Trusting Gonzo, part II
First, we're told that we're supposed to trust Alberto Gonzales to certify that the government's warrantless spying on us is Constitutionally valid and not at all Orwellian.
Now, it turns out that the revised Patriot Act requires us to trust Alberto Gonzales with the authority to put certain executions on the fast track:
The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year's reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.
Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and Gonzales agreed, prosecutors could use "fast track" procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court.
The move to shorten the appeals process and effectively speed up executions comes at a time of growing national concern about the fairness of the death penalty, underscored by the use of DNA testing to establish the innocence of more than a dozen death row inmates in recent years.
As with the oversight of wiretapping, the White House has subverted the Constitutional authority of the federal judiciary and placed their rightful oversight power in the hands of a corrupt serial perjurer.