Rep. Brad Drake (R., Eucheeanna) wants to put the pain back into executions. The Florida Republican has filed a bill to require the use of electrocution or firing squads to execute people — saying that lethal injection is simply too easy a way out for convicted murderers.
Saying that the convicted should not “get off that easy” with lethal injection, Drake wants to see people fried or shot instead. He said the idea came to him at a Waffle House in talking to a constituent. He said that the electric chair or firing squad would make inmates more scared and think about their punishment “every morning.”
He helpfully put this idea into perspective: “I think if you ask a hundred people, not even talking to criminals, how would you like to die, if you were drowned, if you were shot, and if you say you were put to sleep, 90 percent of some of the people would say I want to be put to sleep. Let’s put our pants back on the right way.”
I previously wrote about the increasing use of politicized piety and now we have politicized pain as a draw for voters.
Well, if we are putting our pants on, perhaps we should not stop with electric chairs. As discussed in this column, we used to cook people in a “brazen bull.” The Romans punished parricide (murder of a parent) by putting the condemned into a sack with a dog, a rooster, a viper and an ape — then throwing the sack into the water. Now that would keep guys up at night.
Drake may want to visit Iran where Sharia judges mete out punishment on the same theory from pouring acid into eyes to throwing people in bags down hills with sharp rocks.
When politicians start to run on the promise of pain for convicted persons, we have finally de-evolved into an unrecognizable state. Of course, promising to terrify inmates and hurt them is probably preferred to dealing with social programs being shutdown and unemployment rising in the state. What is left is the promise of gratuitous pain to satisfy some deep need. Then again, maybe it was the waffles.
Source: MSNBC
with these people it’s always max punishment, until it’s family.
Hey!!! All this execution stuff could cut into my “Scarlet Letters-R-Us” business. And I just finished a gross of “EPs” (Evil Politicians)
What–no option to be hanged or stoned to death? How about beheading?
Let’s execute people in the public square. We could charge admission. That would be one way to raise money for the state.
He would probably withdraw the legislation if they would let him push the button a time or two.
Tool Time: Bring Back Old Sparky and Firing Squad!
Brad Drake–A Worst Person in the World
Why not…if its good enough for the military….Its good enough for them….Police State…right?…Due Process….right…
It’s Friday… a little gallows humor…
Brad D.,
This is your song, I believe… only the lyrics that fit…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3-EwMJDQek
(I’m surprised that he didn’t mention the guillotine…)
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Speaking of guillotines (…for the low, low price of $11,284.95):
http://www.halloweenexpress.com/guillotine-machine-p-3029.html?gclid=COvd_eXL6KsCFQIKKgodxWQKJw
==============
Woosty,
b. deeply disturbing…
hahahahaha! Elaine…..so instead of “Let them eat cake…it’s….. Let them eat waffles!!!!!!”
hahahaha!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ergxf2I_ilM
Rick L:
“What the crap are they putting in those waffles for someone to come up with this line of rationalization?”
*************
Always check the powdered sugar first.
Rick L.,
What line of rationalization?
They would have been accused of “aiding the terrorists” so most caved.
What the crap are they putting in those waffles for someone to come up with this line of rationalization?
“And too many Democrats were afraid to stand up for their principles for fear of being called unpatriotic or weak.” (Elaine)
You make many wise observations and this is definitely one of them.
Jill,
“The population of the US as a whole, is trained for violence and blood lust. It is why we cheer war and killings conducted by the president, and love execution and pain. This is very deeply entwined in American society.”
I believe there are many of us who do not cheer war and killings. People who spoke out against going to war with Iraq were shouted down by warmongers. Even some members of the media seemed to cheer lead for that preemptive war. Those who supported war were called patriots. Those who were anti-war in the Bush administration were silenced. Many war protests were not even covered by the corporate media. And too many Democrats were afraid to stand up for their principles for fear of being called unpatriotic or weak.
I’m voting “b” on Woosty’s Poll but I’m going to add to it for Rep. Brad Drake reminded me of a recent part of our history that people don’t particularly want to discuss.
Does anyone recall the history of Eugenics here in the U.S. back in the ’20-’30s? …”the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a human population”
Yep, our fellow countrymen were enchanted with the practice and sterilized/murdered thousand and thousands of citizens.
By the end of World War II Eugenics had been largely abandoned thanks to its association with Nazi Germany but … before then we were happily sterilizing and euthanize thousands of Americans.
The American Eugenics Society even set up pavilions and “Fitter Families Contest” to popularize eugenics at state fairs.
The belief was that genetic stock deteriorates over time producing undesirable humans. Poverty, feeble-mindedness-including manic depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, rebelliousness, criminality, nomadness, and prostitution were singled out and the belief that charity and welfare only treated the symptoms whereas eugenic sought to eliminate the disease entirely through sterilization (no more children conceived carrying bad genes) or euthanasia.
From the 1927 Buck v. Bell trial. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views/072100-106.htm
Rep. Drake is a person who in an attempt to gain favor with Teapublican voters wants alleged and convicted felons to suffer more pain has actually outed himself as someone without a brain cell in his head and without a scintilla of understanding of the Bible or the Constitution. Is this guy related to Gov. Scott? They seem to be on the same wavelength.