As
the death penalty was abolished in Illinois on this month, March 2011, I
suspect that it will soon be ended in Maryland. I chose this article from Pat Buchanan
which criticized those governors’ decisions to allow evil to triumph. At the
same time, do not forget those victims and their families from Illinois.
NOTICE: The following
article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to
violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.
PAGE TITLE: http://www.theamericancause.org
ARTICLE TITLE: Moral Corruption in
Illinois
DATE: 25 January 2003
AUTHOR: Pat Buchanan
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Patrick
Joseph "Pat" Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is an American
conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician
and broadcaster. Buchanan was a senior advisor to American Presidents Richard
Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and was an original host on CNN's Crossfire.
He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996. He ran on
the Reform Party ticket in the 2000 presidential election. He co-founded The
American Conservative magazine and launched a foundation named The American
Cause. He has been published in Human Events, National Review, The Nation and
Rolling Stone. He was a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network,
including the show Morning Joe until February 2012. Buchanan is a regular on
The McLaughlin Group and now appears on Fox News.
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Pat
Buchanan
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Declaring the imposition of the death penalty to be
"arbitrary, capricious ... and immoral," Illinois' exiting,
scandal-plagued Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentence of every rapist-murderer
and child-killer in the state.
This decision "commands respect," cooed
the Washington Post. Gov. Ryan "leaves Illinois a better place." From
the rejoicing in the penitentiaries of Illinois, 167 murderers agree.
One suspects the people of Illinois do not. For it
is Ryan, who in trying to salvage what remains of his reputation, has committed
an act at once arbitrary, capricious, immoral and anti-democratic. Pandering to
an elite that is obsessed with the death penalty, Ryan abused his power and showed
manifest contempt for the will of the people who elected him as a supporter of
capital punishment.
Again and again, in Illinois and across America,
people have voted to retain this ultimate sanction for the most vicious and
vile killers among us. Our Constitution provides for a death penalty. For
centuries, it has been a part of our criminal justice system. When Illinoisans
elected Ryan, they were voting to retain it. Every killer on death row is there
because a jury, after hearing all the evidence, voted unanimously to put him
there.
"A decision on who gets the death penalty in
the United States is as arbitrary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightning,"
declares Ryan. This is demagoguery. To get hit by a bolt of lightning, one need
only be outdoors. To get a death sentence in Illinois, one must commit an act
of deliberate murder against a citizen of Illinois.
Ryan even played the race card. "Two-thirds of
the inmates on death row were African-American," he said, suggesting they
were there for racist reasons. Why did he not mention the percentage of murders
committed by African-Americans? Some 97 percent of death-row inmates were men.
Was that because Illinois juries hate men?
Ryan announced his decision to a wildly cheering
crowd at the Northwestern University Law School. Families of the victims of the
soon-to-be-reprieved killers were not invited.
"I no longer shall tinker with the machinery
of death," said the governor in conscious echo of Justice Harry Blackmun –
who became famous, 30 years ago, for his Roe v. Wade decision, derided by his
fellow justices as "Harry's abortion." In Roe, Blackmun permitted an
exception to his blanket opposition to the death penalty. Unborn children may
be killed at the whim of their parents. And since Roe, 40 million unborn babies
have gone to the chopping block. This is the morality George Ryan and his ilk
are imposing upon us.
"The Legislature couldn't reform it, lawmakers
won't repeal it, and I won't stand for it – I must act," said Ryan.
What pomposity. Ryan does not speak for Illinois.
He was not even popular enough to be renominated by his own party. His record
cost the GOP the state. Yet because a legislature rejects his
"reforms" and refuses to repeal capital punishment, Ryan plays king
and turns all the inmates on death row out into the general prison population.
If any convict or guard is murdered by these released killers, the blood will
be on Ryan's hands.
"How can one person have all of this authority
and power?" asks John Van Schaik, a Chicago fireman whose brother, a cop,
was murdered on the South Side. "He is making a mockery and a farce out of
our legal system and our prison system."
And our political system. Though Americans, in
survey after survey, support prayer in school, halting illegal immigration and
retaining the death penalty, they are told they may not see their will enacted
into law. Even when they vote against the moral code of the elite, unelected
judges and justices abuse their power and impose it upon us.
In one lifetime, America has been reshaped,
undemocratically, into a nation that would, in many ways, not be recognizable
to mid-20th-century Americans. It is happening in Europe, as well – the steady
transfer of power to anointed elites answerable to no one.
"Here, sir, the people rule!" Americans
boasted in the 19th century. In the 21st, the claim is a joke.
Elected as a conservative Republican, Ryan long ago
forfeited the support of Illinois conservatives. They are through with him.
Power slipping away, facing possible indictment, he sold out to an
establishment that alone may be able to save him from ending his days eating
off plastic trays alongside the murderers he helped to evade justice. George
Ryan is more pathetic than heroic.
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