Today seems like a good day to die...

It's Good Friday - the day where the Lord and Savior was executed by His own people - all because he worked against the establishment.  Granted, they were unwittingly fulfilling a prophesy.  Capital punishment was alive and well in biblical times.

This week, my former home state (Connecticut) voted to abolish the death penalty.  Now there is very little connection between the crucifixion of Jesus and a punishment of death handed down from the American judicial system.  The times Jesus lived in were far more wrought with political corruption and power mongering than things are today.  If you're sentenced to death in one of the 33 remaining death penalty states, it's probably because you killed at least one person - or at least the state's prosecution convinced twelve people with whom you have no connection that you did.

I used to be a fairly staunch supporter of the death penalty - mainly for the justice of it.  If you kill someone, you made it clear that you do not value the sanctity of life, so why should anyone look at you with that level of compassion?  I've since come to the conclusion that, from a Christian standpoint, an eye for an eye doesn't apply anymore.  As a murderer, you get the rest of your life to contemplate the lives you destroyed.  It doesn't really rehabilitate the sociopaths out there, but at least they're not part of the general population anymore.

Where I get cross with capital punishment is the lack of consistency from both sides of the aisle on the issue.  On the red side of the aisle, you have the ultra-right out there saying that murderers must be put to death for justice while beating their Old Testament calling for an eye for an eye.  They conveniently leave out what Christ says about judgement and loving your enemies.  On the blue side, the left-wing socialists are quick to point out exactly that - love your enemy, but in the same breath state that religion plays no role in government.  Basically each side uses arguments that they shouldn't be able to use - because they don't wholly support the background for those arguments.

Here's where I fall - capital punishment is a political issue.  Do I believe in it?  No.  The complete cluster that is the American judicial system promises nothing more than a fair trial, not that the outcome is correct.  If you can't be 100% sure that someone really did it, you can't execute them.  Justice isn't served because of "reasonable doubt."  However, you can't stand up and say, "I'm for the death penalty" if you're using the example of Christ as your argument.  You also can't stand up and say, "I'm against the death penalty" if you're going to deny Christ the second some kid leads a prayer at a football game (which we still do in Texas, thankyouverymuch).

So, getting back to the politics of it, governments make their laws and punishments based not on what Paul says to the Romans, but on justice.  If the state determines that it is justified that someone has to be put to death for murdering a police officer after Christmas Eve dinner with his family, then they should make that law.  If a state determines that murderer just needs 60 years in an 8x8 cell for that crime, it should make that law.  If I don't like it, I can vote for another lawmaker.  My person may not win that election, but that's the extent of my say in it.  Best I can do is pray for the people involved, that God may bring them the clarity they need to make the decisions they believe best for the situation.

So why am I picking on Connecticut?  This is a political move.  The good folks in Hartford have said that the death penalty doesn't work as a deterrent, and therefore it should no longer be on the table.  Connecticut has executed as many people in the last fifty years as Texas has in the last two weeks.  There are currently 11 death row inmates in CT, none of whom were ever going to be put to death because of the chain of appeals.  SO, what our Yankee friends have done is basically repeal a law akin to "It is unlawful to walk across a prairie with a pair of wire cutters."  It's hard to take a law seriously when it's never enforced.  The lawmakers are heroes because they took the moral high road.  *slow clap*  But don't you talk about Christmas Break!!  There is no Christmas here!  Only HOLIDAY break!

Never mind that we used to get out of school for every Jewish holiday.

My Texas Tech soliloquy

Some of my best friends in life affiliate themselves in one form or another with Tech. What I have found is that those individuals who went to Tech based on legacy (parents or siblings attended), are typically more decent people than those who went for other reasons - number one being that their high school academics left them ineligible for Texas or A&M. It hurts that those friends of mine are somehow lumped in with the collective whole of the prototypical Tech student - and to those people, I want you to know that I do not think of you in the terms I describe below.

There are a great number of things that separate the Aggies, Longhorns, and Raiders, but the one thing that stands out for me is maturity level. In Austin or College Station, you won't see the home team tearing down their own goal post after a big rivalry win, yelling drunken obscenities at a reporter during an interview, or defacing the opposing team's buses. In a preschool, the kid who acts up is the kid looking for attention. A&M and Texas both have acclaimed academics and national recognition in athletics - Tech has neither. If I'm an administrator at Tech, I'd be regularly embarrassed by the antics of my students and the failures of my individual colleges to gain respect with Princeton Review and US News and World Report.

A number of years ago, the A&M football program described Texas Tech as those "classless clowns" in Lubbock. Rightfully so, the Tech nation took offense to this. There's only one problem - regularly the students of Texas Tech live down to that title. This year it was spray-painting Tech logos and obscenities and dumping excrement on the A&M team buses. The antics, pranks, and disrespect shown from Tech over the years just show an absurd level of immaturity that I hope my children never display.

I just cannot get behind a school whose administration doesn't seem to put the kabash on stuff like this. I cannot respect a school where the students only way to make themselves known is to degrade others. Texas Tech should be up there with the great academic institutions in this state, and its students continue to keep it in the third tier. Good luck, Tech with your future. You'll need every bit of it.

My thoughts on SECession

A year ago when there was a chance of A&M leaving the Big Xii (note: I didn't miss the capital II), I was pretty pumped up. Nebraska and Colorado had bailed out for greener pastures, and the Aggies had a shot at joining arguably the best conference in college football. Now, I have no say in those sorts of events, and the cooler heads of College Station didn't listen to my pleas. Our friends in Austin had saved the conference by working out a new TV deal that would work out well for us (and the boys in Norman), and so the Ags would agree to keep old things the same. I shrugged, let things play out on the field, and outside of an ill-timed interception in Stillwater and laying an egg against Missouri, my alma mater didn't disappoint.

A year later things are different. Hours after "saving the conference," our friends in Austin announced their intention to start their own TV network - not a conference network, their own. They would (hopefully) broadcast their beloved Longhorns to the masses (hurray women's track & field!). The TV deal for the rest of the Big Xii was only good on paper. Should the Aggies feel a stood up at the altar? Sure. So should everyone else in the Big Xii. If our friends in Austin helped start a conference-wide network, they would have been able to take their fair share (and more), legitimately claim that they "saved the conference," bring in a couple of good teams to replace NU and CU, and be heroes. It didn't go down that way.

"But Aggies, you're just being little brats." Ultimately yes, the straw that broke the camel's back was the Longhorn Network. Austin officially has their hooks in the biggest sports network in the country, and ESPN's coverage of Texas' rivals will be akin to the state-controlled journalism in Soviet Russia. Anyone who believes otherwise probably also believes there was no conspiracy with the Kennedy assassination.

Texas A&M University's decision to leave the Big Xii for another conference (presumably the SEC) is a good one, but not just because of the LHN. This is a divorce from 117 years in coming. The Aggies have had enough of "but I'll change." In spite of what anyone says, the Big Xii just isn't as strong without NU and CU. The credibility of the conference lies solely with an OU team that A&M pounded last year and a Texas team whose recent mediocrity should make ESPN question the existence of their god. Old Army no longer wants to deal with Tech's incessant whining about respect (in spite of US News' academic ranking which is just north of mentally retarded), Baylor's insistence that their semi-dominance in women's basketball is reason for them to be in an a BCS automatic qualifying conference, and pretty much anyone from the state of Kansas.

Kidding aside, having the stability of the SEC means a lot to Aggies who believe in "things the way they were." Old rivalries will be rekindled (Arkansas and LSU), new rivalries formed with the school who likes to share coaches (Bama), and new gnats to swat (Vanderbilt, MSU, and Kentucky). I won't miss the annual Texas game if for no other reason than it is typically close enough that I have a hard time keeping down my turkey dinner. I won't miss the arrogant bastard in Bob Stoops or pounding my fist because we just can't win in Stillwater. For the first few years at least, seeing TAMU and Auburn on the ticker is going to look like a pretty badass non-conference game.

So it's a change of scenery. The Aggies get to be a part of something bigger. They get out from under Big Brother's shadow and finally get to be their own man - accountable only for themselves without being compared to him. It's a good feeling.