In a final act of passion, outgoing Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour loosed upon the world a collection of dangerous convicted murderers, intending that they should kill us all in a raging torrent of blood and entrails to get revenge for the term limits preventing him from governing the state forever. (That’s what I heard Democratic leaders in Mississippi said, anyway.) Barbour said he released most of these guys because they were guilty of crimes of passion, and crimes of passion are unlikely to be repeated. But what if, just for the sake of argument, during their time in prison, these convicted murderers have become really passionate about crime and murder? Wouldn’t that mean that they’re just waiting for the opportunity to passionately commit crimes of passion more passionately than ever before? Of course it does! (But as long as you’re passionate about it, you should be able to get away with it. Or at least, that’s what I heard Haley Barbour said.)
Some people are apparently mad about this whole affair, and passionately so. I wonder, since crimes of passion are okie dokie with Governor Barbour, if the people who are mad about this felt passionately enough about it, could they beat him up and not get into trouble for doing it? I mean, it would be a crime of passion, so after all, he could hardly object, right? Or does he only not mind if the crime of passion is perpetrated against someone other than himself?
Here’s the passionate report:
And here’s another version of the story, where some guy says Barbour tried to run Mississippi like Boss Hogg (which begs the question, how come Democrats didn’t oppose him by acting like The Dukes of Hazzard? Those good ole boys always foiled Boss Hogg, didn’t they?):
