The Daily Dose/January 9, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Editor’s Note: the Leading Off staff is seeing how long it can go without writing about the current presidential administration.
Scott Dozier, an inmate on Nevada’s death row, killed himself this week. This by itself isn’t particularly newsworthy, except for the fact death rows exist to ensure its occupants stay alive long enough to have their death warrants carried out and they generally make it as difficult as possible for an inmate to kill himself.
Dozier, however, was determined to die. He had been condemned for the 2002 murder of a drug associate and had long ago given up his appeals, preferring to have his sentence executed than spending any more time on death row. Usually giving up your appeals in Nevada is enough to ensure you’re taken out back and shot immediately, but most recently in Dozier’s case the company that made one of the drugs to be used to kill him objected to its use, leading to his death’s delay. Dozier had been on suicide watch off and on during his captivity in Nevada and was alone in his cell the afternoon he hung himself.
We are on record here at Leading Off as favoring the abolition of the death penalty because we’ve executed innocent people. If you do not believe that you are deluding yourself. Dozier’s battle to get himself killed is merely further proof of how broken our justice system is: we cannot even execute someone who is clearly guilty and who wants to die.
We deserve better. Dozier’s victims deserved better than to be murdered, Dozier deserved better than being obliged to hang himself to get the death he long wanted and you and me – we the people – deserve better than to have these humiliating imbroglios carried out at all.
We deserve a nation without the death penalty.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow scams some pizza at work, in addition to moving a lot of Choco-Tacos.
The big sellers were those Choco-Taco ice cream deals, plus bottled water, both the regular and premium smart water…I want to tell guests don’t do this, some of the very best tap water on the planet comes out of your bathroom tap, but I’m not paid to tell people not to spend their money, so I keep this to myself because people like spending money on water…We sell air at the retailer for Pete’s sake, so this shouldn’t be too surprising.
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On This Date
In 1349 – The residents of Basel, Switzerland – then part of the Holy Roman Empire – murder their Jewish neighbors, locking 600 Jews in a barn on an island in the Rhine River and burning them to death. Almost as bad, 140 surviving Jewish children were forced to convert to Catholicism. Known to History as the Basel Massacre, residents believed the Jews were responsible for the Black Plague then currently decimating their town and Europe.
In 1930 – The Boston Bruins defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-3 to become the first NHL team to win 14 consecutive games. On January 4th the Bruins had established a new NHL record with their 12th straight win and the streak would end at 14 three nights later with a 3-2 loss to the New York Americans. The record was broken in 1982 by the New York Islanders (15) and is now held by the Pittsburgh Penguins, who won 17 consecutive games in 1993.
In 1988 – So Emotional by Whitney Houston is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for its only week. It was Houston’s sixth consecutive #1 song, tying the Hot 100 record established by the Beatles and later tied by the Bee Gees. Houston would later extend that record to seven consecutive #1 singles, still the Hot 100 record.
Quotebook
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.
Gandalf
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The University of San Francisco won the 1955 NCAA basketball championship, defeating LaSalle 77-63 in the title game.
Today’s Stumper
What acts have had the most consecutive #1 songs on the Hot 100 since Whitney Houston’s seven consecutive #1s? –Answer next time!
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