|
Faithful husband, soccer dad,
basset owner, and former cowboy
Return to TboggHomePage
FELLOW TRAITORS
*The Nether-Count*
100 Monkeys Typing
Ain't No Bad Dude
Alicublog
Americablog
American Leftist
Attytood (Will Bunch)
Bad Attitudes
Balloon Juice
Better Inhale Deeply
Bitch Ph.D
Bloggy
Bob Harris
Brilliant At Breakfast
BusyBusyBusy
Byzantium's Shores
Creek Running North
Crooked Timber
Crooks and Liars
Cursor
Daily Kos
Dependable Renegade
David Ehrenstein
Democratic Veteran
Dohiyi Mir
Down With Tyranny
Echidne of the Snakes
Edicts of Nancy
Elayne Riggs
Eschaton (Atrios)
Ezra Klein
Failure Is Impossible
Feministe
Feministing
Firedoglake
First Draft
Freewayblogger
The Garance
The Group News Blog
Guano Island
Hairy Fish Nuts
Hammer of the Blogs
Hullabaloo(Digby)
I Am TRex
If I Ran the Zoo
I'm Not One To Blog
Interesting Times
James Wolcott
Jesus' General
Jon Swift
Juan Cole
King of Zembla
Kung Fu Monkey
Lance Mannion
Lawyers Guns and Money
Lean Left
Liberal Oasis
Main & Central
Majikthise
Making Light (Nielsen Hayden)
Mark Kleiman
Martini Revolution
MaxSpeak
MF Blog
MyDD
Needlenose
The Next Hurrah
Nitpicker
No More Mr. Nice Blog
Norbizness
Norwegianity
Oliver Willis
One Good Move
Orcinus
Pacific Views
Pam's House Blend
Pandagon
Pharyngula
Political Animal(K.Drum)
The Poorman
Progressive Gold
Right Hand Thief
Rising Hegemon
Roger Ailes
Rude Pundit
Rumproast
Sadly, No
Seeing The Forest
Shakesville
Sisyphus Shrugged
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Slacktivist
SteveAudio
Suburban Guerilla
TalkLeft
The American Street
The Left Coaster
The Road To Surfdom
The Sideshow
The Talking Dog
The Talent Show
Tom Tomorrow
Tom Watson
Whiskeyfire
UggaBugga
Wampum
Wonkette
World O'Crap
TOSS ME
A BONE
Amazon Wish List
SOURCES
MSNBC
CNN
The Washington Post
Media Matters
The New York Times
The Guardian
Yahoo News
Salon
The Raw Story
Common Dreams
Media Transparency
The Nation
Alternet
Joe Conason
Talking Points Memo
THE VAST WASTELAND
Captain Corndog & Friends
Cheerleaders Gone Spazzy
80% True
Corner of Mediocrity and Banality
Village Idiots Central
Darwin's Waiting Room
News for Mouthbreathers
Mailbox
Your e-mail may be reprinted sans name and e-mail address. Think about how stupid you want to appear.
Blogroll Me!
Site Feed
|
Monday, January 20, 2003
Kill them all. Let Will sort them out.
George Will is in a killing mood lately. If it's not Saddam, it must somebody, anybody, on death row in Illinois:
Illinois Gov. George Ryan's commutation of the death sentences of all 167 inmates in Illinois prisons is another golden moment for liberals that underscores how many of their successes are tarnished by being explicitly, even exuberantly anti-democratic.
Speaking at Northwestern University to a celebrating audience of opponents of capital punishment, Ryan, two days from leaving office under a cloud of scandal and the threat of indictment, said of capital punishment: "The Legislature couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. But I will not stand for it." Translation: The chief executive vowed to not carry out the consensus of the people, as carefully codified by their elected representatives, in conformity with U.S. Supreme Court standards.
I guess we can disregard the fact that Ryan is a Republican (after all, Will does) just so that he can pin this on those evil "liberals", in much the same way that Will ignores the will of the people that "codified" the Illinois law that allows the Governor to do exactly what Ryan did. Will also doesn't want to address the factors that led to Ryan's move such as this.
Ryan said he was pardoning Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard, Aaron Patterson and Leroy Orange. All of them were on death row for at least 12 years.
"We have evidence from four men, who did not know each other, all getting beaten and tortured and convicted on the basis of the confessions they allegedly provide," Ryan said. "They are perfect examples of what is so terribly broken about our system.. … I believe a manifest injustice has occurred."
Ryan spread the blame in his hour-long speech, calling the state's criminal justice system "inaccurate, unjust and unable to separate the innocent from the guilty, and at times very racist."
He blamed "rogue cops," zealous prosecutors, incompetent defense lawyers and judges who rule on technicalities rather than on what is right. He also criticized the Illinois Legislature for failing to enact his proposals to reform the death penalty system.
Ryan said he felt he had little choice when declared the moratorium on executions after 13 men were freed from Illinois' death row because new evidence exonerated them or there were flaws in the way they were convicted.
"How do you let innocent people march to death row without somebody saying stop the show?" Ryan said.
Of course, sinced Will doesn't know the names of the thirteen (he's a pundit not a journalist, dammit!) there is no reason that the killing should stop.
George Will: Third, in the last 25 years, 13 men have been released from Illinois' death row -- three of them in 1999 -- as a result of exonerating evidence. This might seem to justify the inference that, nationally, some innocent persons have been executed. But none of the many groups opposed to capital punishment provides the name of any such a person.
By causing courts to multiply restrictions on the imposition of capital punishment, opponents of such punishment have helped make its administration capricious, thereby doubling the arguments against it: Capriciousness, and the fact that this reduces the death penalty's ability to deter, and even the ability of social science to measure its deterrent power. So the remaining realistic case for capital punishment is proportionality: It is disrespectful of life, and of the victims' survivors, not to take a life for an especially heinous murder
So by building in safeguards to keep the innocent, the railroaded, the poor, or the not-white-like-Will from being executed by an imperfect system, Will would have a few innocent people die to make sure that the death penalty acts as a deterrent and can be measured. To Will this must be like "taking one for the team" only in this case, the innocent person won't be around to see the final score or if George Will's team of grim social Darwinists win.
How very gracious of him.
|
|
