TERRE HAUTE: A Kansas woman was executed Tuesday for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and cutting the baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put to death a female inmate.Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1:31 a.m. Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was the 11th prisoner to receive a lethal injection there since July when President Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal executions following 17 years without one."The craven bloodlust of a failed administration was on full display tonight," Montgomery's attorney, Kelley Henry said in a statement. "Everyone who participated in the execution of Lisa Montgomery should feel shame."``The government stopped at nothing in its zeal to kill this damaged and delusional woman,'' Henry said. "Lisa Montgomery's execution was far from justice."It came after hours of legal wrangling before the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution to move forward. Montgomery was the first of the final three federal inmates scheduled to die before next week's inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, who is expected to discontinue federal executions.But a federal judge for the
WASHINGTON: President-elect Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping immigration bill on Day One of his administration, hoping to provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the US without legal status, a massive reversal from the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.The legislation puts Biden on track to deliver on a major campaign promise important to Latino voters and other immigrant communities after four years of President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies and mass deportations. It provides one of the fastest pathways to citizenship for those living without legal status of any measure in recent years, but it fails to include the traditional trade-off of enhanced border security favored by many Republicans, making passage in a narrowly divided Congress in doubt.Expected to run hundreds of pages, the bill is set to be introduced after Biden takes the oath of office Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the legislation and granted anonymity to discuss it.As a candidate, Biden called Trump’s actions on immigration an “unrelenting assault” on American values and said he would “undo the damage” while continuing to maintain border enforcement.Under the legislation, those living in the US as of January 1, 2021, without
Washington Linda Greenhouse was once the New York Times’ reporter for the Supreme Court. Now I take it she is in retirement, though she apparently comes out of retirement from time to time to heave bouquets to President-elect Joe Biden. Last weekend, she heaved several of her floral encomiums his way when she told “My Joe Biden Story” to the Times’ gullible readers. The result was warm, effusive, and mostly claptrap. She wrote that in 1987 when Joe was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Mr. Biden presided with confidence and grace [over the hearings for Judge Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination], all the more notable because during those weeks, his presidential candidacy imploded over what now seems like one of the sillier scandals of modern politics: his unattributed appropriation, at the end of a candidates’ debate at the Iowa State Fair, of a few catchy lines from a speech by a British politician.” The British politician that originated the lines that Biden plagiarized was no ordinary politician. He was Neil Kinnock, the British Labour leader, and he was running to become Prime Minister. Biden not only stole Kinnock’s words but a part of his life, claiming to be a