Mark, As a Scottish descendant in the "Texas Colony", I have to admit we do deserve the horrible reputation in capital punishment and the expenditures on prisons now exceeds higher education. It seems that when a people emigrate, they bring with them the worst of the original culture. The French in Canada and Louisiana for instance and the Ulster Scots here in Texas. I imagine only Pennsylvania out does Texas is Scottish surnames, even on a per capita basis. The Ku Klux Klan is an Ulster Scot institution that brings shame all over this land. Our greatest challenge is the prevention of a military coup de e'tat in the United States, and we could see a horrible worldwide holocaust. > treated as traitors, > rather than as > prisoners-of-war. He and most of his Captains were among the last men in > Britain to suffer the dreadful punishment of being hung, cut down just > before they were dead, having their entrails removed while they were alive > and then if they hadn't died with shock or loss of blood, watched as the > axeman put them out of their misery. This was the execution William Wallace > faced 450 years earlier. We weren't that terribly much more civilised almost > half a millennium later!! > > Many places still are not. Many of the less civilized countries still have > the death penalty.