Philippe DeCroy, a member of the Volokh Conspiracy, points to a Mississippi Supreme Court case from 1941, which, if interpreted in the proper light, makes a reasonable argument for killing Saddam Hussein.
“What else was there reasonably left but to kill the animal? There was nothing else; and we reject the contention, which seems to be the main ground taken by appellee, that admitting all that has been said, the dog could not lawfully be killed except while in the actual commission of the offense. This is a doctrine which applies in many if not most cases, but is not available under facts such as presented by this record. After such a period of habitual depredation as shown in this case, and having taken the alternative steps aforementioned, the owner of the premises is not required to wait and watch with a gun until he can catch the predatory dog in the very act. Such a dog would be far more watchful than would the watcher himself, and the depredation would not occur again until the watcher had given up his post and had gone about some other task, but it would then recur, and how soon would be a mere matter of opportunity.”
Unfortunately, I have trouble enough accepting the fact that Saddam is a member of my own species — I couldn’t ascribe him to the same species as my faithful friend lying curled up at my feet as I type.
It’s not the scale of the tragedy, but what it symbolizes to me. I’m crying for the family and friends of the astronauts and I’m crying for every one of us who ever dreamed we’d be up there, too.
I remember crying when my parents showed me the newspaper with the article about the January 27, 1967 launchpad fire which killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee of what was later designated the Apollo 1 mission. I still shudder when I imagine three brave men, remaining astronaut-calm as they struggled to unseal the tin can they’d been bolted into.
I remember struggling not to cry as I stood with Mike Hughes and Ed Gonzalez in the shoestore we managed on January 28, 1986, listening to the radio broadcasting the immediate aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Later, at home, I, like so many people around the world, remained fixated on my television, watching images of the eerily silent explosion over and over again.
This morning, I felt the same way, the internet alerting me to the first signs of disaster. The images of a hurtling white dot, suddenly separating into smaller and smaller pieces… There are families grieving, nations mourning, and an entire world, looking up at the blue or cloudy or precipitous sky.
I was born in the first full year of the US Manned Space Program, and I was so sure, all my growing-up years, that I would be living in space. Our space dreams are so small today: NASA practically begging Congress for funds to send up a telescope, a fly-by of Pluto, another shot at Mars. We should be living on Mars, on the Moon, on the asteroids by now. Instead, as Richard Fienberg, editor af Sky & Telescope magazine said in his editorial in the December, 2002 issue, “In 1972 we had three guys exploring the Moon, making discoveries. In 2002 we have three guys circling the Earth, making repairs.”
With today’s crash, we’re sure to see a halt to shuttle flights for several months or a year. What happens to our commitments to the International Space Station? What happens to our big dreams? We waste our resources on making the rich richer, our expectations lower, our wishes smaller, our world poorer…
