U.S. Should Not Scale Back Efforts In Afghanistan In Face Of Election Cancellation, Says Analyst

By Ravi Bhatia - Talk Radio News Service

Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C., told Talk Radio News Service Monday that it would be a mistake for the United States to scale back its military efforts in Afghanistan after Hamid Karzai was declared President for another term by Afghanistan’s election commission.

“The whole election debacle was a setback for international efforts in Afghanistan,” Curtis said in a telephone interview. “That said, U.S stakes in the region are far too high to allow the imperfect election to cause us to think about scaling back the mission there.”

Karzai’s competitor, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the race Sunday, citing the risk of voter fraud.

General Stanley McChrystal has requested 44,000 more troops in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama is expected to adopt a military strategy in the coming weeks.

Former Homeland Security Official Calls For Increased Information Sharing In War On Terror

By Leah Valencia, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

Former Homeland Security Adviser Frances F. Townsend called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Monday to focus on information sharing among local governments and other government entities, warning that a failure to do so could impede the Department's ability to prevent future terrorist attacks.

“If we do not get information sharing right, when there is another attack ... there will be a problem with information sharing,” Townsend said during a presentation at the Heritage Foundation.

Townsend said the issue of information sharing often falls down the list of priorities for the current administration, but could be vital in the prevention and response to terrorism.

“This is not a sexy issue but it is one that will absolutely be our downfall in terms of stopping an attack,” she explained.

The DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis outlined their key intelligence initiatives and reforms in a hearing before the house subcommittee on intelligence late last week. One priority mentioned included improved coordination and information sharing.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said the fundamental goal for protection is to better information sharing so that it occurs in a regular and timely manner.

“The key for protecting the homeland from attack is disseminating useable intelligence and information to our state, local, tribal and private sector partners, getting similar intelligence and information back from those partners for analytic work by Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the national Intelligence Community, and ensuring this two-way exchange happens on a real-time basis,” Napolitano said.

Townsend said drastic circumstances should not be necessary before this issue gets the attention it deserves.

“I think people sorely underestimate the consequences of a large scale cyber attack,” Townsend said. “There will be a cyber 9/11 and regretfully I think that is what it will take before people pay attention to these security issues.”

No 'Adult Time' For Youth Crimes

In this day and age of neurobiology (understanding of brain chemistry and neuro-anatomy), it is shocking to have an organization such as the Heritage Foundation release a report called "Adult Time for Adult Crimes – Life Without Parole for Juvenile Killers and Violent Teens." It is not "compassionate conservatism;" it shows a lack of knowledge in regard to basic brain development.

I am not so naïve that I believe if a juvenile commits murder at 16 years old, that the day he or she reaches 21 they should be a get-out-of-jail-free card. But life sentences for a child or teen that commits an act of even horrendous violence when they are a teenager? Why keep them in for life? It is highly improbable that a disturbed young person who is in the prison system 24/7 can control his or her behavior for years at a time to "fool" the prison staff that they are remorseful and non-violent when they actually are not. There are cases where people have been freed and then commit horrible crimes, but juveniles are generally studied and evaluated frequently while incarcerated. By the time they reach adulthood, the criminal justice system knows a lot about them. The offenders who remain capable of violence years after committing the crime should be placed in a humane and structured prison/mental hospital facility.

According to the Heritage Foundation report, 43 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government have laws allowing for life without parole for juveniles. Although I think these laws in themselves are horrendous, why, if it is law in a super majority of states, is this is an issue now? The Heritage report states that it is because there is coordinated lobbying going on to change this. Maybe that is true, but more likely it is another way for conservatives to get on the "tough on crime" bandwagon as it always stirs up the base. It worked in California and drove voters to the polls. California prisons are now filled beyond human capacity due to the three strikes law. They can't afford to keep their prison system in operation, but the voters were happy that California would not be "soft on crime."

This entire proposal ignores how these young people became violent in the first place. Authors Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley in their book about violent and murderous juveniles, "Ghosts From the Nursery," studied incarcerated young people. They write, "We can see that there are many kinds of ghosts from the nursery. Some result from biological factors such as head injuries or learning disabilities. Others emerge from familial experiences such as child abuse, domestic violence, or the impact of maternal depression or rejection. As children grow older, larger societal factors, such as chronic community violence, may compound the damage from earlier experiences. One factor by itself rarely creates antisocial outcomes in human development ... a majority take root in the nursery, where few people are looking."

The fact is that most juveniles who commit crimes have been abused, dropped or shaken in their early years or may have some congenital form of mental illness. That does not translate to the notion that society should let offenders out to roam free. It does mean that giving a life sentence to a juvenile is not justice; it is barbaric.

A psychologist I know said the rental car companies are about the only entities that understand brain development. They don't rent cars to people who are younger than 25. The part of the brain that makes thoughtful decisions is not fully developed until the mid-20s. Therefore, putting someone in jail for life at the age of 16 or younger makes no sense except to the "tough on crime" crowd.

My advice is for the authors of the Heritage Foundation report to spend some time learning and understanding the roots of violent behavior and to study brain development before they continue to tout "life without parole" for even the most violent criminal acts by adolescents. Our laws that allow 14-year-olds to be incarcerated for life are at odds with other Western countries and put us in the company of countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hopefully those are not countries we want to emulate in terms of how they treat other humans. It is time our criminal justice system adjusted itself to what we know about human behavior and the brain. It is time we acted based on science and not just pure retribution.

Legal Analysts Defend Life Sentences For Juvenile Offenders

By Laura Woodhead - Talk Radio News Service

Life sentences without parole for juvenile murderers are justified and constitutional, a panel of legal experts said Monday during a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation. The discussion coincided with the release of the right-leaning think tank's report "Adult Time for Adult Crimes: Exposing the Movement to Set Free Juvenile Killers and Violent Offenders," a study former Attorney General Edwin Meese III said aims to "set straight the record on this subject and to educate the public" on serious juvenile offenders' sentences.

"[The study finds that] Juvenile life without possibility of parole is reasonable, constitutional and appropriately rare," Meese said. "Contrary to what many have contended, the United States has no international obligation to ban the life without parole sentence for serious juvenile criminals."

The 2 1/2 year long study's release comes before the Supreme Court hears two cases from Florida surrounding the sentencing of juveniles.

Groups that advocate parole for juvenile offenders argue their case using "carefully crafted lies," Meese asserted. Paul Wallace, Chief of Appeals at the Delaware Department of Justice, said that the opposing view usually revolved around 8th Amendment arguments, that life without parole is a "cruel and unusual punishment" for a juvenile criminal.

"The Supreme Court has always said that you don't even look at the 8th amendment unless... the sentence is grossly disproportionate and grossly disproportionate to the crime," said Wallace.

"Outside the death penalty context, [the Supreme Court] has never found a sentence of incarceration to be disproportionate," Wallace noted."The Supreme Court has kept the line between death penalty cases and incarceration, even life without parole incarceration. The disturbing part in the current discussion is this: that certain people want to blur that line, they want to take down that wall between those sentences."

"[The blurring of this line" would give offenders] a right which [would] jeopardize all non capital sentences," said co- author of the report, Charles Stimson, Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

Stimson said that these lobbying campaigns were filled with misleading statistics and misreadings of Supreme Court precedent that did not represent the truth behind juvenile sentencing.

"[There needs to be a debate] that is framed by a forthright, honest and direct discussion of the facts," Stimson argued.

"Most juveniles deserve to be treated in the juvenile justice system," he said. However, the juvenile offenders who received life without parole "deserved a fair trial, got a fair trial and were justly sentenced."

Universal Health Care To Cost Money And Jobs

By Joseph Russell- Talk Radio News Service
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) discussed the future of employer provided healthcare at the Heritage Foundation.
 
The lessons learned from failed universal care programs are alarming and allowing the United States to become another “laboratory” for mandated health care programs will yield similar results, according to U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). According to Blackburn, who spoke comments yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, these systems yield runaway administrative costs and diminish patient access to quality healthcare due to "serious government mismanagement." 
 
“We need to shift the focus,” Blackburn said. “So its not about punishment, and punishing employers, and punishing individuals, and limiting access. That’s not the way to do health care reform. We need to flip it and focus on the positive.” 

Blackburn said that U.S. health care reform needs to be a priority of the government. However,   putting insurance in the hands of the consumer allows more people to have access to healthcare while keeping costs down, she said. The “pay to play” system for employers to continue to provide benefits to employees under universal health care will cost more than 1.5 million jobs and shift 120 million people from private insurance to public insurance, she said. 

The “pay to play” system Democrats have proposed “allows” employers to buy into insurance programs through a newly proposed National Insurance Exchange. The insurance exchange forces insurance companies to offer the same benefits as their competitors, including the government, but they are paid more if the enroll higher risk patients.