The Debra Saunders Leap of Logic Watch

Sometimes I feel like I need to start a different blog just to deal with the inanities Debra Saunders spews forth on a regular basis. I will call it something like "Oh, Debra Saunders" or "You Are Such a Fucking Idiot, Debra Saunders" or "Debra Saunders is Wrong Again" or something like that but I would have to do every single column (with certain exceptions) and I don't have the time.

(The exceptions are that she and I are both opposed to draconian drug sentences, so I guess we can agree on one thing.)

Yesterday's column - "Obama tries to obstruct executions" - promised a bombshell! You mean the President of the United States is trying to keep individual states from enforcing the death penalty within their borders? WOW.

Except there is nothing in the story like that. Here's how it starts:

President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war - this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws - on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers.

Oh, hold on a second. "Well may have begun"? What the fuck does that mean? Did Obama begin a war on states trying to enforce their own death penalty laws? MAYBE! Does Debra Saunders drink childrens' blood from a chalice made from a piece of the True Cross? MAYBE!

Here's the evidence:

On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug given under the three-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country's 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice, which sent an e-mail declining to comment. News reports indicate that the feds had concerns that the drugs were imported improperly.

A-HA!!! That Bad Old Obama must have called up the FDA and told them not to let anyone have sodium thiopental, right? Because he secretly hates the death penalty, right?

Wait, what's this? "FDA helped two states get scarce execution drug"?

The Food and Drug Administration, which has long maintained that it has nothing to do with drugs used in executions, has quietly helped Arizona and California obtain a scarce type of anesthetic so the states could continue putting inmates to death.

The shortage of sodium thiopental has disrupted executions around the country. But newly released documents show the FDA helped import it from Britain.

Huh, so maybe the FDA was just doing its job with the shipment in Georgia, and meanwhile was actively helping other states get the drug. I guess Obama forgot to call the FDA when they were busy helping Arizona and California get the same thing.

The point is, when your worldview is that everything the president does is wrong and evil, you see all kinds of conspiracies where none exist. Never mind that Obama supports the death penalty. Why let facts like that get in the way when you can construct a fictional account of Obama somehow reaching down from the White House to stop executions in Georgia because he's secretly against the death penalty, I suppose, just like he's secretly a Muslim and secretly whatever else you want to ascribe to him.

If you object to the FDA's concerns about the importation of lethal injection drugs, that's fine. State your objections and the factual basis for them and move on. But for God's sake, Debra, no need to invent conspiracies that you can't support with actual facts. You "may well have" to stop listening to your Lizard Creature Overlords if they're feeding you this shit.