BREAKING: Kentucky Debates Treating Inmate Humanely

Yes, that "BREAKING" is sarcastic. This story has been picked up by papers around the country since it broke in the Herald last week.

I don't know whether it's popular because people are horrified that Kentucky might spend tax dollars to spare a convicted felon from excruciating pain, or it's popular because people are horrified that Kentucky is still - after a year and a half - debating the necessity of spending tax dollars to spare a convicted felon from excruciating pain.

I do know is that what horrifies me is the large number of intelligent, educated, otherwise compassionate people who start foaming at the mouth and screeching in fury at the idea that imprisoned human beings might experience a moment of humane treatment.

A condemned killer’s fight to receive surgery for agonizing hip pain pushed Kentucky officials into an uncomfortable debate over security, politics and even the possibility of inviting scorn from Fox News pundits.

Emails and memos obtained by The Associated Press show corrections officials struggling for a year to reconcile their duty to provide medical care with the political ramifications of spending tens of thousands of dollars for surgery on a man they plan to execute. A key problem would turn out to be security issues that led several hospitals to balk at treating inmate Robert Foley, who still hasn’t had the surgery.

Read the whole disgusting thing.

Foley was sentenced to death, not to 18 months and counting of excruciating pain.

Anyone who has suffered a degenerated hip, knee or back that needs surgery knows that the pain quickly surpasses the ability of even the strongest painkillers to quell it.

Again, no one sentenced Foley to the continuous torture of unending pain for months on end.

Considering that Kentucky's death penalty has come under increasing criticim lately, Foley could easily spend another 40 years on Death Row, with no relief from unrelenting, unbearable pain.

Sounds to me like the Kentucky Department of Corrections is deliberately and with malice aforethought using torture to force Foley to demand immediate execution, just to make the pain stop.

Motherfuckers.

Shame on the Department of Corrections. Shame on the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Shame on everyone who thinks of prison inmates as animals who deserve torture and abuse to which they were never sentenced.