I wonder how many people who think Ken Lay cheated us by dying are also death penalty proponents?

I’m one of those who feel cheated by his untimely demise. I’m also suspicious enough to wonder how they got the autopsy report so quickly. It’s as if they anticipated the furor. But it’s funny that often it seems to take weeks before we get autopsy reports. This time we got it within hours.

But the larger point is the death penalty. One reason I’m opposed to the death penalty is that if it were me, I’d much rather be killed than spend a lifetime in prison. So I think a life sentence, or one approximating it as Lay’s may have been, is the greater punishment. Maybe those of you who read more blogs than me can find the inconsistency of those who think Lay “got off easy” but support the death penalty.

In any case, The Post story this morning suggests that Lay’s heirs won’t pay a price, and that is a real travesty.

As my bro’ said, “He got off easy.”

From the story here’s the quote I love:

Lay also defended his extravagant lifestyle, including a $200,000 yacht for wife Linda’s birthday party, despite $100 million in personal debt and saying “it was difficult to turn off that lifestyle like a spigot.”

That’s why poor people stay poor, I guess: They can’t turn off that spigot of a lifestyle.

UPDATE: Andrew Cohen thinks we’re being too hard on Kenny Boy.

What happened at Enron–what happened to the tens of thousands of people impacted by it– was truly awful. But it wasn’t just Lay, or Skilling for that matter, who are responsible. The failure at Enron was a system-wide failure of corporate America. It was a failure of lawyers and accountants and public-relations officials and market analysts. It was a failure of judges and lawmakers who watered down securities law. In short, it was the failure of a great many people, whose culpability is both known and unknown, but who, unlike Lay, will be able to spend another day, another week, another month, another year on this Earth. I don’t call that a case where Lay “got off easy. I call that yet another tragedy in a story that has been filled with them.

But judging from the 99 comments, few agree with him.

Del. Ken Plum’s recent email sums it up pretty well:

While a mere few weeks ago I promised to end the wailing about the current legislative session, I am back again more upset than ever before about the actions in Richmond. At a meeting of the General Assembly last week to wind up the longest legislative session in its history, the legislature needed only to review and vote on a number of amendments proposed by Governor Timothy M. Kaine to tidy up the $74 billion record-breaking biennial budget. Instead the Republican majority in the House of Delegates in the most arrogant abuse of power that I have ever seen in my nearly three decades in the House used the occasion to figuratively stick a finger in the eye of the Governor and to deny Democrats an opportunity to even present or to debate any amendments to the final budget package. It was tragic to watch events unfold in what over the years has been a fairly collegial body.

After prolonged recesses at the beginning of the session, the Republican majority voted in their caucus with a two-thirds vote required to bind themselves to vote as their caucus decided, regardless of the interest of the voters and constituents in their districts. That system allows the most conservative ideologues to dictate the position of the party and to enforce party discipline. No one including the most moderate of Northern Virginia Republicans has been willing to buck the system. Presumably the penalty for not going along with the caucus would be the loss of committee assignments or the failure of future bills or budget amendments of interest to the member. The Democratic caucus has no such rules and allows members to vote the interests of their district.

The result of the excesses of partisanship and the blatant abuse of power is an inconsistent and incoherent product. For example, the General Assembly approved a record $285 million to clean up the Chesapeake Bay but refused to approve or even allow debate on a four million dollar amendment for the City of Lynchburg to improve its antiquated sewer system that continues with heavy rains as we have had lately to dump raw sewage into the James River to flow into the Chesapeake Bay. Lynchburg’s offense in the eyes of the majority was to elect a very intelligent and effective Democratic woman to the House of Delegates in the last special election.

The biennial budget contains a billion dollars in capital building projects mostly for colleges and universities, but the Republican majority refused to allow debate on or to approve an amendment for $1.4 million in funding to begin the architectural and engineering phase of renovating the library at Norfolk State University that accreditation authorities say is necessary for the historically black university to maintain its accreditation. The Republican majority refused to approve or to allow debate on an amendment that would have provided $200,000 for an institute for minority leadership when the state provides two and a half times that amount to an institute that provides the same kind of training to predominately white persons. All members of the Black Caucus in the House are Democrats.

The House majority Republicans including presumably moderates like Callahan, Rust, and Albo refused to approve or even allow debate on a $6 million budget amendment to allow fund balances to be used in a 50-50 match with localities to replace the loss of federal funds for child care services for the working poor. If the local governments cannot come up with the money, large numbers of children especially in Fairfax County will be without daycare.

In my State of the Commonwealth – 2006 address (www.kenplum.com) I called the legislature dysfunctional. On the last day of a session that has gone on for months, Delegate Ward Armstrong took the floor to observe that we had just had a dysfunctional ending for a dysfunctional session. The voters of Virginia need to take back control of the General Assembly from the tyrannical mob that is running it now.

Not likely to post until weekend.

Jim Webb’s campaign manager needs an editor. From the latest campaign email:

And [Sen. Allen] hired Dick Wadhams, a man whose last race featured the despicable intimidation of Native American voters and campaign workers breaking the law.

Let’s overlook for the moment that it’s not a complete sentence. Read without the first half of the prepositional object may make the other problem clearer.

And [Sen. Allen] hired Dick Wadhams, a man whose last race featured the despicable intimidation of campaign workers breaking the law.

So what’s wrong with intimidating people who are breaking the law? Ah, what a comma would do.

And [Sen. Allen] hired Dick Wadhams, a man whose last race featured the despicable intimidation of Native American voters and campaign workers, breaking the law. “Thereby” is then implied.

I figured with my check I get to give them a grammar lesson.

And as others have pointed out, this sentence leaves us a little cold:

The fact is Allen and his campaign have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb’s position on free speech and flag burning.

You don’t really “earn” free speech, even if Allen is a draft dodger like so many other right-wing, arm chair soldiers.

“Nixon would be proud.”

Jim Webb must be a little pissed about the way Charles Babbington ends his story on the flag burning amendment.

Hours before the votes were taken, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) thrust the issue into his reelection campaign. Noting that Democratic challenger James Webb had said he opposed the amendment, Allen’s campaign issued a press release linking Webb to Sens. John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who voted against the amendment. The release said Webb is “totally beholden to the liberal Washington senators” who backed him in this month’s primary.

Babbington offers Webb no chance to respond. Has the Webb campaign made a call to Babbington this morning?

SCOTUS rules against Delay’s redistricting plan. At least a small part of it.

Media Matters and this blog have regularly criticized Washington Post media writer and CNN TV host Howard Kurtz for his conservative bias in his reporting. Whether his being an administration mouthpiece has anything to do with his wife being a GOP consultant is unclear. (It is interesting to note that in her bio on her website she makes no mention that Kurtz is her husband.)

But certainly one has to question not only his bias but his journalistic credentials with his piece this morning. The story does nothing more than provide critics of the New York Times about 40 column inches to criticize the paper for its reporting of the banking records search initiative by Bush & Co. and put both the NY and the LA Times editors on the defensive, right from the lede.

President Bush calls the conduct of the New York Times “disgraceful.” Vice President Cheney objects to the paper having won a Pulitzer Prize. A Republican congressman wants the Times prosecuted. National Review says its press credentials should be yanked. Radio commentator Tammy Bruce likens the paper to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

… Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, yesterday asked John Negroponte, the national intelligence director, for a damage assessment following the Times story. Three other GOP senators joined Roberts at a news conference, with John Ensign of Nevada saying the paper “should have worked in cooperation with those authorities in our government to make sure that those who leaked were prosecuted.” Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth circulated a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert calling for the paper’s congressional credentials to be withdrawn. And New York Rep. Peter King continues to call for the Times — which, he told Fox News, has an “arrogant, elitist, left-wing agenda” — to be prosecuted for violating the 1917 Espionage Act.

… Heather MacDonald, writing in the Weekly Standard, called the Times “a national security threat” that is “drunk” on its own power.

William Bennett, the former Reagan administration official and conservative radio host, said the “cumulative impact” of both Times stories, and The Post’s disclosure of secret CIA prisons overseas, had brought the situation to a “critical mass.” Conservatives, he said, now wonder: “Gosh, is there a secret operation we’re running that won’t be disclosed by the press?”

But here’s the journalistic flaw, one that many reporters have when it comes to reporting the latest PR flack coming from the GOP: They rarely cut to the chaste and ask why this is a problem.

[Republicans] contend that exposing the classified banking program has badly undermined the administration’s efforts to investigate and capture terrorists.

The obvious question is How? Never once in the piece does Kurtz bother to ascertain whether the criticism is legitimate. If searching bank records is not on nearly the thin ice as the eavesdropping efforts are, as some contend, then critics of the Times at the very least need to tell us why the story is a threat to the administration’s efforts to thwart terrorists. Does anyone think that the terrorists would be surprised by this effort? The administration said from early on that they would try to disrupt the flow of money among Islamic terrorists. So why is the story so destructive to those efforts?

Tonight on “All Things Considered” there’s a short interview with GOP messaging guru Frank Luntz and George Lakoff, a Democratic consultant best know for his book Don’t Think of an Elephant.

Luntz of course thinks cut-and-run is quite snappy and effective. Lakoff says Dems should say we accomplished the mission of defeating Iraq in May 2003 but are bogged down in an occupation.

But then Luntz says something to the effect of “George keeps hoping if you say occupation over and over again, people will believe it.” The ATC host, to her credit, says, to the effect, “Isn’t that what the Republicans do all the time with cut-and-run?” Luntz essentially says, “Yes but that’s what the Dem want.” He’s clueless to the hypocrisy.

The interview should be up by 7:30. Here’s the link to the story. It should get you to the audio.

In sum, I’m not sure if Lakoff has the right idea, but it’s worth a shot.