Gary Ashwill

April 14, 2005 - OK, sorry, no more lame puns. At least I don't go in for exterminator jokes.

April 14, 2005 - In recent decades, most states have rejected electrocution, firing squads, hanging, and gas chambers as cruel and unusual, leaving lethal injection the most popular method of execution in this country.

April 13, 2005 - Republicans promised their reign would bring an era of "fiscal responsibility." Then why is the federal budget still loaded with dubious pork spending?

April 12, 2005 - West Virginia state legislators were surprised to discover that Senate Majority Whip Billy Wayne Bailey, a Democrat, had quietly slipped a provision reading, "English shall be the official language of the State of West Virginia," into a mundane parks and recreation bill that passed during the latest session of the l

April 12, 2005 - Eric Rudolph, everyone's favorite pot-growing white supremacist, will be pleading guilty tomorrow to several bombings, include a 1998 blast at a Birmingham women's health clinic that killed a security guard and maimed a nurse.

April 12, 2005 - In a letter to the Financial Times, Ian Rutledge (author of Addicted to Oil) looks at spiraling oil prices and argues that no one should be surprised.

April 12, 2005 - Our friend Pam Spaulding has a rundown on "The State of Bigoted Marriage Amendments" newly added to state constitutions. The South is, to no one's surprise, solid on the issue. Five Southern states passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage just last year: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi (plus, for good measure, border state Oklahoma). North Carolina has such an amendment under consideration.