AtDTDA 212 Governor of Jeshimon

Joseph T brook7 at sover.net
Mon Mar 12 11:49:00 CDT 2007


On Mar 11, 2007, at 12:12 AM, Joseph T wrote:

> This was brilliant. Just  too dead on  to be anything else.
> On Mar 9, 2007, at 1:32 PM, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>
>>                 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
>

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