Well, I definitely picked the worst possible entry to leave up for days on end.
(conditioner, coca cola, hair clips, trash bags...)
Yes, already this blog is going downhill...I blame school...seriously.

However, I suppose I can start that ranting I had promised. In my criminology class on Wednesday of last week we watched a movie about the death penalty and mainly how the "justice" system deals with the death penalty in relation to minors. Can someone explain to me how people who aren't even old enough to be considered compitent enough to vote or drink or in some cases even drive, can manage to think clearly enough and make a logical enough decision to commit a crime as outrageous as murder, and then be considered adult enough to know what they were getting into? Compitent enough to vote = no, compitent enough to die = yeah. Gotta love it. It was seriously disturbing. I understand that murder is serious...I'm not stupid. But I know that *I* have changed a whole lot since freshman year of COLLEGE, not to mention since my sophomore year of high school when I was 16. Just because someone was stupid enough to commit, or in some of the cases in the video to just BE AT THE SCENE (yeah, dont even get me started on that one, I was appalled), does not mean that their mentality will be the same in one year, much less multiple years. It is a dilemma, because how DO you deal with someone who could potentially kill again? Locking them up really just makes the situation in the jails worse, not to mention treating people like animals doesn't seem right, but how much faith can you put in someone who has killed? I've had people that I've known for years turn out to be someone completely different than I thought, so how do you trust someone who you don't know at all with something as important as a human life? It does present a problem, but, if nothing else, I know that if *I* were killed by someone, I would never want them killed on my behalf.

AND ANOTHER THING! Since 1976 there have been 877 executions, and do you KNOW how many of those have been in Texas ALONE? 310!! I am disgusted and can't believe I am from that state (and that's without all the negative publicity it gets from Bush...both of them). The next highest number of executions in the good 'ol USofA is Virginia, which doesn't even compete with its measley 89 executions since 1976. Why is it that Texas is apparently full of a) murderers and b) people who have such animosity in them that they feel the need to murder the murderers? Ok, clearly I'm exaggerating with this "full of" wording, but really, studies have been done that show that the death penalty is not proven to deter murder (want me to cite things? ok, fine: Sorenson et al (1999) "Examining the Effect of Executions on Murder in Texas"), so why do ANY of the states keep the death penalty? I mean, should the aim in general not be to deter more murders first and foremost? And clearly the death penalty is not proven to do that. So what does it do? I mean, with the actually small number of executions compared to the number of people in jail in general, its not like its keeping the number of people in prisions lower. So what? It makes the people in power look like they have MORE power? Yeah, basically. And what does that say? Does our goverment have to use murder to keep their status as powerful? Hm, ok, switch gears, that's too big of a subject to tackle at the moment, cause then you get into war and...yeah, not tackling that now.

In summation, it seems that the only people who are for the death penalty are either scared or angry, and I don't think either emotional status is logical enough to make decisions about whether someone should live or die...oh, but apparently it is logical enough, because those poor kids in that video were stupid, young, scared, and/or angry, and they're apparently logical enough to kill and then BE KILLED for their murders (and just for the record, I hardly see people who support the death penalty FACING the death penalty).

Next time on "What Rant Does Mary Have Now?": apathy, button-pushers, and Mary's thoughts on the subjects.