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"He's going to have to hit a sitting jump shot"
The thinker
Pulling a Clinton?
Texas attorney general helps Bush try to kill subpoena
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Gov. Death | page 1, 2
But it runs up against a potentially interesting conflict: at least 28 major religious groups in this country have declared against capital punishment. Might not now be the time to ask them if they will agree to ladle charity on behalf of a man who conducts photo-op and opinion-poll executions? Some Lone Star State cases for your perusal: An openly homosexual named Calvin Burdine was sentenced to death after being given a court-appointed lawyer who referred to gay men as "queers" and "fairies," and who fell asleep during the trial. In 1998, two Texas defendants were executed for crimes committed when they were 17. (That same year, of the 70 juveniles on death row in the United States, Texas was holding 26.) Then there's the case of Joseph Cannon and Robert Carter, who suffered head injuries in infancy, had been subject to lurid physical abuse later, and tested at an abysmal level for mental retardation. Texas killed them anyway, violating the accepted international standard that prohibits the death penalty for the underage, as well as the presumption that it is wrong to slay the mentally ill or incompetent. You probably don't want to know how perfunctory was the presentation of the state's evidence, how 10th-rate was the performance of the court-appointed defense, and how wretched was the end. (The humane "lethal injection" needle blew out of Joseph Cannon's arm as the "procedure" began: The witnesses were hurried from the room and then brought back to view a second and more conclusive try.) Perhaps you wonder if capital punishment is unevenly applied, as respects race and class, in the state of Texas. Wonder no longer: Just read the Amnesty International report "Killing With Prejudice" (322 Eighth Avenue, NY, NY 10001. $6) Finally, the man who is awaiting execution as I write -- Larry Robison -- is a paranoid schizophrenic who, along with his family, asked repeatedly for treatment of his unstable condition before cracking up. The state which failed him in the first instance is now stepping in, at vast expense, to warehouse him on death row and to snuff him on the taxpayers' dime. Yet most people can still mention only two things about George Walker Bush -- his extreme opulence and his commitment to "compassionate conservatism." This is the story, and the media are sticking to it. Every time I get on the radio or TV, I mention his assembly-line execution policy, and every time I do so I get treated as if I had developed Tourette's syndrome in church. Let that go, and on to the next question. Yet Bush's addiction to the death cult actually touches every important aspect of what could be described as his "politics." Unfortunately, the commitment of President Clinton, Al Gore and Bill Bradley to the same pro-death penalty politics prevents it from surfacing as the issue it deserves to be.
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About the writer Sound off Related Salon stories The Texas way of death George W. Bush is subpoenaed over the alleged special treatment of a funeral-home mogul who's a big campaign contributor. "I'm a uniter, not a divider" George W. Bush talks with David Horowitz about going from patrician to populist -- and from party boy to presidential front-runner.
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