Erstellt am: 1. 10. 2011 - 12:43 Uhr
Today's Webtip: Killing in the name of?
The fact that the U.S. is fond of capital punishment is nothing very new. Despite the global trend toward abolishing the death penalty, the U.S. has held the banner high for quite some time now, taking fifth in the global ranking for most citizens killed by the state through judicial process.
Although some individual states in the U.S. have abolished the death penalty, the federal government still has many laws on the books that can result in loss of life for those convicted.
Most of the time, criminals are put through a trial and convicted before being put to death. It's one of those things that the U.S. constitution calls for, and has been used as an example of one of the things that sets the U.S. apart from those OTHER countries that kill their citizens.
We can haz trial.
Well, that used to be the case. In continuing the Bush tradition of ignoring basic constitutional rights, President Obama has succeeded in actually seeing over the assassination of a member of the government hit-list.
Although a good portion of the media and U.S. Government would have the world believe that this is really something very different, for many people it seems like the latest in successful attacks on the rule of law in the U.S.
One of the better explanations of why the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki might be a very bad thing indeed can be found at Salon. Glenn Greenwald has been following the story around this particular member of the hit-list for some time now, and takes a perspective you won't see in most media coverage of the subject.