![]() Russia, which is applying to join the Council of Europe, has pledged the abolition of capital punishment. The very first act of the Constitutional Court of liberated South Africa was to abolish the penalty of death. In order to be a fully signatory nation of the Council of Europe, for example, you have to show that you have wiped it from your book of statutes. Most "advanced" countries in the world have abolished capital punishment. Two classes of people are exempt from this rule: those who plan their own deaths, and those who are sentenced to be "put to death." Nothing is more predictable and more certain than death, and nothing is less predictable and less certain. "Wherever you happen to be," "Somewhere among the clouds above." Our whole existence as a species is made unique by our absolute foreknowledge of death combined with our complete ignorance of its timing. The two verses share an ineluctable element of the random and the uncertain. Kingsley Amis, a man of a deep, awed respect for the Grim Reaper, once wrote:ĭeath has got something to be said for it: There's no need to get out of bed for it Wherever you may be, They bring it to you, free!Īnd, passing from the absurd to the near sublime, Yeats wrote of an Irish airman who "foresaw" his own death: "I know that I shall meet my fate / Somewhere among the clouds above." You may laugh at death all you like, but only on the recognized condition that you allow death the concluding cackle. Second, he asked for a last cigarette and was refused it by the prison authorities. so that the event was more within the manageable compass of business and working hours. I've been spending a fair amount of time in and around death row in the past few years, and two aspects of White's terminal experience caught my attention. As a celebrated double murderer, he attracted few mourners and only a thinly attended vigil of death-penalty opponents. His self-described region is "the coast of Maine from the Sheepscot River to Calais.Last May 22, Larry Wayne White was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas. Since January 2001, Rector has served as "Regional Representative for United States Senator Angus King working in the Augusta, Maine office. In 1999, Rector became a firefighter in his hometown of Thomaston. He was appointed to and has served on the Joint Select Committee on Research, Development, and the Innovation Economy in the summer of 2006 the Joint Select Committee on Prosperity in the summer of 2007, and the Joint Select Committee on Maine's Energy Future in the winter of 2009. He helped to develop the Midcoast Leadership Academy, which offered classes in leadership development. He is co-chair of Maine Solutions, a consensus-building training and facilitation group for legislators and public officials. He serves on the Community Preservation Advisory Committee, the Maine Economic Growth Council, and the board of the Maine Compact for Higher Education. He served as Chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Labor, Commerce, Research, and Economic Development, and also served on the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Technology and Joint Select Committee on Regulatory Reform. He served in the Maine House of Representatives from 2002 to 2006. ![]() He attended the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2006 on a Brooks Fellowship. ![]() ![]() He graduated from the Boston University College of General Studies and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Southern Maine. Rector served as a Republican State Senator from Maine's 22nd District, representing much of Knox County, including Rockland and his residence in Thomaston. ![]() Rector (born July 12, 1951) is an American politician and entrepreneur. ![]()
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