Gov. Rick Perry testifies that he never lost any sleep over whether or not he, as governor of Texas, presided over the death by execution of a prisoner who was actually innocent. Sounds like he should read the imprisoned conservative media macher Conrad Black’s new book. As the conservative Canadian newspaper editor Jonathan Kay writes in his review essay:

The human drama on display in A Matter of Principle will appeal to all sorts of readers. But conservatives, in particular, have a duty to read it. For it shows that many of the presumptions we make about public policy are shaped by the fact that policy-makers and pundits themselves usually haven’t the slightest personal contact with the criminal-justice system, nor with the human wreckage who fall into it. Indeed, Conrad Black may be the only high-profile Canadian op-ed columnist who has spent even so much as a single night in prison. Yet these are the same writers who often blithely support “tough on crime” policies.

UPDATE: Yow! By far the harshest comment I’ve yet seen criticizing Perry for his death penalty remarks the other night comes from the conservative American Spectator blogger Quin Hillyer, who, by the way, supports the death penalty. I’m not even going to excerpt this one. Read the whole white-hot thing yourself.