And I was just *this far * from closing the deal! 'Smatta you?
On the first point, if Tucker’s repentance were true and her faith genuine, she was no doubt confident, as would I be in her shoes, that she could appear before the Judge of all the Earth and say: “I did wrong. I am sorry. I have paid the penalty that Man imposes. Against You only have I sinned and done evil in Your sight, and I crave your pardon.” - and, upon receiving the same, enter into an eternal bliss dimmed not one whit by the fact that she left Earth earlier than she might have done.
I personally doubt that you would argue, for any purpose other than Bush-bashing, that people who profess Christianity should receive more lenient treatment than those who don’t.
But the point is, you’re getting your ass kicked in this thread, and it’s quite funny to watch.
**Malacandra **already said it better than I could. I’ll just add that “forgivenness” is not a Get Out Of Jail Free card and shouldn’t exempt anyone from secular punishment.
I’m not a “Bush defender.” But to answer your question, Bush is “held in contempt” for a lot of things by a lot of people who seem to seize upon anything they don’t like about him and use it as additional fuel for the bonfire of their contempt.
Dumbasses like you who have to shit in the pumpkin pie by comparing some kind of imaginary “pardons record” to a quaint, sixty-year-old Presidental tradition aren’t any different.
I don’t think a Turkey ever brutally murdered people and ruined countless other people’s lives. But I’m not defending Bush, just the point of the death penalty.
Sine no one mentioned this yet: that’s an opinion piece, not an article. Surely you kow the difference.
Oh. BTW, the turkey pardoning thing dates from 1947 under president Truman. It’s a silly tradition, but one that we seem to be stuck with. It has nothing to do with Bush.
Well, most representatives of Meleagrididae gallopavo are not particularly violent, I grant.
But how is that relevant? Are we really saying that we put human beings to death simply for revenge for their prior violent acts? If not, then what point of the death penalty, precisely, are you defending?
Question-nowadays, the White House turkey wouldn’t really be presented to them live, even if the pardon wasn’t a tradition, would it?
It’s a really stupid tradition. For one thing, it’s not like the turkeys live to a ripe old age; they’re almost universally dead by the next Thanksgiving, since the giant-breasted turkeys bred for Thanksgiving consumption get too heavy to move themselves around if they live past harvest time. (Both of last year’s pardoned turkeys, Marshmallow and Yam, have since joined the flock invisible.)
For another thing, there’s approximately a 100.0% chance that some turkey somewhere gave his life for the President’s dinner yesterday. Nothing wrong with that; my family and I cooked three of them. But unless the President and his family then decide to go veggie for the day, it makes it a particularly meaningless gesture.
I’d love for the next President to say, “Pardon? Fuck that! Let’s get that bitch plucked and brined.”
(And before anyone asks, no, this is not Bush’s fault. It’s silly no matter who does it.)
Egg-fucking-zactly. I am a strong opponent of the death penalty, but why there was such a hubbub over Karla Faye Tucker, specifically, is beyond me. So one of the people who got death sentences allegedly turned religious, and that should somehow exonerate her? Bullshit. The same people screaming for her pardon would have screamed for a painful execution of anyone who did exactly the same thing but didn’t belong to their particular flavour of religion.
Wouldn’t a Governor commuting the death-sentence of a murderer because of Jesus’s words of forgiveness be a violation of seperation of church and state?
And actually Gov. Bush did overturn one death sentence because the evidence came forth that the convicted, who was probably guilty of many other crimes even more severe, could not have committed the murder for which he was sentenced to death. Bush got assurance from his legal staff that this guy’s other convictions would guarantee him life without parole & so overturned the sentence. That was why Henry Lee Lucas died in prison.
And he commuted the sentenced (not overturned it) only after the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole voted to recommend commuting Lucas’s death sentence to life imprisonment.
Bush-Haters, please do a favour to your fellows; despise him for what he has actually done, not for what he has been percieved to have done. Learn the facts and hate him for them, not some errounious reporting. Whether she deserved death or not, his mocking of Tucker deserves ridicule, his upholding of Texas law does not.
Do I think him either a liar or a fool?; yes. But not for upholding the systems he has been “voted” into.
Peace -DESK
I would argue that none of those killed lifted a finger to save any of their victims. why should we or Bush give a shit about them?
And yeah, Jesus said forgive, and? The Bible says alot of crazy things. You can’t use what you want to support your case and ignore the rest. Are you saying we should follow every single rule or command in the Bible? You dont get it both ways.
I dislike Bush for alot of things, this just aint one of them.
What exactly is any Texas governor supposed to do? As a Catholic I’ve often wondered what I would do in an executive position. What if I were governor of a state where I had unlimited power to grant clemency? Morally and religiously I oppose the death penalty, but would it not be an inappropriate use of my pardon and clemency powers to grant clemency to every single person on death row simply because my religious and moral beliefs preclude me from supporting the death penalty?
How many people would argue that is an extreme example of violation of separation of church and state (I don’t think it would be, actually, but that’s beside the point)? How much would this hurt my political career? Would it completely destroy my ability to be reelected?
If it was in Texas, and I ran with that as part of my platform, I’d never get elected. Is it unthinkable that I should just bite the bullet and accept, as a gubernatorial candidate, that in my particular state the overwhelming majority of the public and the legislature supports capital punishment, and thus using common sense, there is nothing to be gained from me opposing it?
I don’t think absolutists can be politicians, you have to bend on some of your convictions or you will either never be elected, or when you are you will be completely powerless because you lack the ability to compromise. [I’m almost certain you or someone else wants to bring up the fact that Bush never compromises, I’ll just say that isn’t the case and he has compromised quite a bit during his Presidency, most often with members of his own party.]
If I’m running for governor, hopefully at least some of it is because I feel it is my civic responsibility, and that I can do a lot of good things for my state. Should I sacrifice any possibility of improving my state in a fruitless and politically suicidal battle over capital punishment, that I could never win?
I think that’s the sort of situation a Texas governor faces, capital punishment is by and large out of the hands of the executive, it is a legislative matter. And while governors do get some legislative influence in most states, that doesn’t mean the separation of powers doesn’t exist, nor does it mean the governor has a responsibility to commit political suicide by trying to push through legislative initiatives that are widely unpopular and unacceptable to the constituents in question.
I don’t think any one is ignoring the fact that Bush supports capital punishment. Bash him for that if you want, but don’t bash him for not offering pardons or clemencies when he did not have the power to do either unilaterally.
Interestingly enough, there was a race here in Virginia with this very issue as one of the major points of debate; the Democratic candidate and our current governor, Tim Kaine, ended up having to defend his personal beliefs against the death penalty saying, in effect, that even though he is against the death penalty in his personal beliefs he will still sign every death order that crossed his desk (of course, his support of that statement is debatable, but that’s another thread). If he had tried to stick to his convictions, he’d have had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected governor in Virginia… we love ourselves a good hangin’ almost as much as them Texans.
Seriously though, a governor who abuses that power is just as dispicable as activist judges, except in the opposite capacity; where one undermines the legislative process, the other undermines the judicial process. If a man can be convicted by a jury of his peers, sentenced to death, and then let off because the governor has moral or religious objections, it kind of makes the whole process seem pointless, doesn’t it? If a governor really has objections to the process, he should try to get new legislation drafted or get an amendment to the state constitution on the next ballot.
As for the ascertion that Bush didn’t lift a finger to save any of the 152, for those supporting this assertion, can you provide an example of any of those that SHOULD have been saved? So far, I’ve seen one example, but she was clearly guilty, from what I’ve drawn here, and thus doesn’t fit the bill. Was there a case where new evidence showed up that demonstrated the convicted’s innocence or at least warranting a new trial? Was there a case with serious controversy about the jury’s decision, the court procedings, corruption, or other such that might have cast doubt on the conviction and/or sentencing? A claim for a lack of clemency is only meaningful if there are situations upon which the claim. If, in each situation, none of those given the death penality is anything short of “guilty as sin”, then there is no evidence to either support your claim or refute your claim.
Is it just me or does this OP remind anyone else of reader’s infamous OP about the Bush daughter sticking out her tongue? Sorry, can’t link… seems to have been deleted
If the person was innocent they should be released, not just have their sentence commutted, n’est ce pas? In the Carla Faye Tucker debacle, the arguement for commutation wasn’t, IIRC, the concept she was innocent, or there might not have been a fair trial, but more that the person she was now was not the same as she’d been then, that she’d rehabilitated herself and could do good in the world, even though incarcerated.
innocence/potential or not is not the only reason to be taken off death row.
Not sure I agree.
Activist judges do, as you correctly point out, usurp their roles as interpreters of the law when they inject their own desires for a particular result into the process and skew their decisions to support that end goal.
But a governor is different. The law clearly states that he has the power to pardon or commute under certain circumstances – in Texas, of course, that power is not unilateral; in other states, it is. Just as the legislators are correctly excercising their roles if they pass laws outlawing the deat penalty, the governor is correctly exercising his role if he pardons or commutes sentences in accord with his own discretion. It’s true that by doing this, he may thwart the will of the populace – but the populace has a remedy: they may remove him from office. Ask Gray Davis how effective that remedy can be.
A governor is also corrrectly executing his role if he chooses never to pardon anyone, confident that the death penalty is legally and morally being applied correctly.
That’s the perk of being elected as the chief executive – you get to wield that authority.
This, I suppose, is a difference in our beliefs. Personally, I support the use of the death penalty for appropriate cases; I do not believe any amount of reform after the fact removes the burden of the crime. That is, I believe the purpose of the punishment is not to “reform” but to correct the injustice. I just can’t see the logic or morality in saying in one breath someone deserves to die and then in the next saying “unless you’re really, really sorry”. I see that more as a concession potentially made by someone who generally opposes the death penalty for moral reasons, but realizes that sometimes its all but a necessity. … but I feel as though I’m not adequately understanding your position, can you clarify if that is the case?
As a Christian myself, I’m glad that she appeared to have become one. However, while God has the “luxury” of being able to see into her heart and determine if she is truly repentent, we as humans do not. Considering the number of people who have used religion, and Christianity specifically, for financial, political, and other such gains, it is duly unjust to grant her any special preferences for making any religious claims. As I am unsure of what the general concensus is on the aforementioned rehabilitation as a cause to commute the death penalty, for the sake of this point, what other evidence is there that she reformed? And, since it obviously wasn’t enough for the board, why should it have been enough to convince Bush?