Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

Bob Nonini, a state senator from Cour d’Alene, Idaho and a candidate for lieutenant governor of that windswept northern land, has come down in favor of the death penalty for women who get abortions.
 
The pro-lifer’s advocation of the death penalty was met with pushback from some people, most notably his wife, who was heard to mutter under her breath, “What a raging asshole,” when Nonini announced his position in an interview with the Christian podcast Cross Politic.
 
Mrs. Nonini knows best, we imagine. However, devotees of the podcast no doubt agreed with Nonini, because a certain subset of Christians believe that the death penalty is a good solution for any people they don’t care for, which, besides women who get abortions, include doctors who give abortions and gay people. The latter two are sometimes killed on a volunteer basis by eager believers, whom Nonini no doubt has some sympathy for.
 
Idaho does have the death penalty, although there are only nine people on death row in that state. Sociologists agree that the reason for the limited number of individuals waiting for lethal injection in Idaho is that there are very few black people there.

​It is not known how many women get abortions every year in Idaho, so how big of a wing they would have to add to the ladies’ prison if Senator Nonini has his way is not known. People are fucking in Idaho for sure, though—there’s not much else to do there except shovel the snow off of your fields so you can watch your potatoes be ruined by hail—so there’s bound to be some abortions as a result, because some people, even notable Christians like the Senator, end up fucking people they shouldn’t be fucking, like immediate family members or other people’s wives. Or else they are too shy to buy condoms.
 
There’s no doubt that the women involved in illicit affairs deserve death, as does every teenage girl impregnated in the back seat of a car with Idaho plates, because they were having wild sex while the good Christians of Idaho were doing God’s work by eating meat loaf off dinner trays while watching Wheel of Fortune.  The question for Senator Nonini has to be, how far of a look-back period is there going to be? If you had an abortion while it was permitted (which, believe it or not, it still is in Idaho) are you going to be executed for it when the legal tide turns? What if you accidentally wander into the state when you meant to go to Iowa instead (people get the two states mixed up all the time) and have an abortion on your medical records? Are you going to swing for it?
 
Probably yes, because if you don’t think all life is sacred, you deserve to be killed. And what about the men who are not complete cads and cheap asses and cough up the money for an abortion when they have been party to a sex act that was a little too spontaneous? Are they going to get the death penalty too?

Probably not.

In this world riddled through with conflict and injustice, the most hated person in it is suddenly a dentist from Minnesota.

Rising far above the competition of cruel dictators, mass murderers, government sanctioned torturers, ISIS, Boko Haram, cop killers, killer cops and all the other evildoers running amuck even as this is being typed is Dr. Walter Palmer, a general dental practitioner from Minneapolis.

Palmer's crime is that he went to Africa and killed a lion named Cecil. Cecil was a popular lion. He had a human name, which many lions don't, and a distinguished mane. He wore a stylish radio color. Apart from that, there was little to distinguish him from other male lions, who generally let their females feed them, sleep up to twenty hours a day and are really only keenly interested in fighting with other males and then killing their cubs afterwards. Most of them have ancestors who dined on Christians.

That's all true, I hear you saying. But there are plenty of human males like that, and while they may not be the most well-regarded members of the population, nobody advocates doing away with them, unless they actually carry out the offspring-killing bit, or do in fact eat Christians.

Plenty of people are advocating killing Dr. Palmer, however, including many people who otherwise regard themselves, and are regarded by their friends, as sweet, kind, loving and generous. His Facebook page filled up with death threats. Already over 100,000 people have signed a White House petition to have him extradited back to Zimbabwe, where the killing took place.

And Zimbabwe wants him. They are seeking that extradition. Nobody who has ever been served papers really enjoys the process, but when you suspect that crisp knock on the door is from someone who wants to haul you back to Zimbabwe for some bush justice, you're damn straight you don't answer.

Why are lions so much more popular than dentists? Make no mistake about it, they are. Otherwise, there would currently be a Broadway hit called "The Dentist King," a medieval hero remembered as "Richard the Endodontist-Hearted," and a beloved classic movie featuring a character known as "The Cowardly Dentist."

You never hear people singing "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the maxillofacial surgeon sleeps tonight," because it doesn't scan and nobody cares.

Nobody likes going to see the dentist, but going to see the lions is regarded as a general good time, because we usually do it at the zoo and cram ourselves full of overpriced junk food while we're doing it.

The question is, why are huge predatory cats that kill mercilessly only when they can't steal food from other animals or snack on a rotting corpse generally regarded as more benevolent than dentists? It's true that lions don't kill people very often, but then, neither do dentists.

The answer is that while people don't often feel they are being preyed on by lions, they often feel that they are being preyed on by dentists, as anyone who has ever had to pay cash for a root canal can attest. "It's going to cost WHAT?" they splutter, spitting the contents of the little sucky tube all over their dental bibs.

And when the dentist replies with something in four figures, they have to repress a strong urge to spring on him from ambush and sink their fangs into his neck. Only the fact that they have such bad teeth no doubt keeps some of them from doing so.

It's a PR problem, as so many things are. Dentists of America, Dr. Palmer is paying for your sins as well as his own. You owe him.

And you can pay him back by letting him hide in your tool shed.

Most couples have simple things in common like taking long walks, going to movies, and enjoying sunsets. But police say Gerald and Alice Uden had one extra thing in common: spousal homicide.

The Udens had been living in rural Missouri since the early 1980s, and neighbors said they were a friendly couple and lived a quiet life. “They’re the kind of neighbors you leaned over the fence and talked about your chickens with,” neighbor Allen Bishop told KSPR-TV. But it turns out they harbored a shocking secret: according to police, the couple killed their ex-spouses and had been hiding out in a remote location for years...from Time Magazine .

What the cops aren't saying about this fun couple is whether they were involved in killing each other's spouses or they just found each other and discovered they had mutual homicidal tendencies. Since the Mrs. sent her then-hubbie to his eternal reward in 1974, and it wasn't until 1980 that the Mr. decided one wife was one too many, it seems likely that each had already dispatched a life partner before they even met and found connubial satisfaction together.

I mean, it's one thing to discover you favor the same TV shows or brand of mouthwash, but to find out that each of you had a soul-rotting secret that would destroy your future together if the cops ever found out—well, that's bedrock for marital bliss. Imagine the Udens, in the rosy glow of their hideaway home in Missouri, where they were eventually arrested after many years of contented cohabitation, discussing their first date:

HE: Well, it's been thirty years now, Snugglebottom. Do you remember when we met?

SHE: Oh, so well, Sweetums. But how fate turns!

HE: If I hadn't had that flat tire...

SHE: I would never have opened my trunk to lend you my jack.

HE: And we wouldn't have discovered that we each carried a bag of quicklime and a sturdy shovel at all times!

SHE: Then the floodgates really opened. We discovered we had so many likes and dislikes in common!

HE: Yes. I remember telling you how much I like people shutting up when I ask them to.

SHE: Yes, and when I said I like walking alone in the woods until I found a remote location with soft, spongy soil, you should have seen the twinkle in your eyes!

HE: And we both disliked the same things, too. Persistent investigators, paper trails, latent DNA evidence...

SHE: Don't forget extradition laws! And corpse dogs!

HE: When I said I hated both good cops and bad cops, you just smiled.

SHE: That's when I knew. (They move closer together. Their lips are almost touching. Suddenly, there is an abrupt knocking at the door)

SHE: (Alarmed) Do you think...?

HE: Naw. Probably just the neighbors wanting to talk about their damn chickens again.