[cameo1440]

Mrs. Blair is voicing an opinion that betrays a lack of understanding of the American system of voting, the checks and balances with the electoral college and so on. As to the death penalty in Texas, that is a mandated thing by Texas law that those whose level of capitol crime reaches a certain point, i.e. serial killers, etc., are executed. Just because a man is governor does not mean he can reverse those decisions. From a practical standpoint, the death penalty is a very expensive proposition because of legal stays of execution, and delaying tactics built into our legal system. DNA evidence is something new which can correct the system of justice.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Yes. The only body who can stop an execution in Texas is The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. It seems some people have been watching too many movies or listening to too many liberals.

[bernie_g]

You might also want to consider this from a domestic UK point of view. Mr Blair is facing a very tough couple of weeks, culminating with the report of the Hutton enquiry. While Hutton is likely to share blame for Dr Kelly's death equally between Gilligan, his management and the Government, it's still very bad news coming on top of e.g. David Kay's resignation and other lack-of-WMD stories.

His very clever PR people are perfectly capable of leaking this story to manufacture a fake controversy that will tend to suggest that he's not a total poodle of Mr Bush. This right now, is something that he desperately needs to do.

In the US, I get the idea that nobody is too bothered about the lack of credible evidence of WMD. Here in the UK, the only way Blair could get support for war was making very strong claims about it, which have turned out to be false and now his own party are seriously wondering if it's time to scrag him and replace him with e.g. Gordon Brown.

The left here are already building a 'story' about this in our media. Both BBC's Panorama and C4's Dispatches have just produced very critical (of Gilligan also) programmes which are suggesting that our intelligence gathering systems were subverted for political ends. Blair also looks like he's going to try to blame his intelligence people and I doubt that they are going to take that lying down either.

So he desperately needs anything that will distract the media and distance him from Mr Bush's policies to help him survive the next few weeks. My guess is that this was leaked as part of a 10 Downing Street spin campaign to do just that.

[freered]

Obviously, Mrs. Blair doesn't know that if Algore had won his home state, he'd be the president now. She is pretty ignorant and unclassy