Liability Waiver And Release Form (Minor Child) This Is: Fill & Download for Free

Maybe. What country are you in?In the USA. Yes.There are exceptions to the clergy-penitent privilege. Priests are rarely charged with obstruction. They are often cited for contempt when refusing to testify.Priest Charged with Obstruction in Indecent Liberties CaseBy Clarke Morrison for Citizen TimesJune 9, 2009 — ASHEVILLE — A local Catholic priest charged with obstructing justice by deleting hundreds of pornographic images involving children from the computer of his music minister made his first court appearance this morning.The Rev. John Schneider, pastor of St. Eugene Catholic Church, told Buncombe County District Court Judge Calvin Hill that he understood his rights under the law.Asheville Police on Monday charged Schneider, 56, with felony obstruction of justice. A warrant states the suspect entered the apartment of the church's former music minister, Paul Lawrence Berrell, on May 18 and deleted hundreds of pornographic images of children during a criminal investigation of Berrell.That's the same day police charged Berrell, 29, with taking indecent liberties with a minor. Berrell also was charged May 23 with nine counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor after police searched his North Ridge Drive home. He remains jailed under a $1.5 million bond.Schneider was released after posting a $10,000 bond.Priest Charged with Obstruction in Indecent Liberties Case, by Clarke Morrison, Citizen Times, June 9, 2009Clergy-Penitent PrivilegeThe clergy-penitent privilege is the legal mechanism that prevents clergy or counselors from being required to disclose confidential communications in a court proceeding. This privilege belongs to the person who disclosed the information and is designed for his protection, rather than for the protection of the clergy.One important exception to the privilege rule deals with the issue of suits affecting the parent-child relationship. In mental health counseling, it may be possible to uncover information that concerns a child and that is the subject of a pending lawsuit. This exception makes it critical for a church that provides counseling services to distinguish what type of services it is providing and to understand the difference it makes to the congregation.If the counseling is pastoral or spiritual counseling only, in many states the only exceptionfor divulging information is for reporting child abuse. If the counseling is mental health counseling, lawyers can argue that the exceptions of the mental health privilege would apply, and the court could compel the counselor to divulge the information in a suit involving a parent-child relationship. Failure to differentiate between these could give rise to liability on the part of the church and the counselor, for example, based on the lack of informed consent, if pastor/counselor inaccurately led the person he was counseling to believe that nothing he tells the pastor/counselor can ever be revealed.Another situation in which the privilege would not apply is when the individual or someone authorized to act on his behalf signs a written waiver of the right to the privilege or confidentiality. This eliminates the privilege and the information is subject to disclosure. If a parishioner waives this privilege, the pastor has no legal grounds for withholding the information and must disclose it upon proper request.A recent Washington state case regarding confessions made by a church member to a pastor dealt with the issue of waivers. The congregant made certain confessions to his pastor regarding a murder in which he had been involved. The pastor discussed it with two colleagues. At the church member’s trial, the court attempted to compel the pastor to testify regarding the confessions. When the pastor refused, stating they were confidential, the judge held him in contempt of court. The prosecutor argued the communications were no longer privileged because the pastor had waived the privilege by talking to others about the conversations. The court ruled that, while the pastor broke the rules regarding the confidentiality of the statements, the congregant’s rights regarding the privileged nature of the communications were still intact. Essentially, the court stated that only the communicant may waive his privilege. The acts of another unauthorized person may not act to waive the confidential nature of these special conversations.Note that any waiver of the privilege that a pastor or counselor uses must be clear and specific, so the person understands that anything told to the pastor/counselor will not be kept confidential if requested by a third party. This does not change the confidential nature of the communication or records, but does prevent the counselor and the counselee from claiming these communications are “privileged.”In summary, while each state’s privilege rules differ, every state has some form of privilege for communications made to a member of the clergy in the context of a confessional or penitential communication.Child Abuse ReportingAll 50 states have enacted child-abuse laws that define responsibilities in protecting vulnerable children from abuse and neglect. Most state statutes define child abuse to include physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual molestation. Some states now include parental substance abuse and abandonment within their definitions of child abuse. States ordinarily define a child as any person under age 18. Typically, individuals who may be reported for abuse or neglect include individuals who have some legal responsibility for the child, such as a parent, legal guardian, foster parent, or relative.Every state has a statute that identifies persons who are under a legal duty to report abuse under specific circumstances. Whether members of the clergy are required to report suspected child abuse varies from state to state. Some states’ statutes include a list ofmandatory reporters and define a mandatory reporter by occupation — doctor, nursery school workers, or nurses; or, the statute simply defines a mandatory reporter as “any person having a reasonable belief that child abuse has occurred.” If a pastor falls within the category of a mandatory reporter, the pastor must report actual or suspected instances of child abuse to the proper authorities. In contrast, other states’ statutes may provide that a pastor falls within the category of a permissive reporter, which means that the pastor may report cases of abuse, but he is not legally required to do so.Pastors who are mandatory reporters of child abuse under state law, face an ethical dilemma when they learn information about child abuse during a confidential counseling session. How should the pastor proceed? Should the pastor maintain the confidentiality of the privileged communication or should the pastor adhere to his legal responsibility to report the abuse to the proper designated authorities? The short answer is that the response will depend on the laws of the state where the pastor lives. Some states have attempted to resolve the conflict of mandatory reporting versus the clergy-penitent privilege by exempting clergy from the duty to report child abuse if the abuse was disclosed during counseling sessions. Other states have determined that any information protected by the clergy-penitent privilege is not admissible in a court proceeding.Even though the reporting laws frequently recognize the clergy-penitent privilege, courts typically interpret this narrowly in the child abuse or neglect context. As a general rule, clergy should not assume they have no duty to report. Even if the clergy-penitent privilege is in effect in your particular state, it does not automatically excuse a failure to report. For instance, if the clergy learns of suspected abuse outside of the context of counseling or he does not obtain the information in confidence, then the clergy-penitent privilege could be held not to apply and the pastor could be liable for failure to report the suspected or actual abuse.While persons who are legally required to report child abuse are subject to criminal prosecution for failure to do so, instances of actual criminal prosecution are rare. Some clergy, however, have been prosecuted for failing to file a report when they were in a mandatory reporting classification and they had reasonable cause to believe abuse had occurred. Criminal penalties for failing to file a report vary, but they typically involve short prison sentences and small fines.Members of the clergy must know and understand their responsibility regarding the reporting requirements for child abuse. To find the specific reporting requirements for a particular state, visit: www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/state/index.cfm. To report a claim of abuse or neglect, you can call the National Child Abuse Hotline at 800-4-A-CHILD orcontact individual state hotlines, where available. To obtain the hotline number for a particular state, visit: http://capsli.org/hotlines.php.Read more at: Pastoral Confidentiality: An Ethical and Legal Responsibility

I am pro-choice, but I have never bought the argument that life doesn’t begin at conception, that it’s just a clump of cells and has no right to consideration. I prefer to think of the question as a conflict between two competing dreams of which only one can be the victor; although I side with the mother’s dream I see gray in this decision that so many paint in black and white.The crux of Tate’s position espouses this same conflict; the rights of individual ownership over a shared experience. A few hours ago, immediately after reading this question, then her story, then her arguments, I would have said that some mistakes were made but for the most part I thought she was right. Now, I just think that she’s right.As I see it, there are really two questions here, two foci of contention. The first is whether Tate has a right, in the context of her daughter’s expressed objection, to continue to press to write about her at all. The second is whether she had the right to do so when her children were too young to give an opinion or express consent. The consent issue is more straightforward, so I’ll take aim at that first.I’d like to be clear that although this question asks for my opinion on Tate’s claim, I want to separate the question of choices I would make from the question of choices that I could make; this distinction is the driving force of my shift away from my original position that perhaps she had made some mistakes. Like any pro-choice person who might never choose to have an abortion themselves, my answer needs to be not about my own personal choices, but about the range that is acceptable within our society, and I want this framing because I want you, readers, to look at it through the same lens. It’s easy to summon quick outrage in sympathy with her daughter’s upset, but in the absence of the expressed objection, would her actions in using details and images of her daughter’s life as a toddler and a pre-schooler have been outside the norm? I claim the answer is no.I have kids, and consequently I am a long-time peruser of a variety of one of the richest internet resources for kids’ arts and crafts, which is blogs. Quite frequently these blogs are lifestyle blogs, and names, ages, and small snippets about the family’s children are contained therein. I also come to these blogs via the internet recipe search route, and while details of the children’s lives are more often absent here unless the meal preparation was a joint activity with them, it’s reasonably common to see the home page with a nice family photo of the parents and all the kids.In fact, there is an entire blog (probably more than one) devoted to content exactly like that which Tate claims to have produced: thoughtful essays about parenting that may illustrate or support the writing using details or anecdotes about the kids.[1] Sometimes those essays have names and ages,[2] sometimes they don’t but contain far more details about a child’s actions.[3] I have seen links to articles from that blog here on Quora, and the questions I have seen on these links have never been about whether or not the author violated their kids’ privacy by telling these details of their preschoolers’ lives without their consent. I have seen authors here on Quora give details or stories about their kids in this fashion while answering questions, and the comment sections are never full of the readers’ reservations that the author gave specifics about their child.The point made by the above observations is that this type of content, content that references specifics of a child’s life before they are of age to even consent to their representation, sometimes with names and ages, is everywhere, and outrage about the violation of privacy of those too young to consent is not. Yes, there is occasional discussion about where the limits should be, as Tate notes herself, but in general it is accepted as within the norm.Hopefully, I have made this point well enough that you are now thinking about times in the past when you may have seen similar content and accepted it without a second thought, questions about whether or not the children were old enough to consent to use of their stories never having crossed your mind. Possibly, you may be thinking about the question of the value of that content. I certainly find it valuable, in ways that have benefited not only myself, but also my children. And judging by some of the comments that do appear on those blog articles and Quora answers — you know, the comments that aren’t about the author’s crime against the privacy of their children — many others find value in it too.Possibly you don’t find anything worthy in it, but rhetorically assuming that you do, or at least that you accept the argument that others do, perhaps you are now considering whether such compositions could be written to have the same impact and resonance in the absence of those stories. Anecdotally, I can tell you from my own experience here on Quora that I believe the answer to that question is no. In one of my recently written and most-upvoted-ever answers here,[4] I opened with what was functionally a tacit admission that my own 15-year old son struggles with chores and is routinely criticized for not making his family contribution. I don’t fool myself that that answer was such a high level above the rest of my content that it would have been so popular without that attention-grabbing first line.Maybe, you might not have gone in that direction of questioning whether that presentation is really necessary for the value of the content. Maybe you found that easy to accept because you think the real issue is about how much is OK. “Oh,” you might be thinking, “that answer where you talked about your son in the first line is alright, you didn’t really give anything away that’s so unique to him, and it was only the one sentence anyway.” One of the reasons that I have never liked the “it’s not really alive right after conception” argument for choice is that the question that immediately follows is “Well, then when is it really alive?” Despite the fact that there is an entire branch of mathematics built on the foundational concept that if you make a bunch of connected pieces tiny enough eventually they become one continuous thing and not a collection of separate things, this process doesn’t go well in reverse. Looking at a continuous spectrum and picking out a discrete point to be the bright, shining line of division where everything on one side is OK and everything on the other isn’t — that’s hard, and the answer is almost always one that everyone agrees is a compromise, a judgment call. So before you get too far down that path of “but”: but it’s OK if it’s not too much, but it’s OK if they don’t use the images, but it’s OK if they don’t use the real names, I’m just going to highlight what I view to be the extreme end of this spectrum that our culture considers acceptable. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jon & Kate Plus 8, 19 Kids and Counting, and The Real Housewives of <insert locale here>.I have never watched these shows, nor paid more than passing attention to them as a cultural phenomenon, but in an (admittedly brief) stint of internet research, I don’t find any controversy over the parents’ right to place their children on these shows, to make them part of the focus of the shows, to intrude on their privacy. I found expressions of concern, but they were about working conditions, child labor laws, behavioral problems of the lifestyle and whether proper consideration is being taken for the child’s welfare.[5] [6] They were not about whether these shows should maybe not exist at all because they violated the children’s rights to privacy.For the Duggar family, I found criticism of their religious views, of their political views, and of their lifestyle, but the only criticism I found relating to anything that “maybe shouldn’t be aired to the public” was when they shared photos of their miscarried baby.[7] In light of the outrage expressed in the comments of Ms. Tate’s article I find this ironic. The veil of culturally acceptable privacy was pierced by photos of their dead child, when the dead are commonly considered not to have any rights of privacy to violate, but not one squeak about how nobody had asked the 3 children born during the tenure of the show if they wanted to participate and whether or not the parents had been presumptuous in simply adding them in.Of course, the fact that I did not find those discussions does not mean they are not occurring, or that they are not there to find. But I think the lack of prominence does mean that a parents’ right to make decisions about high level public access to details of their children’s private lives is not only a legal perspective, but a normative one. Maybe that won’t always be true. Maybe it will change. I’ve written elsewhere, many times, that just because something is legal or common doesn’t make it right. But before any change can happen I want to see conversation, not castigation. Consideration, not knee-jerk reaction. Evaluation of the pros and cons of all the parties with a stake, not just a confirmation-bias position taken with 20–20 hindsight.For myself, personally, I recognize that the slippery slope argument I gave above is a logical fallacy. Saying that it’s hard to know where to put the line is not a sufficient justification for not having one, nor is it even the case that one does not already exist here; there are laws about use of one’s own child’s images in the context of child pornography etc. Nonetheless, I feel that the value equation is sufficiently complex that I don’t believe the greatest benefit comes from an external mandate. I’ll note that my position that Ms. Tate should retain the right to make choices is not the same as saying that I don’t think she should have to answer for the choices she makes. It’s just that it’s not us that I think she should have to answer to, any more than I think that a woman who chooses to abort a baby should have to justify her decision to the public. And I concede that it’s possible I would feel differently about that, were it not that I so strongly agree with the other perspective of her position, that she has an ownership stake in this shared experience and that gives her rights too.My grandfather’s camera was everywhere, and I hated it. He was no respecter of whether or not you had a fork halfway into your asymmetrically opened mouth when the shutter went off, and I was an unpopular tween with self-esteem issues who couldn’t understand why I was so socially inept. The last thing I needed was six million bad pictures of myself. I eventually came to an agreement with my parents that I would allow my picture to be taken and stop hiding from the camera, if I were allowed to take possession of both the photograph and the negative of any picture I disliked. But should my desire to control those permanent recordings of myself have had primacy over my family’s desire to have permanent reminders of family gatherings, ones that would have failed to represent the family experience had I been universally absent from them? Have they no vested interest?While you are thinking about that, I’ll note that on a routine basis parents grant the interest of others in a shared environment under circumstances where the level of investment in a particular child is much less: I refer to the media release so common in waiver forms for children’s activities. Here is an example, from Part A of the medical form of the Boy Scouts of America that must be filled out by the parent for any child attending any camp or overnight scouting activity where their parent will not be present:I also hereby assign and grant to the local council and the Boy Scouts of America, as well as their authorized representatives, the right and permission to use and publish the photographs/film/videotapes/electronic representations and/or sound recordings made of me or my child at all Scouting activities, and I hereby release the Boy Scouts of America, the local council, the activity coordinators, and all employees, volunteers, related parties, or other organizations associated with the activity from any and all liability from such use and publication. I further authorize the reproduction, sale, copyright, exhibit, broadcast, electronic storage, and/or distribution of said photographs/film/videotapes/electronic representations and/or sound recordings without limitation at the discretion of the BSA, and I specifically waive any right to any compensation I may have for any of the foregoing.[8]Have you ever checked a box like this, giving permission for images and recordings of your child to be used? Did you do a serious assessment of the pros and cons? Did you ask your child first? If you did, were they of an age where their consent was in any way meaningful?I spend a week every summer volunteering at a Cub Scout camp in an administrative role, and I handle these forms. I can tell you that my experience is that very, very few parents withhold this permission. I suspect strongly that for most parents, the thought process is something like: “Well, of course it’s reasonable to expect that this organization will take pictures etc. for a variety of reasons including advertising, and of course it would be extremely difficult for them to single out my kid and make sure he isn’t in any photos when they’re just getting candid shots of a group while the kids are doing their stuff, and really, what’s the harm?” There is a casual assumption that in a group activity, where it’s reasonable to take pictures or video of the group, it’s reasonable to grant permission to other invested parties to have control of those images. That is not a legal assumption, or the waiver would not be required. But it is the way that average people behave.My husband is sensitive to me telling other people (friends, etc.) stories about him that he perceives to portray him in a less than positive light. We don’t always agree about which stories these are; I’ve occasionally relayed something about a shared experience that I thought was fine in a group dinner with friends and had him tell me later that he was upset that I had shared that. Does he have the right to tell me that I am not allowed to discuss anything he does with other people, in order to guarantee that no mistakes are made? Forget the mistakes, does he even have the right to tell me that I can’t say anything about him to others, even if I am as much a part of the story as he is, unless he has approved it in advance? Let’s imagine that I came here on Quora and asked that question: “My husband won’t allow me to talk about him to others unless he approves what I have to say in advance, what should I do?” I’m willing to bet that after I waded through the ocean of responses telling me I was trolling because nobody could be so stupid as to not know that the right answer is to leave him, I would find some very helpful answers explaining to me that this was controlling and unhealthy behavior on the part of my spouse, and that I should consider leaving him or at a minimum seek counseling. I doubt that I would find any answers upholding his sole right to determine the use of our shared experience.Another answer here suggests that we should flip the tables; consider how we would feel about the child sharing their experience without the parents’ permission. Alright. I’ll go there. In an elementary-school assignment to tell which room in the house was their favorite and give five reasons why, one of my children wrote that one of the reasons he chose this room was that when Mom and Dad are arguing you can’t hear it in there. As you may imagine, I had an uncomfortable moment envisioning what the teacher would think as she read that. But should I have made him change his response? I can see the headlines now: “Parent forces child to rewrite schoolwork to conceal evidence of family dysfunction.”In each of those examples, it’s wrong for one party to have total control of the joint narrative, and Tate is not saying differently; she does not propose that her control at this point in time should be total. Of her daughter’s rights she notes:Certainly, my daughter is old enough now that I owe her a head’s up and a veto right on the pictures or on portions of the content … Amputating parts of my experience feels as abusive to our relationship as writing about her without any consideration for her feelings and privacy.There it is, clear as day, she feels that writing about her daughter without any consideration for her daughter’s perspective is abusive. That doesn’t appear to me as callous disregard for her daughter’s part-ownership of their mutual experiences. But note also a key point; her daughter’s right to consent is related to her age. Not a specific age, but it doesn’t need to be; this is about development and maturity. Maturity is always a key component of consent; no four year old could meaningfully consent to a parent’s use of content.That’s important, because Tate also says this:So my plan is to chart a middle course, where together we negotiate the boundaries of the stories I write and the images I include. This will entail hard conversations and compromises. But I prefer the hard work of charting the middle course to giving up altogether — an impulse that comes, in part, from the cultural pressure for mothers to be endlessly self-sacrificing on behalf of their children. As a mother, I’m not supposed to do anything that upsets my children or that makes them uncomfortable, certainly not for something as culturally devalued as my own creative labor.Writer Christine Organ has described how “we seem to be creating this unrealistic image of the mother as all-giving, all-knowing, selfless, superhuman who will gladly give up the last piece of apple pie to please her lip-smacking, big-eyed child.” Surely, there’s a way to cut the pie so that I can write about motherhood in a way that takes into account my daughter’s feelings and respects her boundaries. But if I simply cordoned off motherhood as a forbidden subject for my writing, we would never know.In my experience, Tate and Organ are right about the cultural pressure on mothers to place their children’s desires first, and their own needs last. And when children are very small that is not unreasonable. But I do not think it is the case that when parents become pregnant, they are signing up for 18 years of unmitigated second seat, 18 years of subjugating their individuality and personhood to their offspring. Rather, at some point during the process of maturation, children gradually become aware — or they should — that parents are people also, and sometimes they will come first. That 18 years of growth and maturation is a long, slow process of equalization of autonomy between parent and child. We cheer the developmental milestone when our toddlers begin staking out their territories of self-control. Yet over the years, increased privilege is built on the back of concomitant increased responsibility.When I was old enough to care about how I looked in photographs, old enough to be negotiated with on the basis of my consent, I was also old enough to understand that my parents and family had a right to want photographs of me. I think the situation is similar here; if Tate’s daughter has reached the age where she is mature enough to be owed consent, then she is also old enough to be expected to understand why it is unreasonable for her to expect totalitarian control over an experience that doesn’t belong only to her. Maybe she doesn’t understand it right now, but to me that simply means that she has growing to do; growth that will occur through that process of negotiating the boundaries. Growth that needs to occur, that should occur, that will inform her daughter of her own right to personhood when she is on the other side of this equation with children of her own. Growth that will never have a chance to happen if Tate cedes the battlefield immediately rather than pressing for a treaty as she proposes.Footnotes[1] Scary Mommy: A parenting community for imperfect parents[2] The Question That Changed The Co-Parenting Relationship With My Ex[3] If You See A Kid Having A Tantrum In Public, Do This[4] Jennifer Edeburn's answer to My mother says I don't 'contribute' to the family. How do I do so and become more responsible, practically?[5] Do children ever belong on reality TV?[6] ‘Kid Nation’ - Television[7] Duggars Share Photos Of Miscarried Baby At Memorial[8] https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/HealthSafety/pdf/680-001_ABC.pdf

Without a doubt, the death penalty. I wouldn't say a complete 180 because I wasn't in active in fervent supporter of it. But I definitely supported it, at least in my own head. And then after law school and serval years and politics, and then working for the innocence Project and realized that of the 334 people we exonerated who were wrongly convicted of murder and a majority of them on death row, how in the world could we possibly allow this punishment which is completely era vocable. And then I thought about law school and what you learn are the four reasons why we punish people. Deterrence, Public Safety, rehabilitation and vengeance.Deterrence is probably the best reason why we have so many criminal laws. If people did not think they would get in trouble for robbing a bank, a lot more would try it. But statistic after statistic after study after study has shown that after interviewing hundreds of murderers, not one of them thought about what the consequences would be. And let me tell you, the average drug lord lives his life under constant fear of being killed and was a lot less due process then the American criminal justice system, as broken as it might be.There is also no rehabilitation argument obviously as they are going to receive life without parole and therefore no public safety risk either. Did you know that the Texas Legislature while they are judges were still imposing death penalty sentences on their own until the supreme court ruled that was unconstitutional and that the jury had to then decide a penalty phase after they found the defendant guilty. The Texas Legislature passed a law saying that the defense could not tell the jury that their client if they gave their client life in jail instead of the death penalty, that there was no chance for parole. If this wasn't just the lowest of any legislature, trying to keep extremely pertinent facts from the jury which could affect their decision, I don't think I've ever come across something more abominable by a state legislature. Of course the Supreme Court soon overruled that procedure once it was brought to their attention. However the media then interviewed about 80 jurors who voted for the death penalty in previous cases. The vast majority said that they did not really want to sentence the person to death but they thought it was the only way the person might not get out of prison and kill someone else, because of that law by the Texas Legislature which for him he did them from knowing the full facts.Wendy's approximate 80 jurors were asked if they knew it was life without the possibility of parole when they have voted for jail instead of the death penalty and 87% said yes. I can't even think about how many people were then wrongfully executed because of this obscene law that was passed.I then became very aware of the Socio economic disadvantage is that hurt my Nordie's so badly and why they were so disproportionately the ones facing the death penalty. As far as my research showed as of 2011, there has never been a white person with the net worth of more than $100,000 who has ever been sentenced to death. I mean it's not like it's some star revelation. Look at the people who are getting executed.It completely comes down to vengeance. And they symbolize country which we constantly beat our chests about our human rights while western Europe and Canada consider us to be barbaric regarding our human rights compared to them, and the EU will not even export to the United States the drugs we want for lethal injections and in the last couple of years we've had some truly horrific extremely agonizing and lengthy lethal injections which took as long as two hours to work, because we couldn't get the proper drugs so pharmacists were forced to compounds concoctions of drugs that had never been tried on any person or animal before.And the bottom line is, what does that accomplish? Closure for the family of the victim? Resultingly they have been asked about that, families, and they say nothing will ever close that pain or in that pain. It might be a nice two second high for them but then it's back to missing the person they love. I witnessed to lethal injections which went fairly well I guess for such a barbaric thing, but after seeing that I was 101% against the DP. And American opinion has shifted greatly to last 10 years over this 10 years ago it was approximately 75% of Americans in favor of the TV. Now it is about 50/50. I'm so hoping we are on the last stretch that will never rebounds where people finally realize that this has been way overdue to be banned in this country. And Four states in the past five years have retracted it from their law including the Braska a very conservative state. You have a lot of conservatives now agreeing with this, not so much because of the reasons I mentioned, but more because of the in Norma's costs in executing someone which surprisingly is far more expensive than keeping them in jail for life. I think they also care more about the $50 million wrongful death lawsuit that will be filed against their state when they falsely execute and innocent person.A long time ago I came to the decision that one wrongfully executed person was worse than 10,000 murderers being sent free. And the fact that obviously it is irrevocable is another extremely's relevant point. The idea that the steep can actually be bloodthirsty which is exactly what it is is beyond me. That's something that I would expect that of North Korea. And by the way, we are the only country on the planet that executes both minors and those who are mentally ill. Not Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, North Korea etc. etc. etc. only the great United States of America who tells the world about every other countries human rights indiscretions.I'll end with this last point. In Italy, in Rome whenever a United States state abolishes the death penalty, they spend millions of dollars to set off fireworks at the Coliseum that can be seen for miles. This is an area of their history which was so barbaric and yet they are willing to call attention to it for the sake of showing that they had made a horrible error and that is exactly what we are doing and that every time one less state has the slaw, is a victory for morale and he and ethics and civilized nations.Did you know on the death certificate what's listed as cause of death on an execution? Homicide. State sanctioned homicide. 1st° state sanctioned murder. I always found it interesting as a lawyer to wonder if the penal code of laws these states that have the death penalty were also amended to not incriminate the executioner. Here is a person who is committing first-degree murder. Every day there are thousands if not tens of thousands of surgeries in US hospitals. The only thing that prevents the surgeon with being prosecuted for assault and battery is that the patient has signed a informed consent waiver that releases the doctor from any criminal liability for cutting into them. Obviously they can still be sued civilly if there is malpractice. But the surgeon without the signature could very easily be tried for first-degree assault( BTW, I still fall into this trap all the time. Salt is so widely miss used as a word. Assault is not the actual infliction upon another of harm but rather when a person rightfully fears for their safety because of some action by the other person. If I were to come up to you with a gun that was unloaded and pulled back the hammer, told you it was loaded, and then pulled the trigger, I would be guilty of first-degree assault even though you were never touched. Battery is like it sounds. Battery involves the actual inflicting of violence upon another.).It's off-topic but I would also love someone to explain to me how the Republicans who basically don't want any government outside of the military and I guess themselves, then how do they explain that the government should go to great extends to legislate and get involved in what a woman decides to do with her own reproductive system. Personally I am poor abortion. It makes me sick. Especially women who use it as a form of birth control and I've had dozens of them. But I still believe it would be the lesser of two evils to allow safe and legal abortions. It would force those with less economic means to use back alley, veterinarians to perform the abortion which happened before and resulted in many deaths of the women or it then allows those of means to Travel abroad and have the abortion performed legally, therefore creating a situation where people are being treated differently based on their economic situation. Back to the days of code hangers. Horrible. And those who won't even carve the exception for the life of the mother I find truly unexplainable. Even though, I do believe life begins at conception. The real problem is going to be when we start having the technology to keep fetuses a live outside the woman's womb and body at earlier and earlier stages in the pregnancy. Roe v Wade, basically divided a pregnancy into the three trimesters. And generally in the last trimester, which is when the baby is generally viable outside of the mothers body, that is where they drew the line of abortion being illegal. But if we come to a point where a one-month-old fetus can somehow be kept alive and grown in a simulated uterus, does that now mean which the Roe v Wade decision said was the main deciding point as to whether the fetus was viable outside of the woman's body?You know it's funny, after spending so much time in politics and Law and drafting legislation and finding so many problems with our suppose democratic government, although we are technically a republic. A true democracy would allow Americans to vote on every single issue themselves. And we have the technology for that, for years now through the Internet. There has been an old argument against that, way before the computer age, that the public is too reactionary and they would not think through the ramifications of something horrible just happening in them now passing the law to prevent that even though it might not be a good law in the long run. But I think that's ridiculous And if it happens the Longwood then be changed back most likely. Anyway what I was saying about our form of government which Winston Churchhill famously said was the worst form of government except for everything else. I once allowed Jehovah's Witnesses to come in to I house when I was a teenager and I was raised Jewish because my mother is, even though she was born in Iraq, and my father is Roman Catholic from Italy. I was interested in what they had to Ceyenne was curious about their views and what they told me always stuck with me that I thought was the most accurate thing I ever heard from a religion which was that one of their main tenants is that man cannot form a government that is equitable and fair. It's a simple impossibility. And that was when I was 15 but I always remembered it and 20 years and politics basically showed me they were completely correct.I mean anarchy would be the solution I guess but in some ways I think that might not be worse then our form of suppose it democracy where multi national multibillion-dollar corporation's can buy a president. So for everyone who is sick of Jehovah's Witnesses, think about that very deep philosophical point in their beliefs.With regard to abortions, I find them deplorable, but as other politicians have said, under the current circumstances they have to be safe and legal. And I couldn't be more disgusted as someone who is pro-choice and seeing a woman go into abortion clinic for the seventh time, but after spending a long time weighing the pros and cons I've come to the conclusion that is a better scenario than that child being born into what would probably be a nightmare family atmosphere. I know that's easy to say because I'm not the child's and if I were I probably would fight for my survival, but I just can't wrap my head around Women like that being able to care for a child to begin with and that the child might not suffer even more by being forced to be born and if it were illegal, do you put the doctors in jail for murder? Pro life people can never answer that question if you notice. I'm not saying I could answer it if I were pro life but they will never go as far as saying that the doctor is a co-conspirator to murder you know that's exactly what's your philosophy is saying. They know such a thing would sound way too extreme and clearly out of the mainstream thinking.I won't go into it but there have been many other areas I have switched on. One of them definitely being a patriotic American citizen. In high school I tried to enlist underage at 16, for the first Gulf War. My father was a Vietnam war hero receiving two bronze stars and a Silverstar as he flew over 70 missions for the Navy. And now today, he thinks about all the innocent women, men And children he killed with his indiscriminate carpet bombing that he now believes he was lying to you about his targets and were not military installations but in fact villages of innocent people. In high school, they would read the Pledge of Allegiance over the PA and unlike in some places in the country, I was the only person who stood up and recited it. Everyone used to laugh at me when I did that but I was so patriotic to this country. And now, now that I know how everything works, politically, And how many countries that are bigger then Kuwait that are annexed or invaded every other week that does not even make the news or concern the leaders and the president of this country.The fact is Bush Senior blatantly lied to us and the only reason we had any concern was because it was in the middle east which is very unstable yet is the source of our domestic oil supply, or rather the vast source of our domestic oil supply, and and any instability we consider a national security threat, because we need oil for our own national security, and that is why we sent half 1 million troops to the Gulf. Somehow I don't seem to think there would be much interest by our government or people if the democratic republic of the Congo was invaded by the Congo. So I would not fight for this country in any war. For a while I said I would fight to defend this country if we were attacked on our on land. Like 911. But since then, further dealings with more and more senior politicians, convinced me that there is no way I'm going to risk my life on the order of a politician who will lie about anything to get reelected.I'm very sick with a degenerative neurological disease, but if I could get citizenship in the UK or western Europe or 10 I would move tomorrow. Screw citizenship just give me residency. And I can imagine, I have fantasized about what would be such a gratifying moments in my life which would be after I gain residency and/or citizenship in one of those countries, to go before the ambassador for the consul general in the embassy in that country and till this American diplomat that I was renouncing My American citizenship and then lighting my passport on fire. If I videotaped it I bet it would get a lot of YouTube hits. I actually research this and over the last 15 years, while we're certainly not talking about hundreds of thousands, the number of Americans who have voluntarily renounce your citizenship and has increased every single year in the last 15. Once I learned firsthand the hard way that any politician certainly including the president will do or say anything to get reelected, since he is the commander-in-chief the idea that I would actually risk my life based on the political decision is truly absurd. I do not take anything away from the very brave men and women who fight for this country. I have The utmost highest regard for them and their bravery and I never see a vet who I don't think profusely for what he has done. But that doesn't change the fact that the last war that we fought which I think was ideologically honest was the Korean War. And even that might've been somewhat questionable. WW I I certainly was a war we should have gotten into purely for humanitarian purposes. Although if the president knew about the Pearl Harbor bombing and FDR allowed it to occur because then it would cause out rage amongst the American public which would then give him the cover he needed with American position changing to know give him the covered to get involved in the war. If that was true, as many as Dorians have claimed, then it was treasonous. The commander-in-chief, especially back then before the war Powers act, didn't need permission from anyone and to allow all of those innocent sailors to be slaughtered like that, many of them drowning so his approval ratings would not drop. Since every military engagement has been for political purposes since Korea, is abominable. We do not risk the blood of our citizens for political reasons.And the so-called domino theory which is how we justified the Vietnam War, that communism would take over Vietnam and then spread to other countries and may not be good for us, never gave us the right to invade a sovereign nation over their own internal political decisions. And I'm disappointed that one of my heroes who is actually a conservative, Colin Powell, was in Vietnam for many of those years and certainly supporting that war and I just can't imagine in his heart that he really believed, especially towards the end and especially after the golf of Tonkin incident was totally made up, that this was a just fight