For my British readers, here's a piece of news that will make you feel as smug and superior as you could possibly imagine.
It seems that tomorrow, the great state of Texas will put to death a man who didn't even kill anybody. Jeffery Lee Wood was the wheelman in a 1996 armed holdup of a Texaco station in which his partner in crime shot and killed the store clerk. Wood acted in a way that sanctioned his partner's actions. In Texas, apparently, that's enough to give him the juice.
These are the kinds of "Texas values" that have dominated on the national stage.
Meanwhile, in the state of my residence, they're now debating how to reinstitute the death penalty after a 2006 order that the method of lethal injection was improper. The governor, Martin O'Malley, is against the death penalty but would apply state law without regard to his personal beliefs, which is the usual Democratic wiggle move. I guess I understand this politically.
Besides, the reality is that no one is likely to be killed by the state of Maryland. A state like Maryland is likely governed by the kind of people who'll follow due process reasonably faithfully and look at the expense of appeal after appeal and decide it isn't worth the trouble. Whereas in Texas....
