Capital Punishment: The Necessary Evil

Death is always something that has been regarded with a sense of unease. And because of our natural discomfort with death, many issues dealing with it are controversial. One such issue is that of capital punishment, the ending of a person's life as punishment for a crime. In the states of the United States of America where capital punishment is still implemented, such as Texas, it is only used in response to the most heinous of crimes, such as multiple murders or the murder of a young child. There is much controversy regarding this practice, but ultimately it is something that is necessary, and Texas should never abolish the death penalty.
Capital Punishment is the ultimate penalty for a crime, and Texas recognizes that. The death penalty can only apply to these crimes:

• murder of a public safety officer or firefighter;
• murder during the commission of kidnapping, burglary, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, arson, or obstruction or retaliation;
• murder for remuneration;
• murder during prison escape;
• murder of a correctional employee;
• murder by a state prison inmate who is serving a life sentence for any of five offenses (murder, capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, or aggravated robbery);
• multiple murders;
• murder of an individual under six years of age.

It is not overused, having only been used 405 times since 1976 according to deathpenaltyinfo.org. There is no conclusive evidence that any of these people were innocent.
Many debate whether capital punishment deters future murders or not, but John McAdams clearly states my opinion on the matter when he said,

"If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call."

The most important reason to keep the death penalty is to prevent those that commit the crimes from repeating them. If an inmate is sentenced to life in prison without parole in a state without the death penalty, then that inmate has nothing to lose. The felon would have the rest of his life to attempt an escape, and it would be impossible to have a substantial penalty for his actions.
For these reasons Texas should keep the death penalty. It is something that all people who want peace in our society wish did not have to exist, but it is absolutely necessary.

Article on Hillary Appealing Abuses

Lisa Sandberg wrote an article concerning declarations made by Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign about complaints that Barack Obama's supporters were carrying out a number of inappropriate actions during the caucus on Tuesday night, March 4. This article is posted on a political blog that is hosted by the both the Houston Chronicle and by the San Antonio Express News. A majority of Houston's Democratic population supports Obama and a majority of San Antonio's Democratic population supports Clinton, so the blog should be relatively unbiased overall between the two candidates. Lisa Sandberg, however, writes for San Antonio Express so a slightly favorable bias towards Clinton should be expected. The article gives most of its sources, directly quoting Garry Mauro and Josh Earnest, members of the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign, respectively. Sandberg does not state her sources for the complaints about the caucus, but due to the fact that she is a writer for the San Antonio Express News it is unlikely that her sources are not credible. While Sandberg does not implicitly say whether the complaints about the caucus are credited or whether the Clinton campaign's stance on the issue is the correct one, the way she writes her article suggest that she supports Clinton. Most of the article describes Clinton's response to the complaints and only the very end of the article gives the Obama's point of view, that Clinton is trying to "discount the voice of those who participated" in the caucus. Throughout the article she does she gives reasons and support for Clinton's argument but only mentions Obama's argument, never giving any evidence or support for his argument. In Lisa Sandberg's argument Clinton and her supporters are the winners and Obama and his supporters are the losers.