THIS HAS BEEN the year of American democracy. The values of this nation have never been more dramatically on display before the world. "Freedom" has been the watch word, from Operation Iraqi Freedom to the coming Freedom Tower at Ground Zero in New York. In a period of enormous stress, America has pulled itself together, freshly defined its beliefs, and begun to press them on others. Washington aims at nothing less than the propagation of US notions of civil order and social justice everywhere. And why shouldn't citizens be proud? But this vision throws a shadow. Contradictions of American idealism have also been manifest with rare clarity this year -- and not only in wars abroad. A signal event took place in Massachusetts as the year approached its end. A jury made up of citizens of one of the relatively few states that outlaws the death penalty nevertheless imposed it in the federal murder case against Gary Lee Sampson, the brutal killer of Jonathan Rizzo and Philip McCloskey. As advocates of the death penalty hoped, this decision in the heart of a community that has long rejected capital punishment -- the last execution in Massachusetts was in 1947 -- speeds America's complete return to frontier justice. [continues 616 words]
Harlan incident is 2nd recent case involving drugs In the second instance of drug use at Kentucky coal mines in recent months, state regulators have cited a Harlan County mine after inspectors conducting a surprise underground search last month found a marijuana joint belonging to a miner. Inspectors also cited B&D Mining, LLC, operating a mine in Liggett, after a cigarette was found under another miner's foot, according to documents on file with the Kentucky Mine Safety Review Commission and obtained under a Kentucky Open Records Act request by The Courier-Journal. [continues 1169 words]
Gifts Came Weeks Before Hearing On OxyContin WASHINGTON -- Rep. Harold "Hal" Rogers, a leading critic in Congress of how OxyContin's manufacturer has marketed the powerful painkiller, returned what he called improper campaign gifts from three company officials. The $750 in contributions came six weeks before one of the officials testified before a subcommittee about OxyContin abuse and was lectured by Rogers, who organized the hearing. Rogers, a Republican who represents Kentucky's 5th District, said he did not know of the contributions at the time of the Dec. 11 hearing because the officials didn't disclose their connections to the company when the donations were made. Rogers' campaign discovered the link two days later and returned the money. [continues 979 words]
Rogers Calls For Probe Of Painkiller Rep. Hal Rogers -- facing an epidemic of OxyContin abuse in his Eastern Kentucky district -- said yesterday that he'll seek an investigation of how the manufacturer marketed and promoted the powerful painkiller. Rogers, R-5th District, joined Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., in calling for a General Accounting Office investigation after clashing at a hearing with a top official of Purdue Pharma, the Stamford, Conn. based manufacturer of OxyContin. Rogers and Wolf said the company was too aggressive in marketing the drug, sold in time-release pills for treatment of chronic pain, and has failed to act to halt the abuse. [continues 886 words]
In taking the measure of the European conquest of the New World, when so many indigenous people were eliminated by sword, gunfire, and disease, we note that the invading Europeans did not practice human sacrifice. The Aztecs, for all their high-culture accomplishments, routinely offered up live human beings to appease their gods. The cult was so brutal that the conquistadors, by comparison, could think of themselves as a civilizing force. By extension, ever since, we descendants of conquistadors have felt certain of our moral superiority. Yet in recent years, the high-culture United States has embraced the extreme form of a primitive cult by which a few are scapegoated for the sake of the many. Human sacrifice, modern American style, is the revivified cult of capital punishment, ritual killing carried out in the magical belief that society, as a result, will be safer and more just. But human sacrifice has also come to describe the entire American approach to the maintenance of social order. What else could it mean that the staggering number of 2 million people are imprisoned in this country? This is so even though many represent no physical threat to others and many are innocent. If the mortal pressures of death row are leading to the repeated discovery that murder convictions are all too easily obtained against those who are not guilty, that finding applies across the entire spectrum of prosecution, meaning tens of thousands of innocent people are wrongly inprison. [continues 608 words]