Ahhhh, first of all, Old Guy, my apologies... I am right in the middle of living in a construction site and most of my files are boxed up and in the barn somehwere... That means I don't have access to the hundreds and hundreds or articles I have cut out of the Wwahington Post...

Even, sniff, the story I was going to relate to you about the Afganistani who started a magazine and had an article in it where he said that women deserved the same fundamental rights as men... He was arrested by the same folks who used to be part of the Taliban and is now possibly facing execution for standing up for human rights...

I have very slow dial up here in this holler so trying to find the article is like finding a needle in the haystack but it was in an article within the last week in the Washington Post......

The point is that in Afganistan, the areas outside of the cities are falling back into life that more closely resembles the pre-invasion Afganistan, with Islamic extremists calling the shots... Yeah, you can feel free to challenge this premise 'cause I can't get to any of my stuff right now but maybe Ebbie or Dianavan or someone else who has a faster computter and maybe more time can provide a couple links to back this up...

Ahhhh, as fir "new ideas" I once offered a program here in Mudcat that wopuld be more of a win-win alternative to not only the death penalty but also incarceration in general... The basic premise of the program wuold be to create public/private partnerships between inmates being part of company/corporation... Not like work release but like prison production plants... No, not making license plates for the state but making dishwashwers, 'er hose reels, 'er widgets...

This would do a couple three good things... First, it would create a relationship for ther inmate with a company and so when the inmate has done his time he moves into a jobh waiting for him. Second, it would be a move towards "corrections" which punishment isn't. Third, the wages earned by the inmate could go toward paying "restitution" to the victims of the crime... I've been the victim of crimes and have never felt the system did much to compensate me for my losses...

Take a man who has killed someone... That someone might have been the primary bread-winner in the family and now the bread-winner is gone... Hey, if we can get the labor out of the killer and turn that into compensatable wages to the victims we have win-win...

Lastly, Big Mick and others... Me and Freda can take Fat Boy Arnold... I may be skinny just as I was back in my karate days but the big guys didn't want to sapr with me then and I don't think Arnold is all that tough... It's all mental... Plus, Freda can grab hold on one leg of Fat Boy and skinny me then can use the ring to embaress Arnold... Bad 'nuff being a Fatso but even worse with only one leg you can get to move...

Arnold goes down in two...

Bobert