by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Donald Trump and his trusty attorney general, William Barr - each a paragon of virtue - are in a rush, almost a panic, to leave as much of their stain on the presidency and the country as they can before Joe Biden boots them out of office on January 20th. Trump and Barr know that Biden will move quickly to reverse the damage that they have perpetrated on America, and will probably spend much of his first few days in office signing executive orders that reverse Trump's executive orders from the past four years.
Biden, however, will not have a presidential power of resurrection, and any federal prisoners that Trump an Barr manage to kill before Inauguration Day will remain dead.
This past July the Justice Department under Barr's direction announced that a 17-year moratorium on the execution of federal prisoners was at an end, and between that time and the present eight federal executions have been carried out. Now Attorney General Barr has announced that the US government intends to put five more individuals to death before Joe Biden, a man who opposes the death penalty, is sworn into office in less than eight weeks.
One of the eight, Lisa Montgomery, is a mentally ill victim of sex-trafficking who is to be put to death eight days before Biden comes into office.
As a way of adding a little kink to this blood frenzy, yesterday Bill Barr announced a new rule regarding federal executions. Lethal injection of a three-drug cocktail had been the method of execution used in the recent spate of death row housekeeping, but now the Feds will be able to use any method that is legal in the states where their executions will take place. In addition to lethal injections, some states still permit use of the electric chair and firing squads. If an execution is to occur in one of those states with alternative forms of killing prisoners, the federal government will have the option of turning to the state for "assistance" in the matter.
Line 'em up and shoot 'em down! And if one of the targets in the Trumpian shooting gallery happens to be a mentally ill former sex slave, well, that's just gravy!
Donald Trump has this thing about killing. He seems to regard it as macho, like himself. Back in 1989 Trump, then a self-described New York City businessman, spent $85,000 to run full-page ads in four New York City newspapers that called for the execution of a group of young men who were known as the Central Park Five. The five were black and Latino teenagers who were accused of raping a white jogger in Central Park. Trump's ad featured the large headline "Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police." He said that he received over 15,000 letters in support of his position. More than twenty years later when all five of the young men had been completely exonerated, Trump still refused to apologize for his open hostility toward them - and his race-based outrage was voluminous when the city of New York agreed to pay the wrongfully convicted men damages in excess of forty million dollars.
Today Donald Trump still likes the permanent solution of death. Joe Biden can sign executive orders until his hand quits working - or falls off, but any prisoners that Donald Trump and William Barr manage to snuff before January 20th will be dead - and they will stay dead.
And the Trump stain on America will be just a little more red!
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