Lanell Anderson takes to the road early this warm spring morning for a tour of Houston real estate. Perfectly coiffed and smartly turned out in a black pantsuit and a black Lexus, cell phone bleating every few minutes, Anderson is an independent real estate agent — seven closings this month alone. But we are not taking a standard home tour today. As we head north on a high bridge over Buffalo Bayou, the Houston Ship Channel sprawls ahead in all its petrochemical glory. It is this...

No state executes as many people as Texas, and no American governor has put more people to death than the state's current governor, George W. Bush, who on August 3rd will be nominated as the GOP's presidential candidate. Bush has signed off on 135 executions since he took office in 1995, about one death every two weeks. In his first term of four years, seventy-nine people died. By contrast, Bush's predecessor, Ann Richards, approved fifty executions in her term as governor....