Oh, quite. And "18 years in the vineyards of Arkansas politics" also furnished Clinton with the cynical or merely morally-defective sang-froid required for him to countenance the judicial murder of a retarded convict -- because only through smearing his arms up to the elbow in the blood on the altar of populist vengeance could he become president and, through triangulation, keep doing the cruel, witless will of "the people" throughout an administration whose much-vaunted "success" was solely owing to luck and Moore's Law. Is that indeed the sort of thing desired as a positive social good by "the people"? Then to hell with them. And to hell with you.

I assume you are referring to Ricky Ray Rector?

Let's recap what actually happened in that case. Rector killed a man in a nightclub. He later agrees to turn himself in, and then shoots and kills a police officer. He then shoots himself, but is unsuccessful in his attempt at suicide, effectively lobotimizing himself rather than ending his life. Prior to the suicide attempt, he was not retarded. The unsuccessful suicide attempt was the source of Rector's mental retardation, not a condition which predated his crimes.

When they executed Rector, they weren't executing a clinically retarded man who just didn't understand what he was doing when he levelled that gun and fired at other human beings. They executed a murderer who had tried to evade the consequences of his actions by killing himself, effectively finishing the job that Rector had botched.

If anything, we need more executions in this country, not fewer. Opponents of capital punishment typically will argue that it is less expensive to incarcerate someone for the remainder of their lives than to execute, but the only reason this is true is because we allow them decades of appeals, a process which does little but line the pockets of lawyers and further bloat the gigantic caseload already carried by our judicial system.

As a caveat, let me say that the DNA evidence is crucial. It is impossible to 'unexecute' the innocent. However, when all the evidence is in order (including the DNA evidence!), and it's a 100% sure thing that this person is guilty, why bother? Why not just execute them then and there? A length of rope might run you ten or fifteen dollars, and you can build a decent scaffold for a few hundred. A scaffold offers the same reusability value as an electric chair or the medical table which is utilized for lethal injections, but at a far more economical cost. The rope is also reusable, in contrast to the electricity consumed by a successful execution via electric chair, or the contents of the syringe in a lethal injection. A gallows is not only more economical, but eco-friendly as well.

Prior to our soft, rather milquetoast era, such events were also a form of edifying public entertainment. For some, it was mere spectacle, whereas others took comfort in knowing that should anyone kill them, the perpetrator would suffer harsh consequences... consequences that swing in the wind, surrounded by crows.

Granted, in this digital day and age, the town square has largely ceased to be an entertainment venue of note. However, I'm sure that the media outlets of our nation would pay quite handsomely for footage of such events. The families of the murderer's victims should each receive free coverage of the event, and the revenue generated by the sale of such footage to more general audiences should be evenly divided up between the families of the murderer's victims. Although this wouldn't repay the loss of a family member to a murderer's depredations, such a gesture would be better than nothing, and would perhaps aid in providing much-needed closure.

@Elistra --

Well, I got affectionately (I think) snarked at in Fraywatch -- I'm puzzled as to whether they just liked the post-Wolfeanism in agnus clothes that was my title, or what -- and had to look. And what do I run into but your suppurating horror. My skin crawled as I read your words.

I stand corrected on the retarded part; I stand by the rest of my reprobation, and indeed am now moved by your crude flippancy to amplify the vehemence of its expression. As for your cute crap in the second post -- y'know: the eco-friendly ropes and whatnot, all leavened with your oh-so-tender concern for those rendered even on your account bereft beyond any remediation incuding that putatively vouchsafed by the exaction of the referenced talion -- here's some unfriendly criticism: (a.) You're no Mencken; you're not even P.J. O'Rourke. (b.) You are -- or at least you present yourself as -- a vulgar friend of that murder as much murder, however diffuse, as the precipitating murder that it dares to claim it fitly addresses, and it's flatly sickening to see someone play with such jocular relish the curt, brittle advocate of a practice shameful among civilized peoples.

Be clever and hard all you want; your day wanes.

Jocular? You're obviously giving your thesaurus quite a workout, but you're failing to understand the meanings of the words you're using. (Either that, or you have the essay comprehension skills of a rotten banana.) "Jocular" would be a fitting descriptor, had I been joking. I wasn't.

Unlike the limp-wristed liberals you might be used to, I'm too busy observing, thinking, and using reasoning skills to worry about impressing people down at the coffee shop with pseudo-intellectual babble. Likewise, I am completely unconcerned about whether or not my opinions are reminiscent of a writer they might have been introduced to as part of a freshman lit course. That might well impress your friends down at the coffee shop, but that doesn't cut any butter with me.

As concerns the remainder of your 'comment' (and I'm trying to be nice here)...

1) A society does indeed have the right to defend itself from destruction, whether that destruction comes from within, or without.

2) "Barbaric" or "uncivilized" are little more than code-words for cultural practices the writer/speaker doesn't agree with. (Personally, I am reminded of pompous Victorians sitting around in their drawing rooms, thinking of conquered lands, and clucking their tongues at the practices of native peoples. (One half-expects the phrase "white man's burden" to appear next.) Do us all a favor and drop the faux self-righteousness, alright?

3) Believe it or not, there are some people who are beyond redemption. No amount of hugs, cookies, or hand-pattings will ever make them ok. Then again, if you occasionally set foot outside of your self-imposed pseudo-intellectual hidey-hole, you'd know that.

The desendents of those said Victorians, though by no means perfect, at least no longer 'lawfully' and cruelly commit state murder. I, in my youth, knew a young man who was exicuted, years later he was pardoned, he wasfound to be not guilty, if you listen to no other plea for humanity, that one no-one can ignore. But then 'who cares' most of the time they get it right !...... wait til it happens to one of yours.

On the one hand you sneer at the Victorian sensibility with regard to public virtue and decorum. Har har har. On the other hand, you express a certain sentimentality of your own, harking back to those palmy Enlightenment days when children were routinely hung for petty crimes of property. My, how entertaining.

At the conclusion of the last big sneer, you parenthetically exhort your target and his fellow "limp-wristed liberals" to drop their faux self-righteousness. So, what kind of self-righteousness do YOU practice, sugar doodle?

Oh, but there's more. People who dare to disagree with your bloodlust are also pseudo-intellectuals residing in self-imposed hidey-holes. What does this have to do with the social value of state murder? Well, nothing. For such a self-identified rational, practical being, you do a lot of pussy-footing when actual issues arise. You want to see some death porno; a live snuff movie, and your rationalization of this is, well, it's CLOSURE and they're bad guys who deserve it. But YOUR desire is also an issue, and yours is the desire of a creep; one of those people beyond redemption. You sure you don't want a cookie? Your kind of petty sadism is usually accompanied by a sweet tooth, for some reason. The Marquis was mad for hot chocolate. I would bet your little realist's hidey-hole is amply stocked with sweet treats.

Speaking of which, the most telling story about Rector is that at the end of his last meal, he asked to have his pie wrapped up so he could save it for later. He had no idea. But heck, vengeance is mine, saith the turd.