I’m not being snarky, but it is strange that there is a large media outcry over Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis but little mention of Texas’ execution of Lawrence Russell Brewer. As you surely remember, Brewer chained James Byrd Jr. to the bumper of his pickup truck and dragged him to death in 1998. Brewer’s execution causes no outrage because, well, he deserved it?
I read the news report that Davis might have been innocent of the murder of a police officer. The case against Brewer was much stronger. But aren't both executions cruel and unusual punishment? The hideousness of the death penalty to me is
1) That it doesn’t deter capital murder.
2) Due to the agonizing appeals process, it takes decades to actually execute someone. For example, Richard Allen Davis, the killer of Polly Klaas, was sentenced to death in 1996 and is still on death row.
3) It is hideously expensive. California spends $63.3 million a year to house 670 death row inmates. Over $90,000 per inmate.
4) The death penalty supposedly satisfies society’s need for deliver retributive justice for hideous crimes of murder. But shouldn’t retribution be swift? It took Texas 13 years to execute Lawrence Brewer for his crimes, Georgia 20 years to execute Troy Davis, and California hasn’t executed Richard Allen Davis.
Why do we insist on the death penalty then? For that few seconds of satisfaction we get when the sentenced is announced? Life without parole then seems just as effective as the death penalty. It protects society from vicious criminals in a way that’s humane, morally justifiable, and is more cost-effective.
Along those lines, a reader points to a compelling YouTube:
Thought you should see this. Lawrence O’Donnell makes the point that no one else is making. So eloquent. He’s Keith Olbermann without the snark.
I'm still repulsed thinking about the question from the gay soldier last night, but one small observation – this is the only instance I can recall in which an active duty service member was not thanked for his service. Every time politicians interact with military personnel, they fall all over themselves thanking "the brave men and women of our armed forces, and their families."
This time – no thanks, and no mention of his family, of course, because that's about SEX.
Until the Florida GOP apologizes to that soldier, along with Santorum, we should not let up in protesting this disgrace.
Herman Cain's healthcare answer from last night was pure nonsense:
The ACA does not include death panels, it gives more people insurance, and it makes colon cancer screening free. You may not like the ACA, but it doesn’t make it more likely that you will die from colon cancer. It does just the opposite. I hope this is a line that Mr. Cain will stop using during his candidacy.
Bonus untruth: Michele Bachmann lied about Obama's approval rating.
Larison is struck by the depth of Mitt's support among conservatives in New Hampshire:
The most surprising item from the latest New Hampshire primary Suffolk poll was the response to the question, “Do you trust Mitt Romney to say what he believes, even if it is unpopular?” Amazingly, 60% of all respondents said yes. Most of the reactions to the poll have focused on how little support Perry has (8%), and how well Ron Paul (14%) and Huntsman (10%) are doing, but what I find most newsworthy is that most people “very likely” to vote in the primary (62%) don’t perceive Romney to be the famously unprincipled panderer that he is, and conservatives are even more likely to agree that Romney can be trusted to say what he believes.
More on the latest polls out of the Granite State here.
In a new book, Dr. William Davis compares eating wheat to smoking filtered cigarettes:
The research that indicates whole grains are healthy is all conducted the same way: white flour is replaced with whole wheat flour, which, no question, is better for you. But taking something bad and replacing it with something less bad is not the same as research that directly compares what happens to health and weight when you eliminate wheat altogether. There’s a presumption that consuming a whole bunch of the less bad thing must be good for you, and that’s just flawed logic.
It's been a few months now of my wheat-free life. Ptown was the hardest. I used to have two fresh scones each morning at Far Land grocery store as I read the paper. No longer. No cupcakes; no bread; no pasta; no shredded wheat. But the results have been pretty striking. For two years, I'd been scratching and rubbing, as an allergic rash began to cover my entire back and chest. Now, I have my skin back. I've kept roughly the same weight – although I lost ten pounds during my summer flu – but the muscle-fat ratio seems to have shifted in favor of muscle, even after a long break from the gym (that broken hand).
I think I struggled with low energy to start with: you don't realize how many calories are being pumped constantly into your body by wheat products on almost everything. But now, if anything, I seem to have a tiny bit more energy, and my diet has far fewer carbs. So two cheers for a wheat allergy. Now to get back to the gym …
Pareene gets excited watching Governor Gary strut his stuff:
Jon Huntsman may win liberal affection by tweeting about his love of Captain Beefheart and evolutionary science, but Johnson is the race's genuine voice of reason (or Reason), opposing the drug war, mass incarceration and the military-industrial complex in no uncertain terms. Despite usually meeting most of the official "requirements," poor Johnson has thus far been shut out of GOP debates (and much of the press in general) due to the presence of perennial candidate Paul, who will not relinquish the "token libertarian" seat. Johnson has, I think, a much better shot at winning disaffected young liberals to the libertarian cause than Dr. Paul.
I have become used to hearing gay people and our lives either ignored or stigmatized or demonized in Republican debates. It is a function of a political party becoming a religion. And so my skin is pretty thick at this point, and my outrage button eroded by two decades of learning to ignore this stuff and focus on the positive arguments we have to make. It's not that I didn't react at the time:
10.18 pm. Santorum claims bizarrely that repealing DADT means permission for sexual activity for gays in the military. This is a lie. The same rules of sexual misconduct apply to gays and straights alike. And a gay servicemember is booed by this foul crowd. Santorum keeps saying "sex is not an issue." But that's the current policy! This has nothing to do with sex, as Santorum surely knows. And again, the crowd reveals itself as hateful – even when it comes to those serving their country in uniform. This is one core reason why I cannot be a Republican. So many are bigots – and no one – no one – stands up against them. They're a bunch of bullies congratulating themselves on rooting out the queers.
But as I went to bed last night, the scattered boos for an American soldier in the field at any debate began to sink in. And Santorum's despicable lie in response – that repealing DADT somehow means license of gay sexual misconduct in the armed services – was intended to reduce that soldier, his life and work, to Santorum's obsession: the intrinsic evil of gay sex. Again, this is usual. Gays are used to being reduced to sexual acts rather than being seen as full human beings, like straight people, with sexuality sure, but a whole lot of other things as well.
But somehow the fact that these indignities were heaped on a man risking his life to serve this country, a man ballsy enough to make that video, a man in the uniform of the United States … well, it tells me a couple of things. It tells me that these Republicans don't actually deep down care for the troops, if that means gay troops. Their constant posturing military patriotism has its limits.
The shocking silence on the stage – the fact that no one challenged this outrage – also tells me that this kind of slur is not regarded as a big deal. When it came to it, even Santorum couldn't sanction firing all those servicemembers who are now proudly out. But that's because he was forced to focus not on his own Thomist abstractions, but on an actual person. Throughout Republican debates, gays are discussed as if we are never in the audience, never actually part of the society, never fully part of families, never worthy of even a scintilla of respect. When you boo a servicemember solely because he's gay, you are saying he is beneath contempt, that nothing he does or has done can counterweigh the vileness of his sexual orientation.
And then I think of all those gay servicemembers who have died for this country, or been wounded in battle, or been on tours year after year … and the fury builds. Even GOProud, the two gay guys who love Ann Coulter, issued this statement:
“Tonight, Rick Santorum disrespected our brave men and women in uniform, and he owes Stephen Hill, the gay soldier who asked him the question about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, an immediate apology. That brave gay soldier is doing something Rick Santorum has never done – put his life on the line to defend our freedoms and our way of life. It is telling that Rick Santorum is so blinded by his anti-gay bigotry that he couldn’t even bring himself to thank that gay soldier for his service.
Stephen Hill is serving our country in Iraq, fighting a war Senator Santorum says he supports. How can Senator Santorum claim to support this war if he doesn’t support the brave men and women who are fighting it?”
In fact, he's not far right enough. I have a feeling that the in-state tuition subsidy for the kids of illegal aliens effectively ends his candidacy. But if that doesn't, his inability to sustain the energy and focus for two hours in a debate is fatal. Malkin:
The cringe-worthiest moment, by a hair, was when Perry botched what should have been his most potent attack on Mitt Romney’s chronic flip-flopping. As I noted on Twitter when it happened, any random high schooler at the CPAC conference in Washington could have done better than this … Perry said he’s in favor of making English the official language of the U.S. Perhaps he should concentrate on mastering it before the next debate.
Coulter tweets:
“Governor Perry losing debate with his own tongue.”
Everyone here in Palinville who looks forward to good hard competition will be relieved to know that Gov. Rick Perry was NOT drunk at last night’s debate, all appearances to the contrary. It’s just that before taking the stage he inexplicably chose to receive a Gardasil shot, one of whose known side effects is mental slowness.
Going in, I saw these last three debates as critical to him, but by no means everything. Unfortunately, instead of seizing upon them as an opportunity, his now obviously very weak debating skills have proved to be disastrous.
Perry has been coming back to Earth lately, partly on his uneven debate performances. Orlando didn’t do anything to change that dynamic–indeed may have accelerated it.
If Perry cannot win over these partisans, what chance independents? And the one good moment he had last night – his account of meeting with a woman with cervical cancer that helped him decide in favor of the HPV vaccine – was a lie. He met her after he had already made the decision.
Weak.
(If you're just tuning in, my live-blog is here and the Dish's trademarked reax post from the web is here.)
Heather Mac Donald homes in on family breakdown as "the largest predictor of child and family poverty":
The cardinal rule for writing about child poverty if you are in the mainstream media is this: Never, ever mention single parenthood. This New York Times article on a study showing that one in three young families with children were living in poverty in 2010 scrupulously obeys the rule. The Times offers several possible reasons for this recent rise in child poverty, including the high-tech, high-skills economy and the greater difficulties of going on welfare following the 1996 federal welfare-reform law. It never articulates, however, what is overwhelmingly the largest predictor of child and family poverty: The family is not a two-parent household. In 2007, single-parent families were nearly six times more likely to be poor than married-parent families; that ratio has not significantly changed.
The Dish 