"Enemy Combatants"

Jose Padilla has been told he will be charged or released which is a victory for any "enemy combatant". It has been ruled that terrorists cannot be held indefinitely and must be charged with a crime or relased. It's important to remember that this does not take away the right that the president has to round up enemy combatants in the United States who may be linked to al-Qaeda while we are fighting al-Qaeda. I support this but I do not support the government's notion that they should keep "enemy combatants" indefinitely. It's just not right and I don't think it helps our nation in foreign relations to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely.

Death Penalty Reform

He says, "Stop the machine of death." He drew national attention in 2003 with his blanket commutation of sentences of Illinois' 167 death row inmates (sentences were changed to life sentences). He earned a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for this action. All of this was done because of the breakdowns in judicial process and not because he is against the death penalty. Actually, that's not entirely true. He used to be in favor of it but due to the breakdowns, he now is calling for an end to the death penalty. He is former governor of Illinois George Ryan.

Indiana and Illinois currently support it, while Michigan does not. As for other states nearby, I cannot give their status. I do not like the death penalty for much of the same reason Ryan dislikes it. Now I have not worked or been involved in carrying out the death penalty like Ryan has, but after reading about the death penalty, I feel like there's no way it could ever be uniform. I also could never see killing someone as an answer to the crime. I'd put them in prison for life so they had to live with what they did until they died.