DURST: Gotta Love that Death Penalty

The death penalty. You got to love it. Because it never matters until we're waist deep in the lukewarm contagium known as an election year. So now, simply because this is an annum divisible by four, we're forced to watch the spectacle of excessively dressed white men leapfrogging each other over the stickier-the-better matter of which misdemeanor they'd be willing to publicly ice somebody.Al Gore simply favors the death penalty, while Pat Buchanan thinks it should be applied to anybody who makes fun of his sister's hair. George W says he wants to strengthen it. What the hell does that mean? How does one go about strengthening the death penalty? Does he plan on administering it twice? Have do- overs? Fake- outs? Are we talking drawing and quartering here? Soylent Green?Is there a secret plan to throw miscreants in vats of poisonous leeches on Saturday morning TV? Is he advocating waiting until the two minute warning of the second half of the Super Bowl before throwing the switch? Maybe mandating the state neglect to apply rubbing alcohol before employing the lethal injection? And what could act as a better deterrent to an habitual criminal than facing the threat of a nasty postmortem infection? Maybe the audio track of continuous episodes of "Suddenly Susan" piped into the chamber in lieu of gas.Will Durst thinks once we try to use Brooke Shields for evil purposes we are not far from becoming Brooke Shields ourselves.