Blogfodder: Not Tookie enough

Thursday night the thunder worked like a drug holding me down in my bed, out cold. This morning I'm up at 4:30 a.m. listening to it rattle the walls. I swear to god that's the same map on weather underground that was there when I looked 8 hours ago. My yard is a lake.

I collected stories off the wire for blogfodder the other night while Steve gave the AP quiz and lectured the lab. They're old now but they resonated with me. Acquiring a taste for reading news straight from the wire is like the difference between pure and processed.

URGENT

Supreme Court blocks Florida execution

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the

execution of a man who drowned a woman in her bathtub a decade ago,

granting a stay to a Florida death row inmate for the second time

in a week.

The court, acting without its newest member, ordered Florida to

stop the evening execution of Arthur Rutherford, who claims that

the state's lethal injection procedure is cruel and unusual

punishment.

AP-ES-01-31-06 1814EST

I didn't see this story play as prominently on the local front as I expected. Maybe because he wasn't Tookie-esque enough a character ... or because Florida really isn't the new California yet. We're getting there. Seems like few state stories go national that don't include freaks and storms.
I read a story describing Rutherford's family's uncontained joy and I felt for them. Nothing good can come from the state's decision making powers being sucked up into the hands of the federalistas -- even if it is the SC making the call.

I don't think this is over; Florida is just going to find another way of offing him. Delaying his death only drags out a painful situation for the family.
Not to mention, I am sure the woman he drowned in her bathtub some years back probably thought her death was cruel and unsual. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a believer in an eye-for-an-eye or much of a proponent of capital punishment.
Around 7th grade, I read a story in my dad's Time magazine with a lede that described exactly what happened to the human body in an electric chair. I think this was one of the first time I understood how words can impact and change a person's point of view. I also remember being younger and seeing a story in Time on the Jonestown murders -- all the bloated bodies out in the sun. No one took it away from me. No one explained it. I read the captions. I got it.

So, I think I'm gonna break up blogfodders by story. I tend to write longer than blogs are supposed to be ...

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I posted this this morning but this e blogger sucks ass and ate my last three entries and didn't work have the day. Not to mention, it keeps dumping my design changes.