Is There Censorship Surrounding The Death Penalty?

Due to a European Union ban on selling drugs used in lethal injections, death penalty states now rely on compounding pharmacies, according to Business Insider.

Compounding pharmacies are typically small businesses who produce execution cocktails to order. These compounds are unregulated by the FDA, and their manufacturers are cloaked in secrecy, states ReasonTV.

“Since the 70s, America has tried to sanitize the way it kills people in death chambers by saying that this is an act of medical intervention,” says Ed Pilkington, chief reporter for The Guardian US.

Pilkington describes the botched execution of Clayton Lockett of Oklahoma in April 2014, as related to him by a Guardian colleague who witnessed Lockett’s execution:

“He was groaning, he was shouting out. They were finding it impossible to get the vein, so blood was spurting over all the people in the death chamber, I mean it was the most horrendous situation. And right at that moment they decided to shut the curtain, which would prevent any witnesses, including reporters, from seeing what happened.”

Pilkington calls this the “most visceral form of censorship” and says “there should be maximum transparency.”

He claims the current system has complete secrecy surrounding every step of the execution process, from the sources of the drugs themselves to the grisly reality when those drugs fail to kill the condemned in a timely and painless fashion.

Missouri is one of 13 states to have expanded what are known as “black hood laws,” which are meant to protect the identities of executioners, to now also make confidential everyone involved in the production and delivery of lethal injection drugs. These laws even supersede the Freedom of Information Act.

In response, The Guardian, Associated Press, and several prominent Missouri newspapers have filed suit against the state, in what is believed to be the First Amendment challenge to the death penalty.

The lawsuit argues the public has a First Amendment right to access all information pertaining to government activities in capital cases, beginning in the courtroom, through the death chamber, and into the autopsy room. No court date has been set.

ReasonTV

More on Ed Pilkington

Russell Brand: Which Is More Important, Climate Change Or ISIS?

Trews

Comedian Russell Brand gives his reaction to Fox News’ coverage of President Obama’s statement that the media overstates the threat of terrorism in comparison to the threat of climate change.

In other news…

The British paper The Guardian has decided to put coverage of climate change “front and center.”

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: “…changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers – and, to be fair, for most readers.

“The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian on Friday even though nothing exceptional happened on this day. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.”

Rusbridger will be leaving the Guardian this year, and he asked himself if he had any regrets.

“Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.

“So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening and what – if we do nothing – is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termed as ‘incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community.'”

In other news…

Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, walked onto the floor of the Senate with what he declared was persuasive evidence climate change is a hoax: a snowball.  Inhofe is the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, with jurisdiction over the climate problem.

The Huffington Post:  “Indeed, even on his own terms, the snowball doesn’t make the point he thinks it does. Climate change produces wild and extreme swings in weather. That Washington, D.C., is experiencing record cold and snowfall is not refutation of climate change, but rather one more data point to add to the pile in support of it.”

British Paper: ‘With Climate Change, US Presidents Matter’

The British paper The Guardian recently “admitted” that the U.S. president can have an impact on climate change.  It is fashionable for the European press to claim that the president or political party doesn’t affect political outcomes.

“Yesterday, President Barack Obama became the first president who has taken a stand to stop climate change,” according to The Guardian.

Here are some quotes from The Guardian:

“…President Obama took that stand from his first step into the White House. He has put into place a series of initiatives that actually give us a chance at stopping the most serious consequences of climate change.”

As outlined in his Climate Action Plan, his administration has overseen investments in renewable energy industries in the U.S. that are creating jobs.

“He has worked on international agreements to reduce hydrofluorocarbons and methane emissions…”

“Even more significantly, he has overseen the plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s new and existing coal plants; the EPA’s Clean Power Plan rewards state-level initiatives to find flexible solutions to reduce their emissions.”

“He has enacted increases in fuel-efficiency standards…”

“And also significantly, the President has achieved a huge agreement with China to curb and reduce carbon pollution,” according to The Guardian.

More:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/feb/25/with-climate-change-us-presidents-matter