RedState Morning Briefing For September 22, 2011

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The first post today is on Troy Davis. I want to make clear that I have a lot of friends who oppose the death penalty. They have valid reasons for doing so. But those of my friends who oppose the death penalty have not been out planting or reaping seeds of doubt the Troy Davis defense has, for twenty years, been sowing. For twenty years, for multiple trips to the Supreme Court, and despite all the hollering from the Davis supporters, he has been consistently found guilty.What is ironic to me is the large number of liberals who think the state should abandon its 5000+ year history and, in this country additionally, its constitutional role in meting out death as the ultimate punishment, but should suddenly embrace as a duty those things the government has no long history or constitutional authority to take on.Contrary to last night’s “clever” talking point on the left, there is no conflict between a belief in limited government and support for the death penalty. That penalty has long been an explicit power of the state. Troy Davis is dead. May Mark MacPhail, the real victim, rest in peace.

1. There Is No Travesty of Justice in Georgia.

2. Class Warfare: American Communists of 1928 Compared to Barack Obama

3. Green Profiteers and Plastic Bags

4. Get Ready: Conservatives Are About to Support the Federal Takeover of Schools

5. On HPV and Virtuous Diseases

1. There Is No Travesty of Justice in Georgia.

Last night, the United States Supreme Court declined to stay Troy Davis’s execution. He will, by the time many of you are reading this, be dead. There were no expressions of dissent or objection from any of the 9 members of the Supreme Court.I like Guy Benson a lot, but his column on Troy Davis got my blood pressure up.I’m hearing a lot from people opposed to Troy Davis’s execution that there is no physical evidence in the case — and a whole lot of other hoo-haa.First of all, let’s set out that the case has been going on for twenty years.Second, let’s point out that two witnesses at Davis’s trial testified under oath that Troy Davis admitted to the shooting.Yes, those witnesses have now, twenty years and much badgering by anti-death penalty advocates later, recanted. A federal judge spent two days reviewing the evidence and the testimony last year and issued a 172 page order explaining why the witnesses recanting was “smoke and mirrors.”In fact, one of the chief nuggets of the case is that there was no physical evidence. Except that is crap. There is the matter of Troy Davis’s bloody clothes that you’ve probably never heard of. And the gun.Please click here for the rest of the post.RELATED: Ann Coulter’s Mumia’s the Word

2. Class Warfare: American Communists of 1928 Compared to Barack Obama

The other day I linked to a rather silly post at Think Progress by Matthew Yglesias. His point was that Obama is not engaging in class warfare because if you want real class warfare look at the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1928. That was real class warfare. Never mind how similar some of what the CPGB wanted in 1928 is what Obama is calling for now.But we don’t have to look to the CPGB. We can look to the Communist Party of America 1928.Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Green Profiteers and Plastic Bags

Believe it or not, there’s been a war going on over plastic bags for some time now. It seems that manufacturers of those reusable bags you see near the checkout line were none too pleased that so many people were continuing to choose plastic or paper bags as opposed to shelling out $20 bucks for their environmental solution.So the reusable bag company known as ChicoBag did what any good environmental alarmist would do: they lied.For instance, they claimed that “a reusable bag needs only to be used eleven times to have a lower environmental impact than using eleven disposable bags.” They were close. It was actually 393 times or roughly 7.5 years to replace reusing a plastic bag just three times.But, as always seems to be the case with wild claims of healing mother earth, their exaggerations weren’t just limited to their alleged comparability to plastic bags.This company even went so far as to hide the fact that reusable bags can actually have negative health effects since, unlike the evil plastic bags, reusable bags can become covered in bacteria.They even created a bogus government website to push their agenda.Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Get Ready: Conservatives Are About to Support the Federal Takeover of Schools

After Mitt Romney attacked Rick Perry for joining Milton Friedman in calling social security a “ponzi scheme”, conservative intellectuals in the DC-NY corridor suddenly began treating Friedman as John Maynard Keynes’ bastard love child with Karl Marx and rejecting all calls to reform social security because Rick Perry dared to call it a ponzi scheme.Considering the behavior of conservative intellectuals in Washington and New York on that issue, get ready for them to support a federal take over of elementary and secondary schools because Mitt Romney today came out in favor of Barack Obama’s Race to the Top and Arne Duncan’s education reforms.This is more than a subtle dig at Rick Perry.Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. On HPV and Virtuous Diseases

One of the disadvantages of being a procrastinator is that sometimes you lose great opportunities. I started on this story last week and put it aside because of travel, In the meantime I find that Michael Gerson has hit the subject much better than I ever could.Though the kerfuffle concerning Michele Bachmann and the HPV vaccine from the Republican candidate debate in Tampa is about over, during the course of that debate I repeatedly encountered an argument that, in my view, belongs much more in Saudi Arabia than America.Fact: there is no such thing as a virtuous disease.Fact: no behavior or lifestyle choice merits death by cancer.Please click here for the rest of the post.