AtDTDA 212 Governor of Jeshimon

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

                In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, 
                a number of protesters came to Austin to 
                demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. 
                "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush 
                whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't 
                meet with any of them", he snaps, as though 
                I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive 
                question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry 
                King either when he came down for it. I watched 
                his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her 
                real difficult questions like, 'What would you say 
                to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" 
                I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips 
                pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" 
                I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a 
                condemned prisoner who has since been 
                executed seems odd and cruel — because he 
                immediately stops smirking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla_Faye_Tucker

                Who IS Alberto Gonzales?

               While Bush was Governor of Texas from 
               1994 - 1999, there were over 150 capital 
               punishment executions -- a number that 
               was described by Alan Berlow of The 
               Atlantic Monthly as "a record unmatched 
               by any other governor in modern American 
               history." As Governor, Bush had the power 
               to grant clemency for any of these executions, 
               yet he granted clemency for only one. From 
               1995 - 1997, it was Gonzales, in his role as 
               (prior to becoming Secretary of State) who 
               was in a position to draft legal documents 
               for Bush as to whether clemency should be 
               granted or if the execution should proceed.  

http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070307_gonzales_alberto.html


                February 14, 2007

                Racism and Corruption in Tulia

                Texas Injustice in Black and White

                By J. L. CHESTNUT, Jr.

                I have a deep and troubling concern in the 
                law's racist involvement with death: 
                executions. I also have a deep and troubling 
                concern in what too often passes for legal 
                justice for black folks and poor folks. Texas l
                ed the nation in executions when George W. 
                Bush was Governor, and that state then and 
                now, is in the business of killing primarily 
                young African-American and Mexicans males. 
                Take a look at so-called justice, Texas style.

http://www.counterpunch.org/chestnut02142007.html


               We beg your pardon

               By DALE McFEATTERS

               Hardly had the guilty verdict come in on 
               Scooter Libby than President Bush's 
               conservative Republican fan base began 
               clamoring for an immediate pardon for the 
               one-time vice-presidential chief of staff. . . .

               . . . .As governor of Texas, Bush was equally 
              as sparing with his clemency powers and 
              presided over 152 executions, a modern record.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cm/content/view/197/159

               Bush refused to save her life, and Tucker 
               became the first woman executed in Texas 
               since the Civil War.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17507199/site/newsweek/page/3/

               They all lived in fear of the Governor, forever to and 
               fro in Jeshimon and apt to arrive anywhere in town 
               without warning. What impressed a first-time viewer 
               was not any natural charisma, for he had none, but 
               rather a keen sense of something wrong in his 
               appearance, something pre-human in the face, the 
               sloping forehead and clean-shaven upper lip, which 
               for any reason, or none, would start back into a 
               simian grin which was suppressed immediately, 
               producing a kind of dangerous smirk that often 
               lingered for hours, and which, when combined with 
               a glistening stare, was enough to unnerve the boldest 
               of desperadoes. Though he believed that the power 
               that God had allowed to find its way to him required a 
               confident swagger, his gait was neither earned nor, 
               despite years of practice, authentic, having progressed 
               in fact little beyond an apelike truge. The reason he 
               styled himself the Governor and not President or King 
               was a matter of executive clemency. The absolute 
               power of life and death enjoyed ba a Govenor within 
               his territory had its appeal. He traveled always with 
               his "clemency secretary," a cringing weasel named 
               Flagg, whose job it was to review each day's 
               population of identified malefactors and point with 
               his groomed little head at those to be summarily 
               put to death, often by the Governor himself, though, 
               being a notoriously bad shot, he preferred not to 
               have a crowd around for that. "Clemency" was 
               allowing some to wait a day or two before they were 
               executed, the number of buzzards and amount of 
               tower space being finite. AtD 212

               Published on Saturday, June 17, 2000 in the 
               New York Times
               Texas Executions:
               GW Bush Has Defined Himself, Unforgettably, 
               As Shallow And Callous
               by Anthony Lewis

http://www.commondreams.org/views/061700-102.htm

               Bush has two vulnerabilities he can't disguise: 
               He's the son of George H.W. Bush, and he's 
               chief executive officer of the Texas death industry. . . .

http://www.commondreams.org/views/020900-105.htm

               On the morning of May 6, 1997, Governor George 
               W. Bush signed his name to a confidential 
               three-page memorandum from his legal counsel, 
               Alberto R. Gonzales, and placed a bold black 
               check mark next to a single word: DENY. It was 
               the twenty-ninth time a death-row inmate's plea 
               for clemency had been denied in the twenty-eight 
               months since Bush had been sworn in. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200307/berlow

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/tslac/20096/tsl-20096.html