And the culture of life continues...

Via The Telegraph UK:

A man convicted of shooting dead a store clerk during a robbery has become the 400th person to be executed by Texas since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

The southern state accounts for almost a third of the 1,091 American executions over the last three decades, and this year it will be responsible for almost two thirds - 21 out of 35 judicial killings so far.

About 14 protestors gathered outside the Huntsville Unit in Huntsville, Texas, as Johnny Conner - who has never confessed to his crime - was executed by lethal injection last night.

Conner, 32, was convicted in 1999 of killing Kathyanna Nguyen, 49, by shooting her in the face during an attempted robbery of the Houston petrol station and convenience store where she worked.

"What is happening to me now is unjust and the system is broken," Conner said as he lay strapped to the execution gurney. Read more...

George Bush has turned the killing of human beings into an art form, so it comes as no surprise that he and Alberto Gonzales are attempting to fast track executions nationwide by doing away with the appeals process for death row inmates. (h/t Dcup)