1. Nicholas Kristof, on how Republican have been scare-mongering Americans into voting against their own interests for eighty years now. History has proven them wrong, every single time.

2. Perhaps you heard about the “Hand of Frog” that secured France a berth in the World Cup over poor Ireland. Ireland’s petition to FIFA for a replay has been denied, proving that FIFA is an organization mired in the past, both rejecting modern instant replay technology and favoring the world’s powerhouses (particularly the Western ones) over the rest of the world.

3. No one sitting on death row in Texas can expect any sort of clemency from Gov. Perry right now…the man has a primary to win!

4. Short-term lenders in Texas are getting what they pay for with their campaign contributions: zero regulation. As I have said before and will say again, our democracy will forever be corrupted by money until the Supreme Court wises up and decides that money is not the exact equivalent of speech, or political campaigns become publicly funded.

Our idiot governor, doubling down on his claim that criticisms of the Willingham execution are politically motivated, put in his sights the arson expert whose report has touched off a storm of controversy:

“Perry said Thursday that Beyler had lost his credibility and exposed his political agenda by criticizing the governor’s actions and calling Perry’s changes to a forensic-science panel unethical.

“I would suggest to you that if you look at the bulk of Mr. Beyler’s remarks over the last days and weeks, you will see a very politically driven agenda,” Perry said during a visit to a Richardson high school. “This is a politically driven agenda by a group of people.”

Thanks to Perry’s comments, a horde of right-wing bloggers will now be digging through his trash for his Democratic Party membership card. Beyler defended himself from such claims:

Beyler has been reluctant to speak publicly on the investigation, and late Wednesday, he said in an e-mail that Perry should stay out of the subsequent investigation because he approved the execution of Willingham.

Perry has tried over the last few days to fashion his decisions in the case as strong support for the death penalty, and he has questioned the motives of those who would challenge the evidence.

Beyler, in one of his first interviews, said Thursday that he was speaking out for a single reason: to insulate science from politics.

“My agenda is that the governor should keep his hands off scientific investigations,” he said.

Beyler said his criticism of Perry stems from the governor’s dismantling and upending the work of the commission.

“Whether he just didn’t have a clue that he had a conflict of interest, which I suppose that’s plausible, or he chose not to do the right thing, I can’t tell you,” Beyler said.

The scientist said the governor’s inference that Beyler is motivated by sentiment against the death penalty is absurd, though he declined to say what his belief on the topic is.

“There can be legitimate findings of murder by arson, and there can illegitimate ones. Both exist. And I had no preconceived notion as to which this was,” he said of the Willingham case.

He said his greatest concern is that the political fight is burying the real work, which was alluded to by a recent National Academy of Sciences report that stated there are problems throughout the forensic sciences and what is being presented in courtrooms today.

“This is simply a specific example of a wake-up call to the broad notion that forensic sciences need help and work. This is not something unique to Texas. It’s a national issue,” Beyler said.

As we’ve noted, Perry’s absurd attacks on the critics of the execution are only serving to draw more attention to the case. This leads me to conclude that Perry’s actions must be part of a deliberate strategy, perhaps an effort to portray himself as a staunch defender of the death penalty for the hordes of right-wingers that occupy our great state. Of course the side effect of these criticisms is the undermining of an earnest effort to bolster science in court rooms across the country. But what’s a few more innocent people imprisoned or put to death when compared to Perry’s political ambitions?

I honestly don’t understand what Gov. Perry is up to. He couldn’t do more to bring attention to the Willingham controversy than with his own actions in the case. Here, the recently deposed chairman of the commission investigating Willingham’s conviction and execution reports that he was pressured by attorneys from the governor’s office to focus less on the Willingham matter:

Just months before the controversial removal of three members of a state commission investigating the forensics that led to a Texas man’s 2004 execution, top aides to Gov. Rick Perry tried to pressure the chairman of the panel over the direction of the inquiry, the chairman has told the Tribune.

Samuel Bassett, whom Perry replaced on the Texas Forensic Science Commission two weeks ago, said he twice was called to meetings with Perry’s top attorneys. At one of those meetings, Bassett said he was told they were unhappy with the course of the commission’s investigation.

“I was surprised that they were involving themselves in the commission’s decision-making,” Bassett said. “I did feel some pressure from them, yes. There’s no question about that.”

[...]

According to Bassett, the governor’s attorneys questioned the cost of the inquiry and asked why a fire scientist from Texas could not be hired to examine the case instead of the expert from Maryland that the panel ultimately settled on.

Following the meeting, a staffer from the general counsel’s office began to attend the commission’s meetings, Bassett said.

[...]

…Bassett said, [Perry General Counsel David] Cabrales told him in February that the Willingham investigation was not the kind of work the legislature intended for the commission.

“I politely said that I’m not sure I agree with that but that I’m certainly willing to go back and look at the statute,” Bassett said. A week later, he sent Cabrales and Wiley a letter with a copy of the law creating the commission.

Wiley also questioned the cost of the investigation and, according to Bassett, called the pay to Beyler a waste of state money. Bassett said he defended Beyler as an independent expert. He said he also responded that the commission had unanimously voted to hire Beyler.

Gov. Perry has also removed another member of the commission:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has removed a fourth member of a state commission charged with investigating claims that an innocent man may have been executed, his office said.

The Texas governor has now replaced all of the four members that, under law, he is allowed to appoint to the commission. The remaining five members are appointed by the state’s lieutenant governor and attorney general.

[...]

Commissioner Alan Levy was replaced by John Bradley, a district attorney who was also named commission chairman. Aliece Watts was replaced by Norma Farley, chief forensic pathologist for Hidalgo and Cameron counties. Perry said at the time the replacements were “pretty normal protocol.”

In a statement Thursday, Perry’s office said he had appointed attorney Lance Evans of Fort Worth to replace former commission chairman Samuel Bassett of Austin, and that Randall Frost of Boerne, chief medical examiner for Bexar County, would replace commissioner Sridhar Natarajan.

“If you’ve got a whole new investigation going forward, it makes a lot more sense to put the new people in now and let them start the full process, rather than bring people in there for a short period of time and then replace them,” Perry said two weeks ago. “I think it makes a whole lot more sense to make a change now than to make a change later.”

I suppose Perry thinks that by stalling and muddling the investigation, he can avoid the commission making an official finding that Willingham’s conviction was based on junk science. But that conclusion is already evident thanks to fire investigator Craig Beyler’s report, so I don’t know how these moves do anything but bring more attention to the case. Which is just fine by me, of course.

You may recall the case of Cameron Willingham, whose was wrongfully executed for the murder of his own children in a fire in 1991. The fire scientist hired by the Texas Forensic Commission whose report has undermined Willingham’s conviction was scheduled to present his findings in a hearing last week in Irving, but the hearing was called off when Gov. Perry announced that he was replacing three members of the commission. The move was an obvious ploy to avoid further embarrassment on the part of Perry, who has publicly defended Willingham’s execution, and now, predictably, the investigation into Willingham’s execution is “on hold” until the new chairman of the commission has time to bring himself up to speed on the case.

Perry has managed only to draw further attention to the case. Phillip Martin at Burnt Orange Report found that a Google search returns 353 articles about the case. That was as of yesterday; right now the number stands at 629, and counting. As this Time magazine article concludes:

…last week’s decision has prompted head-scratching by political observers, even those with ties to the Republican Party. The commission’s final report on the Willingham case would not have been issued until late spring or summer of 2010, after the State Fire Marshal’s Office would have responded to Beyler’s report. The political reality is that the death penalty is unlikely to be an issue in the March Republican primary, says Bill Miller, an Austin political consultant, and it has never had much traction in fall contests, given the wide support for the penalty among both Democratic and Republican voters in the state. Could it be simply an expression of his power? Hubris? Acting because he can? “Well, it is his board,” says Miller with a laugh.

Whatever Perry’s motivation, his ham-handedness has only served to highlight the investigation into Willingham’s execution. The death of an innocent man is not covered up so easily, whatever level of duplicity the Governor demonstrates.

Last week I linked to a Chicago Tribune piece, which detailed the results of investigation conducted by a fire scientist hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission who concluded that Cameron Todd Willingham was almost certainly executed for a crime he did not commit. For more detail about Willingham’s case, and the shoddy science and quack psychiatry that led to his death, I strongly suggest reading this New Yorker piece, “Trial By Fire.” You can only hang your head in despair at the thought that Willingham is certainly not the only person sent to death by pseudo-science in the last several decades.

A fire-scientist hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission has concluded that Texas fire investigators were grossly mistaken in concluding that Cameron Todd Wilingham likely set the fire that led to his children’s death in 1991, and to his execution in 2004:

Among Beyler’s key findings: that investigators failed to examine all of the electrical outlets and appliances in the Willinghams’ house in the small Texas town of Corsicana, did not consider other potential causes for the fire, came to conclusions that contradicted witnesses at the scene, and wrongly concluded Willingham’s injuries could not have been caused as he said they were.

The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had “limited understanding” of fire science. The fire marshal “seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created,” he wrote.

The marshal’s findings, he added, “are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation.”

Willingham’s execution has faced scrutiny for years now from independent experts, but this is the first state-sanctioned review. It will be difficult for Texas officials to avoid the fact that an innocent man was put to death. Willingham joins Raymond Cantu as instances where the State of Texas executed men who were in all likelihood innocent of the crimes they were convicted of. They were certainly not the first, but hopefully they will be the last.

A few things of interest this morning:

1. Did you know that Georgia still has segregated proms? Separate but equal you know, except not really. I think the quickest way to fix this would be for the black high schoolers to crash the white proms. Once white parents predictably overreact and thus demonstrate their racism to one degree another, there will be enough public pressure to change this.

2. More on Obama’s “preventive detention” proposal. Thanks, but no thanks. Personally, I don’t feel like living in The Minority Report. Either people are planning to commit a terrorist attack, and thus committing a crime, or they aren’t.

3. Bob Herbert weighs in on Troy Davis, who is slated to be executed even though there is compelling evidence that he did not commit the crime he is convicted of. When a man can conceivably be put to death despite compelling questions regarding his guilt, it is an indictment of the death penalty in general.

4. The Pakistan Army’s offensive against the Taliban in Swat is not going as terribly as was feared it might, but neither are the Taliban proving to be an easy enemy to oust.

5. Republicans are staking their electoral hopes on a desperate wish for Obama to fail, and therefore doing the best they can to avoid dealing with ever-increasing unpopularity of their proposals and any need for party reform.

6. A profile of Leah Ward Sears, the first African-American woman to be Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court and potential nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

7. I had a chance to watch the streaming webcast of the Cliburn Competition, which kicked off yesterday. I was very impressed by the fact that their webcast is actually a full-fledged broadcast, complete with commentary, fillers between the performances, and backstage interviews with the competitors. Various camera angles make it easy to watch the competitors as they play, and the sound quality is impressive. The competition continues through June 7th, and you can watch it online here.

Boy, if you think we have problems with the death penalty in our country, you should be glad that at least this isn’t China.

The Supreme Court has ordered a halt to an impending execution in Texas, having accepted on cert review a case involving a prisoner challenging how lethal injection is implemented in the state. Texas officials have declared that executions will go on regardless. We are nothing if not an ornery and stubborn people. As the NY Times article makes clear, it is likely that lawyers for the inmante scheduled to die next will apppeal the sentence also on the lethal injection issue, forcing the Supreme Court to grant cert in an effort to bring about a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in the U.S.

You know how Kinky Friedman is thinking of running for Texas governor again in 2010, but this time as a Democrat (should he win the primary nomination)? Well, a new poll by Wilson Research Strategies of 350 Democratic-leaning and 150 independent voters shows he trails other candidates:

Houston lawyer Chris Bell, the Democrats’ 2006 nominee, was favored by 22 percent of Democratic primary voters. Tony Sanchez of Laredo, the Dems’ ’02 nominee, drew 15 percent; former state Comptroller John Sharp got 13 percent; and Bill White, the Houston mayor who might run for governor, won 12 percent.

Friedman, who placed fourth running as an independent last year, was favored by 9 percent of Democratic primary voters.

The poll has quite a few independents included in it, so I’d be his numbers are even lower among actual Democratic primary voters. Kinky is a joke and always has been.

The poll also asked questions about the death penalty, and found some misgivings: 42 percent of all voters favored abolishing the death penalty, with 47 percent of all voters opposing abolition. Forty-eight percent said the death penalty is totally morally acceptable, with 31 percent rating it morally wrong.

79 percent of all the polled voters said they are concerned about the possibility that the state is executing some innocent people. Forty-five percent of all voters were very concerned.

44 percent of voters said they preferred life without parole as the punishment for people convicted of murder, and 30 percent favored the death penalty. Fourteen percent chose life with a chance of parole.

If a candidate were to run on abolishing the death penalty, 46 percent of all the polled voters would likely support them, 37 percent would not likely support them, and 17 percent said either it depends or did not know/refused to answer.

55 percent agreed that a disproportionate or unfair number of poor people are on death row, 21 percent disagreed and 23 percent did not know or refused to answer.

54 percent agreed that if Texas abolished the death penalty but remained tough on crime, the state would be sending a message to the nation that killing is wrong no matter whether a person or government does the killing; 33 percent disagreed.

But again, this is only Democrats and independents, so it ignores Republican support for the death penalty.