When Rahm Emanuel Said Executing a Developmentally Disabled Man Was “OK”

[marmar]

(In These Times) “There are probably a lot of things I could remember, if I could remember.”

Regan Burke has been working in Chicago politics for over 30 years now. She is one of those people anyone who’s ever worked in any campaign knows: the dedicated behind-the-scenes professional, whose names nobody outside political circles recognizes but without whom democracy would not be imaginable, and because of whom democracy is a joy. (Think of a kinder, gentler Kathy Bates in Primary Colors.)

When I sat down with her one afternoon recently at a Ravenswood cafe—“I’m sorry,” she says, inhaling a bagel, eyes sparkling behind ruby-red bedazzled spectacles, “I haven’t eaten anything today!”—she sported a bold black-and-white checked table-cloth style blouse, a red bandana knotted jauntily about the neck. I’ve come here because she’s promised me stories about Rahm Emanuel.

But first she takes me back to 1982, just to make certain I know that she’s no blushing innocent—that she knows how the game is played.

.......(snip).......

It’s a token of how deeply embedded she was within this moment in history that she doesn’t even know that the story is infamous: the time Bill Clinton left the primary campaign trail to execute a developmentally disabled man—who was so out of it he saved the pie served with his last meal to eat later—the better to prove a Democrat could be “tough on crime.” To her, it’s just a trauma she’d rather forget.

.......snip).......

“It was January, when he needed to be in New Hampshire and Iowa. Period. And also, there are these fundraisers scheduled. So I go into Rahm’s office, you know, pretty upset, and I said, ‘I have to schedule this guy’s execution!’ And here’s what Rahm’s answer was: ‘It’s OK. The American public is for the death penalty!’ .................(more)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17798/rahm_emanuel_death_penalty

[MisterP]

1. SCOTUS! SCOTUS!

[REP]

2. Ricky Ray Rector was not developmentally disabled; he lobomotized himself in a suicide attempt

Rector tried to commit suicide after killing his long-time friend, the police officer he agreed to surrender himself to for the first murder he has committed. Rector survived the attempt, but it destroyed his frontal lobe, in effect lobotomizing him. He was not developmentally disabled.