Tuesday, December 14, 2004

On The Mark -- The Homeless: Birds, Vets and an Eye for an Eye

Honk 4 Hawks. I couldn't help being cynical when, in the same section of a major newspaper, there was an article about homeless vets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an article about some red-tailed hawks that were now homeless because they had been evicted from their longtime nest located in an elegant NYC residential neighborhood. The homeless vets were left to stand on corners and beg for food and warmth. Meanwhile, the red-tailed hawks have people like Mary Tyler Moore fighting for the right for these birds to return to their home nests so, as Mary stated, they can be in their natural habitat and peaceful. This isn't an attack against Mary, for all I know she gives millions to homeless vets. Yet, wouldn't it be nice to see some people of celebrity, with influence and money, fighting loud and clear so that our vets, who fought for the right to protest for birds' rights, could also be in their natural habitat and peaceful?

I'm terribly conflicted about the Scott Peterson death verdict. There was a time when I supported the death penalty, but that was before DNA and evidence that a lot of people were put to death simply so that a prosecutor could have a good win-loss ratio and detectives could wrap up a case quickly. Even though it seems obvious that Scott did the murder(s), I would prefer that he stay on death row for the rest of his life with all its restrictions, even with the knowledge of how much it costs this taxpayer to take care of him.

1 comment:

B2 said...

I had this thought - if the only reason someone wants to enforce the death penalty (as opposed to life imprisonment) is a monetary issue, then you've gotta go with life imprisonment anyway. "We can't afford not to kill him/her" sounds really bad to me. And life imprisonment should not be the perk-filled spree we always read about, with weightlifting and cable; it should be just enough to keep a murder or rapist alive, but not happy. Otherwise it's not punishment - it's detention.