Saying it's time to stop letting convicted killers "get off that easy," a Florida state lawmaker wants to use firing squads or the electric chair for those on death row. 
 
 Rep. Brad Drake filed a bill this week that would end the use of lethal injection in Florida executions. Instead, those with a death sentence would choose between electrocution or a firing squad. 
 
 Drake, a Republican, said the idea came to him after having a conversation with a constituent at a Waffle House over the legal battles associated with the Sept. 28 execution of Manuel Valle. 
 
 Valle's lawyers tried to stop the execution by arguing that a new lethal drug cocktail would cause him pain and therefore constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Courts, however, rejected that argument and let the execution go forward. 
 
 But Drake said the person at the restaurant questioned why death row inmates should even be allowed to die by lethal injection. Drake said he agreed and decided to sponsor the bill that would mandate a switch. The GOP-controlled Florida Legislature will consider the bill during the 2012 session that starts in January. 
 
 He said government is spending too much time listening to advocacy groups and instead should put in place a death sentence that forces convicted murderers to contemplate their fates. 
 
 Lethal injection just allows a person to die in their sleep while a firing squad or electrocution would force death row inmates to think about their punishment "every morning," Drake said. 
 
 "I think if you ask a hundred people, not even talking to criminals, how would you like to die, if you were drowned, if you were shot, and if you say you were put to sleep, 90 percent of some of the people would say I want to be put to sleep," Drake said. "Let's put our pants back on the right way." 
 
 Florida first began using the electric chair in 1924. Before then, most executions were carried out by hanging. 
 
 But the state switched to lethal injection in 2000. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature pushed through the change after several botched electrocutions raised concerns that the state's death penalty would be declared unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court had agreed at the time to hear a challenge to the use of the electric chair. 
 
 Since the state made the switch, a total of 26 people have died by lethal injection, including Valle and serial killers Danny Rolling and Aileen Wuornos. 
 
 Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said Drake's legislation would just cause embarrassment for Florida if it were adopted. 
 
 "Just when you thought that public policy in Florida couldn't get worse, along comes a state rep who develops proposed legislation from what he overhears at the Waffle House," Simon said. "Given all that former members of the Florida Supreme Court and the American Bar Association have said about Florida's broken death penalty system, including the nation's highest number of exonerations, this would be embarrassing _ if our legislature were capable of embarrassment." 
 
 But Drake said that those who caused suffering and grief for families should get their day of reckoning. 
 
 "I just don't think they should be able to get off that easy," he said. ||||| On Wednesday Night’s Countdown on Current, Keith Olbermann named Florida Representative Brad Drake as one of his “Worst Persons In The World” for sponsoring legislation to replace lethal injection as a execution method with electrocution or by firing squad. Drake had said if it was up to him, he would “throw them off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and be done with it.” Olbermann responded, “You first, asshole!” 
 
 Olbermann finished his segment by saying “There it is, America 2011, laws written by sociopaths like Brad Drake inspired by bloodthirsty goobers he met at the Waffle House!” 
 
 Olbermann’s obscenity aired uncensored. The lefty political commentator may have been making a legitimate point that Drake was foolish to base capital punishment laws on conversations he’s had at breakfast fast-food chains, but gratuitously hurling invective at the politician debases our political discourse and makes his entire network look bad. 
 
 MSNBC suspended Mark Halperin for calling President Obama a dick. It seems unlikely Al Gore will punish his flagship star at all for his use of profanity on the air, but viewers of his channel deserve better. 
 
 Watch the segment below via Current: 
 
 Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com ||||| ST. LOUIS (AP) — With lethal-injection drugs in short supply and new questions looming about their effectiveness, lawmakers in some death penalty states are considering bringing back relics of a more gruesome past: firing squads, electrocutions and gas chambers. 
 
 FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Virginia Department of Corrections shows an electric chair which Virginia provides as an alternative to lethal injection. With lethal-injection drugs in... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this May 13, 2011 file photo is the gas chamber at the former Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City that is now a tourist attraction. With lethal-injection drugs in short supply and... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this June 18, 2010, file photo, the firing squad execution chamber at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah, is shown. With lethal-injection drugs in short supply and new questions looming about... (Associated Press) 
 
 Most states abandoned those execution methods more than a generation ago in a bid to make capital punishment more palatable to the public and to a judicial system worried about inflicting cruel and unusual punishments that violate the Constitution. 
 
 But to some elected officials, the drug shortages and recent legal challenges are beginning to make lethal injection seem too vulnerable to complications. 
 
 "This isn't an attempt to time-warp back into the 1850s or the wild, wild West or anything like that," said Missouri state Rep. Rick Brattin, who this month proposed making firing squads an option for executions. "It's just that I foresee a problem, and I'm trying to come up with a solution that will be the most humane yet most economical for our state." 
 
 Brattin, a Republican, said questions about the injection drugs are sure to end up in court, delaying executions and forcing states to examine alternatives. It's not fair, he said, for relatives of murder victims to wait years, even decades, to see justice served while lawmakers and judges debate execution methods. 
 
 Like Brattin, a Wyoming lawmaker this month offered a bill allowing the firing squad. Missouri's attorney general and a state lawmaker have raised the notion of rebuilding the state's gas chamber. And a Virginia lawmaker wants to make electrocution an option if lethal-injection drugs are not available. 
 
 If adopted, those measures could return states to the more harrowing imagery of previous decades, when inmates were hanged, electrocuted or shot to death by marksmen. 
 
 States began moving to lethal injection in the 1980s in the belief that powerful sedatives and heart-stopping drugs would replace the violent spectacles with a more clinical affair while limiting, if not eliminating, an inmate's pain. 
 
 The total number of U.S. executions has declined — from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 39 last year. Some states have turned away from the death penalty entirely. Many have cases tied up in court. And those that carry on with executions find them increasingly difficult to conduct because of the scarcity of drugs and doubts about how well they work. 
 
 European drug makers have stopped selling the lethal chemicals to prisons because they do not want their products used to kill. 
 
 At least two recent executions are also raising concerns about the drugs' effectiveness. Last week, Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die by injection, gasping repeatedly as he lay on a gurney with his mouth opening and closing. And on Jan. 9, Oklahoma inmate Michael Lee Wilson's final words were, "I feel my whole body burning." 
 
 Missouri threw out its three-drug lethal injection procedure after it could no longer obtain the drugs. State officials altered the method in 2012 to use propofol, which was found in the system of pop star Michael Jackson after he died of an overdose in 2009. 
 
 The anti-death penalty European Union threatened to impose export limits on propofol if it were used in an execution, jeopardizing the supply of a common anesthetic needed by hospitals across the nation. In October, Gov. Jay Nixon stayed the execution of serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin and ordered the Missouri Department of Corrections to find a new drug. 
 
 Days later, the state announced it had switched to a form of pentobarbital made by a compounding pharmacy. Like other states, Missouri has refused to divulge where the drug comes from or who makes it. 
 
 Missouri has carried out two executions using pentobarbital — Franklin in November and Allen Nicklasson in December. Neither inmate showed outward signs of suffering, but the secrecy of the process resulted in a lawsuit and a legislative inquiry. 
 
 Michael Campbell, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said some lawmakers simply don't believe convicted murderers deserve any mercy. 
 
 "Many of these politicians are trying to tap into a more populist theme that those who do terrible things deserve to have terrible things happen to them," Campbell said. 
 
 Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., cautioned that there could be a backlash. 
 
 "These ideas would jeopardize the death penalty because, I think, the public reaction would be revulsion, at least from many quarters," Dieter said. 
 
 Some states already provide alternatives to lethal injection. Condemned prisoners may choose the electric chair in eight states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. An inmate named Robert Gleason Jr. was the most recent to die by electrocution, in Virginia in January 2013. 
 
 Missouri and Wyoming allow for gas-chamber executions, and Arizona does if the crime occurred before Nov. 23, 1992, and the inmate chooses that option instead of lethal injection. Missouri no longer has a gas chamber, but Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, and Missouri state Sen. Kurt Schaefer, a Republican, last year suggested possibility rebuilding one. So far, there is no bill to do so. 
 
 Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington state still allow inmates to choose hanging. The last hanging in the U.S. was Billy Bailey in Delaware in 1996. Two prisoners in Washington state have chosen to be hanged since the 1990s — Westley Allan Dodd in 1993 and Charles Rodman Campbell in 1994. 
 
 In recent years, there have been three civilian firing squad executions in the U.S., all in Utah. Gary Gilmore uttered his famous final words, "Let's do it," on Jan. 17, 1977, before his execution, which ended a 10-year unofficial moratorium on the death penalty across the country. 
 
 Convicted killers John Albert Taylor in 1996 and Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010 were also put to death by firing squad. 
 
 Utah is phasing out its use, but the firing squad remains an option there for inmates sentenced prior to May 3, 2004. 
 
 Oklahoma maintains the firing squad as an option, but only if lethal injection and electrocution are deemed unconstitutional. 
 
 In Wyoming, Republican state Sen. Bruce Burns said death by firing squad would be far less expensive than building a gas chamber. Wyoming has only one inmate on death row, 68-year-old convicted killer Dale Wayne Eaton. The state has not executed anyone in 22 years. 
 
 Jackson Miller, a Republican in the Virginia House of Delegates, is sponsoring a bill that would allow for electrocution if lethal injection drugs are not available. 
 
 Miller said he would prefer that the state have easy access to the drugs needed for lethal injections. "But I also believe that the process of the justice system needs to be fulfilled."
– Lethal injection is just such a pleasant way to die. At least according to Florida state Rep. Brad Drake, who wants to put an end to the execution method in the state. He argues that Death Row killers shouldn't be allowed to "get off that easy"; the electric chair would be more appropriate he says—as would a firing squad. Drake this week filed a bill that would put an end to lethal injection and give convicts facing death the choice of the latter two, reports the AP. "I think if you ask a hundred people, not even talking to criminals, how would you like to die, if you were drowned, if you were shot, and if you say you were put to sleep, 90% of some of the people would say I want to be put to sleep," says the Republican, who apparently equates lethal injection with taking a permanent nap. "Let's put our pants back on the right way," Drake urges, adding that his proposed switch would force death row inmates to think about their punishment "every morning." And they'd be getting off easy, because, as reported by the Florida Current, if it were up to Drake, "we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it." Mediaite notes that Keith Olbermann is not a fan of the idea. (Click for another odd political push in Florida.)