Drew Carey Doesn't Rock

This morning I was listening to a radio morning show on the drive back to Philly from DC. Drew Carey called in to promote his new movie "Robots." When the hosts asked him about politics, he said his usual mantra: Shut up and act.

Okay, I can respect that. You're an entertainer. You think entertainers should just entertain rather than pontificate on issues they may not know anything about.

But then the host asked if he had anything to say about politics, seeing as he was speaking to a DC crowd. He took the opportunity to rail against social security as a program that we all really hate. Then he said, "If this presidency is affecting your life, you should be living a different life."*

Um, what? Pretty easy to say that a president shouldn't affect your life when you never have to worry about housing, food, health care, employment, and a million other daily struggles faced by non-millionaires.

Didn't Drew Carey come from humble roots? What am I missing here? Well Drew, if you're out there, I would really like to be living a different life so I'm not affected by this presidency. So you can make a check out to me for a million or so and I'll send you a postcardin a month to let you know how nice and unaffected I am.

* This is practically verbatim, but I can't guarantee it's perfectly verbatim.

Frustrating Me At Every Turn

The Terry Schiavo case is on my mind quite a bit lately. But the President's recent statement on the issue made me angry at the way his Administration and Congressional allies pick and choose pet projects by claiming to serve a larger principle, but ignore so many other important cases or programs that would even better serve that principle.

Regarding the recently enacted Schiavo bill, the president said, "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," he said.

So what about the death penalty cases where serious questions were raised about the adequacy of legal representation or mental capacity of the convict? Where is the presumption in favor of life in ignoring their cries for justice? And what about the thousands of kids who suffer or die every year because they live in poverty and without health care? Where is the presumption in favor of life in cutting government welfare programs in the name of "reform?"

I just don't understand how they're drawing their lines.

Live from Death Row

I went to an amazing event today. The newly formed Penn Law chapter of the Lawyers' Guild hosted a call with a former death row inmate who had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment by former IL Governor Ryan. Gov. Ryan commuted the sentences of all the death row inmates in Illinois before leaving office. He pardoned a few inmates as well.

The man on the phone today was "Cortez Brown." I put his name in quotation marks because his real name is Victor Safforld. After police beat and tortured him to get him to sign a statement about his involvmement in two murders, Safforld signed the name "Cortez Brown." As he explained today, he figured that if he signed a fake name, he would be better able to explain to a judge that the statement was false. He thought it would void the statement, like a fake signature voids a check.

The statement was admitted. Safforld couldn't afford a private attorney, so he got a public defender. His public defender had more than 30 active cases and - this is horrific - actually was in trial defending another client at the exact same time that he was defending Safforld. On the phone today Safforld said his lawyer would literally give his opening statement, then leave to go downstairs and give his opening statement in the other trial, then run back upstairs, and so on. The evidence against Safforld was incredibly weak. His lawyer had no time to do any field work. Safforld told his lawyer he was beaten, but this was never investigated. Safforld was convicted and was sentenced to death.

Safforld's story is very compelling and appalling. He is well-spoken. He is funny. He praises the people who work for and volunteer at "Campaign to End the Death Penalty," who have been helping his case since 2000. Safforld has been in jail for 15 years.

I found his words to be so thought-provoking and moving that I thought I'd share some of them with you. There is no knowing his guilt or innocence for certain, I suppose, but maybe that's what makes his story seem all the more terrible. We just don't know what he did, and yet we were willing to kill him. It's depressing how quickly we forget that, whether guilty or innocent, prisoners are human beings too. It's frightening how elusive the truth is.

This was everything I could scribble down during the 45 minute phone call.

Describing the mood when the death row inmates learned that Gov. Ryan had commuted all their sentences:
"It was as though the Chicago Bulls had won their first championship... Everyone was excited and filled with joy... but it was bittersweet... it was like, 'Okay, we won't kill you, but you have to spend the rest of your life in jail as an innocent man.' But where there's life, there's hope."

Explaining why he doesn't care if he's pardoned or simply has his sentence reduced, he simply wants to be free:
"I've seen people go to the execution chamber who have strong innocence claims... however way my freedom comes, I will accept it."

Explaining why sharing his story and having people listen is so important to his case:
"The most powerful asset that we have is out ability to communicate with people who see the system as unjust and who want to change the system... they've started monitoring our mail and made it extremely hard to get on the telephone... do not allow the system to discourage you from communicating with us."

Describing the conditions on death row:
"It's like a cemetary... Everyone there is scheduled for deatj... Nothing can take your mind from the execution chamber, especially when you saw friends of yours go there."

"What we were there for did not mean anything... we had to fight for one another."

"Death row was no different than any other prison. In fact, we had more love and respect for one another because of the seriousness of our cases... They treated us worse than people treat a dog... any way they could do to inconvenience us, the did."

[He also said thaton death row, everyone is in a solitary cell and are only let out of that cell for visitations, which are rare, and for 2 hours of recreation a day. So you spend 22 hours a day in a cell by yourself.]

Describing the night before the execution of one of his friends on death row:
"The night before, he was excited [and upset]... I had to talk to him all night long. I could actually see the death angel pulling on his spirit."

"I had to live with the idea that that may be me one day."

Discussing his education and goals:
"On death row, you can go no further than a GED... [and now it's the same with a life sentence.]... I do self-study... I want to be a master mathematician. I try to learn from the universe itself."

[He also studies a lot of religion, Buddhism and Islam in particular, and has a strong faith in god and a higher power.]

Describing the people from "Campaign to End the Death Penalty:"
"These people embody what I consider to be the spirit of God himself in their activism, not just their words."

His messages to us:
"Please continue to be involved... Whatever you can do to help, it always helps and it's not in vain... We appreciate everything that you do for us... It's a big machine that we're fighting against... and we must continue to fight."

"It's good to fight now because maybe someone you know will become a victim of the criminal justice system... because then you'll wish you'd done more."

"Whatever you do, keept it real, keep it simple, and fight."

Evil Trans Fats

Is anyone else picking up on all the grumblings about trans fats lately? Pretty soon all food containing trans fats will have to be labeled (and by "containing," of course the government means "containing more than this amount which the food manufacturing lobby has convinced us equals zero even though it is more than zero").

I've been reading about trans fats a lot lately and I had no idea that they were both really really bad for you and in just about everything I consume every day. Peanut butter... frozen dinners... donuts... yeah, that's a daily meal plan for me, and those trans fats are in all of it! Any time you see the word "partially hydrogenated" in a list of ingredients, you have to watch out, because that's trans fat. Start reading labels and you'll realize that every good and yummy thing you love to consumer is full of trans fats. It's been rather devastating to my eating habits! Thank god diet coke doesn't have trans fats... just cancer-causing nutrasweet.

Anyway, apparently trans fats not only raise the bad fat in your blood stream, but they also stop the good things that good fats do. In case you want it explained to you in simple form, I saw this article today which lays it all out.

It freaks me out that people weren't talking about this before... but maybe none of us were listening. I wonder if health experts have been cursing apathetic, un-health-educated consumers like me for the past few years for not realizing how bad trans fats are just like I sit around grumbling about people who don't vote and don't realize how bad the Bush Administration is. Hmmm...