Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive. Editorial 05/04/01 note: for links to information resources on the new Bush era, go to NewsBoom A TIME TO DIE? Who Do You Execute? And When? And Why? Several hundred people will watch Timothy Mcveigh become a martyr to the wacky right-wing on the morning of May 16th. As hackers chip away at the government encrypted video line like squrrels burrowing for nuts, the families of the dead from Oklahoma City will watch McVeigh make his anti-government farewell and then die. What will he say? Maybe the words of John Wilkes Booth which were emblazoned on the t shirt McVeigh wore the day he murdered men, women, and children--Sic Semper Tyrannus. Or maybe a quote from Tom Paine--The tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots. Or maybe McVeigh could paraphrase himself--Sorry about the kids and the rest of the collateral damage. We are about to make this loser a martyr to every loose screw who believes he doesn't have to pay taxes. Every militia-loving knuckle-dragging nut case from Idaho to Maine who populates the chat boards of freerepublic dot com is busy preparing the silkscreen and offset press to slap the last words underneath Timmy's leering jug-eared portrait. No one deserves to die more than Tim McVeigh. And no one could be a worse candidate for the needle. He should die, slowly, locked away in the basement of the Federal Supermax prison in Colorado, seeing the sun once a week if he's lucky, fading into irrelevance and obscurity as he spends the next several decades alone, rotting away from the inside. Americans overwhelmingly support the death penalty. But McVeigh's execution could change that. Why? Because the execution, unlike the revolution, will be televised. It's more than even money that someone will hack into the transmission line, or smuggle a tiny camera into the Oklahoma City viewing room, or both. An internet porn magnate has already tried to buy the pay-per-view rights for video streaming. Sooner or later, the execution will show up on DVD or cassette or the 'net, the new century's first snuff film, produced by Tim McVeigh, directed by John Ashcroft. Unless we've reached the level of Imperial Roman mobs, cheering as prisoners, animals, and combatants chopped each other into mortadelli on the coleseum floors, we'll be shocked. And shock may give way to revulsion, as we ask if we want to kill people in the name of all of us. The 19 children who died horribly in the Murrah Building rubble cry out for justice. So do the 149 adults who perished. But justice doesn't mean giving America's worst traitor and terrorist a final platform from which to launch himself into the political fringe's Valhalla. McVeigh should die as his victims died. Isolated. And very, very alone. Join the Discussion

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