The coverup of the murder of Todd Willingham by the Rick Perry administration in Texas is getting more brazen. Today Perry upped the ante. Having dismissed members of a study commission that had found his murder-by-arson conviction unjustified and based on folklore, not science, Perry today ''Willingham was a monster." He's projecting.
The story is in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
As has been covered here before, Willingham suffered the tragedy of a house fire that killed his three children. Then the local prosecutors decided that he had set the fire, and based on fire marshal testimony, he was convicted of murder. He was then executed on Perry's watch.
As the evidence mounts against the state, and we now have a very clear case of a man wrongly executed for a crime he did not commit, in fact a crime that did not happen, Perry is trying to deny it all. He hopes that the Texas electorate shares his blood lust, and would rather kill innocent people than run the risk that a guilty person might be left to live.
His behavior is monstrous. The coverup is not subtle enough to warrant being called Nixonian. It's worse than that. Perry is emulating Ahmedinejad and other despots who use their power to deny uncomfortable reality. His political career should be ended, and the Willingham investigation should be allowed to come to an honest, independent completion . If, as expected, it shows that Willingham was wrongly killed, those who conspired to bring it about should themselves be prosecuted.