Friday, January 22, 2021
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
"Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent tonight in U.S. v. Dustin Higgs will be remembered long into the future as one of the most thorough, resounding indictments of this administration’s reckless, immoral, illegal effort to execute as many people as possible, as quickly as possible." - Sister Helen Prejean
(CNN) -- As the country focused on the aftermath of riots in the US Capitol and the unprecedented second impeachment of President Donald Trump, the liberal justices of the Supreme Court spent Trump's last full week in office battling his administration's long-term objective to execute 13 federal death row inmates in six months.
Late Friday night, over the fiery objection of two Supreme Court justices, Dustin John Higgs became the 13th federal inmate to be put to death. It marked the last federal execution to take place under the Trump administration that announced in July 2019 that it was reinstating the federal death penalty after a nearly two-decade pause. Read more...
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Monday, January 18, 2021
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Damnatio memoriae, or oblivion, as a punishment was meted out by the Romans, who viewed it as a punishment worse than death. Felons would be erased from history for the crimes they had committed.
The sense of the expression damnatio memoriae and of the sanction is to remove every trace of the person from life, as if they had never existed, in order to preserve the honor of the city.
In a nation that stressed social appearance, respectability, and the pride of being a true Roman as a fundamental requirement of the citizen, it was perhaps the severest punishment.
A completely successful damnatio memoriae results—by definition—in the full and total erasure of the subject from the historical record.