THE DAILY BLADE: Who’s Crying Now?
The big winners in the NH primary were Barack Obama, John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Obama, because he finished just three points behind Hillary Clinton (36 percent to her 39 percent), which means he remains very competitive heading into the MI primary next week; McCain, because he needed this win to start to build momentum going into Feb 5th, with AZ among the states holding primaries and caucuses on Super Duper Tuesday; and Mike Huckabee, because he needed to show he’s not just a flash in the pan.
Yes, Hillary won – but just barely – and she will have a tough fight against Obama in Detroit and the college towns of Ann Arbor and Lansing. Obama must feel good about his chances in MI and SC after that, because he never quite conceded to Hillary in his post-vote remarks. His speech not only invoked Martin Luther King, Jr., but at times his cadences – and even his accent – seemed to be channeling the civil rights icon. But it was natural and real – unlike the untrue grits Hillary served up at a black church in Selma, AL, a few months back.
[A personal aside: You can count The Stiletto amongst conservatives who find Obama’s candidacy inspiring. Those of you who have read The Stiletto's bio and the FAQs know that she started out as a liberal and a Dem. Obama is as uplifting an orator as Alan Keyes (well, before he became a caricature of himself) and just as one can feel phantom pain in an amputated limb, Obama can stir liberal impulses in the deepest recesses of The Stiletto's brain.]
Romney’s five point loss to McCain (32 percent to 37 percent) is as devastating to his campaign as John Edwards’ distant third-place showing (17 percent) is to his – maybe more so, as Romney was the governor of the neighboring state of MA and NH voters knew him very well (maybe too well). And though his father was a former governor of MI and Romney was born and raised in that state, he can’t count on an easy a win like in WY. McCain won MI in 2000 and Huckabee can scoop up the not insignificant percentage of voters who are evangelical and/or pro-life.
Editorial Note: The Stiletto is crying now - and probably should get more sleep. Neither Barack Obama nor John Edwards are on the slate in MI, but their surrogates in the state are urging Dems to vote "uncommitted" so that as many delegates as possible will be up for grabs at the Dem Nat'l Convention. It will be interesting to see how many Dems (and in which counties they are clustered) who would otherwise have voted for Obama or Edwards elect not to cast votes for Hillary - or, for that matter, for Romney to foment chaos in the Republican race, as Moombat Central (AKA the Daily Kos) suggested.
Scalia Not Buying Argument Lethal Injection Is “Cruel And Unusual” Punishment
Justice Antonin Scalia seemed skeptical that executions carried out by lethal injection could be painful enough to constitute "cruel and unusual" punishment. Reports Legal Times:
The three-drug "cocktail" used to anesthetize, paralyze and then kill death row inmates is the focus in Baze v. Rees, a Kentucky appeal brought by Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling, two inmates convicted of separate double murders in the early 1990s. Since the Court granted review in the case in September, a de facto moratorium on executions has taken hold across the country. All but one of the 37 states with capital punishment use lethal injections as a requirement or a choice. (Nebraska uses electrocution.)
Some justices expressed concern about whether enough safeguards are in place to monitor or prevent pain during executions. And Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter suggested the case should be sent back to lower court for further fact-finding on whether a proposed single-drug alternative would be more efficient in bringing pain-free death.
Several states have put executions on hold waiting for the high court to render a ruling in the case. Scalia was concerned that comparing the amount of pain caused by various methods of execution would unnecessarily drag out the disposition of the case for years, and pointedly asked: "Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain? Is that somewhere in our Constitution?"
Lethal Injection? What ever happened to the firing squad? We're a bunch of wusses now. How sad.
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