Also, I support the death penalty, but Mr. White also supported the death penalty at about the same percentage as Mr. Ashcroft's appointees.
I don't know the details of the case in front of Mr. White well enough to comment on it, but since Mr. White usually supported death penalty in such cases, something must have seemed amiss about the case to him.
I support the death penalty because it is a cheaper to kill hardened criminals than it is to keep them in jail for the rest of their lives. We won't have to build so many jails, and we can pass on the savings to the tax payer.
Frankly, I don't think spending the rest of your life in jail would be very appealing either.
Personally, if I had to choose between quality of life and suicide, I'd chose the latter.
As far as Ashcroft and White go or did not go well together, no one seems to really know why, at least according to an article in today's Washington Post.
Here is an excerpt:
"It's hard to know precisely why Ashcroft, as a senator from Missouri, so opposed the nomination of Ronnie White.Ashcroft said it was because White was "pro-criminal" and insufficiently enthusiastic about the death penalty.
White had, in fact, opposed the execution of a man who had killed a sheriff's wife. The sheriff lobbied vigorously against White's appointment, but that case aside -- and White had sound legal reasons for his dissent -- most of the time White upheld the death penalty.
So what was it? It could have been that Ashcroft was determined to prove no one was tougher on crime than he. His opponent was going to be Missouri's popular governor, Mel Carnahan, and Ashcroft was looking to position himself
for a tough fight. In the end, he lost, in effect, to Carnahan's widow, Jean.
Or maybe Ashcroft was just settling a score. Back when Ashcroft was Missouri's governor, White had been in the legislature and had blocked some of Ashcroft's pet antiabortion bills. The two men don't much like each other.
Excerpt from articleOppose Him, But Ashcroft Is No Racist
By Richard Cohen
From: The Washington Post
washingtonpost.com
Thursday, January 11, 2001 ; Page A27 |
