Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of arson and murder in the 1991 death of his three daughters, who burned to death in their home. The state said that Willingham set the fire to cover up his abuse of the three girls, a two year old, and two one year old twins. His wife said it wasn't possible, and no evidence of abuse was ever uncovered.

Mr. Willingham was executed in 2004.

It now appears that the original investigators made many errors, and that the fire was accidental, as Willingham had contended. You can read the documentation here.

It's bad enough to put an innocent man to death. But his name can be cleared now. In fact, there was an independent investigator hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, and his findings concluded that Willingham was innocent. The Commission was going to hold a hearing based on the new evidence.

Enter Rick Perry, who fired a number of Commission members. From Barry Scheck:

Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project that has helped free dozens of Texans through the use of DNA evidence, likened the governor's move to Richard Nixon's "Saturday night massacre," when he fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal.

The idea is to decimate the commission, which has cancelled the scheduled hearing, take time refilling the positions, and hope that no one ever gets around to exonerating an innocent man. Pretty standard in Rick-land. You may think that there is no direct benefit to Rick Perry to make sure that the guilty verdict is not overturned, even after death. But then you'd be missing the bigger picture.

More and more people have college degrees. The stats I heard recently in the news indicate that about a third of Americans over the age of 25 have college degrees, up from about a fifth a generation ago. The more education people get, the less likely they are to be far-right wingut IIE Republicans. This was NOT the case before the 1950's, when a college education was close-to-exclusively the province of rich white guys. But beginning with the post-WW2 GI bill, education became more accessible. The 1960's saw a great influx of women into universities, a trend that has continued through today.

The "world" that Rick and his ilk cling to tenaciously relies on the denigration of science, and all other forms of higher education. But especially science. People who study science learn how to approach problems, set out theories to be proved or disproved, evaluate evidence and form conclusions. This is in direct opposition to just believing what the government tells you, the party tells you, the church tells you. It doesn't mean you can't believe in government, your political party, or church teachings -- just that you evaluate first, conclude second, and then believe third.

It's hard to keep people who understand science "in line."

It's also difficult to keep educated people in the "old order". For example, a woman with a law degree may decide to stay home and raise children, AS A CHOICE. But no one is going to convince her that obligatory to stay home just because she is a wife first, and anything else after that.

Refusing to exonerate one innocent man may seem a small thing, but it's part of a pattern. And the right needs to be called out not only the big things they do (I'm talking to you Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, John Ensign, et. al.) but also the "little" things they do. The memory of one innocent man matters.