In today’s “news that didn’t come from The Onion, but I had to double check” North Korea has banned sarcasm. Because that’s going to go real well.

Warning: there’s a lot more sarcasm ahead.

Specifically, sarcasm that mocks the authoritarian regime in the country or its leader, Kim Jong-Un, is forbidden. For example, North Korean citizens are no longer allowed to say “this is all America’s fault” when speaking about their woes, a phrase which is apparently equivalent to our snarky American expression “thanks Obama.”

See:

Another phrase that is no longer allowed is “A fool who cannot see the outside world”–which apparently pokes fun at North Korea’s fearless and not-at-all reactionary leader Kim Jong-un.

North Korean citizens were told about the new ban on sarcasm at large meetings held around the country, which sound like a fun time. According to Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit news organization that operates in the area:

‘One state security official personally organized a meeting to alert local residents to potential ‘hostile actions’ by internal rebellious elements,’ a source in Jagang province, which lies along the border with China, told RFA’s Korean Service this week.

‘The main point of the lecture was ‘Keep your mouths shut!’’ the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

You know, if you think about it, banning sarcasm actually makes a lot of sense. North Korea’s citizens are some of the most oppressed in the world and have severely limited freedoms when it comes to speech and the press. According to a UN report regarding the human rights violations in North Korea, the “gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” When there’s so little accountability, transparency, and decency, humor is apparently the only thing left to lose.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Donald Trump is now trying to take back his repeated claims that President Obama “founded ISIS” by calling it sarcasm, which only proves he doesn’t even know what sarcasm means. On Friday he tweeted:

Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) “the founder” of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2016

This comes after his statement at a rally on Wednesday saying Obama was the founder of ISIS. On Thursday, radio show host Hugh Hewitt tried to clarify what Trump meant by asking if he simply meant that the Obama administration created the vacuum where ISIS could thrive. But he doubled down on his conclusion that Obama founded ISIS.

When Hewitt kept questioning him, saying that Obama is actually fighting ISIS, Trump’s clever answer was “I don’t care. He was the founder.”

The journalist Christopher Hayes joked on Twitter about Trump’s insistence.

INTERVIEWER: You mean, metaphoric–
TRUMP: No literally
INTERVIEWER: But, he didn’t *actually*–
TRUMP: No, actually. Obama is Baghdadi

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) August 11, 2016

Trump went on to say that Hillary Clinton also was an important player in the creation of ISIS, which caused her to react on Twitter, saying:

It can be difficult to muster outrage as frequently as Donald Trump should cause it, but his smear against President Obama requires it.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 11, 2016

She also tweeted, “Anyone willing to sink so low, so often, should never be allowed to serve as our Commander-in-Chief.”

But what Trump is now criticizing Obama for is actually what he himself wanted. He claimed Obama caused ISIS to flourish by withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011. But he didn’t mention that he also wanted to get out of Iraq as early as in 2007.

In an interview with CNN that year he said, “There’s nothing that we’re going to be able to do with a civil war. They are in a major civil war.” Trump has actually expressed this view several times on the record, statements he seems to have forgotten about.

Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski captured it like this:

Trump Iraq timeline:
2002: Supports the war
2004: Against the war
2008: Withdraw the troops
2016: Obama founded ISIS when he withdrew troops

— andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) August 11, 2016

Trump’s latest utterance caused a lot of reactions on social media, particularly as this mini-scandal follows a remarkably familiar pattern.

THE WEEK IN TRUMP

Tues: Kill Hillary, please.
Wed: LOL, JK
Thurs: Obama founded an anti-American terrorist group, literally.
Fri: LOL, JK

— Heather Hogan (@hhoagie) August 12, 2016

A lot of people are saying Trump literally doesn’t know what day it is. A lot of people are saying. I don’t know. You tell me.

— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) August 11, 2016

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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It is getting harder and harder for states to kill people.

Four executions by lethal injection have been botched in the past calendar year. In July, it took two hours for an Arizona inmate to die after he was given 15 times the dose of drugs usually used. And, with the supply of those drugs running out fast, it looks like America is in store for even more of these gruesome mishaps. Cries are growing louder and louder for an end to the death penalty as more and more executions are botched.

Yep, neither the number of innocent people on death row nor the inhuman delays that keep prisoners guessing if and when they will be killed are responsible for the most recent national conversation about the death penalty. Instead, it’s a lack of efficiency in our execution tactics that has Americans up in arms.

Don’t fret, death penalty supporters! There is a simple solution to this problem. It just isn’t as pretty or as comforting as lethal injection.

A federal judge recently called for replacing lethal injection with the firing squad, and his argument is pretty sound:

Lethal injection uses medication to make an execution look peaceful. Since one of the drugs used paralyzes the inmate, all anyone sees is a person slowly falling asleep. U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski has a problem with that:

Executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.

Kozinski’s argument against lethal injection is a moral one. He believes that America needs to look at the ugliness of executions and reckon with what they have wrought upon their fellow man.

I agree that the firing squad should be used, but I would like to go one step further in arguing why. The firing squad isn’t just a moral solution to our death penalty crisis. It’s also a much more practical way to end the lives of our most degenerate citizens. It is time for this nation to abandon its experiment with lethal injection and join Somalia in the practice of shooting its citizens.

Lethal injections have become a crapshoot, where people who aren’t even medical officials mix untested drugs to try their best to kill someone. There is a lot of room for error.

Firing squads, on the other hand, are almost impossible to screw up. Five marksmen shoot the sitting and sedated inmate in the heart with rifles. One of the marksmen is firing a blank so none of them know who fired a kill shot, but the odds of four trained shooters missing their target is highly unlikely. A guaranteed quick, albeit bloody, death is the primary benefit of the firing squad.

But wait, there’s more! Death by firing squad is one of the only execution tactics that preserves the organs for donation (except for the heart, obviously). There are tangible benefits!

Sure, like all good things, there are some downsides to the firing squad. For one, shooting people is surprisingly expensive. The salaries of the five shooters and the cost of the rifles, chair, hood, and sedative all add up to the hefty price of $165,000. But, can we as a society really put a price on justice?

Well, yes. The current price of justice is $1,286.86. That is how much it costs to kill someone with the newest drug cocktail. You know, the one that isn’t even working the way it is supposed to. I’m willing to pay a little more in taxes if it means fewer criminals gasping and wheezing for two hours on a prison gurney.

There’s also the slight problem that being shot in the heart by four bullets is a gruesome way to die. That is why we as a society decided on lethal injection in the first place. All we see is a bad person falling asleep. It’s a sanitary and supposedly peaceful end.

But, as Kozinski reminds us, executions are not supposed to be pretty. The state is murdering one of its own citizens. It is supposed to be gruesome. We shouldn’t hide from this reality. If we are going to allow states to continue killing the people they are supposed to protect, we should accept the barbaric nature of this policy. There are few forms of death that embrace this philosophy more than exploding a man’s heart with four small pieces of lead.

America needs to change its course if lethal injections continue to be botched. The firing squad is the most effective way of killing criminals quickly and humanely.

Or, we could just repeal the death penalty, save billions of dollars, and bring our criminal justice system up to the ethical standard of the rest of the developed world.

But that would be silly. Open fire!

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Eric Essagof (@ericmessagof) is a student at The George Washington University majoring in Political Science. He writes about how decisions made in DC impact the rest of the country. He is a Twitter addict, hip-hop fan, and intramural sports referee in his spare time. Contact Eric at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [T Woodward via Flickr]

Eric Essagof

Eric Essagof attended The George Washington University majoring in Political Science. He writes about how decisions made in DC impact the rest of the country. He is a Twitter addict, hip-hop fan, and intramural sports referee in his spare time. Contact Eric at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post It’s Time To Bring Back The Firing Squad appeared first on Law Street.

I was going to attempt to be more upbeat about the law this week, but I’m not there yet. Sorry in advance.

Anyway, one of my favorite people on the planet has decided to move across the country. I’m devastated. Inconsolable. Lonely. Sad. Jealous. Miserable.  [Insert other dramatic adjective.] The reason for my friend’s cross-country trip is that she is chasing her dreams. She took the brave steps of leaving her job, breaking her lease, selling her belongings, and pursuing an uncertain goal. She’s so brave, but I could literally never.

That’s the problem: my friend is following her gut, and I haven’t listened to mine in years. If I am going to be completely honest here, I’ve not been completely satisfied with the decisions that I’ve made in my life these past three or four years. It’s nobody’s fault buy my own, so I’m hoping that Law Street readers will use my story as a cautionary tale.

The gist of this story is to not be afraid to follow your instincts in life. I know that I always went with my gut when I was younger — specifically in high school and college. I think that as I grew older, and became an “adult” in my mind, I stopped trusting myself. Instead of doing what I felt was right for my own life, I jumped on a path that seemed to make the most sense.

I graduated college in 2008 and started my job two days later. I had no time to transition from the unrealistically fantastic experience of college to the very adult and very un-fun world of paying rent and bills. I freaked out about that change, and I have yet to stop freaking out. I decided then that I had to start doing adult things: working certain jobs and ultimately applying to graduate school. In making those adults decisions, though, I have been unfulfilled in my life. Here’s hoping you don’t find yourself in a similar position.

I’ve mentioned before the fact that I knew law school wasn’t for me. What I haven’t mentioned is that after my 1L summer, I called my parents and floated the idea by them of dropping out of law school. Being the amazing parents that they are, they said that I should think about it longer, mainly because they wouldn’t want me to have the legacy of a quitter (Side note: the old “we’re not angry at you, just disappointed” move STILL works. How do parents do that?!). I thought about it for a while longer, and with less than a week between 1L summer and the beginning of 2L year/OCI, I frantically called one of my law school friends. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: “Hey, are you back in town yet?”

Peter: “No, I’m still in New York.  I don’t know if I’m coming back. I don’t know if it’s worth being so unhappy.”

F: “Stop it — you have to come back. The hardest part is over, it can only get better.”*

P: “Yeah, but I don’t know if I want to be a lawyer. I don’t know if I want this life.”

F: “You’re being stupid, nobody wants this life! See you next week at school.”

P:  “You’re a terribly unsupportive friend and I will regret this immensely. Namaste.”**

And with that, I decided to come back to law school. I stayed and eventually graduated.  In a heartless, soulless way it all worked out, and is working out so far.

There are still so many things I want to do though, and I sometimes get a feeling that I should just “go for it,” and “take the next step.” Unlike my friend, though, I can’t bring myself to make decisions without a safety net beneath me. One of these days, though, it’s happening.

As the crapfest that is 2013 comes to an end (Thank You, Jesus!), I’ve decided that 2014 is the year of exploration, re-invention, and following my gut more.***  Who’s with me?!

*LIES

**This was at the beginning of my yogidom.

***Maybe

All .gifs provided by T. Kyle MacMahon from Reality TV .gifs.

Featured image courtesy of [Flickr]

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Peter Davidson is a recent graduate of law school who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy.

Featured image courtesy of [Duncan Hull via Flickr]

Peter Davidson II

Peter Davidson is a recent law school graduate who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy. Contact Peter at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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