Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Death Penalty Resources

POTENTIAL SOURCES TO CONSIDER....If you use any other resources, please check to see that they are CART worthy (current, accessible, relevant, trustworthy)


Arguably pretty objective:

Pew Forum. This website does a nice job of showing both sides of the issue, with an emphasis on some of the recent Supreme Court cases that have involved the death penalty.
http://www.pewforum.org/topics/issues/Death-Penalty/


Has bias, but still reliable sources:

Supports the death penalty:
This is a website that is organized by the lead prosecutor for Clark County, Indiana. This site is very well known and respected for containing a large amount of verifiable data related to the arguments in support of the death penalty.  (there is also a link off of his site that has a list of many additional pro-death penalty sites)
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/death.htm

Opposes to the death penalty:
American Civil Liberties Union: Clealy opposes the death penalty and has a lot of information to support their point of view.
http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment



Constitutionality
http://www.thisnation.com/question/018.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/colorado-death-penalty-ca_n_2773237.html
http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/case-against-death-penalty

Just cool...
Very cool website for both sides of the argument. This is how others have debated this topic, included the major reasons pro/con and the sources used to support their point of view:
http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/capital-punishment/house-supports-death-penalty


And, again our grounding website for objective analysis of the issues:  Today, we're going to be looking solely at one website, ProCon.org. This is a pretty fabulous website that focusses on looking at controversial issues by providing both sides as objectively as possible.

  • Overall reasons why people are either for or against the Death Penalty


  • The background on exactly what the Death Penalty is, what qualifies as a crime worthy of the death penalty, where the death penalty is legal, etc.


  • Some of the specific reasons why people are either for or against the Death Penalty. 

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you should now see the Debating Current Events pg.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Shooting in Chapel Hill



Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, and his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, of Chapel Hill, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh North Carolina.

Background one what happened:

Link #1: USAToday article about the shooting of 3 Muslim college students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/11/north-carolina-muslim-students-gunman-chapel-hill/23222317/



Link #2: Vox.com -- has a strong collection of articles/reactions to the violence in North Carolina.  Brings up the possible connection to religious intolerance
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/11/8018443/chapel-hill-shooting-unc


Let's chat about this…but, we're going to do it in a slightly different way….SILENTLY?!

Group #1  https://todaysmeet.com/HarriganOdd1

Group #2 https://todaysmeet.com/HarriganOdd2

Questions: Was this racially/religiously motivated? Has the media responded differently than it would if victims were white and alleged gunman was Muslim? What is confusing about the story? What do you want to know more about?