OMG. I agree with right-wing commentator Byron York and libertarian judge Alex Kozinski (and I see Markos does too):
The surreal national debate over the death penalty reached a climax of sorts Wednesday afternoon in a prison execution chamber in Florence, Ariz [over the execution of double murderer Joseph Wood]....
The botched execution by lethal injection has restarted the debate over capital punishment:
"The death penalty simply has no place in this country," said Brian Stull, an attorney for the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project. "As method after method of state-sponsored killing has been deemed barbaric and archaic, states are left scrambling to invent new ways to execute."....
Alex Kozinski, chief of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was one of the jurists who listened to Wood's plea for a stay of execution based on concerns about the lethal injection drugs....
Kozinski focused his dissent on the broader issue of lethal injection. Older, now-abandoned methods — hanging, firing squads, the electric chair, the gas chamber — were all devised specifically to kill people, he wrote, and did so pretty well. But lethal injection took drugs originally intended to save lives and used them to kill.
"Subverting medicines meant to heal the human body to the opposite purpose was an enterprise doomed to failure," Kozinski wrote. Using drugs for executions was "a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful."
If the United States is going to carry out executions — and public support stands at about 60 percent today — Kozinski suggested returning to an old, highly effective method: the firing squad. "Eight or ten large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time," he wrote....
"I have some sympathy for the drug manufacturers," he said. "They're not in the business of killing people. They're in the business of healing people."
Gun makers, on the other hand, widely sell their products to law enforcement agencies. "We as a society accept weapons as a means of carrying out lawful violent activity," Kozinski added, pointing to the examples of police, military, and security guards.
Of course, an execution by firing squad, unlike lethal injection, would involve blood. But Kozinski concluded, "If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn't be carrying out executions at all."
I must say this makes perfect sense to me. If the right wing must have their executions, why make them appear mild, rational and humane? Why not use the God-given implements provided by the gun-making industry and the NRA? As the good judge says, if we cannot stomach the splatter and gore from an execution by firing squad, then we shouldn't be carrying out executions at all.
Capital punishment enthusiasts, gun thugs, and all right-thinking conservolibertarian barbarians, please proceed.