Washington - The Bush administration employed frontier imagery to paint a bull's-eye on Osama bin Laden yesterday as President George W. Bush said the elusive Islamic radical was "wanted dead or alive."

As Bush did so, the president's chief spokesman said a long-standing federal ban on political assassination does not limit the government's options to act "in self-defense."
Target: bin Laden: Bush says terrorist is 'wanted dead or alive', Newsday.com, September 18, 2001

I have no timetable in mind...I don't care. Dead or alive, either way. I mean, I -- it doesn't matter to me.
President George W. Bush, U.S. State Department Transcript: Bush Says Bin Laden Videotape "Devastating Declaration of Guilt", 14 December 2001

About 10 hours before he died Monday, Gov. Mel Carnahan remarked to his staff that he was going to be stuck in wet weather all day, including during his evening flight to a New Madrid town meeting. A few hours later, he told a public radio reporter that he'd had a good life.
Donna McGuire, Mel Carnahan's last day was busy one, The Kansas City Star

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Missourians elected a dead man to the Senate on Tuesday, choosing Gov. Mel Carnahan -- who perished three weeks ago in a plane crash -- over Republican incumbent John Ashcroft. Carnahan's widow had agreed to take her husband's place.
Missouri elects dead guy, the-election.com

Ashcroft is a cheerleader for the death penalty at every turn. Bush says that he sees no need for a moratorium on federal executions. He almost certainly would not have granted a federal inmate the six-month stay of execution that Clinton did pending review of gaping racial disparities in those given the federal death penalty.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Ashcroft Poses A Mortal Threat To Civil Rights, San Francisco Chronicle , December 28, 2001

As a senator, John Ashcroft backed a Missouri bill that might make killing an abortion provider justifiable homicide.
Adele M. Stan, License to kill?, salon.com, January 18, 2001