The U.S. Supreme Court stepped in just two hours before Troy Davis was scheduled to be excuted yesterday and ordered a reprieve until the Court can decide if the Georgia Supreme Court did its due diligence last March when it decided against giving Davis a new trial or hearing of new evidence.   (Full article and comments)

Troy Davis, who's scheduled to be executed tomorrow night, should get a new trial. An overwhelming majority of those who testified against him when he was convicted of murdering a Savannah police officer in 1989 have since recanted or admitted they lied. To carry out an execution based on such faulty testimony places the much-maligned death penalty on even more morally wobbly footing. If you support the death penalty, the Troy Davis case should appear to you as a threat to its future.
Now, Davis' fate now rests with the US Supreme Court. This just in from the Georgia Supreme Court:
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The term “identity politics” has come into high vogue in the past decade, what with all the fuss in the Netherlands about Muslim migrants being out to get white Europeans and silly nativists in the United States nattering on about Latino migrants plotting to blow us all up between working shifts at our favorite restaurants—even liberals use “identity politics” pejoratively—but for under-represented minorities, nothing makes more sense than voting for someone like yourself. If you are a member of an under-represented minority, in order to get elected and work effectively once in office you must, at the very least, have the backing of your own community. That is a minimum requirement for obtaining and using political power.

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After a month of incredibly hard work, I've completed the program at Operation Boot Camp! Read my latest blog entry here, along with a full month of daily entries. (Full article and comments)

“She has not been partisan,” said Rep. Les Gara, a Democrat from Anchorage. “Anybody that comes to Juneau and says, ‘I’m not going to do my party’s bidding’ deserves credit. We had some very dark years under Frank Murkowski, and it has been nice to see something different.”

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Motorcycle safety awareness is vital. But why does the burden of the bumper sticker—"Look Twice, Save a Life"—seem to fall entirely on me, the automobile driver? Where is the public awareness program targeted at motorcycle riders, reminding them that lanes are not to be shared, that being small does not entitle them to make fancy highway maneuvers, and that feats of motorway derring-do endanger more even than their own lives—that by taking their lives so cavalierly into their hands, they're also gambling with the lives of the motorists who may swerve to avoid them?

All I'm saying is that I am very careful on the road, especially around motorcycles. But at least half the motorcyclists I encounter in Atlanta ride dangerously, zipping in and out of lanes and up the shoulder, and that makes me very, very nervous for all of us, especially them. Believe me, being nervous does not make me a better driver. So shouldn't we focus on teaching bikers to follow traffic rules and ride properly, instead of (or at least whilst we're) reminding me to allow them to make me so nervous? Looking twice is good advice, but there's more to it than that.

True, if a motorcycle rider makes an ill-advised move on the highway and causes me to collide with him at 60 mph, I'm probably not the one whose life is at risk. And a lifetime of nerve-wracking omg-what-is-that-guy-doing-two-lanes-over-is-he-coming-over-here skittish driving is, though unfortunate, a small price to pay in comparison. So by all means, let's focus on the cost to motorcyclists and not on the danger to me. Let's be aggressive about educating them. Where are my bumper stickers? I never see any that say, "Think twice, you're ON A DAMN MOTORCYCLE." Don't key my car, but I'd buy it. (Full article and comments)

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the only organization that keeps reliable stats on the issue, one in three American women, about 33 percent, has an abortion by the time she’s in her 40s. Far more American women have children by the time they are in their 40s. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2006, about 80 percent of women between the ages of 40 and 44 have at least one child.

Far more American women are concerned about how they can manage to have children and keep their jobs than they are with terminating a pregnancy, but the Democratic women who have set the feminist agenda in Washington for more than 50 years have made sure that every piece of legislation aimed at women gets boondoggled with abortion rights—a circumstance that makes better family leave policies and proposals for equal pay difficult to pass among moderates and conservatives.

Liberal women have failed American women shamefully and catastrophically.

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I've been a John McCain fan since the 1980s. But, I've never been a fan of his smile. Watching his speeches, I've gotten the impression that maybe Cindy, trying to be supportive, told him that he has a charming devilish grin and he believed her. With the political stakes so high and tension at a fever pitch, it's a relief for me to be able to say that the candidate I so deeply admire has a smile problem and I'm not alone in noting it. If you don't feel like smiling, my policy is, you shouldn't. (Full article and comments)

There is no failure to be found in anything that Palin has done in relation to the "bridge to nowhere." There is, however, failure to to be found in how Obama and Biden, given the chance to re-route that money in November 2005 to help rebuild areas destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, didn't do so. I'm sure the victims of Katrina could have used the money, but they didn't get it because Congress--including Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden--voted for the money to go to Alaska instead. (Full article and comments)

It is the height of irony that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama lays claim to the idea of embracing diversity, while many of his supporters lash out at GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin for embracing real diversity on a daily basis in a very intimate way. If you are truly tolerant of the differences of others, how is it possible that you can condemn a woman for welcoming into her family someone with Down syndrome, someone who is more discriminated against than women or blacks? (Full article and comments)