Limits of Religious Freedom and the Atlanta Spa Shootings
The tragic Atlanta spa shootings may have been motivated by religious guilt, for which the perpetrator’s Church bears some responsibility.
United States
difference between a 15-year-old stabber and 19-year-old Holocaust Guard?
What should be done with a man in his 80s or 90s who way back when they were a teenager committed a crime? On Feb. 27th 83 year old Joe Ligon was released from Pennsylvania prison. He had been incarcerated since 1953, for a total of 68 years, for involvement in a robbery …
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Controversy On State Department Report On Human Rights
The U.S. State Department recently released a document titled ‘Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights’, with the purpose of clarifying and assessing the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy. Immediately, a coalition of over 200 human rights groups, former government officials, and academic experts released a letter condemning the report, saying it …
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Human Rights and Statues
Recently there has been much argument over statues of historical figures that owned slaves or carried out other such injustice. People argue that honoring these figures is to condone or overlook their crimes, minimizing the gravity of what they did and the harm they caused. Of course, statues don’t have rights and there is no …
Book Review: Evicted, by Mathew Desmond
In his recent book Evicted, Mathew Desmond follows the detailed stories of poor Milwaukee residents as they struggle with the threat of eviction, are evicted, and then subjected to homelessness and struggle to find new housing. The strength of Desmond’s writing is that he is scrupulously non-judgmental in his portrayal of both evicted tenants and …
court can be worse than crime
Chanel Miller wrote her memoir, titled ‘Know My Name’, to give readers a window into sexual assault and the toll on victims from prosecuting it afterwards in the legal system. Chanel was drinking at a party, blacked out, and then a young man took her to a deserted area close by. He removed her clothing …
Who Will Prevent Death in the Desert?
In 2017, four volunteers from the ministry ‘No More Deaths’ left food and water for migrants in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Reserve along the Mexican border. This reserve is a particularly harsh environment, especially in the summer when these volunteers were active, with the daytime mercury topping 100 degrees. In 2017, the remains of 32 …
Today’s Land Mines May be smarter, but bringing them back is still a mistake
In 1997, the use, manufacture, and stockpiling of anti-personal land mines was banned via what’s commonly referred to as the Ottowa Treaty. This was mostly as a reaction to the horrific damage land mines cause to civilians. Land mines are cheap and easy to deploy, and armies are able to scatter tens of thousands …
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Wisconsin’s Enormous Prison Count and Mistreatment of Prisoners
Last week I attended a panel titled ‘Reentry: Ready or Not’ organized by Milwaukee’s Community Advocates Public Policy Institute, the Milwaukee Turners, and other local community partners. Wisconsin currently imprisons 23,755 people, more than twice as many as neighboring Minnesota. The focus was on ways to reduce Wisconsin’s prison population, along with how to better …
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Mississippi Restitution Centers Are an Unwelcome Throwback to slavery
Imagine being imprisoned because you can’t pay $656 that you owe. That can happen today in Mississippi, where poor people who cannot afford court ordered fines, fees, and other payments are put into restitution center prisons where they are forced to work until they pay off their debt. The Marshall Project, a non-profit that investigates …
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