It’s becoming clear now that handsy Texas ball-of-fire Rick Perry, in notably indiscreet fashion, has been trying to cover-up or kill an investigation into the execution of an innocent man, which would show that… well… he and his staff could have maybe prevented this from happening! This is a major scandal, for serious. BUT LET US CONSIDER THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS. If you’re Kay Bailey Hutchison, and you have a Texas Republican primary against Rick Perry in a few months, how do you attack this from the right? How do you reconcile (a) the major opportunity to attack Rick Perry for this major thing and (b) the fact that the Republican base loves the death penalty and will always love it and want it and cherish it? Hmm… uhh… how about… Rick Perry is in cahoots with the liberals? Huh? Any objections? Fine, type up a statement. MORE »

Man, you know what costs gazillions of dollars of taxpayer money? Executin’ people! With appeals and increased housing costs, the tab to house a prisoner and eventually carry out the death penalty can run upwards of $3 million. Conversely, just keeping somebody in jail forever costs a mere $1.1 million or so. MORE »

KARL ROVE IN CONTEMPT: “A U.S. congressional panel voted on Wednesday to find former presidential adviser Karl Rove in contempt for defying a subpoena to testify in its probe into suspected political meddling at the Justice Department.” [REUTERS]

YOU DON’T SAY: “The inspector general’s investigation found that Ms. Goodling and a handful of other senior aides to Mr. Gonzales developed a system of using in-person interviews and Internet searches to screen out candidates who might be too liberal and to identify candidates seen as pro-Republican and supportive of President Bush.” [New York Times]

America is doomed. The Nebraska Supreme Court — probably “loaded” with gay Democrats — ruled today that “electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole means of execution.” Jesus, where’s the Soviet Union when you need it? MORE »

We just got this shocking, repulsive news tip from Wonkette operative “Matt R.,” who is monitoring the proceedings on CNN:

On the C-SPAN precinct feed, one guy just raised two hands while voting for precinct chair. Hooray Iowa! (It was around 8:07 p.m.)

I know it’s Iowa Day where we celebrate importance of Iowa by letting it pick our next president, but there are still a ton of other dumb things going on in this dumb country that we have to talk about. High on that list is the crazy way we execute people, which is something I knew pretty much nothing about 10 minutes ago but has now made me a raving lunatic and it’s no wonder that a lawyer somewhere finally decided to suggest that maybe this process was a little cruel and/or unusual along with a whole slew of other adjectives I can think of. MORE »

I grew up in Texas, and my parents still live there, so I still go pretty often and it’s not as bad as you think. Houston’s become a pretty fun town — there are plenty of bars, and it’s possible to make out with even the most elite of hipster girls on the mention of being from, say, New York, which is where I happen to live. It’s not all fun and games down in the Lone Star state, though. Texas, it turns out, killed more than half the prisoners executed in the whole country combined, (60 percent!) this year according to the New York Times. Hooray Texas! MORE »

Wonkette Intern Extraordinare Greg Wasserstrom continues to surprise us by neither bringing us our coffee as specified in his blood oath nor being decidedly unfunny to make us look better. But, without coffee, we’re too lazy to crack down anyway.

I just have one question for Jon Corzine, governor of the State of New Fucking Jersey and it is this: What, sir, would Jesus do? Would he sign into law a bill banning the death penalty, the fucking death penalty, the most important tool in the law enforcement tool box? The verdict is in, Corzine, the verdict is in, and Huckabee and I know what Jesus really wants. But go ahead, governor. Sign away the lives of your citizens, as now there will be no deterrent to killing people in your state. But plow forward sir, you know what’s best. Go ahead and reverse a 42-year tradition of executing those individuals who, after being charged with a capital crime, were assigned a public defender for lack of access to an actual, non-poor-person lawyer and therefore convicted. Go ahead and spare those from death who would otherwise be exonerated by DNA evidence. That’s just so American and everything. As for me, I’m on the next bus to Moscow because what’s the fucking difference?

* True crime: “In 1993 Katrina Hawkins was only thirteen when she and her mother Diane Hawkins were brutally murdered in their Washington DC home…” Kevin Flynn discusses Relentless Pursuit: A Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn’t Quit at the Penn Quarter Olsson’s. Free at 7 p.m. [Olsson's]
* “Live From Death Row!” at Busboys & Poets. Two prisoners will call in “live from death row” and former death row prisoner Lawrence Hayes will speak about ending the death penalty. Depressing is always free, not always punctuated with exclamation points. 8 p.m. [Busboys & Poets]
* “Learn some surprising lessons about life and love” in the Tom Hanks production Starter for Ten. It’s set in the 80s and involves trivia. That’s all you need to know. AFI, $9.25 at 7:10 p.m. and 9:10 p.m. [AFI]

* Hank Paulson carries the budget flag up to the hill, and by the end of the day is looking for an ATM to fully fund every program. [WP]
* President Bush has a sense of Morissettian irony over the Senate’s support of Gen. David Petraeus while opposing the surge. [WP]
* Luckily, Robert Gates has a back-up to the back-up plan. [LAT]
* Thanks to Walnuts, Ill Hill, and Barry Hussein the ‘08 election will likely cost over a billion dollars. [WP]
* MPAA uses actor from West Philadelphia to illustrate their blue-collar base. Patrick Leahy really liked The Queen. [NYT]
* Military wants civilian agencies to “step up” and “get ‘r done” in Iraq. [NYT]
* Which six states want to expand death penalty powers? Exactly the ones you think. [USAT]