McVeigh Wants Execution Broadcast. The official answer — not on your life. Our Puritanism about not allowing public viewing of executions makes further hypocrisy of the claim that capital punishment is a socially acceptable sanction, doesn’t it?

But in McVeigh’s case, I am persistently nagged by the idea that he’s angling for martyrdom in the militia movement. They’ve already got their own national holiday in Patriot’s Day, the anniversary of both the denouement at Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing. Some suggsted that McVeigh’s timing in rejecting further appeals of his death sentence and asking that an execution date be set was an attempt to get put to death on that date as well.