Kill Tookie Williams Deader Than Dead

That seems to be the mentality behind most conservatives (or really, anyone who disagrees with them, if you get right down to it).

What else explains this nauseating, racist cartoon from Glenn McCoy that the Philadelphia Inquirer, in their everlasting stupidity, decided to publish this morning? How can this be anything but a sap to lizard-brain paranoia and the most base instincts you can imagine as opposed to reasoned and informed dialogue?

I suppose this is but a small step from the brilliant reasoning posited by Michael Smerconish lately that stated that Tookie Williams must die because he had the bad manners to cite Mumia Abu-Jamal in a book dedication. Surely, lethal injection wasn't punishment enough for such an offense. Why wasn't Williams drawn and quartered as a pay-for-view event sponsored by Fox television?

I will probably be linking to this great post from The Bulldog Manifesto for a long, long time that sums up the questions surrounding the Williams' verdicts and his execution, as well as a testimony to the fact that he turned his life around and made great contributions to keep kids away from the gang violence he helped cultivate in his youth.

Oh, and I suppose the person McCoy is depicting in the cartoon is Albert Lewis Owens, the 7-11 store clerk Williams was convicted of murdering in 1979. How convenient for McCoy that Lewis happened to be white. And if you think I'm making too much of this, try substituting Mark Chapman for Williams and John Lennon for Owens, or Mikhail Markasev for Williams and Ennis Cosby for Owens, and guess what? You have illustrations of totally different circumstances with TOTALLY DIFFERENT visceral effects, that's what (with the common circumstance that three different people are being murdered).

If Williams' execution had somehow enabled Owens, or any of Williams' other victims, to return to life somehow, I would have been all for it. However, the simple, basic, metaphysical fact of life, as we know, is that that is impossible. The best we can do is weigh all the facts at hand and make the best possible decision. And as far as I'm concerned, executing Williams based on what we know was a criminal act of state-sponsored murder that was no better than the crimes of which Williams was originally convicted.