While presiding over a record number of executions as Guv of Texas (140), GWB granted clemency to only one death row inmate, commuting his sentence to life imprisonment. It wasn't Gary Graham, the candidate most likely to have been innocent. Nor any of the estimated 20% of death row inmates who may have been or are innocent, according to some statistical estimates based on post-conviction DNA exonerations (between 1976 and 2000, 87 wrongfully condemned prisoners had been freed from the nation's death rows, prompting the governor of Illinois to impose a moratorium on executions in his state, while GWB accelerated the pace).
George Bush's single act of mercy was reserved for one of the most prolific and horrific of serial killers—Henry Lee Lucas, whose confession to over 600 murders is controversial and surely exaggerated, but who was definitely guilty of multiple homicides, rape, torture, necrophilia and cannibalism.
This curious, little-known fact has been circulating on the web lately—news to a lot of people, including myself, who resided in Texas under both terms of Dubya's governorship (don't bother me with your suffering!). And no, Bubba, this is not a "conspiracy theory," or an urban legend—Texas newspapers reported it, briefly. Lucas was scheduled for execution on June 30th, 1998. Bush appealed for clemency on June 18, and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles uncharacteristically granted it. Lucas enjoyed his new lease on life until a heart attack claimed him in 2001.
Stranger still, the parallel fate of Lucas' accomplice in many grisly crimes, Otis Toole, who also resided on death row in a capital-punishment loving state, Florida. His sentence was also commuted to life imprisonment—by George's brother, Governor Jeb Bush.
What accounts for these singular anomalies? The answer may lie in an incredibly sordid tale of satanic death cults, supposedly involving more than your wayward Goth teenager or psychotic drifter. Journalist Dave McGown has explored it in depth: There's Something About Henry. Warning: do not go here if you're afraid of the dark.
For now, I'll focus on more verifiable evidence of the dark, sinister core of GWB's soul, prefaced with a Biblical adage modifed for the political sphere: "Not by their words, but by their vetoes, ye shall know them." Whether exercised or merely brandished, Bush vetoes are notable for their relative scarcity:
1. In 2002,he threatened to veto a defense bill, opposed to new pension benefits for disabled military veterans.
2. He threatened to veto Congress' bipartisan torture ban. When both the House and Senate approved the bill with veto-proof margins, Bush issued a signing statement stating that, as "unitary executive," he would be free to ignore it. Torture, it seems, is dear to GWB's heart.
3. He vetoed the bill for increased embryonic stem-cell research that could help cure many intractable diseases, such as the Alzheimer's that afflicted conservative idol Ronald Reagan.
4. He vetoed a defense spending bill that included a troop withdrawal mandate, after his de facto veto of the Iraq Study Commission's recommendations for solving the Iraq imbroglio. His "surge" strategy has resulted in the highest monthly casualties for the U.S. military since the war started.
5. He now threatens to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children, despite it's proven links to autism and other neurological disorders.
6. He plans to veto a bill to increase funding for S-CHIP (State’s Children Health Insurance Program), which subsidizes health care for children whose families are too poor to buy private insurance, yet do not qualify for Medicaid.
There is a pattern here: in every case, the veto would increase the sum of human suffering.
As the bloodshed in Iraq continues unabated and his approval ratings continue to plummet, reports from the inner circle describe Bush as "serene." When warned of the dire problems of post-war reconstruction in Iraq, he casually signed off on the catastrophic decisions of Paul Bremer in near total "detachment," according to aides.
He knows that many innocent men have been unjustly imprisoned in Guantanamo and the rendition gulags, yet he fought the Supreme Court's ruling and pushed through the Military Commissions Act to deny them any redress. Undoubtedly, as the new science of DNA analysis was coming to the fore in the '90s, he knew that many innocent men were probably being executed in the Texas death chamber, yet he remained "serenely confident" that all deserved their fate—except one.
Nurturing a genuine sympathy for the devil, George Bush is a cruel, callous, narcissistic sociopath, and only the tattered remnants of the Constitution restrain him from unleashing a greater whirlwind of misery upon the world. Before it's too late, we must pressure Congress to do their sworn duty and impeach the blackhearted sonofabitch.
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