flesh. Asada adds she's spent "the past two years" obsessed with a virtual game that lets her act as a manager of a sweet shop. Japanese-American author Roland Kelts, who writes about Japan's youth, says it's inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven. "Japan has developed incredibly sophisticated virtual worlds and online communication systems. Its smart phone apps are the world's most imaginative." Kelts says the need to escape into private, virtual worlds in Japan stems from the fact that it's an overcrowded nation with limited physical space. But he also believes the rest of the world is not far behind. Getting back to basics, former dominatrix Ai Aoyama – Queen Love – is determined to educate her clients on the value of "skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart" intimacy. She accepts that technology will shape the future, but says society must ensure it doesn't take over. "It's not healthy that people are becoming so physically disconnected from each other," she says. "Sex with another person is a human need that produces feel-good hormones and helps people to function better in their daily lives." Aoyama says she sees daily that people crave human warmth, even if they don't want the hassle of marriage or a long-term relationship. She berates the government for "making it hard for single people to live however they want" and for "whipping up fear about the falling birth rate". Whipping up fear in people, she says, doesn't help anyone. And that's from a woman who knows a bit about whipping. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex

Reflections by visionary underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, director of 'Scorpio Rising' and 'Lucifer Rising', author of Hollywood Babylon and Hollywood Babylon II... Kenneth Anger: 'I'm reasonably proud to be American'The controversial author and filmmaker, 86, on creating his own religion, working with Marianne Faithfull and living through the Red Scare Alex Needham The Observer, Saturday 19 October 2013 14.00 EDT Kenneth Anger, the American underground experimental filmmaker: 'Lucifer is not the devil. He's the god of light and colour.' Photograph: Pål Hansen for the Observer Time will conquer. Humans can attempt to freeze it and keep it, trick it and say: "You're not going to take it away from me." But it will win – every time. I never worked in Hollywood because I had a political conscience. The Red Scare – fear of communism – was just a bluff for people like McCarthy to gain power. At 20th Century Fox you had to take a loyalty oath and swear you wouldn't do anything bad to the United States. I said: "Forget it." You can express yourself as well in five minutes as three hours. I'm basically a short film-maker. I've never had the big, big grants. I could use $250,000 from the MacArthur Foundation, sure. But mostly I make "cine-poems". I devised my religion basing it on the beauty of nature – the sunrise, the sunset and the stars. When I was very young, my family – who were Scottish Presbyterian – tried to force me to go to Sunday school, but I said: "I simply reject the whole thing. You're just trying to scare people." Lucifer is not the devil. He's the god of light and colour. Luciferous – I bring the light. To me Satan and Lucifer are totally different entities. I've never bought drugs in my life, but I've known people with the money to buy them. People like Keith Richards or Mick Jagger. And if they had something to offer me, I'd take a little sniff. My siblings hated me because I was the artist. I had a bitchy older sister, Jean, who identified me not by Kenneth but by BCA – Birth Control Accident. I live alone. I have no so-called partner and am very independent. My most valuable possession is my passport. It's my escape hatch. I carry it in my breast pocket. My grandmother knew Busby Berkeley and he was cruel. In Footlight Parade he had girls dive into shallow water and their knees were scraped bloody. The water was stained pink by the time he was finished. Digital film won't be permanent. If we project ourselves 50 years in the future, when we want to watch something on digital from 2012, it will be gone, disintegrated. A lot of things are going to be missing in the future. Marianne Faithfull claimed I hypnotised her. The truth is I cast her as Lilith, the evil twin of Lucifer [in Lucifer Rising] and I was good to her at a difficult time – she was a heroin addict. She even brought heroin into Egypt, where we were making the film. She hid it under her face powder. I'm reasonably proud to be American. I don't think our wickedness is as bad as Russia's. They killed millions just to prove Stalin's power. There is a third volume of Hollywood Babylon [the controversial book of film industry scandals that Anger published in 1959] but it can't be published because of a very nasty group who call themselves Scientologists. They put rattlesnakes into people's mailboxes – that's a fact. It's a rather exotic way of trying to frighten people. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/19/kenneth-anger-this-much-i-know

Careful with that "we," Kemo Sabe.

Isn't that Lil Twist, Bieb's role model who borrows his Fiskar for the occasional fun homicidal evening drive?

ROFL

That much is certain. My view, as mentioned in past discussions here... As long as prosecutions and convictions are subject to error, the state has no business imposing an irreversible penalty. Even if the judicial process could magically be made perfect and error-proof, it seems abhorrent and immoral to me when the state confers on itself the power to kill. So few other states we consider peers see need or justification for it. To take the Judeo-Christian line, "eye for an eye" is not in the Commandments but "Thou shalt not kill" surely is. Life without parole is a sentence that can be, and has been by at least some states, legislated as ironclad, without escape clauses for anything other than an overturning of conviction. This seems to me less inhumane than the dragged-out uncertainty of today's (and any foreseeable, under our system of justice -- fortunately, I would say) death-penalty process. And less expensive to administer, if that should matter.

Do you realize how many gin-soaked olives one would have to eat to get drunk?

Cue music... :purple:

Well, at minimum.

Oh, come now!

Larry Flynt urges clemency for Joseph Paul Franklin, the killer who shot himPornographer and civil liberties advocate calls for neo-Nazi to be spared, saying death penalty is 'not justice but vengeance' Edward Helmore in New York The Observer, Saturday 19 October 2013 08.43 EDT Larry Flynt: 'This nation is bent on executing people and it’s hard to get people who feel that way to be rational.' Photograph: Dan Tuffs/Getty Images By the brutal norms of American capital punishment, few recipients of a lethal injection will trouble consciences less deeply than Joseph Paul Franklin. In a spree of racially motivated violence across the US in the late 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan-affiliated gunman murdered as many as 20 people on a mission to "cleanse the world" of those he considered to be of inferior status. But if Franklin is strapped down to receive the fatal shot of drugs on 20 November, in conformity with the Missouri Department of Corrections' schedule, at least one of his surviving targets won't be raising a glass in celebration. "If it was a deterrent, I'd support the death penalty, but it's not," Larry Flynt, the notorious pornographer and civil liberties campaigner who was paralysed by a bullet from Franklin's hunting rifle, told the Observer last week. Flynt first expressed his views on the death penalty and the sentence of his attacker in the movie-industry trade journal Hollywood Reporter last week. Referring to Britain in the 18th century, Flynt wrote: "Once a week, crowds would gather in a public square to observe public hangings of convicted pickpockets, unaware that their own pockets were being emptied by thieves moving among them … if you're ever trying to convince somebody of why the death penalty is not a deterrent, that's a good example." Flynt, whose life at the time of his shooting was depicted in the Milos Forman film The People vs Larry Flynt, is well known for crusading on controversial civil liberties positions. His causes have always been characterised by a fiercely anti-authoritarian streak. In 1983, after he leaked FBI surveillance tapes showing agents threatening carmaker John DeLorean during a cocaine trafficking sting, Flynt wore the stars and stripes as a nappy and was jailed for six months for desecration of the flag. DeLorean was subsequently exonerated on all drugs charges. During a spectacularly unsuccessful run for the California governorship in 2003, he referred to himself as "a smut peddler who cares". Flynt's decision to speak up over Franklin's execution comes nearly 35 years after the gunman's actions put him in a wheelchair. Though never convicted for shooting Flynt, Franklin confessed to the 1978 assassination attempt outside a Florida courthouse years after his rampage was ended by arrest for other crimes in 1980. In his confession, Franklin explained he had shot Flynt because Hustler had published a spread featuring an interracial couple. The partially sighted neo-Nazi gunman, who was linked to 20 murders, six aggravated assaults, 16 bank robberies and two bombings, was sentenced to death in 1997 for shooting a man outside a bar mitzvah celebration in a suburb of St Louis. Though described as a paranoid schizophrenic by his defence, Franklin – who took the names Joseph Paul after Hitler's propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels – explained during a lengthy confession that he had wanted to start a race war by travelling the country shooting interracial couples. Franklin's confession to shooting Flynt did not come till 1994, leaving the publisher at a loss for many years to understand the attack. "Hustler was pretty controversial at the time and I was being blamed by the religious right for every ill that society embodied," Flynt recalls. "So it didn't surprise me that somebody shot me. I didn't anticipate it, but it didn't surprise me. I was loved by half the country and hated by the other half – and that's not necessarily a good position to be in." Flynt says his feelings about capital punishment began to crystallise after he was shot. "I have been private about the death penalty because I knew I'd feel like a voice in the wilderness. This nation is bent on executing people and it's hard to get people who feel that way to be rational about anything. But you have to understand that most people are not after justice but after vengeance – and vengeance is wrong." It is not yet clear that Franklin will actually be executed next month. Missouri is among several states that have exhausted their supplies of the substances used in triple-drug-cocktail executions. Fresenius Kabi, the German manufacturer of the anaesthetic Propofol, used as a single-drug substitute, is demanding the return of supplies. Last week, Missouri prison officials said they would return a shipment of Propofol nearly a year after the distributor issued an urgent request. However, the officials said they still had a supply of the drug, but did not clarify if there are sufficient quantities for two upcoming executions, including Franklin's. States running low on execution supplies say they are increasingly turning to independent pharmacists to compound the drugs, opening the way for legal challenges that amount to the head-spinning argument that the drugs used for execution may not be safe for human use. For Flynt, the method is largely immaterial. "The electric chair, hangings, firing squads – there's a lot of ways to go. Drugs just seem to be the most civilised way – if there is a civilised way. "I just don't think it makes sense for governments to be in the business of executing people. It costs less to house them than it does to execute them, and I think locking them up in a cell on their own for the rest of their life – that's a far worse punishment than snuffing someone's life out in a matter of seconds." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/19/larry-flynt-clemency-joseph-paul-franklin-crippled

With openly gay correspondent, NBC sticks thumb in Russia's eye By DYLAN BYERS | politico.com 10/18/13 3:36 PM EDT NBC has decided to send correspondent Thomas Roberts to Moscow this November to co-host the network's coverage of the Miss Universe pageant -- an asignment Roberts, who is openly gay, says he took "because it is a huge, visible opportunity for LGBT people." The decision to send Roberts to Russia is a move in opposition of the country's official anti-homosexual stance. Roberts, who is also an MSNBC host, has publicly criticized what he describes as Russia's "homophobic laws," a reference to new laws prohibiting the promotion of nontraditional sexual relationships to minors and the adoption of Russian children by gays. NBC declined to address specifically Roberts' advocacy on behalf of gay rights, but told POLITICO that it was Roberts who expressed interest in co-hosting the event. "We've considered Thomas Roberts as host in the past," Doug Vaughan, NBC's executive vice president of specials, told POLITICO in a statement. “Thomas approached us and expressed his interest in the job. Thomas is smart and very talented, and we jumped at the opportunity to have him join us in Russia." On Friday, in an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe and in an essay on MSNBC.com, Roberts said he hoped he and his husband's presence in Russia would demonstrate that it was acceptable to be gay. "I think it's a wonderful assignment, because this is going to be seen by a billion people in over 190 countries, and if they happen to find out that I'm gay and married and that my husband Patrick's going to be there with me -- fantastic," he said on Morning Joe. In his blog post, he wrote: "We must be visible, we must show up, and, as Harvey Milk said, we must 'give them hope.'" The the Miss Universe Organization has also voiced opposition to Russian laws, which it says are “diametrically opposed to the core values” of Miss Universe. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/10/with-openly-gay-correspondent-nbc-sticks-thumb-in-175430.html?ml=po_r

Dick Cheney feared assassination by heart-device hack Cheney has suffered five heart attacks since the age of 37. | AP Photo By NICK GASS | 10/18/13 8:14 PM EDT Dick Cheney’s heart problems are well known. What isn’t widely known is that the former vice president had the wireless feature of his implanted defibrillator disabled so nobody could attempt to assassinate him by hacking into the device. During a “60 Minutes” interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta scheduled to air on CBS this Sunday, Cheney said his cardiologist feared a terrorist could send a signal to the device to make him go into cardiac arrest. “And it seemed to me to be a bad idea for the vice president to have a device that maybe somebody on a rope line or in the next hotel room or downstairs might be able to get into— hack into,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner said, according to the show’s transcript. “And I worried that someone could kill you.” During the interview Cheney reveals that he watched an episode of Showtime’s “Homeland” last year in which a terrorist kills the vice president by sending a fatal signal to his cardiac implant. “Because I know from the experience we had and the necessity for adjusting my own device that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible,” the former vice president said. Cheney, 72, underwent a successful heart transplant in March 2012 and has suffered five heart attacks since the age of 37, most recently in 2010. When asked whether his physical condition affected important decisions on Afghanistan, Iraq and surveillance programs, the vice president demurred. He also said he wasn’t worried about studies that show a connection between severe heart disease and memory loss. “You know, I was as good as I could be, you know, given the fact I was sixty-some years old at that point and a heart patient,” he said. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/dick-cheney-feared-assassination-by-heart-device-hack-98550.html#ixzz2iB4XWdjk

"...for those wanting to celebrate birthdays or Christmas with their beloved cats." http://blog.trutv.com/dumb-as-a-blog/2013/10/16/wine-exclusively-for-cats-now-on-sale-in-japan/index.html http://kotaku.com/introducing-japanese-wine-for-uh-cats-1445498718

...His Jordan stood in Manner fitting Between his Legs, to spew or spit in... Swift, 'Cassinus and Peter: A Tragical Elegy' http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/cassinus.html#6

The curry will pass. In a hurry. We may never pass this way again...