Comments I don't publish . . .

There are a few categories of comments I don't publish. Racist or other hate speech, obviously. Also comments that are factually incorrect, or totally miss the point. The latter seems exceptionally common. Unfortunately, consumers of conservative media frequently come to believe things that are not true, or absorb nonsensical arguments. It is too much trouble for me to put these in the comments and then try to refute them. So let me must make a couple of points.

Yes, the Texas Board of Pardons recommended the pardon of the murderer Daniel Perry, but that doesn't mean it wasn't politically motivated. I didn't just rely on a single source. Here are a few more.

Tayo Bero in The Guardian:

During Perry’s trial, it emerged that in the weeks before he killed Foster, he had shared white-supremacist memes and talked about how he “might have to kill a few people” who were demonstrating outside his house in 2020. He also compared the Black Lives Matter movement to “a zoo full of monkeys that are freaking out flinging their shit”. And days into nationwide protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Perry sent a text message saying: “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”

Perry described shooting Foster as an act of self-defense. Yet according to trial testimony about the day Foster died, Perry had seen the predominantly Black group of protesters gathered across the street from him, ran a red light and drove his car right into the middle of the protest. When Foster – who was legally carrying a firearm but had not, according to some eyewitnesses, threatened Perry – approached Perry’s car, he shot him dead and sped away.

 

Here's the Texas Monthly.  

Inside the Texas Pardons Board’s Unusual Role in Freeing Racist Murderer Daniel Perry

Experts on the workings of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles say it broke sharply from its standard protocol when it recommended a pardon for the killer of a Black Lives Matter protester.   

 

In 2020, Perry had run a red light and driven into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters, when Foster, an Air Force veteran who was in legal possession of a rifle, approached his car. Perry then shot him five times. No witnesses testified that Foster raised his gun at Perry, and, when questioned by the authorities following the shooting, Perry also indicated that Foster never aimed at him. A jury determined Perry was not acting in self-defense and convicted him of murder. But Governor Greg Abbott disagreed, and promised to pardon him.  . . .

Almost from the start, Perry’s case proceeded through the board in an unusual manner. A day after the guilty verdict, in April 2023, Abbott publicly called for Perry’s clemency and announced that he had instructed the board to expedite the review process, even though Texas law states that a full pardon will not be considered for anyone currently in prison except under “exceptional circumstances.” . . .Typically, exceptions apply to cases in which new evidence of innocence is presented. Here, however, what appears to have been exceptional was the pressure from Abbott. Although the governor has the legal authority to request a pardon, Abbott had never done so in his then eight-plus years in office.

 

You'll have to read the whole thing. There's plenty more where these came from.