Ah, yes. No wonder he couldn’t do it in 152 death sentences. The poor bastard’s hands were tied.
Well he’s made hay as president.
Almost 3,000 of our military dead, tens of thousands blinded, paralyzed, or deafened, or lost limbs, or maimed in some way, and countless Iraqis, killed injured and severely crippled, all because he wanted to go to war so bad, he lied his way into it.
And now that he once again finds himself over his head, Daddy Bush has to send his people in to bail him out.
I can only speculate. My speculation is that people reflexively feel contempt for Bush, and are guided by that, rather than investigating the actual facts.
We see what appears to be this attitude in your post. Even when apprised of the facts – even when you’ve been told that the Texas Constitution does NOT give the governor unilateral power to pardon – you resist accepting this fact, instead arguing that it must NOT be so, because people hold Bush in contempt.
The error in your reasoning should be obvious.
I am an ardent opponent of the death penalty. I have criticized Bush for his general support of the death penalty, and will continue to do so. But I won’t criticize Bush for specifically failing to pardon anyone in Texas, because I know that he could not legally do so absent the requisite action by the Board of Pardons and Paroles.
And here, rather than explicitly and sincreely acknowledging you were wrong, you sidestep your own error and criticize Bush for another set of sins. This, too, suggests my earlier thesis was correct.
Whoa! Watch Owl dodge! Dodge, Owl, dodge!
It seems so simple and so obvious, I didn’t feel it needed mention.
Bush could have simply let the Board of Pardons and Paroles know that he thinks a defendant deserves a commutation and asks them for the requisite vote.
But no.
“I’m confident,” he said last February, “that every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged, and has had full access to the courts.”
What does “…full access to the courts” mean? In my book, a fair trial. And yet:
"The State of Texas is a national embarrassment in the area of indigent legal services," a committee of the State Bar of Texas says in a report just approved. Again, Governor Bush has shown no concern about this reality. He vetoed a bill, passed by the legislature, that would have let Texas counties set up a limited public defender program for the poor.
Bush just doesn’t care. He took 152 lives and never lifted a finger to save one of them.
Then along comes 9/11 and Bush is so hot to go to war he sends our people in without body armor and their vehicles without armor. Many get killed or maimed because of it.
He prosecutes the whole war on the cheap so his rich buddies can get their tax cuts.
Bush doesn’t give a damn for those guys and gals doing the fighting - to say nothing of the innocent Iraqis who’ve suffered as well.
The man’s a monster, kiddo.
I realize this is MPSIMS, and not GD. Yet you are advancing arguments, providing facts that you wish your reader to draw inferences from – inferences favorable to your proposed conclusions. In short, you are treating this as a debate. Because of this, I do not feel the use of MPSIMS as a forum should insulate you from the requirements of a debate.
If your thesis is that Bush’s support of the death penalty makes him a monster, I don’t agree. People who support the death penalty are wrong – as wrong as they can be. Yet they are not monsters – they are simply wrong. They are acting in good faith, as reasonably as they can; they are simply mistaken.
If your thesis is more narrow – that we may infer from his tenure as Texas governor that he supports the death penalty. I agree.
The problem was this: you suggested we infer from his failure to commute death sentences as Texas governor that he was morally bereft, especially given his faux “pardon” of Thanksgiving turkeys. Now that you’ve been shown that Texas governors don’t have that ability, rather than simply admit you made a mistake, you’ve danced around the issue, thrown up other attacks at Bush having nothing to do with Texas or turkeys, and refused to acknowledge that you’re moving the goalposts.
If your debate is that Bush, as a result of all his actions as President, or just as a result of Iraq war, is morally bereft, you certainly entitled to argue that; you’ll find a great deal of support on this board for that view. But it’s not where you started, and shifting the debate to that proposition now, after losing your original point, is not particularly useful, since most every reader of this thread is well-versed in the practice of rhetoric and can easily identify the tactic.
This one, I think, is not suited for either of those forums.
Moved from MPSIMS to the Pit.
How would such a request have been received by the board? How independent of gubernatorial influence is it – rather, was it when Bush was governor? Any Texans or other knowledgeable folks able to answer these questions?
If Bush truly couldn’t sway the board to recommend clemency, then that removes any remaining grounds for criticizing his failure to grant it. It still doesn’t absolve him of the charge of callous disregard based on his petty, juvenile mocking of Tucker and his insistence that the justice system worked flawlessly in every case.
So, you’re saying the Texas state constitution should be amended to require the governor to eat the executed??
I know Frank has already moved this thread, but since the reported posts came to me while it was originally in MPSIMS, I thought I’d cowboy-up and take care of the copyright issue.
So, while I know you did attribute the text in your post (post #10 in this thread), BarnOwl, please just quote a portion of a copyrighted article and link to the rest. Simply giving a credit is not enough to stave off any copyright violations.
Texas governors do indeed have the ability to get a death sentence commuted or maybe even pardoned. You refuse to consider what I said previously:
"Bush could have simply let the Board of Pardons and Paroles know that he thinks a defendant deserves a commutation and asks them for the requisite vote."
A seat on the board is a sinecure, a plum.
Now let’s say the governor asks for the vote to enable him to show mercy to a particular person on death row, and the board tells him no. The governor lets it be known to the people on the board, that unless they cooperate, they might lose their jobs. I think they’d soon see the light. And if they didn’t?
Soon after, when the Board of Pardons and Paroles reconvenes, now with certain hostile parties replaced, don’t you think Bush would then get that vote? Yes he would. And every time thereafter.
It’s politics, to be sure, but it is reasonable, it is humane. And it is exactly what Texas needed - a governor who wants justice even for poor people who’ve been convicted of crimes they haven’t committed.
You’re right, I was remiss. I apologize and won’t do it again.
I thought you were gone today; there must be a misprint on my scorecard.
Is anyone advancing the notion that if GeeDubya had the power to commute sentences, he would have? Seems to me if you’re eager to point out that he hadn’t the power to do so, you are implying that he might have done, if he only had the option. Frankly, I think not.
It would have taken him maybe half an hour to find out the ugly truth about Texas criminal justice. He could have spent some time reading up on the lives wrecked by the Tulia, Texas, drug kingpin fiasco. Or the guy convicted on capital murder charges whose lawyer fell asleep during the proceedings. (I swear, I am not making this up!)
And yet he stands there and states, without a hint of irony, his complete and utter faith in that system. Please.
Sure, sure. And since every single Texas governor, Democrat and Republican, used exactly those tactics until Bush came along, you’re right.
Oh, wait.
Ann Richards had just as much chance as Bush did to execute the plan you outline. She doesn’t seem to have done so… the inhuman monster.
Bill Clements was the first Republican governor of Texas since Reconstruction. Obviously, as an Evil Republican, it’s no surprise he ALSO failed to use your technique, eh?
But what’s Democrat Mark White’s excuse? Or Democrat Dolph Briscoe’s? In fairness, Briscoe had fewer chances, since he was governor during the brief period between Gregg and Furman when the US Supreme Court outlawed ALL executions.
Preston Smith, Democrat doesn’t seem to have used your system either.
Why is your ire directed at Bush, when NO TEXAS GOVERNOR EVER has seen the wisdom of adopting your suggested approach?
For one thing, Bricker, power in Texas swings between two political poles, the Conservative and the Reactionary. The late Ann Richards, bless her soul, was the closest thing to a “Democrat” in a long time, maybe ever. Her career is an example of what happens when a whole bunch of money hates your guts.
All of the above, GW included, were awash in a Texas culture that positively exults in capital punishment. So while I’m disappointed in Ms Richards that she didn’t do more, the fact that GeeDubya didn’t do anything at all doesn’t surprise me in the least.
That’s fine – and I absolutely agree that the … bloodlust, if you will … exhibited for the death penalty in Texas is abysmal. I tell you now that getting an anti-death-penalty Democrat to run for national office would be a pretty good way to get me to hold my nose and vote ‘D’; the death penalty is a stain on a moral society.
But it’s intellectually dishonest to inveigh only against Bush for this, when no governor has EVER taken the steps BarnOwl suggests.
So if we add et. al. to the indictment, will Counsel be satisfied?
How about this plan? Let’s say you quit making stuff up about how it actually works in that particular state. You were provided with information about when a Texas Governor may reprieve a death row inmate. You then make up this nifty little scenario that has zero to do with reality.
But since you’ve ventured into the land of make-believe, let’s not stop at just one condition (Yes, I did hear almost that identical line in a DVD of Divine Comedy, the comedy troupe from BYU). Let’s say the Governor not only lets it be known that they’ll be canned if they don’t vote his way but tells him that in writing. Let’s say that at least one of the board members takes umbrage at that and then requests his representative in the Texas legislature to initiate impeachment proceedings.
And, in an effort to bring you back to reality, here’s a link to the “sinecure.”
No, because the Latin word “et” is not an abbreviation. 