One of the world's oldest and largest news agencies, Paris—headquartered AFP, has treated us to a textbook example of journalistic deceptiveness. The last two paragraphs in a story about the execution of Clarence Allen in California read as follows: Polls show that while most Americans still support capital punishment, the margin is dwindling. A survey conducted late last year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed that 62 percent of Americans were in favour of executing convicted murderers, while 30 percent were against. The wording of the story's penultimate paragraph creates the impression of a closely contested issue with opposition to the death penalty gaining momentum. But when you carefully look at the actual numbers, you realize that the American public is in fact overwhelming in favor of capital punishment — by a two—to—one margin. If this were a political race it would be a landslide. In his rout of Walter Mondale in 1984,...(Read Full Post)