AN HOMAGE TO FINALITY

Q once said:
Can we not just take
Five minutes to wish others well

But she could
Not a short time take
To delay the sounding of the death knell.

This all reminds me of the two bush brothers in the Texas Mansion laughing during a plea for mercy in a death case.

In the only silver lining I've found from the economic crisis, it seems that executions have become too expensive for many states. There goes the 'saving the taxpayers' money' rationale we hear so much about.

In Hard Times, Executions Become Question of Cost

Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys. Tens of millions of dollars cheaper, politicians are learning, during a tumbling recession when nearly every state faces job cuts and massive deficits. [AP National Writer Sat Mar 7, 10:11 am ET]

Tha only reason execusions are so spensive is cuz we have to put the poor little babys to sleep with a big spensive drug rig and doctors and such. Now if we still had hangins...
But ya’ll are right, mehbe Texas is like Hell. But that’s all cuz them lilly-livered librels are givin away are God-given resources to tha imgrants and four-eyed Yankee eggheads (prolly of the He-brew pursuasion) that come lookin fer jobs here after they awready done fouled up thar own nest. Least we know ya don’t shit where ya sleep unlike are southern amigos.

So if yer gonna sit in front of yer compooter whining bout things, why doncha help out by watchin tha border like are good Govenor Perry has asked us to-
texasborderwatch
Whats great is ya’ll can choose yer own camera and who ya wanna catch– them dirty Mescan hippie dope dealers or them other brown devils who make Texas a Hell cuz they swim over here and take are jobs and cain’t even talk English! This is surely worth the millions were spendin even though it dint work the first time they did it two years ago. America fer Americans!

The idea that a person cannot be executed just because they are innocent isn’t new. It was ratified by the Rhenquist Court in the mid-‘90s against a man whose brother admitted to killing the state trooper he was convicted of killing ( Herrera VS. Collins). I couldn't believe then, and still can’t, how the law would allow the execution of an innocent person.

NYT: Judge Keller, 55, has always kept her own counsel; her colleagues at the court have given her the nickname Mother Superior because of her reserved and diligent demeanor and her devout Roman Catholic faith.

Pope John Paul II: "A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary" (1999).

But if there was ever an indisputable argument against the death penalty, or extreme caution at least, it is the revelation of the large population of wrongfully convicted revealed by the perfection of DNA testing (I believe the Innocence Project initially found that over 25% of those it tested, mostly rape cases, were innocent). In the ‘30s and ‘40s, a many received the death penalty for rape. Oddly, it seems that 90% of rapists at that time were black! Of course, Keller is just a small part of a”‘justice” system that GW put in place here when he became governor and continued to install nationally. The “Bush legacy” that will take decades to undo.