You can't. Catholic teachings once were that indulgences (pieces of paper you could buy) could help people who would get into Heaven anyways get there faster, but never that they could save the soul of someone who didn't genuinely repent for their sins and sincerely believe in God. The idea was that if you committed a…

Peru wouldn't have the authority to try him for the Holloway murder though, so this sentence is only for his murder of Flores. This does give authorities in the US and in the Bahamas an extra fifteen-thirty years to collect evidence; if they ever get enough, they can ask Peruvian authorities to extradite him once his…

Thanks for contextualizing that! This make way more sense in that light.

I agree with you in general, but in this case the eyeliner echoed the shape of the little eyelets around her dress' neckline, so it really worked.

This is why I don't have room-mates.

Good point. We're not even honest perverts - our shows are all about "justified" violence (showing you the horror, then showing you the justice/vengeance! It's redemptive!), so it's okay when the camera lingers on a torture victim's face or closes up on a wound.

As a counterpoint to the people who don't work out and are super flexible who have already posted, I work out daily, am in good shape, and am not and will never be that flexible. I don't think that flexibility has much to do with being in shape.

Their bras are awesome, and I have yet to find another store that makes a similar style. This will keep me going there despite the really uneven quality and general aesthetic that isn't to my taste.

I assume that in the two cases of mistaken identity, the dead were really dead - leaving us with only one mistake, the woman whose grave was open. Still odd, but at least less so.

With extra time for having qualified it with the term "just."

I strongly suspect that some form of institutionalized misogyny is at play here (along with other kinds of institutionalized prejudice), but yeah... actually discussing the kinds of evidence that you mention would make it possible to demonstrate that there are structural problems involved with these seemingly random…

This is a book that another commenter mentioned below, but it sounds depressingly relevant to your characterization: [texastough.com] !

I agree about the human face making compassion easier. What's sad is that instead of thinking "prisoners are people" this experience makes the governor think "these four prisoners are people". If humanization was made into a more integral part of the justice system, it would make for a much fairer system overall. I…

I may be misinterpreting the OP, but I think that she has a point in her criticism of the article. The article conflates two issues, 1- whether it is acceptable to pardon prisoners and 2- whether the justice system is too indifferent to intimate-partner violence. They would benefit from being discussed separately and…

It's unlikely. McCray is the only one who still has underaged children, and the youngest would be thirteen or fourteen. At that age, the child (who has been raised by maternal relatives for more than a decade) would likely be given a say in his or her living arrangements.

What riles me about this story is the mechanism of these men's release rather than its earliness. I think that parole and other measures that allow people who are reforming themselves to reintegrate into society are good. But they function because they are (or really, should be) available to all prisoners, and because…

I've had a stranger get in my bed while I was staying at a hotel before. This guy wasn't trying to assault me - he was drunk, exhausted, and had been given the wrong key and room number by hotel staff. I had never even thought of guarding my door at all. Anyways, he got into bed, let out a surprised scream that woke…

Those things are scary. I've had a debate about this with a friend who thinks that I'm creeped out because that image reminds me of The Shining. I think that the Shining is a terrifying movie because it reminds us of something that is inherently creepy, for all the reasons you describe so well.

I disagree. Many of the children who commit sexual offences have been victims themselves and are too traumatized to understand that what they are doing is wrong, or to stop themselves from doing it. Many others don't have the moral maturity to understand that what they are doing is violent or coercive. What you…

What happened to him was probably awful. Divorce is painful even when your ex is respectful; being cheated on is painful and destabilizing.