Great Moments in Blather: Big government thugocrats to kill taxpayer with his own money

There's a bill in the legislature - once again - to ban the crude and barbaric practice of capital punishment... it is said to have a better chance this year than usual...Here's our post from September 2010 when the last human being was put to death by the state of Washington.

When the statist thugocracy flexes its awesome power by robbing a sovereign tax-payer of his very life, where are the libertarians? (Hint: don't leave the light on for 'em...)

Murderer Cal Coburn Brown will die by lethal injection Friday in Walla Walla by 1 ayem, barring legal intervention; it's the first execution in Washington since 2001.

We witnessed the one in 2001; it was our fifth.

Here, in part, is a BlatherWatch post from December, 2005:

I'm passionately against the death penalty (so passionate I'm eschewing the "royal we," I usually use in this blog).

I was a media witness to the last execution in Washington State and watched the pathetic little death of a pathetic little man named James Homer Elledge who'd killed a couple of nice church ladies in the basement of a Lynnwood Methodist church where he'd worked as a janitor.

I covered it for the Seattle Weekly and Agence France-Presse, a French international wire service who's always hungry for the gory details of American barbarity.

Elledge was deeply disturbed and so ridden with sick Christian guilt, he refused to mount a defense.

It was state-supervised suicide.

I plotz with Christians over the death penalty. The biggest bunch of them, the Roman Catholics, are institutionally against it. That's why Europeans made it illegal long ago- not because they're a bunch of godless socialists as you hear on talk radio- but because they were (are) Catholics following the moral leadership of their church.

(Evangelical, born-again, fundamentalist Christians, (different names for the same orthodoxy) follow the vengeful Old Testament legalism of an eye-for-an eye (agreeing with Moslems, BTW) even though they sentence the Jews to hell for denying the New Testament, which is the Old Testament, The Sequel, starring Jesus. To make it even more conundrumatic, and confusing- most Jews we know agree with the Catholics. Others more orthodox, we hear, do not. The dwindling mainline Protestant brands like Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans agree with the Catholics, and the Reformed Jews. Of course, there are exceptions within each and everyone of these congregations. It just goes to show you: religionists are really hard to understand).

Me ? I'm with the Pope on this one.

My dad, a Republican legislator in the 1950's, helped pass the bill outlawing capital punishment in Washington State. It stood until the US Supreme Court declared all capital punishment unconstitutional in 1972. Boy, those 1950's were the days! Redemption was a Christian family value, and Republicans were compassionate. Hard to imagine, no? (And it was too good to be true: The Supremes re-allowed it in 1976, the US joining such national role models of justice as Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China and Yemen).

Today, Dori Monson (KIRO m-f, 12-3p) made jokes about Tookie [Williams, just executed in CA] "getting nookie" and we heard listeners all over the dial opine that the big thug never deserved a trial in the first place.

(The festive vengeance today wasn't so different than the glee I saw in Lagos, Nigeria in 1972 after a Sunday afternoon firing squad dispatched 4 criminals in a soccer stadium before thousands in their Sunday best. It was a picnic event, everybody got drunk and spit on the bound prisoners both before and after they were shot down. Little boys came up, put lit cigarettes into the mouths of the corpses and posed with arms around them for tourist photos. I love the human race!).

The execution I saw in Walla Walla in 2001 was quite different. It was clinical and actually boring. It was such a non-event, I felt myself wanting more. It was if I'd paid for Terminator II, and got the Little Mermaid instead. From The Weekly:

WE SAT ON THE EDGES of our seats like kids waiting for a puppet show. Then the curtain went up, revealing the shitty little room with its exposed electrical conduits, elevated now to the dramatic status of "death chamber."

A small one-way glass window behind Elledge's head concealed the anonymous "injection team." These "licensed medical practitioners" are chosen by prison superintendent John Lambert, their identities known only to him.

Elledge lay on his back on the old wooden gurney. The clear plastic intravenous lines coming out of the wall behind him led to catheters stuck in his arms under a dark blue sheet covering him feet to chin. His arms sat on rests angled away from his sides, hands completely covered with black tape.

With his eyes and mouth closed, he looked already dead. His scraggly beard was shaved, leaving one of those bushy 1970s mustaches favored by cops. His thin, graying hair was combed forward and looked blow-dried; his skin appeared very white. He was laid out like a corpse at a mortuary viewing.

Lambert, a balding man in shirtsleeves, came out and said hurriedly into a microphone, "Inmate Elledge has no last words."

There's more drama in putting down a dog, anesthetizing a frog, or salting a slug than there was in watching this human die.

I stared at his chest with the dark sheet against the light wall to detect a breath. I saw no movement. Some reporters said they saw a breath, some said an eyebrow twitched; we all saw his jaw relax and mouth open. The first drug, two grams of thiopental, a sedative, was so massive that even if they had stopped the other chemicals, it would have been over. Then came a load of pancuronium bromide, which paralyzed him from the neck down; finally, potassium chloride stopped his heart. In these amounts, any one of these drugs would be fatal. They wanted to prevent a "Rasputin phenomenon," an uncomfortable situation named after the mad monk who wouldn't die.

We witnessed very little. There was no beginning, and we knew it was over only when the curtain fell and Veltry Johnson told us Elledge had been pronounced dead at 12:52 a.m.

I felt ripped off. It seemed a mockery of the witness requirement--we were supposed to view the alleged humanity of this process, but we had no real access to it. His attorney had left him at 11 p.m. For all we know, in the next hour and a half he could have changed his mind, tried to stop his execution, been wrestled down by guards, had a needle stuck in his arm to shut him up, and then been laid out for us to "witness."

I HAVE NO REASON to think this scenario happened--nor that this Department of Corrections is evil. But I can't say that about Texas, Florida, or some future DOC. The awesome power given the state, with so much secret discretion in this life-and-death duty, is for me the overriding argument against capital punishment. Even if the judicial process could somehow be made perfectly just and fair, the power to put to death should not be in human hands.

This execution took place as a new discussion was starting in America about the death penalty. There'd just been a moratorium on executions declared by Governor Ryan in Illinois after law students had sprung scores of death row inmates who they found were mistakenly accused or convicted.

There was great hope and expectation that the American people, who polled at some 70% for the death penalty, may be cycling around to that compassionate place where my father and his peers had been in 1959.

It was not to be. 9-11 happened the following week; the nation saw blood on the moon and suddenly it was wartime and the suffix 'compassionate' was scratched off George W. Bush's self-description and replaced with 'neo.'

Maybe the tide has started to turn once more as our country has grown sick with this is war. But from what we heard today on the radio, we're not making book on it.

Reading: John Grisham's non-fictional The Innocent Man, about the cases that turned the conservative attorney/novelist against the death penalty.

Comments

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Thanks for the book reference. I'll definitely pick it up.

I've been against capital punishment for about 5 years. Mark Furhman--yes, that Mark Furhman--wrote an anti-capital punishment book about what was going on in Oklahoma with a Prosecutor named 'Cowboy Bob' Macy and his chief Crime Lab Specialist who use to 'sweeten up' the evidence.

Cowboy Bob put a whole lot of people away to death.
Wonder how many of them were actually guilty.

Anyone who is for the death penalty, go read about the DNA Innocence Project. See if that doesn't give you pause.

[Pete]

I'm with BlaM - and PSB - on this one.

I have never, ever understood how conservatives who don't even trust the government to get property assessments right are fine allowing the same apparatus determine who lives and dies. There are many, many other arguments against the death penalty, but it boils down to that core one: such decisions are not ours to make.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

spot on, Pete.

and lets also decriminalize marijuana and allow people to retain some personal dignity and be able to choose the way they die with a decision between the patient and the doctor.

at least WA State finally made the right choice on the rights of gay and lesbian couples to marry.

so some progress is being made in getting gov't out of the personal decision department.

i am amused at folks who disdain gov't or don't trust it, suddenly want gov't to me intruding in some of the most personal of decisions like who we marry, how i die, or my ability to recreationally enjoy my life without bothering anyone else.

[Jovita]

Puget has become a progressive!

[Walt]

I dont think its a deterrent since people still commit murder. I would like to see hard labor during the day and isolation at night with meals eaten alone as well.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Puget has become a progressive!

Posted by: Jovita | January 27, 2012 at 04:19 PM

jovita, i've been like that for a long time. i just have little tolerance for hypocrisy. as some of the usual suspects have learned to their chagrin.

[Truthseeker]

Does KS know of your sudden conversion to liberalism? Interesting that nobody knew until now. Isn't that the surprise here? Isn't that hypocrisy? Glad to know you're on the side of the righteous, Puget Sound.

"usual suspects" - still name calling.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

actually, you are incorrect.
i've made no secret of my stands.
here is my post from 2009 (and you can find more back in 2007)

Drew

I can understand your confusion. I'm not a holly roller Jerry Falwell type; rather, I am a Goldwater type ie keep Uncle Sugar out of my life and out of my wallet. And just to give you a heads up, I weave across the idealogical centerline enough to blow a .24 on the breathalizyer. I am against the death penalty and an atheist. While I do believe the Gov't has the right to put a person to death and I know of certain murderers that I would personally volunteer to drop the cynadide pill on (Joseph Duncan and Gary Ridgeway come to mind) but the Gov't makes too many mistakes and fails to provide an adequate defense for the poor (when's the last rich person you have heard of who has been convicted and given the death penalty?). The Menendez Brothers shotgunned to death their parents and never even sniffed Death Row.
Google 'Project Innocence' or Cowboy Bob Macy a prosecutor out of Oklahoma with the greatest number of death penalty convictions. Mark Furhman (yep, that Mark Furhman) wrote a great book on 'Cowboy Bob' and his abuse of prosecutorial power -with some help from a Crime Lab Tech that would 'sweeten' the evidence.
It should be a wakeup call.

Posted by: Puget Sound | May 31, 2009 at 07:52 PM

[Truthseeker]

Then explain this "i just have little tolerance for hypocrisy. as some of the usual suspects have learned to their chagrin." Don't get the connection.

Can you dig up a post about marijuane? Goldwater didn't believe in legalizing marijuana. Where's your defense of gay marriage? Interesting that you found one going back to 2009. Should be easy to find the others.

You've hidden your "Goldwater? Republicanism" well. Still don't think those are "Goldwater" stands. But, I'll take your word.

And the name calling?

[Puget Sound Blathers]

here you go TruthSeeker
I xxx'd out the poster i was schooling as evidently that person is still persona non grata. this was back in 2008 and my displeasure over Gays-Lesbians having their right to marriage 'voted away.'

"You idiot, it is out there and discussed. That's my point. If they over-discuss it, they will alienate people. It is a sensitive issue.

Posted by: joanxxx | December 30, 2008 at 09:57 PM"

So you want gays and lesbians to just STFU and be grateful? It's akin to MLK being told 'don't push too hard you'll alienate people' by well meaning Whites back in the 60's.
51% of the people have just voted to disenfranchise a portion of the population a right to marry. A right that they had.
All they wanted was to have the state recognize their rights in the same form/fashion granted to heterosexuals.
Sheesh. Jerry Brown -the AG of California- gets it.

Posted by: Puget Sound | December 31, 2008 at 04:55 AM"

[Puget Sound Blathers]

the term 'usual suspects' refers to folks who ask questions but when posed questions disappear.
like 'walt' did the other day.

[Truthseeker]

"sensitive issue" - yes, I agree. You were for it. Good. I wouldn't have guessed that.

"usual suspects" isn't that still name calling or am I missing something?

"idiot" - "usual suspects" - is one better than the other?

You do sound more socially liberal than I would have guessed from some of your posts.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

yes, usual suspects isn't referring to an idiot. rather, it refers to those who like to pose questions and when they get asked 'em tend to run away. very poor manners, eh?

i've never made a secret of the fact i am very liberal on social issues. i also wonder how much longer we will be fighting a war of no end, the one in afghanistan. how much longer will you tolerate it?
11 years. and recall this is the war president obama said was the 'good war.' he has escalated it quite a bit. at least iraq had an end game.

[Truthseeker]

Obama determined the end game in Iraq. Can you give him credit? That's the kind of selective reasoning that encourages your reputation as unreasonably biased.

Name calling is name calling. No excuses.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

sure, pres obama removed the troops out of iraq at the proper time.

[KS]

I am undecided about ever using the death penalty. However, I acknowledge that it costs our government less not to have the death penalty, as appeals are very costly.

I will say that we should have never gone into Iraq in the first place.

[Pete]

Truthseeker: Obama did not "determine the end game in Iraq." The drawdown happened on the SOFA timetable set in Dec. 2008, at the end of the Bush administration. Obama (at the Pentagon's urging) actually tried everything possible to get the Iraqis to agree to extend the deadline, but one of the few things Iraqi politicians were united on was that the US had to go, on time. And so Obama was unsuccessful in his efforts to keep large numbers of US troops in place.

I give Obama credit for honoring his predecessor's agreement, once his efforts to amend it failed, and for leading the drawdown with a minimum of chaos and disruption. But it wasn't his idea. Far from it.

[KS]

Good point Pete. He actually followed through there.

Re: Death penalty - A progressive would seldom if ever acknowledge the high cost of appeals. Money seldom matters - as exemplified by the sloppy and fuzzy math that the lefty progressives use for the mantra "The rich need to pay their fair share". Don't they know that even with all of the assets of the rich, our debt would be far from paid off and on the average the rich pay more than their fair share. It's the 48% who pay no net Federal taxes who are not paying their fair share.

That problem (class warfare) will only go away when a flat tax is instituted. Well ?

[Chucks]

In all of the research that I have seen through the years, I have never read any real proof that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder. But I have never seen evidence of any murderer re-offending after having been put down.
Executed offenders do not kill prison guards or other prisoners. Executed offenders do not break out of prison and re-offend.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Pete
i agree. good point. the endgame was determined by pres bush and his policies. pres obama continued with them and kept folks like sec of defense robert gates on to ensure that same would happen without interruption.

chucks
i agree to the point that it is true as long as you execute the right person. i just don't have the faith in government to find the guilty person. nor do i have faith in the gov't to apply the death penalty in an equitable manner given the disproportionate number of poor that get the death penalty. one only has to look at the Mendez Brothers, Robert Blake, or OJ to see how money can make the death penalty not a problem.

[Truthseeker]

"Death penalty - A progressive would seldom if ever acknowledge the high cost of appeals."

"fuzzy math"

Why the disrespectful broad-brushing of Progressives? Seems like you always have to use a smear tactic to make a point. At least Pete had his facts down. Your condescension isn't factual nor even relevant to the discussion at hand. And the notion that Obama wanted to keep troops there was anathema to me and to most liberals. KS was right. We should never have been there in the first place.

I am curious, Pete, why do you think Bush made such a time table at the very end of his authority to do so? What would motivate him to endrun Obama at the last minute?

[KS]

As long as Obama and the progressives play the class warfare and spew out all of their false propaganda about paying their fair share, I'll continue to refocus on the truth. Too bad, but the facts get in the way of liberal progressives in this specific political argument.

As I said below, an much better and equitable solution would be to shitcan our current tax code and adopt a flat tax. Show me any Democrats that would go for that idea and I'll be surprised.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

why do you think Bush made such a time table at the very end of his authority to do so? What would motivate him to endrun Obama at the last minute?

Posted by: Truthseeker | January 28, 2012 at 09:13 AM

Truthseeker,
why would you call that an 'endrun' around Pres Obama? Pres Obama had the power to use it or modify as the conditions on the ground changed. that Pres Bush left in place a well coordinated end game for Iraq should be seen as a positive.
Truthseeker, why do you constantly put a negative spin on Pres Bush?

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Truthseeker
Regarding Pres Bush, do you think he 'lied' to get us into Iraq?

[Truthseeker]

I asked a question to Pete. I'll wait for his answer. As for Obama changing it, ask Pete about that. He's the one who gave Bush credit for it. Facts are not "spin."

[Truthseeker]

A question for you, Puget Sound: "endrun" - do you know what that is? How was it not an "endrun" around Obama?

[RQ]

[PSB's]... sudden conversion to liberalism? Interesting that nobody knew until now. Isn't that the surprise here? Isn't that hypocrisy?
Posted by: Truthseeker | January 27, 2012 at 05:15 PM

Nice job, PSB, of backing up your positions with previous posts.

TS, many who are right-leaning centrists are there because we are liberal on social issues, but conservative on fiscal issues. I'm surprised you didn't know that. :)

[Puget Sound Blathers]

A question for you, Puget Sound: "endrun" - do you know what that is? How was it not an "endrun" around Obama?

Posted by: Truthseeker | January 28, 2012 at 10:58 AM

TruthSeeker
You've asked a bushel of questions, would like to see some fairplay on your part and answer a few posed to you.

RQ
Thanks.

[Truthseeker]

Nothing surprises me. Liberal on social issues. That's a broad brush as well. Are you pro gay-marriage, RQ? Since so many social issues demand fiscal leniency, how do you find the two compatible? Isn't that like saying healthcare for everyone but don't ask me to pay for it?

Healthcare is an example and not the question. Take on the larger issue of social liberalism without paying for it.

[Truthseeker]

Taking time to process these posts leads to an interesting conclusion: the importance of words.

"Determined" - Pete says providing a deadline at the end of a term for a new President "determines" the outcome. Puget asks why Obama didn't change it? So who really determined the date on which we would leave Iraq? Have we left Iraq?

You can set a deadline but that doesn't determine the outcome. Look up the meaning of determine, Pete. Puget was right: Obama could have changed it. He did not and thus determined the end date. Except that most of us informed people know that we have left behind a huge base, a struggling government,and roughly 4,000 troops and thousands of private security contractors.

I guess we've left Iraq on Bush's "determined" time table, right Pete?

[KS]

I justified my broad brush on progressives - for the issue of taxation. When you bring up healthcare, you opened up a big-ass can of squiggly worms. I'd call myself a social libertarian/moderate and fiscal conservative.

I go back to PJ O'Rourke's famous quote - "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until there is (so-called) free health-care". Obamacare would be another 1/6 of our economy being controlled by the Federal Government. That is the biggest indictment I have on the current regime in the White House.

[RQ]

TS, your premise that social issues "demand" fiscal leniency is not valid. A most glaring example: throwing money year after year into a myriad of social programs that aren't working is fiscal irresponsibility, and to focus primarily on raising revenue through taxes, without careful examination and prioritization of expenditures, is fiscal stupidity.

[A Day Called X]

The military is a social program.

[Truthseeker]

"throwing money year after year into a myriad of social programs..."

See, that's my point. Broadbrushing...again.

I've been thinking about Puget's claim to being a "Goldwater Conservative." Goldwater voted against the 1964 civil rights act. You say you're a social conservative, use MLK to make your point, and then call yourself a "goldwater conservative?" Sounds like hypocrisy to me.

Good call. X. Pick your social program, RQ. KS is right: it is all a big mess of worms. Unless you're a true progressive - which most people agree stands for liberally taxing for liberal gains for all people (free education, free healthcare, right-of-women to own their own bodies, choose your own marriage partner, choose your own drug, choose your own belief system) - then you are a mix of self-interested desires.

Consistency? Not possible when you are prioritizing according to your own selfish wants.

[Truthseeker]

Social liberalism? Not possible if you are using your belief system to determine other peoples' choices.

I'm leaving No "walt-ism" Puget sound. Which is really nothing more than another put down.

[KS]

Walt has taken a leave of absence and his senses until further notice. Back to the strawman of "the rich need to pay their fair share (a false premise)"

Mark Steyn summarizes and editorializes on class warfare ;

"But why stop there? Americans need affordable health care and affordable master's degrees in climate change and social justice studies, so why not take everything that Warren Buffett's got? After all, if you confiscated the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it would come to $1.5 trillion.

Which is just a wee bit less than the federal shortfall in just one year of Obama-sized budgets. 2011 deficit: $1.56 trillion. But maybe for 2012 a whole new Forbes 400 of Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs will emigrate to the Hamptons and Malibu and keep the class-warfare thing going for a couple more years."

[Puget Sound Blathers]

...and so it goes, Truthseeker.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Truthseeker,
Goldwater of the end was different then he was in 1964. Then he was more of a Libertarian type, the one who thought the best way to improve race relations was without Gov't intervention. He didn't believe in public accommodation laws ie the role of gov't in enforcing same. He was wrong. Very wrong.

In later years he had changed in that regard and in many others such as his support for Gay Rights.

Reading your posts has been revealing.

[Truthseeker]

You thought I was gone...

The subject at hand is not class warfare. Why change it?

As for Goldwater, the same is true of Robert Byrd yet you still call him "sheets" - why?

"Revealing?" About what? Another puzzling last word.

[Truthseeker]

"and so it goes..." What does that mean?

[KS]

TS - There is a connection between class warfare, social programs and throwing money at these entities and or redistributing income. What we have is a Federal Government that has grown to monstrous proportions and corruption, such as picking winners and losers (crony capitalism), lobbyists, etc.

No matter which party controls, that is the problem and unless this problem is effectively dealt with by (gradually, not abruptly) decreasing the size of Federal Government, things will only get worse. The problem with progressives is that they want bigger and more oppressive not smaller government, which means loss of liberty, freedom for all of those under its rule. If progressives changed their agenda to advocating smaller and more limited Federal Government, many of the existing problems would go away. That is a pipe dream right here right now though and the roadmap to cleaner more efficient government is twisty, windy with many turns and a large-scale maze.

[Truthseeker]

Puget: "answer a few posed to you."

Such as?

I answer to point and ignore distractions. What do you want to know?

KS: there's connection between everything - interesting conversations occur when topics are respected and connections relevant.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Barry Godlwater explains why on constitutional grounds he voted against the 1964 Act based off of constitutional grounds (note: every other civil rights act he was presented, he voted 'yes' on)
here, this is Goldwater rationale...I think he was wrong at the time on public accommodations but clearly he isn't a racist as noted by Roy Wilkins NCAAP

Do you have anything other than that to tar Goldwater with as a racist?

[Truthseeker]

"Do you have anything other than that to tar Goldwater with as a racist?"

Where did I tar him?

[Puget Sound Blathers]

truthseeker
so you still hold the view that Goldwater voted for racial reasons?

[KS]

KS: there's connection between everything - interesting conversations occur when topics are respected and connections relevant.

Posted by: Truthseeker | January 28, 2012 at 03:51 PM

I realize that it is difficult for you to get your arms around the topic, but there is a connection. How did we manage to survive back in the late 60's and early 70's when government was way smaller ? This topic will be back because in case you didn't notice, that is what the 2012 election is about.

Goldwater probably had constitutional reasons to vote against the Civil rights act, but that didn't stop a majority of Republicans from supporting it. Goldwater's presidential campaign was pretty much a disaster - he must not have sent a clear message as people were scared of him as he did not address the claims that he was an extremist from what I read, kinda like they are scared of a certain GOP candidate for POTUS now.

[Truthseeker]

Where did I say that?

[Puget Sound Blathers]

KS
coming off the Kennedy Assassination in Nov of 63, there was little hope of any Repub beating LBJ at that point in time. Goldwater knew it at the time.

TS
So what is this 'social conservative' you labeled me with. It doesn't quite wash.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

I am still waiting for your answer, do you think that Pres Bush lied to get us in to the Iraq War?

Do you support the USA Patiot Act that Pres Obama reauthorized?

Do you support the use of Predator Drones in Pakistan?

Do you support the war in Afghanistan. Is it a winnable war, and if not, when should we pull out?

[Truthseeker]

I haven't labeled you anything. I take issue with you labeling yourself a social liberal.

I'll attempt to bring this back to a linear place: I did not characterize or mischaracterize anybody. I merely pointed out that you called yourself a "goldwater conservative" and that goldwater voted against the 1964 civil rights bill.

Calling yourself socially liberal and a "goldwater conservative" is contradictory. He was far right for his time and easily defeated by Lyndon B. Johnson. Per Wikipedia, he organized a coalition to fight the New Deal. That is not socially liberal.

Why he voted against the Civil Rights Act is irrelevant. Choosing to leave civil rights up to states' rights is a nice distraction but doesn't do much for Blacks.

I'm all for his becoming more liberal as he got older. "Goldwater conservatism" denotes his 1964 conservative stand. You can't have it both ways. He was against the New Deal. Are you against New Deal programs? Those are the criteria one has to answer honestly to be considered socially liberal.

When you say "it doesn't quite wash" I wonder if you understand it yourself.