Hank Kalet

A capital idea

The state Senate is scheduled to consider a bill on Thursday that would abolish the death penalty in New Jersey. According toa story in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The proposed legislation, scheduled to go before the committee on Thursday, would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole. Current death-row inmates would be resentenced to life imprisonment without parole in a maximum security prison.

It seems a sensible approach and should address some of the legitimate concerns raised by Assemblyman Bill Baroni (a Republican who represents South Brunswick, Cranbury, Jamesburg and Monroe). Mr. Baroni told me last month that poorly constructed legislation could open the door for death-row inamtes to appeal and potentially overturn their sentences because there would be no mechanism to commute them.

In case anyone is interested, here are my five reasons to oppose the death penalty:

1. Murder is murder no matter who pulls the trigger or sticks in the needle. When the state murders in a democracy, it does so with our implied consent making us complicit in the act. The death penalty, therefore, makes all of us murderers.

2. Premeditiated murder, according to Camus, is especially heinous; capital punishment is really just state-sanctioned, premeditated murder and vigilantism.

3. Death is permanent. There is no system that can be put in place that can safeguard against human error or bias, meaning that there always will remain a chance that the innocent will be put to death.

4. There is no system that can be put in place that can safeguard against human error or bias, meaning that there always will remain a chance that issues of race, class and gender will influence who gets sent to death and who faces life in prison.

5. It not about deterence, but about retaliation and retribution. — something that should be out of character for a civilized, democratic society. Just listen to supporters who consistently stoke fear and speak of it as “the ultimate punishment”; no one talks about the death penalty as a way to prevent crime and, if they did, there have been far too many studies offering evidence to the contrary.

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Tales of the dog

An eventul morning that, unfortunately, is the culmination of a strange and difficult week for my dear doggie.

Honey, my often-too-active mutt, has suddenly lost her sight — within days, literally — and has gone from a dog that could out run a thrown tennis ball and catch it over her shoulder on a fly from 50 yards away to walking into walls and doors.

If that weren’t bad enough — and it’s bad, believe me — she managed to get out of our fenced-in yard this morning and wander up the block.

A little background: I get up at about 6:15 every morning with her to let her out. Our yard is fenced, so I just let open the back door and lie down on the couch for an extra 10 minutes of shut-eye before pouring my coffee and getting into my running clothes.

Often, she’ll either bark or body slam the back door when she’s ready to come in. This morning, however, she didn’t — and she wasn’t visible from the back window. I thought she may have gotten lost back behind the pool, confused in her sudden blindness, so I pulled on sneakers and jeans and went out.

That’s when I found the fence gate open.

The gate is always closed and Annie and I have no idea why it was open this morning. Honey must have nudged it somehow and then wandered off. This has happened before — though, she almost always wandered right to our front door, where should would take a seat and wait for us to find her.

This morning, however, she wandered up the street, and into the yard a couple of houses down. I was in full panic mode, unable to find her (she was obscured by a set of bushes), and not sure what to do. I jumped in the car and drove around the block, hoping I’d come across her and that she hadn’t been hit by a car.

Annie called me on the cell phone shortly after I left — our next door neighbor found Honey just across his fence (his dogs were barking, so he went to investigate) and he helped Annie corral her and get her back to our house.

Needless to say, it was not a good morning — made no better by the news that we’ d need to take her to a specialist in Red Bank and that we probably would not be able to take her to North Carolina later this month (we finally rent a house that allows dogs and she can’t go — figures).

So there it is. I’m still hopeful that the specialist will determine that it is treatable and that with medication she will regain her sight. I also know, however, that she will adjust either way.

I’m not sure, however, whether Annie and I ever will.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
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State-sanctioned prayer?

Steven Hart offers just the right touch of sarcasm to commemorate yesterday’s state-sanctioned Day of Prayer. I’m surprised that more people aren’t bothered by this constitutionally dubious faux event.

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Stupid is as stupid does

Stop being stupid. That’s the advice I’d give to the student or students who scrawled two bomb threats in graffiti in bathrooms at South Brunswick High School recently. I know it was a prank, but it is not funny.

Here’s the editorial we wrote last year ($) when the same kind of nonsense occurred:

Enough is enough.

Five times in just over a month South Brunswick High School has had to be evacuated because of a prank, bomb threats either called into the school or left in a note or scrawled on walls in the building.

The threats — three of which occurred in early May and two last week — were obvious pranks, according to school officials, who nonetheless decided not to take any chances. The building was evacuated with about three hours of class time lost.

We think the district has acted appropriately — it would be foolish not to take seriously any potential threat against the 2,800 or so students and staff members in the building.

The district also has made efforts to punish the pranksters while preventing future hoaxes from taking place.

Two students were arrested in early May in conjunction with one of the threats, charged with making terroristic threats, false public alarm, criminal mischief and conspiracy by local police and expelled by the district.

And school officials promise the same treatment for anyone else caught in connection with the other four threats. (An anonymous donor is offering a $500 reward to anyone with information that leads to the arrest of one of the pranksters.)

School Principal Tim Matheny also announced that additional bomb threats would result in the conversion of planned half days into full school days.

Unfortunately, threats are about the only tool administrators have at their disposal to deal with potential pranksters. It is really up to students to make sure that this foolishness stops.

Students need to understand that these hoaxes are not funny. They waste time and resources, create panic among the community and could, down the road, lead to a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” mentality, lulling students and staff into a false sense of security. The more false threats that are made, the more likely it becomes for students and staff to take them lightly — which could have dire consequences should a threat turn out to be real.

Students can make this stop by taking responsibility for their school and for the actions that their peers take. This means confronting students who find these sick jokes funny and making it clear to peers that they will not be afraid to turn in offending students.

The message has to be made clear: Bomb threats are not funny.

No. They’re not.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
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Runner’s diary, Friday

Managed four today — ran them with progressively faster splits for the first three and then slowed for the last one. Over all I did the four in 34:41 and now have a very sore left knee (but that could be from climbing up and down a stool as we paint our spare bedroom).

Music: Wilco, Kicking Television — the second disc.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
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