The conservative method of controlling the discussion seems to be reliant on the idea of making absurd statements early and then repeating them loudly. No more ridiculous has been the late "culture of life" mantra.
Especially when George Bush and Jeb Bush have overseen far more death than the vast majority of Americans. And I can show this without even having to mention "Iraq" or "War".
While Bush was governor of Texas, the state executed over 150 people. His signature was the final approval needed for these people to die, and did he accept that pen with all the respect and attention to human life that it deserved? Of course not.
"A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute," Berlow writes. "In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence."
From
here.
That Gonzales is the same one you're thinking of, naturally. Funny how things work out, isn't it?
And how did Bush treat the mentally challenged when he was governor? Certainly worse than Schiavo:
A prisoner named Emile Duhamel, for example, with severe psychological disabilities and an IQ of 56, died in his Texan death-row jail cell in July 1998. Authorities blamed "natural causes" but a lack of air conditioning in cells that topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a summer heat wave may have killed Duhamel instead. How many other Texan prisoners died of such neglect during Bush's governorship is unclear.
And while I'm not going to mention certain recent events this article certainly does.
And Florida? Here is a list of all the state-sponsored executions since 1976. So when a Floridian is waving a big sign asking "Who made the Judges God?" ... someone should be waving back "The Taxpayers of Florida". And the fallability of that system? Staggering:
In a follow-up to a study released in 2000 by Colombia University scholars Florida again emerges as one of the states with the highest error rates in death sentencing. In "A Broken System, Part II," the authors of the two reports, which earlier found that an astounding 74% of Florida death sentences are overturned due to constitutional errors, the authors spell out why they think such high error rates occur. In the study, Florida's Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), Hillsborough County (Tampa), and Polk County are named among the ten worst in the country, due to that fact that "These counties had an average capital error rate of 71% at the first and last appeal stages, and eight of them put a total of 16 people on death row who were later found not guilty."
From here.
Culture of Life? CULTURE OF LIFE? Only by turning a blind eye can people say that with a straight face. Insisting that Terry Schiavo is a matter of national importance while an innocent man dies in state executions isn't is hubris on a biblical scale.