AddieStan

Ooh, forgot to letchas know, mes amis , that your cybertrix has a new piece up at The American Prospect just in time for your holiday reading -- and it just happens to be about excessive sentences, and all that.

Our dear leader, loath to impose excessive sentences on anyone, as demonstrated in his commutation of the sentence of I. Lewis Libby , apparently has no such concern for the innocent Pashtun goatherd caught up in the War on Terror net that dropped him in Guantanamo, where he awaits notification of the charge on which he has been imprisoned, lo, these past five years. Or, as Phillip Carter recently reminded your blogstress, death was rarely deemed too excessive a sentence for those condemned during George Bush 's capital campaign as the chief executive of the great State of Texas. Here's Carter in 2004 in Slate : The state of Texas executed 150 men and two women during Bush's six-year tenure as governor--a rate unmatched by any other state in modern U.S. history. As governor, Bush had statutory power to delay executions and the political power to influence the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute them entirely, where there was a procedural error, cause for mercy,...