John Montgomery Presents This Week's	June 24, 2000	Creep Logo by Alan Fraser
	George W Bush
	Smirking at the Death Penalty

We all met George W Bush in high school and we didn't like him. He came from the rich section of town and he knew he could get away with anything because if he got caught, Daddy would fix it. He was the wise-cracking sloucher in the back of the class, with smoke on his breath and a smirk on his face. He'd shove the guys around in the rest rooms and grab the girl's asses in the hallways. George would show up at the school football games, drunk and obnoxious, surrounded by a small entourage of greasers and sluts who were attracted to his money, name and cocky, strutting manner.

Most guys like George fade into well-deserved obscurity, working for Dad, growing progressively fatter and dumber, making life miserable for their families. Unfortunately for us, George used his lifetime ability of getting away with stuff to end up running for president.

He got away with being a no-show in the Texas National Guard. He got away with staying drunk and coked-out until his 40th birthday. He got away with becoming a multi-millionaire through a series of sweetheart deals in oil and baseball set up by Daddy's friends. And as Texas governor, he's gotten away with a crass and cavalier attitude toward the death penalty.

Let's make it clear up front: I believe the death penalty has a place in our society. There are plenty of scum-sucking sociopaths who could vastly improve our ability to sleep at night by taking a government-induced ride into the great beyond. Just peruse the Creep pages and you'll find a long list: Timothy McVeigh, Rae Carruth, Linda Tripp, etc. But we need to know that the people who are making these life-and-death decisions know what they're doing. They have to demonstrate a basic level of intelligence, seriousness and due diligence. There may be some people like that out there, but George ain't one of 'em.

George and the state of Texas have put 135 people to death since he's been governor. He'll fold his arms and tell you that every one of them deserved it and had full access to the courts. He even displayed his macho, kill-the-bastards attitude by mocking the last minute pleas of his only female executee, Karla Faye Tucker.

This week, George and the boys executed Gary Graham. By all accounts, Gary was a dangerous scumbag who deserved to be locked up into one of those Hannibal the Cannibal iron suits. In 1981, when he was 17, Gary went on a week-long shooting, robbing and raping spree. He didn't deny that, pleading guilty to ten counts of aggravated assault. But they also charged Gary with the murder of 53-year-old Bobby Lambert, to which Gary proclaimed innocence right up until they strapped him onto the gurney.

At his murder trail, Gary was represented by a loser of a lawyer, Ron Mock, who has been reprimanded and suspended by the bar several times. Ron called no defense witnesses, despite the fact that there were as many as six people at the scene who said Gary was not the killer or couldn't identify him. Gary was convicted on the testimony of one eyewitness. There was no physical evidence linking him to the killing and ballistics tests showed that the gun he had when he was arrested was not the murder weapon.

Well, that's what appeals courts are for, right? George (and his spin doctors who tell him what to say) pointed out that Gary had been in 36 different courtrooms since his conviction and it was upheld each time. The additional witnesses who could have shed some doubt on Gary's conviction never did testify in any of those 36 courtrooms. "That's the law and I can't do anything about it," says George. If that's the law, it's broken.

George also claimed that it was really the 18-member Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles that made the final decision and he was powerless to override it. The Board is made up of George's political cronies who he appointed to it. If he saw fit, he could have simply made a public statement that he had some reservations about the execution and it would be nice if the board paid attention to them because he's a Compassionate Conservative, God Damn It! That's called leadership, George. That's what we're looking for from our leaders. Presidents have to make life-and-death decisions every day, while showing some accountability and balls. But George's only public statement was a pathetic, "I am confident justice is being done. May God bless the victims and the families of the victims and God bless Mr. Graham."

God bless us and our chances of ending up with this mindless idiot as our president. The alternative, Al Gore, is no prize. We also knew him from high school: the Student Council President who always asked the teacher for more homework. We didn't like him either. He had his own share of trouble this week, trying to weasel out of his Buddhist Temple hard money / soft money scam by saying, "Hard money? When they had that hard money in their hands, I had my soft dick in my hands, pissing out all that iced tea!"

I don't like either one of them, but if I'm on death row, I'd rather have the Student Council President reviewing the case than the smirking class clown.