![]() ![]() Some New Orleans police officers have resigned rather than face the violence in the city. Despair is also affecting those in New Orleans charged with protecting the city, said State Police Superintendent Col. Melancon said some of those waiting for pickup died of dehydration in the 90-degree heat that has afflicted the region since Tuesday. Sadly, though, there are signs that New Orleans has devolved to Third World status: Whether that’s a good thing or not is a judgment call, I suppose, but we’ve got decades of Supreme Court rulings that it’s a violation of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on excessive punishment to execute people for less than murder. Even with benefit of due process, theft is not something for which we execute people. Not only are basic due process rights–being charged with a crime, a trial, an attorney, the right to confront witnesses–being ignored but we’re turning relatively minor crimes into capital ones. It should be noted, too, that the Constitution is being thrown out the window here. I don’t agree with Digby too often and disagree with most of his analysis even on this but we simply can not devolve into a Third World dictatorship here. As this story and others make clear, though, it’s not easy to tell the vermin from the merely desperate. My visceral reaction to the looters and other criminals in the flood zone is the same as most: they’re scum who deserve no compassion. It is ironic, too, that we are treating an American city suffering from the worst natural disaster in memory as a hot fire zone while our soldiers fighting in Iraq are under much, much tighter rules of engagement. Not only does the use of the military for domestic law enforcement rather clearly violate the posse comitatus law but shooting unarmed civilians violates all the ethics of professional soldiering that I learned. Indeed, were I still on active duty, I would refuse this order as illegal. ![]() ![]() Having the American military shooting suspected looters on sight, however, is an outrageous precedent from which we may not recover. These are desperate times which, I’m told, call for desperate measures. Here’s a similar story at Australia’s ABC. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded.” “These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will,” she said. Announcing the arrival of 300 Arkansas National Guard troops in New Orleans fresh from service in Iraq, Blanco said, “these troops are battle-tested. Kathleen Blanco warned rioters and looters in New Orleans on Thursday that National Guard troops are under her orders to “shoot and kill” to end the rampant violence in the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. governor warns troops will “shoot and kill” Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has ordered the National Guard to “shoot and kill” looters in New Orleans. ![]()
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