Sunday Morning Papers: Hangings, Bomber Flights, Immigrants, and Border Violence

I’ll be back with more thinking, less linking later this afternoon (and, yes, I’ve been reading blogs long enough to have seen that den Beste piece when it was new). For now, here’s what you need to know from the morning news:

Iran restarts public hangings.
For the past five years executions have been conducted in private with witnesses allowed only by permission of the government, though they were often televised or filmed for later distribution. Now, those convicted can be hung in or near the place where they committed their crime, or—in the case of exceptionally heinous offenses—from cranes over major thoroughfares. Can you imagine what it would be like to be driving down the 405 in Los Angeles and see the lifeless bodies of capital offenders hanging over the highway? Officially, the executed have been murderers, sex offenders, drug traffickers and others who are threats to “social security.” Unofficially, the dead include political activists and gays, of course.

Russia begins long-range bomber flights.
President Putin has decided to restart routine strategic bomber flights as a show of military strength.

Two more arrested in Newark slayings.
If you’ve been reading Michelle you’ve heard this news already. (If you haven’t been reading her, you should ask yourself why not.) You also know that these latest arrestees are probably EWI (entered without inspection) and one of them has an outstanding deportation order from the early 1990s. And you know that the 10 other people captured during the raid are being held for immigration violations. If you don’t read Michelle, but read this morning’s NY Times, web version linked above, you will know none of that because that information wasn’t important enough to share with the Times’ readers.

Violence is getting worse at the southern border.
As Mexico cracks down on drug cartels they bring their violence into the U.S.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 01:36 PM

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