News The Morning News
posted by on August 6 at 7:50 AM
Don’t Mex with Texas: State executes Mexican convicted of murder, but denies consul visit in violation of international law and despite Bush administration request for a new hearing.
Mauritania: Army officers stage coup after four military officials were fired. Junta blacks out state media, deploys military through capital, detains president and PM.
Vice Chimes: Obama to appear with Evan Bayh, current senator and former two-term governor of Indiana, stirring widespread speculation about Bayh as VP pick.
Driven to It: Former driver for Bin Laden convicted of war crimes in closed military court, faces life term.
Get Well, Councilmember: McIver in intensive care unit after suffering post-operation complications from colon surgery.
Electric Slide: Kentucky governor approves three- and four-wheeled electric cars on some roads.
Get a Room: McCain campaign loves Paris Hilton’s energy plan.
It’s Finally Happening: Airlines planning to install Internet on planes. “If they charge for it, they are going to make millions and millions of dollars.”
Apple Sauce: Jobs concedes launch of troubled MobileMe Internet service was poorly timed, hands over project to another executive.
Red Alert: Freddie Mac posts quarterly loss of $821 million on housing and credit markets—far worse than expected.
Green Light: Port and city strike deal to connect I-90 to waterfront.
Golden Opportunity: China denies entry to former Olympic medalist for views on Darfur.
Under Pressure: “Sen. Obama … said that we ought to all inflate our tires, and I don’t disagree with that,” says McCain.
Under Processed: Sims wants to spend $84 million to update county’s computer systems.
Under Staffed: Waiting time in emergency rooms now averages an hour (while vogue and money for docs is now in cosmetic surgery and dermatology).
Maverick Ad of the Day: Obama campaign borrows page from the Eli Sanders handbook.
The police who arrested illegal alien rapist murderer Medellin denied him nothing. They simply didn't know about the 1963 treaty that supposedly required them to tell illegal aliens arrested for rape and murder that they had the right to contact their consulate. Nobody even uncovered this all-important consular notification issue until four years after Medellin was convicted of his heinous crime.
Further, unless the Mexican consulate had a stock of Get Out of Jail Free cards, contacting them would not have changed the trial's outcome.
When foreign nationals voluntarily enter our country, they implicitly agree to subject themselves to our country's laws. Moreover, I'm pretty sure the rape-murder of underaged girls is a crime in Mexico as well -- at least I hope so. So Medellin should have expected to be punished for his crime.
We won't support spine-less NO-Bama and will re-defeat him in November!!! Go Hillary 2012!!
Good campaign ad!
@1 - you're coming across there as rather omnipotent, knowing what the police did and how a trial would have come out. The rule of law that you correctly pointed out which Medellin apparently broke is the same rule of law that Texas just ignored. The inconsistency is what I think is at issue here.
@4: The one violation of "the rule of law" was procedural, like coloring outside the lines, or forgetting to say "Mother May I?". Such violations are classified as "harmless error" because there is no possible way they could have affected the outcome of the case. The other violation was the gang rape and murder of a 14 year old girl. Can you see the difference?
Yeah, it's called breaking International Law so that we can freely arrest former Texas Governors worldwide for their war crimes.
Dick.
What does Clinton's Army have to do with anything? So Bush was trying to follow through with the Treaty, right? What's the big deal? Like @1 says, Medellin would have faced punishment either way, right?
it's hard in cases where the crime is so despicable to maintain proper procedure but i think that this country has slipped enough on international law and human rights over the last eight years that even a purely formal adherence to the law is something to be stood up for.
@1: Why are you afraid of obeying all the laws? Even if the discovery came late, that doesn't make the law any less, you know, legal. How can breaking the law in the name of upholding the law possibly be justified?
Hey @1:
international agreements and international law are part of US law.
Just as much as the US code or state laws.
And you do not know if contacting the consular official might have resulted in the dude getting a better lawyer or a different outcome.
If you are for upholdling hte law you have to have consequcnces for breaking it and here you are allowing the govt. to break the law with no consequnces.
And it's plain dumb to think Texas, of all states, somehow shouldn't know about the agreement the US made with Mexico. Alaska -- maybe. But no not even them.
not only that, i'd hope mexico would honor agreements with the US if i ever got caught down there for something...
And it's plain dumb to think Texas, of all states, somehow shouldn't know about the agreement the US made with Mexico
To illustrate the complexity and obscurity of the situation, this was not an agreement the US made with Mexico. This was the multilateral Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which was completed in late 1963, when various countries started signing on to it. (The US signed on in 1969.) As of June 1997, some 165 different countries were party to the VCCR while another 26 or so were not. It's regrettable but not too surprising that a municipal Texas police force was ignorant of one international law -- our own native Texan President was ignorant of the Geneva Conventions.
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