"The System" works about as well as...

 A coon dog that can't bark.


In the editorial; Systems don't fail; people do published in the Austin American Statesman by; the Editorial Board. It talks about the infamous Morton case and how a now exonerated and innocent man was wrongly convicted of his wife’s murder and sentenced to life in prison. He served 25 years of this sentence before being exonerated through DNA evidence which indicated someone else was responsible.

Ken Anderson was the district attorney who prosecuted the case back in 1987. He pursued charges against Morton even though there was testimony saying that Morton wasn't home when the murder occurred and other physical evidence found at the crime scene suggesting another suspect, which would in my opinion at least have cast the shadow of a doubt the man could have been innocent and justified further investigation into the case.

 But ol' Ken didn't think so he vigorously prosecuted an innocent man with the hopes of quickly rail-roading this through the court and making sure in the process he was exemplifying the reason why "the system" is completely inadequate when it comes to protecting the rights of the accused.

We always hear the statement "they are presumed innocent until proven guilty" I tend to feel that is just lip-service and what it really means is your screwed because the huge and powerful justice system has you in its sights. So you may as well pack your bags say your goodbyes and find out when it's Salisbury steak night in the state pen because for all intents and purposes when someone is "accused" of a crime and the state decides to press charges. A trial is typically just a formality because facts are facts when a prosecutor brings a case to trial it has usually already been tried in the court of public opinion and unless you are rich or powerful the opinion usually isn’t in your favor.

So for normal folks out there, if for some reason you come home to the nightmare that Morton was faced with please just realize that you really have about the same chance of beating the charges as a snow-ball has of making it all the way through hell.

I feel so terrible for the man. The despair and hopelessness he must have felt that no one would believe him not to mention the tremendous tragedy of him losing his wife and being separated from his children for their entire life’s. It truly tears at the heart in my chest when I try and imagine myself in his shoes. He truly is a wonderful and brave man for having the perseverance to keep his faith all these years.

Cases like Mr. Morton’s are shining examples of the flaws which are entirely too pervasive in our criminal justice system. I agree totally with the Editorial Board who wrote this piece because our system depends on people and people all too often have their values compromised due to ambition and pressure to produce convictions instead of pressure to produce justice.

Overall the piece was really well written and means a lot to me personally because I have long been an advocate for change in the criminal justice system. Also I agree with their criticism of Ken for his half hearted and deflective apology. If he had any integrity at all he would take personal responsibility for what happened and strive to ensure nothing like this ever happens again!

I never thought I would agree with a Marine.

In the article on "The Gunny's" blog post; http://marineviewperryrun2whouse.blogspot.com/2011/10/are-we-really-exceptional.html. My esteemed classmate commends the city of Round Rock's implementation of strict water conservation policies, and his personal disdain for people who are ignorant and careless enough to blatantly violate the restrictions for the sake of having a nice lawn. He also expresses his disappointment with the actual enforcement of the restrictions by the city’s Police Department.


I found myself getting a little "hot under the collar" when I was reading his story of how he was driving home and saw two separate people violating the ordnance and watering their lawns. Even more frustrating for me was the fact that they were doing so in the middle of the day when it is actually detrimental to their lawns because the grass gets scorched by the evaporation of the water caused by the heat of the mid-day sun. The actions he took are what more people should do we are all responsible for protecting the water supply so I must applaud "The Gunny" for having the intestinal fortitude and integrity to actually tell these individuals that they were not supposed to be doing what they were doing.


I also empathize with his level of confusion and frustration toward the reaction of the Round Rock Police department basically telling him "they don't care". It is tantamount to the city implementing the restrictions just for the sake of saying that they had, without having any actual intention of ever enforcing the new laws. This is an all too common byproduct of a pessimistic and non-proactive government and society. It seems to me the only time we really care about the major issues we face like; our current drought and water supply problem, is when they have become to severe to actually do anything meaningful about.


My example is the levee system on the Mississippi River the levee system built by the Army Core of Engineers. The system has long been known to be completely inadequate if there were a large magnitude flood. The State and Federal Governments just kept on passing the buck on to the next guys in line until finally we had a huge flood event in early 2011 and the inadequate levee system all along the rivers length failed and destroyed millions of acres. This may not have been preventable entirely but it certainly could have been mitigated to a much greater extent than it was.


This is why we as Texans seriously need to take a real, long-term, extensive and proactive approach to the impending disaster which we face of running out of fresh water. If you think I'm just exaggerating then you are fooling yourselves! You can think of our water supply as a system. The way a system works is it receives input and produces outputs. The inputs in this case are rain and snowfall which drains into the Colorado River system and the output is the fresh water we harvest from the system. In order to maintain the system there has to be a balance between the input and output levels, we are currently experiencing the worst shortage of input in Texas history (the draught) yet are increasing the output to the highest level in Texas history due to our increasing population. If we are not able to bring the problem under control then we face the failure of the system completely and all we are left with is nothing but empty glasses and dried up communities.

 So I implore you to please be more conscious of our water supply not waste it for any reason, because we simply can't go to wall-mart and get more. Once it's gone it's gone at least until the draught ends, whenever that may be.