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Recipe for disaster: Take a heaping helping of chutzpah, fold in a generous portion of cluelessness and a pinch of self-congratulatory egotism:
"The question to all of us is how much are we willing to fight to maintain this great country. I always find it remarkable that the men and women who are serving in the armed services, who are out there sacrificing tonight -- and God bless them, that they volunteer, they step forward. In a time of war, they step forward.
"Because we have a culture right now that doesn't say, "Serve." It doesn't say, "Don't think about yourself." It says, "Me, me, me." It's a very self-absorbed, me-centered, obsessive popular culture. And yet we have brave men and women who are willing to step forward because they know what's at stake. They're willing to sacrifice their lives for this great country.
"What I'm asking all of you tonight is not to put on a uniform. Put on a [Reelect Rick Santorum] bumper sticker. Is it that much to ask?" -- Senator Rick Santorum, speaking before the Center County (Pa.) Republican Party, Jan. 2006
Just when you think they've stooped as low as they can, they dig a little deeper.
From Monday's Washington Post:
Workers Allege Halliburton Knew Their Water Was Foul
by Larry Margasak, Associated PressTroops and civilians at a U.S. military base in Iraq were exposed to contaminated water last year, and employees for the responsible contractor, Halliburton Co., could not get their company to inform camp residents, according to interviews and internal company documents.
Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, disputes the allegations about water problems at Camp Junction City, in Ramadi, even though they were made by its own employees and documented in company e-mails.
"We exposed a base camp population (military and civilian) to a water source that was not treated," said a July 15, 2005, memo written by William Granger, the official for Halliburton's KBR subsidiary who was in charge of water quality in Iraq and Kuwait.
"The level of contamination was roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River," Granger wrote in one of several documents. The Associated Press obtained the documents from Senate Democrats who are holding a public inquiry into the allegations today....
Here's the rest.
This is the company Bush, Inc. routinely awards no-bid contracts to.
How do you feel about that, Bush voters? What does it take to make you regret voting for these slimeballs? When do you get angry? When do you speak out?
Just wondering.
As if the perversity and wrongheadedness of the state taking a life weren't enough, here's a story that obliterates any possible argument that can be made in favor of capital punishment:
DNA exonerates Fla. man after 24 years
by Mitch Stacy, Associated PressTAMPA, Fla. -- Alan Crotzer stepped into the warm sunlight outside the courthouse Monday and raised his arms to the sky, celebrating his freedom after more than 24 years behind bars for crimes he didn't commit.
A judge freed the 45-year-old Crotzer after DNA testing and other evidence convinced prosecutors he was not involved in the 1981 armed robbery and rapes that led to his 130-year prison sentence.
"It's been a long time coming," said Crotzer, his black hair graying at the temples. "Thank God for this day."
Crotzer walked free more than three years after he wrote to the Innocence Project in New York, a legal clinic that seeks to exonerate inmates through DNA testing.
"Are you ready for what you waited so long to hear?" Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett said to Crotzer during the brief hearing. "Motion granted -- you're a free man."
Members of Crotzer's family and other courtroom spectators clapped and cheered as a bailiff removed the shackles from his wrists and ankles.
Prosecutor Mike Sinacore congratulated him. "Trying to fix an error in the system is just as important as trying to convict someone who is guilty," he said.
DNA has been used to clear at least 172 people wrongly convicted of crimes in 31 states since 1989, according to the Innocence Project....
Here's the rest.
With the option of life-without-parole available to us, the possibility, no matter how remote (and it's not so very remote, alas), that an innocent man might be put to death is all the evidence required to make the case for eliminating capital punishment. There's nothing to debate.
Had Alan Crotzer been sentenced to death and his sentence carried out at some point over the past 24 years, there'd be no bringing him back, no way of rectifying this injustice. As it is, he's likely lost a third or more of his life, suffering indignities and hardships most of us can't even imagine.
But at least he's alive and, finally, free. Crozer is the living, breathing, walking, talking proof that capital punishment is an indefensible and misguided approach to justice. That we still practice it in this country can be attributed to nothing other than collective bloodlust and a desire not for justice but for revenge.