Welcome to the Friday edition of your open thread. TGIF!!!! I’d like to thank everyone who came up and said “hi” at last night’s Deltweet event. It’s always good to meet readers, even if you don’t comment.
Oh what a surprise – evidence has surfaced of a second innocent man executed by the state of Texas. (This first was Cameron Todd Willingham, you can read his story here.) The governor at the time was George W. Bush. The current governor is Rick Perry (who in an interview with Jon Stewart said the 20th century was a failure), so I don’t have any hope that anything will be done.
A Texas man was condemned to death and executed in 2000 on the basis of hair that did not belong to him, according to the results of a recent DNA test.
A test by Mitotyping Technologies published by the Texas Observer magazine — which fought a three-year legal battle to gain access to the evidence — showed that Claude Howard Jones was “excluded as the contributor of this questioned hair.”
Jones – who had a long criminal record – had insisted that he was waiting in the car when his accomplice killed Allen Hilzendager during a liquor store robbery.
He was convicted of the 1989 murder, and denied several appeals, largely on the basis of that single strand of hair which police found at the scene.
Forensic science was limited at the time to examining the hair under a microscope, where it appeared to belong to Jones.
Forensic science was limited at the time to examining the hair under a microscope, where it appeared to belong to Jones.
The DNA test posted on the magazine’s website found that the hair likely belonged instead to the victim.
I don’t like talking about Rush Limbaugh because the story is usually the same – Rush Limbaugh says something mean, stupid and hateful. I guess that leaves you sort of immune to it. He said something especially mean, stupid and hateful yesterday, though:
We’ve got the Democrats worried that Clyburn’s getting the shaft because he’s not going to have a car, he’s not going to have a driver, he’s not going to have security, he’s not going to have any of the stroke, or the perks,” Limbaugh said. “A white, racist leadership of the Democrat party trying to ace out Clyburn.” Limbaugh got his information on Clyburn’s driver from Martin Frost, who appeared on MSNBC.
If Clyburn loses his race to be Democratic whip, he’ll either have to drop out of party leadership, or move into a lower-ranking leadership position, with fewer perks. Limbaugh claimed that this supposed avarice is what’s animating Clyburn’s fight to stay in leadership… and then noted that Clyburn could keep his car if he was willing to drive around the party’s white leader.
“Clyburn’s new position: driving Ms. Nancy,” Limbaugh said. “He’s not in the back of the bus, he’s in the driver’s seat. And she’s in the back of the car being chauffeured.”
There’s too many things in that statement to take apart the stupid. I will say that if you’re trying to make the point that other people are racist, you probably be better served by not turning it into a racist rant. But what do I know – I’m not paid millions of dollars to say horrible things on the radio.