Tweet
“There shouldn’t be anything controversial about a .45-caliber bullet. If it were up to me we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it…In the words of Humphrey Bogart [sic], ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ I am so tired of being humane to inhumane people.”
– bloodthirsty Florida lawmaker Rep. Brad Drake (R-Eucheeanna), on handling of death row inmates, quoting Bogart instead of Clark Gable.
Man, I just don’t know what to say behind that slice of “win” from Brad Drake. If the GOP wants to earn more cred as the “law and order” party, I guess Drake is their poster boy.
A bill filed Tuesday by Rep. Brad Drake, R-Eucheeanna, would allow for executions by firing squad. HB 325 would eliminate Florida’s standard method of execution, lethal injection, and allow for executions only by electrocution or firing squad.
In a Waffle House in DeFuniak Springs, Drake said he heard a constituent say, “‘You know, they ought to just put them in the electric chair or line them up in front of a firing squad.’” After a conversation with the person, Drake, 36, said he decided to file the bill.
…There have been problems in the past with electrocutions. In the late 1990s Florida’s electric chair, known as “Old Sparky,” left one death row inmate convicted of a triple-homicide alive for moments after the electrocution, and sparked a fire on another inmate’s face during the execution. Drake does not share those concerns.
Considering the work of The Innocence Project has resulted in freeing wrongly-convicted people on Death Row (including 13 in Florida), you’d think Drake would want to be sure about the capital punishment convictions in his state. No, he’d rather focus on how to best shoot and fry them. Legal expert Jonathan Turley:
Drake may want to visit Iran where Sharia judges mete out punishment on the same theory from pouring acid into eyes to throwing people in bags down hills with sharp rocks.
When politicians start to run on the promise of pain for convicted persons, we have finally de-evolved into an unrecognizable state. Of course, promising to terrify inmates and hurt them is probably preferred to dealing with social programs being shutdown and unemployment rising in the state. What is left is promise of gratuitous pain to satisfy some deep need.
48 Comments
Never mind his views on capital punishment. He misquoted one of the greatest movie lines of all time. Unforgivable.
ROFL
They’re becoming more like the people they hate all the time….funny how that happens
Honestly, I think a firing squad would be more merciful than injection. I highly suspect the inmate suffers greatly when the last two drugs are injected, but the first drug keeps him from being able to show it.
That said, it is still cheaper to lock someone up forever. And just as effective, unless you put him in a private prison where he can prey on the other inmates.
Boxturtle (I’d make moral arguments, but folks like that only care about money and revenge)
It gives me so much confidence when our reps are people of character and wisdom; you know, real humanitarians. Their moms must be proud.
Why stop there, Rep. Drake? Public drawing and quartering, right before the opening coin toss of the Florida State-Florida football game. That’ll get their attention.
Naw, they still have white skin and go to a WASP church. Nothing like the brown skinned moslems.
Boxturtle (we used to hate dictatorships, until we decided we wanted to be one)
That guy is one sick puppy. I had a close relative who was brutally (and I mean brutally) murdered a dozen years ago. My immediate reaction when he was caught was pretty much the same: you want revenge; it’s part of our genetic make-up I suppose. But after he was convicted for 2nd degree murder, we felt vindicated, and the anger recedes. At some point you get on with your life. That guy probably has never had to face that kind of trauma in his life. He is a make-believe man living in his make-believe world.
I don’t believe in the death penalty. It’s too merciful.
However, perhaps the only way to change public opinion on the topic is for death penalty opponents to insist that if there has to be a death penalty, that it be done in a very public manner, say at football games during halftime, or during the 7th inning stretch at a baseball game, as well as being required to be carried on all television stations.
Perhaps it should be carried out in the most horriffic manner imaginable, for the entertainment of the crowds, to whip up their blood-lust.
It’s not different from a vegan’s approach to the sale of meat – one might want to consider laws that require shoppers who want to buy chicken to personally wring the chicken’s neck. (As to beef, it might be a matter of obtaining an annual permit certifying that you’ve been to a slaughterhouse and personally pressed the button to shoot the bolt into the head of a cow.)
So much of our existence has been so sanitized and shrinkwrapped. As a member of a generation in which many felt traumatized as children by the death, in a cartoon, of Bambi’s mother, such changes in policy might actually drive more people into eating things they don’t mind killing (like lobster or fish) – or into actually abolishing the death penalty.
Keeping the death panalty behind closed doors in a sanitized, germ free enviornment and using a pseudo-medical mechanism intended to be pain free only prolongs the problem.
I don’t believe in the death penalty – but if there is one, it should be horrific enough, and public enough, so that the great weight of public opinion would either turn toward abolition, or prove exactly how barbaric and uncivilized we are as a people.
In quiet moments, I still weep for Bambi’s mother. I’m 60.
What a complete, fucking asshole.
Interesting.
How does that square with your opinion of the Texas sonogram law, prior to having an abortion women will be offered the option of hearing the heartbeat and seeing the sonogram image, which they may decline. But the woman’s doctor must describe the image, explaining the size of the embryo or fetus and the presence of organs and limbs.
Interesting idea, though you also face the possibility of desensitizing people to the act, though that probably wouldn’t happen. If you do that though you should make it fair: Show the crowd, using the stadium bigscreen, what crime the offender committed, such as crime scene photos where a family was hacked to death or a young child brutally assaulted and killed.
I’m, like, totally sure this asshole has a long, long list of “humane” things he’s done for “inhumane” people, right?
Another good take on Joann’s idea.
How would abortion be received by the public if for example a late-term abortion were shown live on tv or at a sporting event, the pieces of chopped-up baby being removed from the womb live for everyone to see.
These people ate so batshit crazy!
You just can’t make this shit up.
And, Dumbo’s mother.
This Dumbo, Drake, should have to sit and watch an execution.
Late term abortions only happen when there is a threat to the mother’s life. Unless you’ve been in that situation, I suggest you back down.
And, you’re changing the subject of Pam’s post.
I think you are misreading the man. Orgasm would be more likely than revulsion.
Perspicacious as always, Rafe. The two situations are exactly the same, totally indistinguishable. To you.
If I misread, I apologize. I’m just very disappointed in the house vote yesterday.
Like chalk and cheese. I suspect Rafe would struggle to down them if he thought it would stir some kind of response.
Technically, the subject was changed at comment #9. He’s just taking it to new heights (or depths).
Do not mean to generalize, truly.
But has Florida always had so many off-the-deep-end politicians?
Dunno. We’ll have to ask Southern Dragon. He’d know the history.
Look at a map. Gravity sucks all the crazies down there.
OR, maybe all the really manly men just can’t resist the lure of that gigantic geographical penis.
“I am so tired of being humane to inhumane people.”
So Drake would rather be inhumane himself? Well, I guess he’ll have to follow his own advice for what should be done with inhumane people and go throw himself off the Sunshine Skyway bridge.
Yes, he may have something to do with it….
Gravity, anatomy, it is all too much for me this morning. I’m going out to finish the lawn.
Come in for a drink of water and find out that all hell has broken loose!
I left you a message at Swim
See you, demi and rc
XOXOXO from Ohmmmmm
Whenever I hear a politician speak like Drake I can’t help but think of the voters who put people like him into office.
(Cringe factor working on me today!)
Later, dear fleshie.
Ding!
Sorry I don’t have the time to search and link, but didn’t this knave Drake get popped for a DUI a while ago?
He’d probably masterbate along with it
I wonder more about the people who elected this man, than the man himself.
This asswipe is another in a long line of GOP cretins that one would like to take into a dark alley with a 2X4 in hand.
I too like the idea of public executions. The public should see where their tax money is going. Forget the college marching bands when they can wheel out Old Sparky, and during basball games, instead of the obligatory rendering of God Bless America during the 7th inning stretch they can instead just march out a firing squad. This is what we’ve come to. It’s rather sickening that we are even of the same species as Brad Drake.
It’s the same crowd who whoop it up for Rick Perry over all of the executions in Texas. Over all they are in a minority, but in some god forsaken parts of this country they constitute the majority. We should have just let the South secede 150 years ago.
I hate to say it, but if we had public executions in Team USA, a large portion of the populace would be all: HELL YEAH! Bring it!
I am totally opposed to capital punishment. Speaking only for myself, I don’t think it accomplishes the so-called “goal” of deterring criminals from doing heinous crimes. I also feel that humankind, esp in these United States, truly needs to move beyond the Code of Hammurabi.
Capital punishment is way way more expensive than life incarceration. Conservatives who have wet dreams about killing people need to wake up and smell the coffee. It is very costly. Where’s the “win” in that?
This deviant Fl cracker asshole is just being true to type and not trying to hide who he is. I give him 2 points for revealing his depraved nature and not trying to gussy it up and pretend to be anything more than a deviant freak. No doubt, he is a *perfect* representative for the jerk-wads who elected him, and they, too, have their own deviant bloodthirsty fantasy lives.
Plus messing up the quote from Clark Gable shows what a complete ignoramus fool he is. Perfect TeaGOPer: willfully ignorant, blood-thirstily jacked up on revenge porn fantasies, and probably goes to church every Sunday exhibiting self-righteous piety.
Typical.
Whenever I think we’ve set the “morality bar” so low that even the repuglicans can’t limbo under it….HEEEERE comes a guy like Drake.
I think it’s safe to say he get’s his famous movie quotes from Michele Bachmann.
onit wrote: “This deviant Fl cracker asshole is just being true to type and not trying to hide who he is. I give him 2 points for revealing his depraved nature and not trying to gussy it up and pretend to be anything more than a deviant freak.”
————
His mother must be sooo proud.
I take “some” solace from my upbringing that taught me that these types are gonna be devastated when they meet St. Peter at the “Pearly Gates” and find their name “ain’t on the list.” Least wise, not THAT List.
Late-term abortions are performed only when the mother’s life is in grave danger. Nobody has a late-term abortion because they “just forgot” to have one earlier.
If you want to inflict additional cruelty upon a woman already suffering and quite possibly dying due to her pregnancy, I believe you need to review your values that allow you to come to that conclusion.
Nice rant. Nothing more need be said about this clown. If George Carlin were still around he would be proud of you, and certainly wouldn’t be lacking for material from this pack of GOP goons.
If this asshole is so fond of .45 caliber bullets, maybe he should eat a clip full.
I wonder if the good representative will agree to painful punishment for crooked politicians who hold the public, their oaths, and the Constitution in contempt.
The French, despite anger at the monarchy and nobility, executed them humanely,
If the Revolution comes here, do you suppose the good representative will insist upon humane behaviour?
I, for one, believe that we should treat our political and economic miscreants as well as the French did.
from EEEEEWWWWWWW-cheeanna. what a maroooon.
“Honestly, I think a firing squad would be more merciful than injection. I highly suspect the inmate suffers greatly when the last two drugs are injected, but the first drug keeps him from being able to show it.”
I believe I agree. If the state is going to execute somebody, it owes them a quick and – if possible – painless death.
Not that I’m in favor of capital punishment given the current judicial situation in the US. It’s just that if it’s gooing to happen, I think the state ought to do it right.