Saturday, November 6, 2010

The Skeptical Juror Scoops the NY Times

Way back on 16 May, I suggested that Rick Perry hopes to be president some day. It wasn't a particularly insightful prediction, but unless I predict the obvious, I am too frequently wrong.

Now the New York Times is jumping on the bandwagon that I already jumped on seven months ago. The Grey Lady just published "Re-elected Texas Governor Sounding Like a Candidate."
Mr. Perry’s decision to keep up his attacks on the Obama administration, right after a grueling re-election campaign and with a book tour to give him a national platform, has fueled speculation that he is testing the waters for a presidential run in 2012.
Those whispers grew louder in Texas last weekend when he declined to commit to serving out his four-year term.
But the governor insisted his only goal was to spur “a national conversation” over whether the federal government has become too powerful, too expensive and too intrusive in people’s lives.
Wow! Not only did The New York Times build a persuasive case that Rick Perry intends to run for President, Rick Perry denied it!  It must be true. We need to get some of those crack NYT investigative journalists looking into the case of Frances Elaine Newton or Johnny Frank Garrett or David Wayne Spence or many of the other Firstname Middlename Lastname people executed in Texas under the careful eye of past President George W. Bush or future President James Richard "Rick" Perry.

(Sorry. That last sentence got away from me a little bit.)

For those of you concerned that we might be executing too many innocent people in this country, here's the takeaway segment from the NYT in-depth analysis.
The tendency of people to “vote with their feet” is the surest guarantee of personal liberty, Mr. Perry concludes. States should be laboratories of government policy, he says.
“If you don’t support the death penalty and citizens packing a pistol, don’t come to Texas,” he writes. “If you don’t like medicinal marijuana and gay marriage, don’t move to California.”
"If you don't support the death penalty ... don't come to Texas." I don't think it's going to fit on a campaign button.

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