The Brady Bunch

Nobody else gets it.

James Brady, shot during the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life way back in the friggin 80's.

Brave man. Honorable man. Led the fight, afterwards, for better gun control legislation, and for all I promote and stand by the Constitution entire, I applaud the effort. [Different rant altogether.]

He was shot in the melon and has suffered the effects of his wound for the rest of his life....which ended yesterday, 8 August, 2014.The coroner ruled that Brady's death is counted as a homicide.

This is very bad, and nobody seems to see it.

Brady was 76 years old at the time of his death. A good age to do it, too. Lots of folks die at 76. Even more don't even make it that far. The coroner rules that Brady's death was caused by complications from his injury, an injury he sustained 33 years ago. He probably could have continued to remain not dead, even with the complications....EXCEPT THAT HE WAS 76 FRIGGIN' YEARS OLD!!! One would seem to think that a frail man of advanced years would not be able to fare as well as a younger man when suffering from the exact same injuries.

We can't even say that the injury shortened his life in any appreciable way, only that the quality of such life was reduced. It might be that Brady, should he have not been shot, would have led a completely different life, one filled with high fat foods, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking of cigars and cigarettes, late nights, poor sleep and very high levels of stress, assuming he remained in the political arena, which, considering he did so with great vigor (albeit in a much reduced, if more celebrity-driven manner) would suggest that he would have done so.

The fact is, that getting shot in the brain-pan may well have lengthened his life-span rather than shortening it!

So, how can something that may have had a beneficial effect on the "victim" be ruled a murder?

Aside from this, just think of the precedent this sets! If you injure someone, perhaps in a traffic accident, and the injuries he suffers impact his life in such a way that the complications stemming from them render him dead NO MATTER THE TIME-FRAME INVOLVED, since murder has no statute of limitations you can be charged with his murder, whether of the First Degree or not. Perhaps you could go to jail for manslaughter a quarter century after the infliction of the injury, your "victim" having taking that long to finally expire!

It's fucking ridiculous!

One person tried to tell me that it was simply a means of keeping John Hinckley Jr. in jail, that my adding yet another murder charge to his personal docket he'd stay away for a while more. Thing is, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He's been locked up in an institution ever since. Thing is, there was such an outcry concerning this verdict that the Federal Government drafted the Insanity Defense Reform Act, making such pleas that much more difficult to obtain. Now I'll quote the relevant Wikipedia article:

The Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 was a law passed in the wake of public outrage after John Hinckley, Jr.'s acquittal for the Reagan assassination attempt. It amended the United States federal laws governing defendants with mental diseases or defects to make it significantly more difficult to obtain a verdict of not guilty only by reason of insanity.

Prior to the enactment of the law, the federal standard for "insanity" was that the government had to prove a defendant's sanity beyond a reasonable doubt (assuming the insanity defense was raised). Under the act, the defendant had the burden of proving insanity by "clear and convincing evidence." Furthermore, expert witnesses for either side were prohibited from testifying directly as to whether the defendant was legally sane or not, but could only testify as to his mental health and capacities, with the question of sanity itself to be decided by the finder-of-fact at trial. The Act was held to be constitutional (and the change in standards and burdens of proof are discussed) in United States v. Freeman.

It was criticized by psychologist Lawrence Z. Freedman for being ineffective: "If the attacker is rational mentally, stable emotionally, and fanatic politically, he will not be deterred. Nor will an irrational, affectively disturbed individual be deterred."

So basically, it seems to me to be a means to an end; to get revenge on the man who attempted to kill "Saint" Reagan. It all comes down to vengeance! With insanity that much more difficult to prove in a court of law, that particular defense has essentially been removed from the defense's kit bag, and now, perhaps, the "evil bastard will finally face justice!"

But beyond that, where does the legality of this really end? If you actually assault someone with the intent to kill them but you fail and are arrested, you will be tried for attempted murder. Whether or not you are found guilty, the individual remains injured, and suffers from these injuries for the remains of his life. Now, assume you are found guilty, and you spend a decade in prison. Afterwards, you are finally released and go on to rebuild your life. Meanwhile, the poor bastard you assaulted is also a decade older and is having complications due to his 10 year-old wound. One month later, he's dead, and you are now facing First Degree Murder charges...charges based on a 10 year-old assault for which you have already served prison time.

Do you know what Double Jeopardy is? Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction. This means you cannot be tried for the same offense twice. However, you served time for attempted murder; now you are facing charges of First or Second Degree Murder, a different crime, and a much more severe one at that! The Double Jeopardy rule won't apply, since it's a different enough crime, but it is a crime based upon the very same act committed a decade prior!

You haven't seen the poor dead bastard for the whole of those ten years! You've not been near him, not spoken to him, not written to him; hell, you may have been in a completely different state of the Union entirely! And yet, you can now be tried and, depending on the state in which the incident took place, you may now face execution for an assault for which you have already served time!

In a judicial system that is based on and bound by precedent (which, I might add, I think is a really bad idea), this case sets a really, really bad one.

And nobody seems to get it.

I'm saying this right now, and I don't give a damn who this might offend: I give up, right now, on Israel. I can no longer support such an appalling, apartheid-riven, inhumane, and now inhuman state. I now give less than a shit about the residents, the people, and the government of Israel. I no longer care if they are driven into the sea or into the desert, or into the mouth of hell itself. For a people with the history that they have, all 5774 tumultuous, blood-soaked, and agony-filled year of it, to be so unsympathetic, unyielding, and uncaring about the fate of another band people who shared their land and their culture, another band of people who lost their lands and their homes at the whim of a completely different culture with no say-so or input on the matter at all, is shameful, sinful, sociopathic, psychotic, and just plain evil.

Guilt led to the recreation of the Jewish state.

Guilt over what the Third Reich accomplished in their so-called "Final Solution". Guilt that the rest of the world ignored the signs. Guilt that the world allowed it to happen.

But that guilt (no matter the religious jokes and tropes about Jews and guilt) has a shelf-life. I'm way past it. If any other government in the world did the the same things to a rigidly separated, confined, and persecuted second-class we would be condemning their actions in open session of the United Nations, calling for economic sanctions, or bombing the crap out of the country in question.

But no. This is Israel. Our one and only true political "ally" in the region. And why should this be so? Well, because we backed them in the first place, we've already bombed or invaded most of their neighboring countries for one reason or another, and nearly the entire world is run off of giant steam engines powered by million year-old liquified swamps buried under the oceans of sand that currently cover the region. The result of this is that we are slowly boiling away the planet upon which we live, poisoning our air, our water, our land, causing massive global temperature increase, and threatening the future of the human race.

No, I'm not saying Israel is the cause of global warming; don't be asinine.

But if we were trying half as hard, and putting half as much effort and energy and national treasure into research and development.....wait, fuck research and development! The technologies we need are available right now! Implementing the build-up of solar and wind power alone we can power our civilization as it stands right now, and with no further poisoning and alteration of the environment. Someone just did the math, and figured that if we covered a good 300 kilometers square in the Sahara desert with the best solar panels currently on the market, we could provide enough power for the entire planet!

But no. Instead we support hate-filled governments because it is politically and economically expedient to do so. So we have Palestinian freedom fighters being called terrorists, and Israeli terrorists being called commandos. And American money being handed over by hands covered in blood owned by those who never fired a shot, but who stand just as guilty as those who do. Because we say it's okay.

Tell ya what; if nobody in the world was using all those liquid dinosaurs buried in the desert, nobody would give a flying rat's ass about Israel. Or Iraq. or Iran, or Saudi Arabia. Because none of those places would possess the national treasure required to buy the armaments that they currently use to oppress their own peoples, to kill the people and citizens of their neighboring nations, or even to attack the United States or other countries of the west. And we would leave them alone. And they would leave us alone. And everybody would be happier for it.

This is logical.

And of course that's why it won't ever happen, not while somebody can make a buck or two somewhere.