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The United States is virtually alone in the world in executing people who committed crimes as juveniles. Only Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen executed people in the 1990s for crimes they committed as juveniles, according to the American Bar Association. We still believe that people under 18 are children and don't commit acts of any sort for the same reason that adults do," said Mlyniec.

1/12/2000...Mrs. Clinton Calls Giuliani Temperamentally Unsuited for Senate...New York Times

Repeating a theme that her campaign is likely to use more frequently, Hillary Rodham Clinton used a trip to upstate New York today to criticize Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as temperamentally unsuited to represent New York in the Senate.

The federal government may have been closed Wednesday because of snow, but the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and claims was open for business, holding a hearing on terrorism.

During the past Christmas season, Gov. George Pataki granted clemency to four state prison inmates who were first-time, nonviolent drug offenders serving long mandatory sentences under the state's harsh drug laws, known as the Rockefeller laws. Mr. Pataki's compassionate gesture is to be applauded, but his real task is to push for reform of the misguided laws that created the need for clemency in the first place.

In April 1996, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The law says a federal judge can only reverse a state court conviction on habeas corpus if it was contrary to federal law or applied federal law in an "unreasonable" way. In other words, if the state court violated rights of the prisoner that are guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, the court had to be not only wrong but "unreasonably" wrong. That standard is almost impossible to meet. If federal courts could no longer review their decisions, state judges would have less reason to be careful about constitutionality. Future Rubin Carters would languish in jail.

As a born-again politician, he might shock those who throw his name around. In particular, candidate Bush. "How can he say he carries me, Jesus Christ, in his heart," candidate Christ asked, "when at the same time he stands by while people are put to death?" .... "How can he love Christ and take part in capital punishment? I say to you there have been 112 people put to death so far, while he maintains that I reside in his heart. Did not a woman beg for her life and he refused her? "

..More than 1 percent of those sentenced to death in the United States since 1973 have been released from death row in light of substantial evidence of their innocence. Add to that the inadequate legal representation of the poor, an appellate process that emphasizes speed over thoroughness, and the accelerated pace of Texas' executions, and it is hard to believe that Governor Bush could be "confident" that not one of the 112 people put to death during his tenure was innocent.

Mr. Bush may feel "compassionate," but that doesn't do much for the abysmal quality of public justice in Texas.

How would Presidential candidate George Bush, Jr. fare under an experienced criminal defense lawyer's cross-examination about possible past cocaine usage?

Reads like a novel but much scarier because it's all true. A page-turner!

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