Ashamed to be from Texas

Perry would rather kill a crazy man than be seen as soft on crime

Appreciate Gove. Rick Perry's efforts to protect me and my children from a murderer so loony that he had heated conversations with his beans, but the governor need not have bothered.

The governor said he didn't commute Kelsey Patterson's death sentence to life in prison, as the Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended, because "Texas has no life-without-parole sentencing option, and no one can guarantee this defendant would never be freed to commit other crimes were his sentence commuted."

Patterson is now dead, but Perry is right. Nobody could guarantee Patterson wouldn't be freed in 35 years, when he would have first come up for parole at the age of 73.

Even if he came up for parole at 73 it is very unlikely he would be recommended for parole from Texas' tough parole boards.