#566 Death Penalty/Conferences/Juneteenth/Nukes - June 18, 2021

Biden Disappoints on Death Penalty We’ve always grieved over U.S. President Joe Biden’s positions on abortion, plus on producing nuclear weapons and other aspects of war, and we knew that his position used to be one of favoring the death penalty. However, during his campaign last year, he tweeted that we should eliminate the death penalty, and talked of closing down the federal death penalty. Abolitionists had hoped we finally had an advocate in the White House on this issue. Delay in keeping the promises could be accounted for because there are so many things being done – it’s only a problem with prioritizing. Unfortunately, however, the administration’s first foray into acting on the death penalty is to file a brief June 14 at the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to reinstate the death penalty in the Boston Bomber case.

Bill Donohue comments on this from the perspective of Biden being a Catholic: “If Biden is bedeviled by the death penalty, it's fair to say that he is plagued by abortion. It is a subject that will not go away, and his inability to adopt a consistent ethic of life is making the ‘devout Catholic’ look like a rank hypocrite, if not worse.”

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Upcoming Conferences from Member Groups ∞ Democrats for Life Conference – July 31 in Columbus, Ohio, with on-line and in-person options, plus meet-up opportunities on July 30 and August 1.

∞ Rehumanize International Conference – September 4 online.

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Celebrating Juneteenth We’re delighted Congress has voted by large margins to make the day commemorating the final end of U.S. slavery (for non-prisoners) a federal holiday. See our page on Finally Abolishing Slavery for prisoners also.

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Why NATO Countries Should Join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons On the occasion of the first summit meeting of U.S. and Russian leaders, ICAN has put out a report making the case. The Biden-Putin summit statement thankfully affirmed that nuclear wars must never be fought, but that’s a bare minimum. They committed to further arms control negotiations. This isn’t the same as getting to zero, which is what’s needed, but progress toward that goal is helpful.

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Our Latest Blog Post This week we offer a poem: The Cure for Headache, by Acyutananda ("c" pronounced as in "ciao"), a yoga monk.

Our blog carries a wide variety of topics, including short essays, personal journeys, movie reviews and poems; see our full list of posts and full list of authors. If you have something to offer, see submission guidelines.

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Quotation of the Week Joe Allen Is Grafting Dead Babies’ Scalps Onto Lab Rats Any Better Than Child Sacrifice? The Federalist, June 4, 2021 I’m unaware of any public opinion polls on child sacrifice, but I think it’s fair to say almost no Americans would favor throwing infants onto temple fires — even for the benefit of the community. For one thing, few modern Americans believe the gods require human blood to make the crops grow or keep the sun on its course. Beyond that logical reasoning, though, we’re morally conditioned from childhood to believe human beings deserve better. . . . The reality is that many Americans benefit from human cruelty — directly or indirectly — be it from wars of aggression or hellish factory farms. In the case of research on aborted infants and “humanized mice,” it’s possible countless lives could be saved by the resulting information. . . . Yet when confronted with the brutal truth behind these actions, something in the soul recoils. We should heed that awakened voice. The moment it goes silent, we cease to be fully human.

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Issue #566 06.18.21