Friday, November 12, 2010

Timing.

Kathryn Jean Lopez, November 10:

The point of the book, Decision Points, is to recount the decision-making process in a series of key moments of [George Bush's] life and presidency. On stem cells. On war. On domestic-policy successes, failures, and mixed tries. He tells us what he knew. What people advised. What he was thinking. He did what he did. What comes of that is a bit of a picture of a man’s discernment process. Not everything he did during his eight years is covered. Not even all of the big things. It’s not meant to be a definitive history.

We also get a clearer portrait of his deep appreciation for human life, which goes back to his childhood.

November 11:

Claude Jones always claimed that he wasn’t the man who walked into an East Texas liquor store in 1989 and shot the owner. He professed his innocence right up until the moment he was strapped to a gurney in the Texas execution chamber and put to death on Dec. 7, 2000. His murder conviction was based on a single piece of forensic evidence recovered from the crime scene—a strand of hair—that prosecutors claimed belonged to Jones.

But DNA tests completed this week at the request of the Observer and the New York-based Innocence Project show the hair didn’t belong to Jones after all. The day before his death in December 2000, Jones asked for a stay of execution so the strand of hair could be submitted for DNA testing. He was denied by then-Gov. George W. Bush.

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