I’ve been listening to a lot of the arguments, both pro and con, of putting Zacarias Moussaoui to death. While I understand the calls for a life sentence from the group that does not believe in the death penalty and the calls for the death penalty from all those who support the death penalty there is a group that I don’t understand. There is a group who otherwise believe in the death penalty that argue for life in prison for Moussaoui because death is what he wants.

What Zacarias Moussaoui wants is not death. He wants the results of martyrdom, which to him is a special place in heaven with a passel of virgins to care for him. The people who want to deprive him of his wishes don’t believe that he will be rewarded so why do they want to “deprive” him of his wishes when they don’t believe those wishes are achievable by him even in the death that he wishes for?

It was Monday, the day after the fourth anniversary of 9/11 and I’m flying weekly now and will be for the forseeable future. I’m currently reading Tom Clancy’s The Teeth of the Tiger about terrorist threats to the US. Do I feel safer today flying than I did four years ago? No. In fact, if anything I think that my safety is more at risk today than it was this time last year or the year before.

The reason that I don’t feel safer has nothing to do with terrorist. It has everything to do with your typical traveler. Traveling is becoming much more stressful each year. With that stress comes frustrations, annoyances and rage. The rage is what I fear, not the terrorist. I place the blame for a lot of this stress directly on the shoulders of the TSA. Not only are the searches becoming more and more invasive but the screeners are becoming more an more beligerent. Simple questions can’t be asked without it being taken as a challenge to the screeners authority.

Maybe it’s just the Atlanta Airport on Monday mornings because I have been through there at other times and the TSA employees were polite and friendly but that has changed over the last few months. Also flying in and out of Tucson a last year the TSA people were cracking jokes with people in line and this was during the holidays. I’m not sure what it is that is changing these people but it isn’t good.

You knew it was going to happen. All those supposed terrorist being detained down at Gitmo are going to have to have some sort of final dispostion decided for them by the US. It appears that some pentagon and intelligence officials feel that they need to be kept incarcerated for the rest of their lives even when there isn’t enough evidence to bring them to trial. Luckily, a couple of US Senators in high places recognize the fact that our constitution doesn’t allow for that.

I am so pleased to discover that the SC still holds our right to a day in court precious.

Congress did give the president authority to hold Hamdi, a four-justice plurality of the court said, but that does not cancel out the basic right to a day in court.

I personally feel so much more personal freedom knowing that I can’t just be grabbed off the street without at least being given access to the court to protest my detention. Not that I think that would ever happen to me but I don’t want to think my country can do that to anyone.

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