Support for the death penalty among Americans is hovering around a 40-year low. Nevertheless, enthusiastic legislators from Bumfuck all the way to Hickville are taking it upon themselves to help their states execute death row inmates with greater dispatch.
The WSJ reports that some of America's most friendly, down-home states, like Florida and North Carolina, are working feverishly to make it easier to kill people locked in their prisons. In Florida, for example, the legislature passed a bill to "mandate that the state execute a prisoner within 180 days after the governor signs a death warrant," because why wait around for "appeals courts" or "careful review of the facts" when it comes to the state taking a citizen's life?
Real Americans will not stand for sitting around and "getting it right." The time for action is now.
Though many state legislators are admirably bloodthirsty, none can top Arkansas's Bart Hester, who's working to end his state's eight-year execution drought, for sheer eloquence:
"There was no talk of letting the death penalty linger on, dormant and unused," said Sen. Bart Hester, a Republican who filed the bill that sets up the new procedures. "This was a bipartisan position. Arkansans want to see a working death penalty."
Arkansas should be proud, as always.
[WSJ. Photo: AP]