Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Years before President Bush, who calls himself "pro-life," began killing brown-skinned, non-Christian people halfway around the world, he honed his murder skills as governor of Texas, where he boasted about signing record numbers of execution warrants. For those eager to keep up with the Lone Star State's ongoing penchant for strapping down handcuffed and shackled prisoners and injecting them with caustic poisons designed to insure an agonizingly painful death, visit www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/scheduledexecutions.htm. There, one can view a scorecard of "who's up next." (The waggish reader sending Dawn this info noted, though, that "unfortunately, there's no 'export to Outlook' function, so you'll have to annotate your own date book manually.")

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oke around further at the TDCJ's site, and you'll find all sorts of execution arcana and trivia (Play Today! Fun for the Whole Family!): "Texas leads [sic] the nation in the number of executions since death penalty was reinstated in 1976," "the State of Texas executed brothers on six occasions," "some death row offenders are allowed to have a radio," "cost per execution for drugs used: $86.08." Or sit back and enjoy the section "Victim Witnesses Viewing Executions: The Texas Experience" (wherein we learn that watching a prisoner's last excruciating moments as life twitches out of his poisoned body contributes to "the healing process").

Victims and witnesses can even send away for a brochure to whet their appetites for the big day.

Perhaps civil libertarians and those (few) Christians who actually pay attention to Jesus would do well to alter their political strategy in opposing the execution of prisoners; instead of condemning the barbarism of state-sponsored murder or quoting Matthew 25:45 ("Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me"), opponents of execution should note that each and every person strapped to the death gurney was formerly a fetus!