The editorial page of Raleigh's News & Observer does an excellent job this morning of summing up the debate over lethal injection and of explaining why the docs ought to appeal Judge Stephens' recent ruling:
The board ought to appeal the ruling. To do less could put some doctor in an ethically challenged position of having to watch over executions, perhaps to revive a suffering inmate only so that he could be put to death later. That flies in the face of a doctor's healing oath.
And the Greensboro News & Record adds a measure of sanity to the latest highway patrol scandal:
Easley was right to react angrily, declaring through a spokesman that "somebody with issues of moral turpitude" shouldn't be employed as a law-enforcement officer….At the same time, he went too far when he had his spokesman add: 'Now that the judge has ruled, she can give that officer a job. But he won't be working for the state Highway Patrol as long as Governor Easley is in office.'…Lassister's order doesn't deserve to stand. Past leniency shouldn't prevail forever, but that point must be made as a legal argument, not gubernatorial pique.
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