I’ll never understand politics.
On one hand, the president pardoned Michael Flynn and the Thanksgiving turkey.
On the other, the Justice Department is in a hurry to execute five federal inmates before the inauguration. They have proposed that prisoners incarcerated in a state that does not allow capital punishment be moved to a state which does.
The approved pharmaceuticals for death by lethal injection are no longer sold for that purpose. Pentobarbitol has been used, which apparently kills by rapidly filling the lings with fluid–in effect drowning the convicted with their own bodily fluids. This sounds like a particularly nasty way to die, but federal judges, including the supreme court approve of its use.
To expedite the deaths of federal prisoners, the federal government is proposing [Click for link]:
- Firing squad
- Electrocution
- Poison gas
So far, no word on the status of the guillotine, hanging, burning at the stake, or drawing and quartering, all of which were traditionally carried out in public. (In England and Europe, beheading was reserved for nobility.)
Perhaps if federal prisoners claimed that their religious beliefs required them to self-identify as a turkey, they might have a chance.
sfnowak 