Extradition almost certain for Pentagon Hacker

Yesterday, Gary McKinnon lost his latest legal battle to fight his extradition order to the United States. McKinnon is charged with hacking 97 US government computers. McKinnon and family claim that he was looking for evidence of alien life, and that due to suffering from Asperger Syndrome, he was not able to understand that what he was doing was profoundly wrong.

McKinnon has until September to launch a final appeal against extradition to the United States, else find himself on a plane handcuffed to US Law Enforcement officials. McKinnon's mother appealed to President Barack Obama to halt the extradition proceedings.

Okay, here is The Atlantic Hopper's take on this!

1. Convenient - McKinnon was "diagnosed" with Asperger AFTER it was revealed on National news that he was facing extradition, not that I am saying that the Asperger diagnosis is phony, because it may well be genuine. It just all seems a bit convenient to me.

2. UK has no jurisdiction - McKinnon and his supporters claim that he should face trial here in the UK, well not really, we don't have any jurisdiction to prosecute for a crime committed against a foreign government. Yes, we are allies and we have an extradition treaty. The facts of the case should be decided by an AMERICAN jury in a FEDERAL court. This was a crime against the Federal Government of the United States and should be treated as such. Locality of the perpetrator of the crime is irrelevant in this type of case.

3. Obama has more important things to worry about - I am not saying that McKinnon is a master criminal but is clearly a very intelligent man, despite his alleged disabilities, Obama has a tough legislative agenda on his plate, and should not be wading in willy-nilly on this, unless he decides to give McKinnon a Presidential Pardon.

4. If you don't want to go to a nasty American Jail - DON'T HACK THE PENTAGON!

This is not an expert legal opinion, it is just the opinion of a lowly blogger, but like GottaLaff from The Political Carnival would say "But what do I know?"

Republicans! STOP using my country as a political football

As the battle over Health care rages on in the US, the Senate and the House are about to head home for the August recess and the President is having "beer summits" over something that should never have become a national issue. The republicans are saying that Socialized medicine will lead to more people having a poorer quality of care and more people dying.

I am here to give the republicans a few facts about Socialized health care. In 1948 my government launched the National Health Service or NHS as we call it today. In 1948, average life expectancy for women in the UK was 70 and for men was 66, whereas last year the average life expectancy was 78.3 for men and 82.1 for women.

In the twelve years since labour has been in power, funding to the NHS has more than tripled with the annual budget now being £92.2 Billion compared to £34.6 Billion in 1997. And in 2007 a study by the Royal Commission on Health care showed that 92% of patients were SATISFIED with the care they received.

Is our system perfect? No way, we still have an annual deficit of over £900 Million in the NHS but our system is getting better all the time. And our doctors are leading the way in many areas of medicine, just last week a Hull hospital was featured on the national news for pioneering treatment of Stroke patients using Clot buster medicines.

Many of our hospitals are on the list of the best hospitals in the world, including Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, an NHS hospital.

Do we pay higher taxes than Americans? Sure, we pay between 31 and 52 percent of our income (including Income Tax and National Insurance) but when we go to the doctor, we don't pay ridiculous amounts of money in co-pays and deductibles or get told that our treatment has been denied by bureaucratic insurance companies.

But what you don't know is that our employers also match our National Insurance contributions. We don't miss this money because we use a Pay as You Earn system or PAYE to pay our taxes, our employers pay our taxes directly to the Inland Revenue.

We are not all dying in the streets as the Republicans would have Americans believe! If you are a republican and are trashing the NHS, please STOP using my country as a political football!