Headlines: "Death Penalty Looms Over Bush Campaign," etc., etc.

Why are the news media making such an outrageous spectacle of themselves by vigorously campaigning against the death penalty when the vast majority of Americans have supported capital punishment for so long? There is nothing subtle about the disturbing answer.

The vast majority of journalists in the mainstream news media are liberal Democrats who seized the opportunity to ignite a one-sided debate against the death penalty with a highly questionable university death penalty study and the recent use of DNA testing which exonerated several inmates.

It's ironic that the experts who trashed DNA evidence in the O.J. Simpson case are the same publicity hounds who are getting people out of prison and off death row using DNA evidence and capitalizing on it with a new book.

Indeed, it's well-known that liberal academia, law schools and trial lawyers are anti-death penalty. But what really brought it to center stage was the political capital that could be gained by the media demonizing Texas as the "death wish" state and Republican presidential candidate, Texas Governor George W. Bush as the "executioner."

Though the death penalty has never been a decisive issue in a presidential campaign, the news media has targeted Bush and made it an issue. It is doubtful that Democratic candidate, and the media's choice, Vice President Al Gore really supports capital punishment but if he came out against it, he would certainly be defeated in November.

Public support for the death penalty has hovered between 75 and 80 percent for many years. Even though opponents and the left-wing media have whittled down that support to about 66 percent over the past five years, that's still a two-thirds majority.

And, of course, that's why Governor Bill Clinton ran home to Arkansas to ensure that a death sentence against a mentally ill inmate was carried out while he was running for president in 1992.

Woe be unto those in government who would abolish the death penalty, even in these troubled and confused times. Former Chief Justice Rose Bird and several associate justices of the California Supreme Court did it and saved Robert Kennedy's assassin and the Manson family for taxpayers to support for life. But they paid the price by being kicked off the bench by the voters.

It costs taxpayers between $30,000 and $100,000 per year to keep each death row inmate alive for the 10 to 30 years it takes to exhaust legal delays and appeals. Common sense should tell us that is cruel and unusual punishment for both the inmate and the taxpayer.

Instead of the media's daily dose of cultural engineering, journalists should be focusing on the real causes of violence and killing. Indeed, society has had enough of being assaulted by selfish interests and battered by the failures of good intentions.

The irony will not be lost if Bush survives the media's attempts at political lynchings and wins the election with 66 percent of the vote...

Alas, neither Bush nor Gore is qualified to hold the office of president, which has been severely diminished by the holder, the two-party system, the Congress and the media, seemingly beyond repair.