David McElroy

A politician who goes out of his way to ignore the innocence of a man he’s about to execute gets nothing but contempt from me. The bloodthirsty supporters of the politician who cheer the idea that he’s an executioner — pointedly ignoring evidence that an innocent man was executed — deserve the same contempt. Meet Rick Perry and his supporters.

Todd Willingham was a troubled man from a troubled background in Texas. He drank too much. He had been known to hit his wife. He had a string of minor run-ins with the law. But when his house burned, he lost the only things that he had seemed to care about — his three children.

Fire investigators concluded that the fire must have been arson, based on guesses and assumptions. Willingham didn’t have any insurance, so there was no financial motive. Still, he was charged with murdering his three children.

At trial, prosecutors claimed he killed his kids simply because they were getting int he way of his drinking and partying, but there was no evidence of that. The only credible evidence against him was that two fire investigators said the fire was arson.

Keep Reading

I didn’t watch the big presidential speech about “creating jobs” last night. Frankly, I just don’t have the stomach for that kind of thing anymore. I just wait to read the reports in cold text. At least the written news reports have the kindness to take out the most dishonestly self-congratulatory words.

I’m curious whether there’s any honest person — of any political persuasion — who believes Barack Obama’s new plan to “create” jobs is anything other than a political maneuver to buy him more time between now and the election. I wonder whether any honest and rational person believes that it has any chance of creating net jobs.

Keep Reading

Like competing used car salesmen who will say anything to close a deal, Democrats and Republicans are engaged this week in a shameful contest to see who can tell the biggest lie about how they’re going to create jobs for out-of-work Americans.

In a speech tonight, Barack Obama will call for spending $300 billion to build schools, retrain workers and pay teacher salaries, among other things. (A CBS News report says this morning that the package might top $400 billion.) Meanwhile, the leading hucksters angling to win the GOP nomination twisted the facts last night over which one of them had done the best in the past in “creating jobs.”

Let’s talk for a second about reality. Politicians don’t create jobs. Politicians destroy jobs. Even if the coercive state is going to exist, the best it can ever do is step out of the way and stop crippling the market with taxes, regulation and populist rhetoric.

Keep Reading