(http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4244969.html)
Ride high, little governor, ride high on the tide of hate and fear. Maybe you will touch the sky.
You know, Minnesota’s lack of the Death Penalty is one of the few good things this state has going for it. Now, Pawlenty has to go and try to ruin that. He said earlier that he doesn’t think that sex offenders are going to stop after they get out of prison. Is he a psychiatrist? Does he even have more than rudimentary knowledge of sex offenders’ psyches? I don’t think so.
It used to be progressive here. It really did.
This all came about because of Dru Sjodin. If it hadn’t been for her, he would have kept his mouth shut.
I can’t help but wonder if he was waiting for something like Dru to happen so he could jump on it. What sickens me (and a lot of people) is that Dru has NOT been found, and so far we have heard nothing from the police… so he is not being particularly encouraging to the family by assuming she’s dead (I think she is, too, but I wouldn’t make a public declaration of it).
As for Minnesota, your right. Conceal and carry, cutting social programs and higher ed, teaching creation in schools, ruining the economy, limiting women’s right to choose, the death penalty… Pawlenty is leaving quite a lot of rubble in his wake. If I have to live in Alabama, at least it should be warm, damn it. But that’s a topic for the pit.
eli (may I call you Eli?), everything I want to say about it belongs in the Pit.
I prefer to be called “mr fanatic,” at least to another mr, mr babbington. 
What Pawlenty didn’t mention in his self-righteous little tirade was his own plan earlier this year to quietly release 190 diagnosed “sexual psychpaths” from state treatment centers as part of his massive budget cuts. The Democrats screamed bloody murder and Pawlenty had to back off the plan. I suspect that his lynching speech today was a preemptive attempt to distract everybody from that little embarrassment.
I also think it’s disgusting that this guy they just arrested in Grand Forks has yet to be even charged much less convicted of anything and everybody in the media is assuming that he’s guilty. The police have yet to release any evidence that he was involved in the Sjodin disapperance other than that he was a level 3 sex offender and he was at Columbia Mall that day.
I heard John Gibson (one of the B-team tools from Fox News) today trying to make an argument that the suspect should be tortured in order to extract information about the victim. It was absurd.
Didn’t know anything about the guy except the ® by his name. But hey, I’m an open minded sort of fellow, willing to listen. After all, he was elected by Minnesotans, a fairly level headed lot for the most part, how bad could it be?
Lord.
But to leverage this horror for political advantage is obscene. Just putrid. Reminds me of Newt Gangrene claiming that the woman who drowned her two sons was “just what happens under a Democratic administration.” Shit like this makes the Baby Jesus puke his little guts out.
The only thing that could suck worse would be trying to rush this through so it will be available when we convict the guy. That would suck worse.
I wait in dread.
Unfortunately I think it might really go through. People love to kill people, especially in a self-righteous rage.
It definitely seems like a “OK, round up the usual suspects” sort of thing. Never mind he’s probably a janitor at the mall.
And torture? By god, if it was a black girl from Cedar-Riverside, no one would have batted an eye.
You’re shitting me. You just gotta be shitting me!
I think its time to start checking for pods.
Dio, do you have a cite for the story about the sexual psychopaths and Pawlenty?
Re: Fox News. I didn’t know Dru was national news. The pitiful city of Grand Forks only flickers on the national consciousness when its pretty girls are kidnapped or its under 8 feet of water.
I shit you not, 'lucy. He went on and on about he had a guest on…that Judge Anthony Napoleon or Napoliatano or whatever the fuck it is. He kept trying to convince the judge that cops ought to torture the guy to get information. At one point Gibson yelled “…if a girl’s LIFE is at stake who CARES what happens to this guy?”
to which the judge replied “the Constitution cares.”
And that judge is a conservative.
When was this, Diogenes?
Eli:
Here is the MPR article which ran shortly after pawlenty’s plan was found out and started to back off of it. The original Strib article exposing the plan is in the pay archives if you have an account.
This afternoon.
Ah. I see that article is written by Laura McCallum. I know her from college. Small world.
Well, just because there’s no funding for a program doesn’t necessarily mean it has to dissolve! The Pubbies are very creative people, very inventive, they can come with some alternative. Maybe one of those loudspeaker sound trucks:
"Good morning, Cloquet! At noon today, we are releasing Sid “the Slime” Sanford - mother raper, father stabber and psychopath - in downtown Cloquet. We have no more money to spend on him, so we’re letting him go. Here. At noon.
Now, if by some lucky chance, some civic-minded people could raise, say, $124,312.45…well, maybe we could work something out!"
“Good morning, Cloquet…”
That’s the thing. We will be able to tell the alien invaders from their inability to come up with ideas as stupid as this. Be reassured that all this nonsense is 100% pure human.
Hmm. Not that reassuring, actually.
The death penalty is a frightening example of the willingness of the people to get someone else to push the button.
It’s uglier when it’s pushed in as the result of one high-profile case, rather than careful consideration. I acknowledge that there is a rational case to be made for the death penalty, though I do not agree with that case. But this story exemplifies what’s wrong with the system: reasoned debate falls by the wayside, overcome with what can only be described as bloodlust.
- Rick
Doesn’t it seem like not too long ago, lots of Americans were intent upon crucifying another convict for another abduction, oh, somewhere in Utah?
All this hand-wringing is distracting from the only thing that will do any good, the search for the missing person.