By Bob Gaydos

Firing squads? Really? As in line them up and guess who has the real bullet? Blindfolds? A last cigarette? A special viewing section for special guests?

Lost in news of the war (are we still at war?) and the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting, Trump reinstated the use of firing squads as a means of capital punishment in federal crimes. Because of course he did.

The Justice Department, which is currently seeking the death penalty for 44 defendants, is in a mood to speed up executions. It said the melodramatic method would apply to undocumented immigrants who commit murder and those who murder law-enforcement officers.

The Justice Department also recommended reviving the electric chair and the gas chamber as approved methods of execution, but apparently stopped short of calling for the guillotine. Too French perhaps.

And just to cover all bases, the Justice Department reinstated the use of pentobarbital for lethal injections, a protocol that had been halted by the Biden administration due to concerns expressed by human rights groups over pain and suffering. Not Trump’s concerns.

The Biden administration had paused federal executions because of the unavailability of other, less-cruel if you will, lethal injection drugs. Some drug companies had become reluctant to provide alternative drugs because of the complaints about pentobarbital.

Let me pause here to be clear. One measure of a society, in my opinion, is the manner in which it treats the worst among it. People who commit murder would fall into that category. Currently, 27 states authorize the death penalty, while 23 states and Washington, D.C. have abolished it. Even where it is legal, a relatively small number of executions are actually carried out.

And the enduring argument against the death penalty is that the poorest among us, those least able to afford top caliber legal representation, are the most likely to receive the death penalty. People who can afford expensive lawyers tend to escape with their lives. With Trump, they could probably buy their way out of the firing squad.

In any case, whether one approves or disapproves of the death penalty, the firing squad as the means of execution is pure Trump. A dramatic show. A show of domination. A show where Donald can show up to say, “Fire!”

Five states currently authorize the firing squad to carry out capital punishment: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. Not a surprise in the bunch.

The expansion of the methods of execution has been denounced by human rights groups and the pope as an attack on human dignity. Ours, not the guy with the blindfold and cigarette.

 The world in 500 words or less 

By Bob Gaydos

Maybe it’s just me, but…

Alec Baldwin on the set of “Rust.” He says he didn’t know the gun was loaded.

— New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau fined producers of the film, “Rust,” $139,793 — the maximum amount — and issued a stinging criticism of safety failures in connection with the fatal shooting of a cinematographer and wounding of the director during the filming of the movie. Actor/producer Alec Baldwin, who fired the fatal shot, says he was told the gun was safe. He is probably not through with the courts and may rue the day he lost his gig playing Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.

— South Carolina has given the phrase “pick your poison“ a whole new meaning. Unable to procure the drugs to administer lethal injections to Death Row inmates, the state now offers electrocution or firing squad as the available means of meeting your maker. A recent candidate appealed both the sentence and method as cruel and unusual and a court has postponed his date with destiny. There have been only three firing squad executions in the U.S. since 1950, all in the state of Utah. Why is that not surprising?

— The reason South Carolina had to stop using lethal injections for executions is that pharmaceutical companies apparently forbid the sale of their products for that purpose. Wish they showed the same concern for some of their drugs that are killing people who are not on Death Row.

— Prescribing fatal overdoses of fentanyl for 25 seriously ill patients would seem to be taking the doctor-playing-god thing a bit too far. Then again, a jury in Columbus, Ohio, had no problem with it, acquitting Dr. William Husel of murder charges in a trial involving 14 of those deaths. Putting people out of their misery did cost Husel his job when the hospital fired him and 26 other employees who went along with his unorthodox treatment protocol. Why it took several years and so many fentanyl-induced deaths has yet to be answered.

— The judges who selected this year’s winners of the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award got it perfect. Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, was an obvious choice and eminently deserving, but the perfect selection was Rep. Liz Cheney, the only Republican in Congress with the guts, conviction and public name recognition to meaningfully stand up to the Trumpers spreading the stolen election lie and trying to treat the Jan. 6 insurrection as something other than a failed coup attempt. Forcefully defying the powers who can impact your political future takes moral courage, especially for Republicans today. I think JFK would applaud the choice. And, while I don’t share a lot of political views with Cheney or her father, Dick, I believe the former vice president should be proud of his daughter and her stout defense of the truth. Ironic, huh?

rjgaydos@gmail.com