Posted on 06/22/2011 1:07:19 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
So, the United States is One Nation, as the Pledge of Allegiance has it?
I sometimes wonder how that can possibly be so.
Yesterday, lawmakers here in New York were on the verge of making gay marriage legal.
Although the issue is controversial, it's a sign that the state is civilized and considerate, understanding that people should be allowed to love each other whatever their sexual orientation.
At the same time the state of Texas executed a mentally handicapped man by lethal injection.
How can one country produce such wildly differing moral landscapes?
How can one state prepare to take a massive step into the 21st century, while not 1,000 miles away another part of the same country travels back in time to the dark ages?
To be fair, the executed man, Milton Mathis, is not exactly the sort you'd want your daughter bringing home. He shot dead two people in a Houston crack house, and left a 15-year-old girl paralyzed.
But he had an IQ of 62. Psychologists routinely regard any adult with an IQ under 70 as being mentally handicapped. Mathis could not perform some of the most basic functions, such as dressing himself.
It was like executing a five year old child, and his death is an indelible stain on the state of Texas.
To those who say Mathis was smart enough to pull the trigger, there is a reason that there is an age of criminal responsibility. Elsewhere, children and those are children in an adult's body, are deemed to be unaware of the consequences of their actions and therefore not liable to the criminal law.
Mathis should have been detained for a very long time in a secure mental hospital, and he should have received treatment or therapy for his disability before, if and when it was deemed fit and proper, he was released into the community.
That would have been the civilized thing to do.
Instead, Governor Rick Perry, who vetoed state legislation ten years ago that would have outlawed executing the mentally disabled, gave the go ahead for the monsters to ram home the plunger on Tuesday night.
Perry, incidentally, is many people's tip as GOP candidate for the presidency in 2012.
If you live in one a state such as New York or Massachussetts, where they outlaw the death penalty, or in New Jersey where it has not been used since 1976, or even in Pennsylvania, which has resorted to it only three times since 1976, and if you are tempted to back Perry for President, remember Milton Mathis.
And just consider what electing Rick Perry's brand of medieval populism would say about the United States.
Nobody with a 62 IQ could make that statement.
He was mentally competent to find a crack house and pursue its product. He was mentally competent to obtain a weapon and to produce a loaded gun when he determined he needed to use it to save him from the trouble which he determined he would encounter if they were to finger him in the crack purchace. That is a fairly linear line of thinking which would lead one to believe this persons cognitive ability was intact and he used them and he acted upon his perceived fear of being found out.
Yes......but this proves Ron White is wrong.....you really can fix stupid.
Instead of running for president of the failed USA, Perry should be investigating the documents annexing Texas in 1845 to see if any loopholes can be found that would free us from the coming financial fate of this country.
I was thinking the same thought. Wouldn't it be a dramatic step down from President of a growing Texas nation to the soon to be bankrupt and at civil war united States?
Without TX dragging the rotting corpse of the other forty-nine states, we could be free to be that shining light in a dark world.
By ending it, I suppose. Sure wish there was a way to actually fix and reuse.
Typical drivel from a typical NYC homo publication.
typo...... was ‘being’ raked over the coals.
If you’re drunk and you kill, you’re a killer
If you’re high and you kill, you’re a killer
If you’re insane and kill, you’re a killer
If you were abused and you kill, you’re a killer.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Of course, I'm from Texas, so I guess I'm not morally qualified to judge.
“Although the issue is controversial, it’s a sign that the state is civilized and considerate, understanding that people should be allowed to love each other whatever their sexual orientation.”
Civilized and considerate means being allowed to indoctrinate our children with marches of Gay pride? To have your congressman and senator march alongside those that dress up as a gigantic green penis or half-naked men dressed as women gyrating in front our children??? THAT is NOT civilized nor is it considerate!! Look to Massachusetts and the Department of Education teaching our children how to have homosexual relations - is that what a civilized and considerate society teaches the children? Schools cannot teach morals and values, but they CAN teach that homosexuality is perfectly fine and by the way, let me teach you how to do it too????? It’s no wonder there are so many people sitting on death row...they weren’t taught how to be civilized and considerate...only how to live a hedonist life-style.
oh, THAT was the reason this guy was executed? For killing 2 and leaving a young girl paralyzed.... man, the lib media are scum
The lib reporter goes on to say Mathis should have been detained for a very long time in a secure mental hospital, and he should have received treatment or therapy for his disability before, if and when it was deemed fit and proper, he was released into the community. WHAT??? released back again so he could commit more murders???
Exactly -- it's not like this guy committed manslaugher inadvertently. He took up a gun and shot two people dead and paralyzed a third. That's a killer.
There ARE mentally handicapped folks who don't know and say push someone down a staircase -- they get mental hospitals for life, but this Mathis guy is a killer, full stop.
Heh.heh. Good catch. And you’re right — they are free to love anyone. ‘Gay marriage’ on the other hand is the same as ‘man-goat marriage’ — illogical, and against God
because he would donate his penis to tony Metcalf?
In a perfect world there would be no crime. In a slightly less perfect world the perp would be shot just before he could complete the crime.
All of the candidates running under the GOP aegis have, as all humans, flaws. But AT THIS POINT, Perry appears to be the BEST candidate who has the BEST crack at flushing that SOB Obama out of the White House. He also has the BEST chance of beating out RINOS Romney, Julie-Annie, Pawlenty, Huntsman and Christie (YES - he's running)in the primary
I agree with him - to an extent. But CERTAIN rights like the Second Amendment - are inviolable. They are GOD-GRANTED, not government dispensed. As such only GOD can take them away. Such rights must be enforced nationally.
The problem I have with the Death Penalty is the unsettling fact that a number of individuals who were convicted of serious crimes and sent to prison, have recently been exonerated and released due to genetic evidence that were innocent. Once somebody is executed, an error can not be corrected. The government, as all conservatives will agree, is FAR from flawless. In addition, taking a life, aside from self-defense, defense of another, or in warfare, is a power only God should have - not a government run by flawed human beings.
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