It is but a small step then to privatizing the state police or even the various metropolitan police departments. Blackwater, I am sure, would love to get the juicy contract, the license to kill and get paid for it. In that event, the march toward fascism will have been completed. Life in America will have become a nightmare for everyone but an elite of about one to five percent of the population. The streets will be patrolled by armor-plated Blackwater goon squads and other gung ho gun nuts for whom human life means little to nothing.
In the meantime, the words of the late Molly Ivins seem prescient, a plaintive warning about the breakdown of law and order that follows from the complete and institutional breakdown of the rule of law. We will have the right-wing to blame for having made of America the ugliest police state in the history of the world.
In the meantime, the words of the late Molly Ivins seem prescient, a plaintive warning about the breakdown of law and order that follows from the complete and institutional breakdown of the rule of law. We will have the right-wing to blame for having made of America the ugliest police state in the history of the world.
The notorious inability of prosecutors to admit that they are ever wrong is a fact of life. What is far more horrifying is the refusal of judges and courts to look at evidence that proves innocence. Can you imagine how that must feel - to be in prison for a crime you didn't commit and to finally be able to prove it, only to have a court refuse to consider the evidence? Most of this is a consequence of a noxious law that Congress rushed through after the Oklahoma City bombing. Called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the law was aimed at the ability of federal judges to second-guess state courts and at the ability of prisoners to file endless habeas corpus claims challenging the constitutionality of their convictions.A day after the United States Supreme Court halted an execution in Texas, that medieval state made public more plans to murder more people in the name of state and justice.
Though several other states are halting lethal injections until it is clear whether they are constitutional, Texas is taking a different course, risking a confrontation with the court.This latest outrage points up an interesting and apparent correlation between Bush's failed "war on terrorism" and the equally failed "war on crime" in Texas. Now, of course, Texas' prison virus will spread across the prison nation that Bush and his ilk --the GOP --has made of America.
"The Supreme Court's decision to stay convicted murderer Carlton Turner's execution will not necessarily result in an abrupt halt to Texas executions," said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas. "State and federal courts will continue to address each scheduled execution on a case-by-case basis."--Texas Planning New Execution Despite Ruling, New York Times
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