Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, September 17, 2009

Death Penalty Horror Story

Commentary By Ron Beasley



Ohio Plans to Try Again as Execution Goes Wrong

The State of Ohio plans to try again next week to execute a convicted
rapist-murderer, after a team of technicians spent two hours on Tuesday
in an unsuccessful effort to inject him with lethal drugs.

[.......]

Tuesday�s one-week postponement was ordered by Gov. Ted Strickland
after he was alerted by the Ohio corrections department that
technicians at the state prison in Lucasville, some 70 miles east of
Cincinnati, had struggled for more than two hours to find a suitable
vein in either the arms or the legs of the inmate, Romell Broom, 53.

Now there is little doubt that Mr Bloom is a bad guy. But I oppose the death penalty but not because Mr Bloom may have gone through a little hell.  I heard on the radio that Bloom was actually trying to help the technicians find a vein because he wanted to get it over with.  The Chinese probably have the most humane executions - a bullet in the back of the head, but that's messy.  If we're going to have executions I think they should be public or at a minimum the jurors should be required to attend.  It's kind of like war -  the people should see the results of their decisions and the messier the better. 

As I said above I oppose the death penalty because it's murder in my name and I am convinced that innocent people have been executed.  When you execute someone who was innocent that's murder and you can't have a do over.  One is one too many.

We must also recognize that the case of Mr Broom was a failure of our criminal justice system.  Mr Broom should never have gotten out of prison after his first rape of a young girl.  It's time we realize that there are some people who are just too broken to fix and need to be taken out of society for ever. 



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