"Even on matters of life & death, Brown is willing to play politics"

Meg Whitman released a statement after Jerry Brown said Wednesday he wants to "resume" state executions.

"Even on matters of life and death, Jerry Brown is willing to play politics. Brown's newfound support for the death penalty after three decades of opposing it is as preposterous as his newfound appreciation for fiscal conservatism. None of this squares with Jerry Brown's record and must have his supporters scratching their heads."

As recently as 2002 Moonbeam was a vocal death penalty opponent.  Or at least he wanted voters to think he was - see video here.

Bill Clinton was right: Jerry Brown reinvents himself every year or two.

New video shows Jerry Brown bragging in 2002 that he "stopped the death penalty" when he was governor

Not surprising for a career politician, Jerry Brown has been all over the map when it comes to the death penalty. A new video shows as late as 2002, Moonbeam was talking like a death penalty opponent.  Via Red County's  jfrankparnell: 

Lately, Jerry Brown has been implying that as governor, he will "uphold the law" in California (whatever that means in Moonbeam's mind), even going so far as to imply he'd support the death penalty.

In this short video clip we have dug up from his run for mayor of Oakland, you can see he said something quite different as recently as 2002!

Jerry actually has the impudence to argue the case that he’s an effective leader, citing evidence that he “stopped the death penalty” as governor. Time for a little history lesson, which apparently Jerry thinks we have all forgotten.

First to the tape: During the Oakland debate he called himself effective because “I not only opposed the death penalty, but as governor I stopped the death penalty. We didn’t have anybody executed when I was governor of California.”

Here is the video: