Cyber Monday

This past Thursday I spent time with my family giving thanks for everything that we had been blessed with over the past year. From Friday to Monday stores and shops online have very big sales to celebrate the season. I'm not saying that shopping on these days is awful because I definitely took part in deals that I thought were very good but some deals are very not even worth the purchase. At some stores the sale would be 10% these items and at another store you could get 40% items that were very similar. During this shopping weekend people don't shop smart because they just see that there is a sale and they buy things that they normally wouldn't buy it it wasn't on sale. Cyber Monday and Black Friday are basically the same just Cyber Monday is mostly online and the sales are just repeated from Friday. I think that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are both something fun and enjoyable because I know that I got clothes for a very good deal but I just don't think people know how to be smart shoppers on these two days. http://shopping.yahoo.com/news/cyber-monday-deals-guide-232336661.html

Hurricane Sandy

There has been so much going on in the world the past three weeks. There was the Presidential election and the bombings in Israel but it all started off with Hurricane Sandy. There was so much devastation that happened in the New York and New Jersey area and there is still so much that we can do to help. I think that it's very important to help out when the country is in need. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, everyone in the nation was really supportive and helped out in many ways. For this past hurricane, we as a nation  need to do that same. Everyone in the country should really think about taking time out of their daily life to put themselves in the shoes of the hurricanes victims. The victims have lost a lot and after imagining yourself in their situation wouldn't you want to help them out? There have been many telethons to support the relief and you can also text a number, found in this article http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-sandy-victims/story?id=17598687#.UKmDylTl6rM , to donate money to the Red Cross to support the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Amendment 64 and Sports

Even though Amendment 64, the legalization of recreational marijuana use, passed in Colorado and Washington, the NFL and the NBA are still enforcing the strict policies against smoking marijuana. I think that it is really smart for the NBA and the NFL to still enforce the laws in the states because the athletes of the two leagues are role models to kids everywhere. In this article, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2012/11/07/nfl-marijuana-substance-abuse-policy-colorado-washington/1688971/ it talks about how the kids in little league are wearing pink in October for Breast Cancer awareness and doing anything they can to do to be like the players in the NFL. Even kids on the school football team were wearing pink during home games to support Breast Cancer like the players in the NFL do. The players of the two leagues influence a lot of young athletes to be inspired by the game they play and love. I know as a basketball player, I look up to the players in the NBA for how they present themselves on and off the court. With marijuana still being illegal under federal law, the players of the leagues would be breaking federal law which would ruin the way people view that player. I think a great way to describe what will happen to their career was a line in the article that said, "light up a joint and a sports career can go up in smoke." I think that is completely true because that player will loose their job and potentially any endorsements that they have. Tiger Woods is a good example of a career that went downhill quickly because of a mistake and smoking marijuana while in such a high profiled profession is definitely a mistake that can ruin a career.

Death Penalty

There are many stages in a death penalty case and there are some of which protect the rights of the people accused. In the pre-trial stage, the court makes sure that there is a suitable jury for the case. This protects the rights of the accused because the court makes sure that there aren't people are clearly biased to the death penalty on the jury because then those jurors would automatically choose the death penalty for the accused. In the Penalty stage you have mitigating factors that protect the rights of the accused. The mitigating factors are things that affect the person in a way that could potentially lessen the punishment of the crime. Mental illness is a mitigating factor because the accused cannot help the fact that they have a mental illness that can interfere with decision making. Clemency stage also protects the rights of the accused because if the person is innocent they can see a pardon board to reduce punishment. The methods of the death penalty are hanging, firing squad, lethal injection, gas chamber and electrocution. As I believe that none of these are humane, if I had to choose i would choose the lethal injection. It seems to be the least painful considering the only pain that you really feel is when they put the IV in and everyone has had at least one shot in their lifetime. The two that I believe should most definitely be considered cruel and unusual punishment are electrocution and gas chamber. With all of the methods they do end up dying but these two seem the most torturous because the process can take longer and the prisoner could struggle during the process. In the gas chamber it is recommended to breathe deeply to speed up the process and some disregard that making their death drawn out and having to deal with dying at a slow pace. There are a lot of states that don't have the death penalty. The state of Illinois and some surrounding states don't have the death penalty but other than those states it is spread out through the country which states have the it and which states don't. I thought that is there sort of is a regional trend because as in the Midwest area, the area by New Jersey also doesn't have the death penalty.  California has the highest amount of inmates on death row with 724 and California also has the most women on death row with 19 inmates. There aren't any statistics for juveniles on death row because in the court case Roper v. Simmons is was ruled unconstitutional according to the 8th amendment to use the death penalty on anyone under the age of 18. This data tells us that even though there are a lot of places that still have the death penalty, there are states that are getting rid of the death penalty at the same time. The state by state data tells us how the death penalty was used mostly before 1976. I think that some of the parts of Illinois Death Penalty Statute are fair and make sense but some crimes don't deserve death as a punishment. The parts that are fair is that if someone was to kill someone who is disabled, elderly or torture was intended. People that kill like that have something seriously wrong with their brain if they feel okay killing someone that is elderly or disabled. The state by state data doesn't tell us why Illinois got rid of the death penalty but I can conclude that Illinois took away the death penalty for the reasons that it wasn't as effective as it is in other states. The death penalty is frequently used in states like Texas, California or Oklahoma but in a state like Illinois there were only so many executions since 1976 compared to the states. In the article it says that in Texas it costs 2.3 million dollars for a death penalty case which is three times the amount it costs to keep someone in a single cell high security prison for 40 years. The economics of the death penalty is that it generally costs more using the death penalty than it does to keep someone in jail for life. The racial factor for the death penalty is that there are more whites executed and more whites in death penalty cases The public opinion is pretty split up between the decisions of the death penalty, life with parole, life without parole, life with parole plus restitution and no opinion. The majority of the people through would rather have the prisoner in prison for life with or without parole rather than have the prisoner go through the death penalty. I thought that the views of the Death Penalty Information Center were that they are against the death penalty. It is convincing because a lot of the statistics that I saw were talking about how expensive it was to use the death penalty over putting the person in prison. They also used statistics talking about how race isn't really a factor in deciding whether or not the person should be getting the death penalty, if they should be getting the penalty at all.