Death penalty; fetal remains; election aftermath

Death penalty

The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s 2016 Annual Report shows death penalty sentences in Texas remain at their lowest level since 1976.

This is encouraging, but I was disappointed to learn that of the three people sentenced to die in Texas in 2016, one was from Tarrant County, our county!

My opinion of the death penalty changed after hearing from the sister of a Death Row exoneree, a man imprisoned for 15 years before being exonerated and the friend of a man executed this past March despite a lifelong history of mental illness.

These stories brought home the reality of wrongful convictions and the problems of racial and intellectual bias that plague our justice system.

For every nine people sentenced to die in the U.S., one is exonerated.

Let’s stop sentencing people to die before we kill another innocent person.

Fetal remains

Thanks to Cynthia Allen for her balanced discussion of the reasonableness of proper disposal of aborted or miscarried fetal remains. (“Fetal remains rule appeals to our sense of humanity,” Friday)

Do we really approve of treating the pieces of a human baby — at any stage of development — the same as discarded garbage, buried in a landfill?

We need to value all human life, beginning with the tiny child in the womb.

Appreciated, too, is her inclusion of the information that organizations like Catholic funeral homes and cemeteries will offer free burial services, negating the claim that such humane care would be financially prohibitive.

Chronic meddling is at an epidemic levels in Texas. Cynthia Allen, in her latest column, attempted to dredge up old, debunked propaganda and lies regarding physician-assisted euthanasia.

What she described came straight from Hitler’s ideas on “unnecessary mouths” listed among the “undesirables” in Nazi Germany.

Then, there is the burial of fetal tissue. There are no health or safety issues here, only the chronic meddlers who have too much time on their hands.

Election aftermath

If Hillary Clinton had been elected and had chosen the people Donald Trump has for his cabinet — those from big banks, Big Oil and even those with ties to Russia and a loony general — the GOP no doubt would be demanding her head.

Even Trump derided her for her speeches and alleged ties to the banks that he now embraces.

The Dems have been relatively quiet, too, but the confirmation hearings should be interesting.

Let’s assume the Russians did hack.

Had Clinton not been fixated on hiding information from the public record by using a private email server, there would have been little for the hackers to reveal.

Had the DNC not been complicit in swaying voter opinion toward Hillary from Bernie Sanders, there would have been little for the hackers to discover.

Bottom line is that Clinton was not deemed to be trustworthy and presented a message that did not resonate with the voting public.

This story was originally published December 20, 2016 at 2:42 PM with the headline "Death penalty; fetal remains; election aftermath."