From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: All 5 Mar 94 03:13:38 Subject: The Week in Death: Feb 18-24 UpdReq QUOTE OF THE DAY ``From this day forward, I no longer will tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have endeavored -- indeed, I have struggled, along with a majority of this Court -- to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor... Rather than continue to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies. The basic question -- does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendents `deserve' to die? -- cannot be answered in the affirmative... The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.'' -- Harry A. Blackmun THE WEEK IN DEATH (February 18-February 24) OSCAR COLLAZO (80), Puerto Rican separatist. Collazo was one of two men who tried to assassinate HARRY S TRUMAN in 1950 (his accomplice was killed in the attack). He was sentenced to death, but Truman reduced the sentence to life imprisonment. He had been working for Puerto Rican independence since JIMMY CARTER freed him in 1979. ``PAPA'' JOHN CREACH (76), musician. A versatile violinist, Creach taught a bunch of San Francisco hippies in the Jefferson Airplane how to play blues, bluegrass, and jazz. He played with the Airplane until they broke up, and with other ex-Airplaners in Hot Tuna. He later hooked up with the Jefferson Starship. JAMES RUSBRIDGER (65), author. Co-wrote the 1991 book ``Betrayal at Pearl Harbor,'' in which he contended that in 1941, CHURCHILL knew about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, but witheld the information from ROOSEVELT, hoping that the attack would draw the United States into the war. The co-author was recent TWID-inductee ERIC NAVE, a cryptologist who broke Japan's military codes in 1939 and who claims to have intercepted messages spelling out Japan's plans for destroying the U.S. base in Hawaii. The response to the book's contention was: if Churchill had warned Roosevelt, and Pearl Harbor was prepared for the attack, the U.S. would have entered the war anyway. DINAH SHORE (76), entertainer. Shore racked up 75 hit singles, including the lite standard ``Buttons and Bows,'' a series of novelties like ``Shoofly Pie and Apple Pandowdy,'' and ``Blues in the Night,'' which was sexy enough to surprise those of us familiar with her only as a charming, ebullient, nice average talk show host. Her first marriage, to actor GEORGE MONTGOMERY, ended in 1962; a second marriage lasted little more than a year. In the 70s, Shore had a 6-year affair with BURT REYNOLDS (who was almost 20 years her junior). That may sound normal now, but it was really quite bizarre; in contemporary terms, it would be like being told that JANE PAULEY was doing the horizontal bop with MATT DILLON. Dinah has also won more Emmys than anyone else--a total of 10 (FYI: EDWARD ASNER and MARY TYLER MOORE come in second place with seven each). BRUCE VOELLER (59), scientist. A specialist in sexually transmitted diseases, Voeller helped found the National Gay Task Force, and was president of the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation. From the Are You Through? Can We Kill Him Now? Department (AYTCWKHND): Last week in a lone dissent on whether or not to grant a stay of execution to a murderer in Texas, Justice HARRY BLACKMUN reversed his career-long support of the death penalty. The opinion, a small portion of which is quoted above, is an impassioned but logical argument that the death penalty can not be made to be applied fairly. Blackmun, FRs might recall, was shocked two years ago when the Court upheld the sentence of a man on death row who petitioned the Court for a stay of execution in order to present new evidence he claimed would prove his innocence. In ANTONIN SCALIA's remarks in that decision, it was clear that Scalia's whole concern in denying the stay was with maintaining the integrity of legal procedure, while being completely dismissive of the possibility of the inmates' innocence. At the time, Blackmun said the Court's decision came ``perilously close to simple murder.'' In the recent decision, Blackmun asked for a dialog with his judicial brethren, and who should respond but Scalia, who wrote a snotty retort in which he skillfully but dishonestly side-stepped Blackmun's arguments while strutting his own moral outrage in order to not-so-subtly belittle Blackmun's views. We despise bullies, and intellectual bullies are the worst sort. Scalia may be brilliant, but he is not a judge -- at best, he's a mechanic, obsessed with constructing edifices of rhetoric, impatient with anyone not in awe of his pretty constructions, and contemptuous of the people who get caught in his machines. BILL CLINTON may end up being the worst f*ck-up ever to hold the Oval Office, but if his election spares us another Supreme Court appointment like Scalia -- or his half-wit toady CLARENCE THOMAS, all will be worth it. Blackmun's recent dissent is unlikely to have any affect on the petitioner's fate. (The Week in Death is by Brian Santo [B.SANTO@genie.geis.com].) ... What's the use? Yesterday an egg, tomorrow a feather duster. 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: All 5 Mar 94 03:37:52 Subject: There is help! UpdReq Fundamentalists Anonymous Says Bakkers Fall Helped Organization. FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- The fall of PTL leaders Jim and Tammy Bakker has helped clear the path for Americans who were having trouble rejecting the fundamentalist mindset, the co-founder of Fundamentalists Anonymous says. "Our attack is on the rigid, authoritarian mindset," said Jim Luce. "A mindset that sees the world in a very judgmental train of thought. Black and white. Good and evil. The kind of mindset that says, If you don't do things our way, you're going to hell.' We're helping people overcome that." Luce said national membership increased from 30,000 to more than 36,000 since Bakker stepped down in the wake of a sexual tryst with a church secretary seven years ago. Officials are expecting an even greater increase within the next few months. "What we've discovered is that when people leave fundamentalist organizations, they take about six months to get up the courage to call us," Luce told the Fayetteville Times. "I would say the PTL fallout will hit us this fall." The New York-based organization, which has no membership fees, does not attack fundamentalist theology, Luce said. Its goal is to aid people who have experienced negative effects from being involved with fundamentalist ministries, he said. Officials with Fundamentalists Anonymous estimate that there are six million dissatisfied or wavering fundamentalists in the United States. The group has members in 50 states and operates 44 support groups in 38 states, Luce said. Luce said the national organization created a legal task force in April to handle numerous requests from ex-PTL members seeking financial recourse. "We're getting about 25 legal complaints a day," Luce said. "We're having a hard time reviewing them all." "I think that these charlatans that are posing as TV preachers have really exposed a lot of the professional-fundamentalism as what it is -- a multibillion dollar industry," Luce said. "The top 10 TV evangelists brought in over a billion dollars last year." Charles Newton of St. Pauls, coordinator of the 500-member North Carolina chapter of Fundamentalist Anonymous, also has reported an increase in calls since the PTL scandal. "People feel devastated when they find that their hero -- a religious and moral hero -- has fallen off the wall and broken into a million pieces like Humpty Dumpty," Newton said. Newton said the state chapter receives calls from people who are not only experiencing emotional difficulties because of fundamentalism, but financial and legal problems as well. He said he received one telephone call from a North Carolina man who wanted help in handling a marital crisis. The man said his wife was attempting to force him to join her fundamentalist organization, threatening to divorce him if he did not become a member, Newton said. Newton said the organization was neither anti-fundamentalist nor anti-Christian. "People who believe in the fundamentalist theology and its interpretation of the Bible have no need to be intimidated by us," Newton said. "This group doesn't address that." 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718