> PS. Given the death, destruction, and suffering that the US armed hordes inflicted on the rest of the world, I find this obsession with death penalty imposed on Americans disingenuous. It is like crying over the roses when the house is on fire. Who gives a shit?
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Attitudes toward the death penalty are indicative of sociopathy in the same way that gratuitous cruelty to animals is. The way GWB mocked Karla Faye Tucker's clemency pleadings says a lot about the kind of president he's been, IMO. Same with Clinton's making a special trip to Arkansas to sign Ricky Ray Rector's death warrant. (Rector was the retarded guy who saved a piece of the pie from his last meal "for later" -- Hitchens wrote a really wonderful, scathing essay on the Rector execution, IIRC).
So I'm with Doug in thinking Obama's attack on the SCOTUS decision is pretty significant. In addition to the argument that death was not a proportional penalty for raping a child, which many Americans disagree with, the majority opinion gave other persuasive rationales for limiting the death penalty to murder: 1) child witnesses are inherently unreliable and so this increases the likelihood of executing the innocent; 2) since it can take the offender many years to be executed, this means that child victims will have to deal with years of dealing with postconviction proceedings; 3) by imposing the same penalty for murder as for rape, this actually encourages child rapists to kill their victims.
Obama could have gotten away with saying that he supports the death penalty for child rapists in theory, but that the practical considerations cited by the majority ultimately favored limiting the death penalty to murderers. I don't think that'd be portrayed as a bunch of mushy liberal crazy talk. Instead, he goes out and says the Supreme Court made the wrong decision. Fuck Obama, and fuck John Nichols for defending him on this.
-WD