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Texas: A state without conscience
Metro NY ^ | June, 22, 2011 | Tony Metcalf, Editor

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.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: deathpenalty; murder; rickperry; texas
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
To quote the bumper sticker,"WE DON'T CARE HOW YOU DO IT UP NORTH."

New York has turned out to be the biggest damned waste of 24 bucks I can imagine!

21 posted on 06/22/2011 1:19:09 PM PDT by SWAMPSNIPER (The Second Amendment, A Matter of Fact, Not a Matter of Opinion)
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To: rocksblues

Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. The author thought that would just slip by us....


22 posted on 06/22/2011 1:19:18 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo (FreeRepublic.com. Now, More Than Ever.)
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To: Ton' M.

"So, the United States is One Nation, as the Pledge of Allegiance has it"

No, the US is one nation as reality has it. A=A and all. The pledge declares the US to be one nation under God.


23 posted on 06/22/2011 1:20:17 PM PDT by I see my hands (Embrace misanthropy)
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To: massgopguy

No idea. But then again, high IQ types might be thought to have at least considered the consequences of murder.

For myself, I beleeeeeeeve....

...I’ll have another scotch. Oh look, here’s one in my hand already.


24 posted on 06/22/2011 1:20:32 PM PDT by BelegStrongbow (St. Joseph, patron of fathers, pray for us!)
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To: Socon-Econ

.....Mathis, 32, was condemned for a shooting spree that killed Travis Brown III, 24, and Daniel Hibbard, 31, less than two weeks before Christmas in 1998. A 15-year-old girl, Melony Almaguer, also was shot and left paralyzed.

Almaguer, seated in a wheelchair and accompanied by her husband, was among a small group of people who watched Mathis die from behind a window at the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“I never meant to hurt you,” Mathis, strapped to a gurney with tubing taped to his arms, told Almaguer. “You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”....

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7621011.html#ixzz1Q2NDKJlS


25 posted on 06/22/2011 1:20:34 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: rocksblues

Was he naked when he killed everybody?


26 posted on 06/22/2011 1:20:38 PM PDT by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I’m still trying to make the connection between gay marriage and standards for executions. Seriously, why the apples and oranges nonsense? Promoting the gay agenda isn’t enlightenment. It is a prelude to every kind of sexual perversion. It has nothing to do with the death penalty policies in Texas, unless Texas is executing homosexuals.


27 posted on 06/22/2011 1:21:09 PM PDT by pallis
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To: freedumb2003
You mean penile IMPLANT...

Maybe you're right.

28 posted on 06/22/2011 1:21:53 PM PDT by VRWCmember
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
At the same time the state of Texas executed a mentally handicapped man by lethal injection.

Well, even a liberal can commit a capital crime.

29 posted on 06/22/2011 1:22:00 PM PDT by fwdude (Prosser wins, Goonions lose.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
Perfectly simple. Perfectly civilized. Perfectly humane.

RIGHTS = RESPONSIBLITY

To have rights, you must be responsible. If you have no responsibility, you have no rights. If the writer wants to say that people with IQs under 70 have no right to be loose on the streets, then I agree they have no responsibility. If on the other hand they have the RIGHT to be loose on the streets, then they have the RESPONSIBLITY for their actions.

And I don't think a liberal idiot like this wants to consider the thought that if people with an IQ under 70 can't be held accountable for their actions, they probably should not be allowed to vote. Woopsie - there goes 40% of the Democrat voting block!

30 posted on 06/22/2011 1:22:19 PM PDT by I cannot think of a name
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

If it were up to me, executions would be hangings from the goal posts at half time of the Texas/OU football game. How’s that for medieval populism?


31 posted on 06/22/2011 1:22:52 PM PDT by ConservaTexan (February 6, 1911)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

New York: A state with brains or balls.


32 posted on 06/22/2011 1:23:07 PM PDT by VRWCmember
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To: SpringtoLiberty
My solution would be for TX to secede.

Please take Georgia with you!

33 posted on 06/22/2011 1:23:29 PM PDT by madprof98 ("moritur et ridet" - salvianus)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I don’t care how stupid the perp is (was), fry him. We put down dangerous animals don’t we? He’s a dangerous animal.


34 posted on 06/22/2011 1:24:59 PM PDT by Little Ray (Best Conservative in the Primary; AGAINST Obama in the General.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
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.

Yes, indeed: Remember that in Texas (and Virginia) murderers don't get a chance to repeat their crimes.

35 posted on 06/22/2011 1:25:30 PM PDT by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

The article writer is as wrong as a football bat.

By his estimation, legitimizing homosexual marriage makes NY civilization superior to TX civilization where murder has consequences. Absolutely flies in the face of the rules of human civilization since time immemorial.


36 posted on 06/22/2011 1:26:56 PM PDT by T-Bird45 (It feels like the seventies, and it shouldn't.)
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To: SpringtoLiberty

This is why our country was intended to be made up of a union of sovereign states with a federal government handling dealings with external entities and with genuine disputes between states ONLY.

Don’t like two Ken dolls on a wedding cake? Move out of Ny and into Tx.
Don’t want to execute murderers? Leave Texas, NY welcomes you.

But no! Leftists MUST have everyone conform to THEIR worldview, and will use force to keep you from escaping.


37 posted on 06/22/2011 1:27:06 PM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter knows whom he's working for)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife
"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."

I would love to see Tony put his money where his mouth is. The next state that gets a multiple murderer released out of the system after only spending time in a mental institution until some doctor deems him fit to be free, Tony should rent him one of his rooms.

These people are all about abstracts and grandiose ideas, but when its their *sses on the line their story changes faster than you can blink.

38 posted on 06/22/2011 1:27:21 PM PDT by Abathar (Proudly posting without reading the article carefully since 2004)
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To: pallis
I’m still trying to make the connection between gay marriage and standards for executions.

For militant faggots, anything and everything is an opportunity and an excuse to promote faggotry.

There doesn't have to be any meaningful connection.

39 posted on 06/22/2011 1:27:21 PM PDT by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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To: ConservaTexan
If it were up to me, executions would be hangings from the goal posts at half time of the Texas/OU football game. How’s that for medieval populism?

Sounds reasonable to me! Can we get a petition together or something?!?!
40 posted on 06/22/2011 1:27:27 PM PDT by ExTxMarine (PRAYER: It's the only HOPE for real CHANGE in America!)
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