Is this a real review, or one of those buy-some-time-until-people-forget-about-it “reviews” a la Holder weighing whether to charge George Zimmerman with a federal crime after he was acquitted in Florida? Given the recent dip in support for the death penalty has fallen, Democrats might feel safe-ish pushing for a moratorium on capital punishment in federal cases circa late 2015 or early 2016, to goose their base a little before the next vote. A studiously fair ‘n balanced review by Eric Holder could be just the pretext they need.

Calling a botched state killing in Oklahoma “deeply troubling,” President Barack Obama said Friday the federal government would review death penalty procedures around the country.

Obama said he’s asked Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct an analysis of how death row criminals are killed after an execution attempt in Oklahoma left an accused murderer writhing and convulsing following a lethal injection…

“Racial bias. Uneven application of the death penalty. Situations in which there were individuals on death row who later on were discovered to have been innocent because of exculpatory evidence – all these I think do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied,” he said.

This retort on Twitter caught my attention:

https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/462272460512301056
https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/462273764852789248

Actually, O didn’t say that he had no opinion on Gosnell last year, he said that he couldn’t comment while the trial was active. Well, the trial’s not active anymore. Has anyone followed up with him on that subject since then? If Holder’s keen on studying how death is meted out in America, the Gosnell slaughterhouse is a fine starting point for an inquiry into the abortion side of it. But that’d be a buy-some-time-until-people-forget-about-it “review” if ever there was one.