George Bush the lesser seems to get a thrill about signing warrants of execution
Quote:George Bush the lesser seems to get a thrill about signing warrants of execution
Katrina Vanden Heuvel: Texas's Commuter-in-Chief
Back in the days when Governor George Bush was only able to screw-up Texas instead of an entire nation, 57 lawyers representing men - and a woman - on death row requested commutations so that their clients might receive life instead of death.
When approached by lawyers representing mentally retarded inmates, Bush refused.
When approached by lawyers representing inmates whose court-appointed lawyers had slept during their trials, Bush refused.
When approached by lawyers representing men who had committed the crime in question as juveniles, Bush refused.
In each case, then-Governor Bush felt that the defendants had had full and equal access to the law.
But now along comes Scooter. President Bush deemed his 30-month sentence "excessive" and - just like that - commuted his sentence prior to any judicial review. Libby had the finest legal representation. He never expressed any remorse for lying to a grand jury or for his role in the administration's snow job on the American people that led our nation into a war. Yet Scooter is the lucky soul granted clemency by Bush.
In an article for the once-hyped but now defunct magazine, Talk, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed then-Gov. Bush about Karla Faye Tucker, a woman who had recently been executed after he denied her clemency. Bush's response struck Carlson as "odd and cruel" and he described this exchange:
"I watched [Larry King's] interview with [Karla Faye Tucker] ," Bush said. "He asked her real difficult questions, like ?'What would you say to Governor Bush?' ?'What was her answer?' I wonder.
?'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ?'don't kill me.'
Odd and cruel, indeed. Carlson provoked a bit of a media storm for revealing Bush's callousness at a time when - unlike now - he was still viewed as Mr. Compassionate Conservative. (The Bush presidential campaign tried to deny that Bush had made this statement but to no avail.)
Bush seemed all the more cruel given that appeals for clemency had been made by figures from around the world, including Newt Gingrich, Pat Robertson, the Huntsville prison warden and correction officers who testified that Tucker was a model prisoner and reformed, a prosecutor of her accomplice, the brother of one of her murder victims, Pope John Paul II and the European Parliament.
Sister Helen Prejean, one of the preeminent fighters against the death penalty and the inspiration for the film Dead Man Walking, wrote, "Callous indifference to human suffering may also set Bush apart. He may be the only government official to mock a condemned person's plea for mercy, then lie about it afterward, claiming humane feelings he never felt."
(Prejean was alluding to George Bush's election-year memoir - A Charge to Keep - in which he wrote that Tucker's impending execution "felt like a huge piece of concrete crushing me.") Preajan described her response when she was told on Larry King of Bush's final press release before Tucker's execution in which he stated, "May God bless Karla Faye Tucker ." Prejean wrote, "Inside my soul I raged at Bush's hypocrisy, but the broadcast was live and global . [So] I took a quick breath, said a fierce prayer, looked into the camera, and said, ?'It's interesting to see that Governor Bush is now invoking God, asking God to bless Karla Faye Tucker, when he certainly didn't use the power in his own hands to bless her. He just had her killed.'"
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http://neweraartist.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/katrina-vanden-heuvel-texass-commuter-in-chief/
