Pardon Pirates
Number of turkeys George W. Bush has pardoned since taking office: 2.
Number of death row inmates he pardoned as the Governor of Texas: 1.
Number of prisoners executed while he was Governor: 158.
An interesting article about the role of Alberto Gonzales, our new Attorney General (and the pirate who made off the with booty of the Geneva Conventions), in these exectutions was published in the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It suggests that Bush made most of his decisions regarding commutation of the death sentence based on summaries of the cases written by Gonazales (his legal council at the time), and that they were mostly incomplete or biased in favor of Bush's stated preference: justice, Texas style. (Gary Graham, who was executed in July 2000 although he insisted on his innocence until the last words, called it "legal lynching," which has a certain ring, and called the death penalty "America's holocaust for black people," which doesn't. He also asked supporters to descend on Hunstville with Ak-47s to prevent the exectution, so we'd do well to take him and his judgements with a grain of salt. Frontier justice, indeed.) The article doesn't conclusively show wrongdoing (Gonzales was, in a very basic sense, just doing his job) but it does indicate a lack of compassion, a lesser crime than ... well, violating international law. But international law is largely writ with the intention of making compassionate self-interest a parmount issue in the rules of war, meaning that the failure of compassion is more concerning than Capt. Gonzales seems to imagine. Yar, matey.
John Ashcroft covered the naked statue of Justice in the Department of Justice's main hall because it was "indecent." Alberto Gonzales doesn't want to acknowledge that our judicial system makes mistakes, while simultaneously recommending the expansion of its ability to do so. That blue drape they ceremoniously draped over the Great Lady will soon be too tattered to cover much of anything.
Number of death row inmates he pardoned as the Governor of Texas: 1.
Number of prisoners executed while he was Governor: 158.
An interesting article about the role of Alberto Gonzales, our new Attorney General (and the pirate who made off the with booty of the Geneva Conventions), in these exectutions was published in the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It suggests that Bush made most of his decisions regarding commutation of the death sentence based on summaries of the cases written by Gonazales (his legal council at the time), and that they were mostly incomplete or biased in favor of Bush's stated preference: justice, Texas style. (Gary Graham, who was executed in July 2000 although he insisted on his innocence until the last words, called it "legal lynching," which has a certain ring, and called the death penalty "America's holocaust for black people," which doesn't. He also asked supporters to descend on Hunstville with Ak-47s to prevent the exectution, so we'd do well to take him and his judgements with a grain of salt. Frontier justice, indeed.) The article doesn't conclusively show wrongdoing (Gonzales was, in a very basic sense, just doing his job) but it does indicate a lack of compassion, a lesser crime than ... well, violating international law. But international law is largely writ with the intention of making compassionate self-interest a parmount issue in the rules of war, meaning that the failure of compassion is more concerning than Capt. Gonzales seems to imagine. Yar, matey.
John Ashcroft covered the naked statue of Justice in the Department of Justice's main hall because it was "indecent." Alberto Gonzales doesn't want to acknowledge that our judicial system makes mistakes, while simultaneously recommending the expansion of its ability to do so. That blue drape they ceremoniously draped over the Great Lady will soon be too tattered to cover much of anything.
posted by Hanna Neuschwander at 3:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home