Links and Minifeatures 2008 04 17 Thursday

End of an era:Ollie Johnson, last of Walt Disney's "nine old men," who helped make all of the old Disney animation the thing of beauty it was and still is, has died.

Supreme Court rejects lethal injection challenge

Here's the line that really chaps my hide

forty-two people were executed last year out of more than 3,300 people on death rows across the country.

About 1 of 78 people on death row was executed last year.

In other words, they're much more likely to die of natural causes while on death row than to be executed.

Is there anybody who thinks that the death penalty is useful under such circumstances? Let's either make the process a lot quicker, to the point of making it more likely that those on death row will be executed rather than dying of natural causes, or stop sentencing people to death. The current situation isn't good for anything except billable hours for lawyers at taxpayer expense.

I'm not saying make it unconstitutional. It's not. Nor do I favor abolishing it. There will always be a few criminals where the crime is so heinous, it's worth fighting the people who make executing murderers so difficult. If I had my druthers, I'd give the criminals three to six months to raise all relevant legal points, and the execution proceeds upon the final resolution of that one appeal. But let's just stop sentencing garden variety murderers to death, and instead simply put them away forever with no possibility of getting out. It has just gotten too expensive to get those inmates off the state dole by executing them. For what we pay for the lawyers and court costs of each death row case, we could house several inmates for life.

Orin Kerr and Paul Cassell over at the Volokh Conspiracy have some good information on the decisions themselves.

Michael Barone reviews a book by a man who helped plan the invasion of Iraq. If what Mr. Feith says is true, it's pretty damning to the State Department and CIA.

There is something profoundly gratifying in watching the left suddenly figure out the media is biased. Stephanopoulos, a Clintonite, was perfectly fine as long as he was sticking it to Republicans, but now that he's asked Saint Obama a few actual questions, he's persona non-grata.

Ace of Spades has more:

But when an actual debate breaks out at a presidential debate -- one that is somewhat effective in exposing Obama's character flaws and also hints at his real political agenda (not-moderate-at-all left-liberalism), he shrieks it's all so "Rovian" and that we should talk about the "real issues."

Right. A debate on the "real issues" where both candidates say they agree with each other for two hours, except on the point of who can better execute the exact same program.

Still more from national Review Online

Hey, welcome to the big leagues, rookie. You're gonna get some questions you're not going to like. Not everybody gets to have their main opponent's bid implode when their divorce records are unsealed and compete against Alan Keyes in a general election.

Seriously, if Barack Obama can't handle questions like this from Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous, maybe the portrait of the cracking-under-pressure whiner depicted in the Saturday Night Live sketch isn't as wild an exaggeration as we thought.

George Stephanopolous weighs in

via Instapundit, Wikipedia's zealots. One more reason never to trust Wikipedia if someone's agenda is a stake.