GAS CHAMBER.

The Oklahoma execution debacle was horrible -- maybe even worse than Jonah Goldberg's mouthfarts on the subject. But it's close. First Goldberg basically said he was okay with torturing Clayton Lockett to death because Lockett's horrific crime merited such treatment. I don't know why he decided to come back and make it worse -- laziness, I suppose; he already had done the research -- but yeesh:

Many of these convicts no doubt deserve worse in the cosmic sense, but it’s not the place of the state to deliver worse. I am strongly for the death penalty but I have no desire to go down the path to medieval forms of execution where we are expected to take pleasure in someone’s final extravagantly choreographed agonies. Moreover, as a political matter, embracing that kind of thing will ultimately undermine the death penalty itself.

If we torture more of these guys to death, we may lose the voters! Oh, and get a load of this:

Of course there’s considerable hypocrisy at work when death penalty opponents do everything they can to block more humane and efficient means of execution — i.e. the old drug cocktail — and then complain that the remaining or new techniques are unconstitutional. You can make the case that the Lockett fiasco was a forced error by opponents of the death penalty.

See what you stupid libtards did? You made us go to the black market for our killin' drugs. What did you want us to do, wait?

But, I should say, I respect many opponents of the death penalty (even if I recoil at some of their tactics).

Goldberg has transformed the pee-dance into a rhetorical form.

Which brings us to the ridiculous claim that the botched execution was cruel and unusual punishment because it was “torture.” I see that Andy beat me to the punch in noting that, as a legal matter, you can’t torture someone by accident.

Holy shit, just when you think nothing could be worse, Goldberg enlists National Review's foremost torture enthusiast, Andrew McCarthy, and his legalistic determination as to how guilty people should feel about this disaster (unsurprisingly, not at all).

Onward:

But let me put it another way: Lockett wasn’t sentenced to a botched execution. He was sentenced to be executed. Think of it this way: Last night a Pensacola jail blew up because of a gas leak. At least two people died. We don’t know yet whether they were inmates. But, let’s assume they were. Moreover let’s assume they were being held for petty crimes. Their deaths would not amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” even though most reasonable people would agree that stealing a candy bar or urinating in public shouldn’t be crimes punishable by death. That’s because the explosion was an accident.

And this is just like the accident that happened while Oklahoma was trying to kill a guy.

Goldberg ends by yelling at Will McAvoy, which is just perfect.

UPDATE. Regarding Goldberg's objection to death penalty opponents' "tactics," mds comments, "Like what? Picketing courthouses while holding up photos of grisly executions? Loudly berating anyone who goes in, even for a traffic violation, as being complicit in murder? Yeah, I could see how a principled conservative might find such behavior offensive."