Bookmarks:
There’s no humane way to carry out the death penalty. • The focal issue for the midterm elections • U.S. “torture” isn’t new. • Misleading headline •

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There’s no humane way to carry out the death penalty

Says Eugene Robinson, “No one who supports the death penalty should have the slightest problem with the way Clayton Lockett died.”

And I don’t.

Robinson presents a fair summary of the issues, and of these convicts’ crimes. He and I merely take opposite stands on the death penalty.

I have no problem with a return, if need be, to hanging, the firing squad, or even the guillotine. Yes, there is no humane way to end a life.

If lethal injection is the choice, I don’t see why it should be so complicated. What’s wrong with a single dose of morphine?

Related: A case for the death penalty

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What working people will vote for this November

(1) I’m no fan of the AFL-CIO.

(2) I agree that the focal issue facing the midterm elections is the creation of living-wage jobs. God, I’d like to find one.

(3) I don’t expect anyone to follow Big Labor’s “party line,” but are there enough “working people” left in this country to constitute a political force?

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Fine Print: U.S. can’t seem to shake the ‘water cure’ as a method of interrogation

Walter Pincus demonstrates that the U.S. has an extensive history of using “torture.”

I am interested in his conclusion:

“While serving in the Army Counterintelligence Corps 58 years ago, I was trained as an interrogator. My training emphasized developing a rapport with a subject over time to help get needed information.

“But in a battlefield situation or facing the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack, I honestly can’t say what I would do.

“It’s under such horrible circumstances — perhaps in the immediate aftermath of a biological weapons attack or dirty nuclear bomb — that presidents and lawmakers will find their positions truly tested.

“As will we all.”

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President Obama Asked to Block BBC Show ‘Top Gear’ That Allegedly Used Racist Term

The headline is misleading: “President Obama” is the object, not the subject, of the verb “Asked.”

And here we have political correctness run somewhat amok.

And a good illustration, perhaps, of the difference between American and other understandings of “free speech.”

This U.K. activist law firm, Equal Justice, does not understand much about U.S. law. The President certainly has no authority to ban any television show, and I really don’t think even this President would on the basis of anyone’s completing the sentence, “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, …”

I am surprised Variety, let alone Yahoo!, saw this as news.

(Originally posted 05/26/14.)