No one is claiming BHO's repudiation of Kennedy v. LA has any "practical effect" -- of course it doesn't. The point is that such a repudiation is indicative of a callous attitude towards the death penalty very similar to the one Clinton demonstrated when he signed Ricky Ray Rector's death warrant. More concretely, BHO's comments on the SCOTUS decision are good evidence that he will probably seize other opportunities to strengthen and/or expand the use of the death penalty during his administration, if such opportunities arise. On top of this, there is the concern that callous attitudes toward the death penalty are strongly correlated with callousness in other policy arenas, as appears to have been the case with at least the last two US presidents.
> Yikes, Barry is really establishing radical feminist creds that would have made Andrea Dworkin proud. Where is the endorsement from Catharine MacKinnon ?
>
> However, Obama didn't just start on this radical feminist line. He sponsored or otherwise played a leading role in passing several laws against violence against women.
Some of the anti-domestic violence laws BHO has sponsored, such as those that ensure job security for domestic violence victims, are obviously good. Some of the more punitive measures I'm not so sure about, although I'll readily defer to someone with empirical evidence showing that tough anti-DV laws are effective.
While the urge to harshly punish those who commit domestic violence is understandable, I worry that the more punitive anti-DV laws are too ham fisted to address a really complicated social problem. There are concerns, for example, that mandatory arrest laws requiring the police to arrest at least one party in a domestic violence call no matter what actually decrease the number of DV calls to the police because victims (rightly or wrongly) often don't want their abuser to be arrested. My guess is that tough anti-DV laws are for liberals what strong anti-drug laws are for conservatives: they make us feel like we're "doing something" about a problem, but end up being ineffective at best or counterproductive at worst.
-WD