Monday, January 13, 2003
"Arbitrary and capricious — and therefore immoral." Even those who believe in the face of all evidence to the contrary that the death penalty is fair, economical, or humane need to pause and take a deep breath. A justice system that is admittedly "arbitrary and capricious," as governor George Ryan called Illinois's system, should be recognized as dysfunctional even by its advocates (with whom Ryan identifies himself). As he said, "seventeen exonerated death row inmates is nothing short of a catastrophic failure."
Although we can sympathize with the emotional pain that victims' families feel, we should not succumb to their unjustified bloodlust. Some of them called for the execution of defendants who were recently proven not to have killed their family members. These unfortunate people are no longer thinking clearly and should be excused from the debate over appropriate sentencing.
Ryan's heroic commutation of all of the state's death sentences is a landmark that we citizens of Illinois will pay for dearly. As a close friend of ours pointed out, with Illinois's new Democratic governor and Democratic legislature beginning today, there is little doubt that federal appropriations will shrivel to nothing and the entire state will be left hanging out to dry.
The Bush administration does not appreciate other Republicans who think or act or their own, especially when they give up elections to Democrats. And Republican fondness for the death penalty, crowned by ex-governor George W. Bush and the Texas corpses over which he presided, shows no glimmer of recognition that the system is fundamentally flawed and therefore unconscionable.
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Greatest Hits
· Alternatives to First Command Financial Planning
· First Command, last resort, Part 3
· Part 2
· Part 1
· Stealing $50K from a widow: Wells Real Estate
· Leo Wells, REITs and divine wealth
· Sex-crazed Red State teenagers
· What I hate: a manifesto
· Spawn of Darleen Druyun
· All-American high school sex party
· Why is Ken Lay smiling?
· Poppy's Enron birthday party
· The Saudi money laundry and the president's uncle
· The sentence of Enron's John Forney
· The holiness of Neil Bush's marriage
· The Silence of Cheney: a poem
· South Park Christians
· Capitalist against Bush: Warren Buffett
· Fastow childen vs. Enron children
· Give your prescription money to your old boss
· Neil Bush, hard-working matchmaker
· Republicans against fetuses and pregnant women
· Emboldened Ken Lay
· Faith-based jails
· Please die for me so I can skip your funeral
· A brief illustrated history of the Republican Party
· Nancy Victory
· Soldiers become accountants
· Beware the Merrill Lynch mob
· Darleen Druyun's $5.7 billion surprise
· First responder funding
· Hoovering the country
· First Command fifty percent load
· Ken Lay and the Atkins diet
· Halliburton WMD
· Leave no CEO behind
· August in Crawford
· Elaine Pagels
· Profitable slave labor at Halliburton
· Tom Hanks + Mujahideen
· Sharon & Neilsie Bush
· One weekend a month, or eternity
· Is the US pumping Iraqi oil to Kuwait?
· Cheney's war
· Seth Glickenhaus: Capitalist against Bush
· Martha's blow job
· Mark Belnick: Tyco Catholic nut
· Cheney's deferred Halliburton compensation
· Jeb sucks sugar cane
· Poindexter & LifeLog
· American Family Association panic
· Riley Bechtel and the crony economy
· The Book of Sharon (Bush)
· The Art of Enron
· Plunder convention
· Waiting in Kuwait: Jay Garner
· What's an Army private worth?
· Barbara Bodine, Queen of Baghdad
· Sneaky bastards at Halliburton
· Golf course and barbecue military strategy
· Enron at large
· Recent astroturf
· Cracker Chic 2
· No business like war business
· Big Brother
· Martha Stewart vs. Thomas White
· Roger Kimball, disappointed Republican poetry fan
· Cheney, Lay, Afghanistan
· Terry Lynn Barton, crimes of burning
· Feasting at the Cheney trough
· Who would Jesus indict?
· Return of the Carlyle Group
· Duct tape is for little people
· GOP and bad medicine
· Sears Tower vs Mt Rushmore
· Scared Christians
· Crooked playing field
· John O'Neill: The man who knew
· Back to the top
 
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