If you support the death penalty …

I think the DP process should include the family of the victim more than it currently does, as I understand the process. For example, if someone were to harm a loved one, I may chose that the offender be jailed for life as an adequate punishment and a tool toward clossure. If on the other hand I chose the punishment be death, that should be taken into account as well.

In principle I agree with the death penalty. I disagree with its fair application in our society so I officially don't agree with it as a piece of our corrections process. I also disagree with the methods of execution. There is no way McVeigh deserved such a serene death.

You christians run around with your WWJD bracelets. Do you think jesus would pull the switch?

The bible is not a political text, it is a religious text and to intermix the two is a mistake.

What if the "minister of God" is evil? Oh right, that could never happen. [insert obligatory rolled eyes smiley]

And Segroves is what's wrong Christianity is America? Here's hoping you're never in the wrong place at the wrong time without being able to account for your whereabouts.

Easy. Not all Christians subscribe to his stance. Of course, we're not real Christians, so what does it matter what we think or say.

You are remarkably ignorant of EU requirements and US laws to actually state that the US laws are too "monarchy/totalitarian". That's one of the stupidest

Fortunately, we're considerably more advanced in our political thinking in the states.

How do you justify letting murderers out of prison when sometimes they go murder again? You liberals are being dishonest with this "you might make a mistake" argument. Mistakes are likely with any human endeavor.

All you can do with any policy is try your best. We give cops guns, even though they sometimes kill people unjustly. We sometimes put people in prison mistakenly, even though sometimes people get killed in prison. This kind of list is endless, but for some reason, liberals can't put capital punishment in perspective. They're against it, end of story. The arguments are just backfilling.

Dak,

I would agree with you that life is sacred, which is precisely why we shouldn't be taking it. You know, we have alternatives, we have options. The choice is not between capital punishment and letting the murderer go. The choice is between pre-meditated, state-sanctioned killing and incarceration. We can punish the evildoer, we don't have to condone the actions, we can hold the perpetrator accountable for his/her actions. By turning away from the death penalty, we can, to paraphrase one of my favorite lines of scripture, act justly, do mercy, and walk humbly before our Lord. I'll do that before I choose to make myself the agent of God's vengeance.

Hmm, lots o' stuff mentioned in this thread. My short take :

DP - good
Abortion - good
lawn darts - good
helmet laws - bad
cell phone laws - bad
parole - bad
people being buggered against their will - bad




Whoever mentioned the cell phone/drunk driving thing, yes there has been studies (questionable maybe, but some have been done). Result - cell phones similar to .08 intoxication level.

You believe in vengeance... even knowing that by getting it you will hurt people that have done you no harm?

I do, on a personal level. But not in an institutionalized manner. And I would get punished for it... and rightly so.

No, when it comes to death penalty, that is just it. I mean, seriously, what does it bring you? vengeance? c'mon. The Balkans, the middle east and possibly soon some former soviet republics being at war has vengeance as one reason.
Or do you do it to try to prevent somebody from doing crimes? Well, why do Canada and the European countries a way lower crime rate(I know there are some other reasons for that, but I don't think germany's would be lower with a death penalty)?
The Western European prisons offer a better standard of life than the ones u have in the US ( I saw a rapper on MTV Ger saying that he'd commit crimes just to get into a german prison). Still ppl do less crimes here (and yes, we do have minorites over here).
Just think of why Europe abandoned the death penalty? because it is something old-fashioned used by totalitarian systems.

Yes, you voter of religion (abortion/steam cell research, Bush is the more religious leader) and of lies (There are WMDs in Iraq, which could be used by Al Qaeda because hussein and Bin Laden are allies) that you call issues...
Or does a sentence like 'who's not with us is against us' sound like great politics? for me it sounds like Wild Wild West. Ever heard of neutrality?
but let#s not get into that.

Life without parole. And all mistakes but one can be taken back.

I disagree. I have mixed views on capital punishment, but the finality of it is very troubling to me. No, I don't lose sleep over the death of, say Dahmer. But few cases are so cut and dry. And I don't want to make mistakes, because this one can't be taken back.
Your examples of guns/prison are bad, and you know why they're bad too. I'm not saying don't put anyone in jail because we can make a mistake.

There's more to EU membeship than the death penalty.

So what?

That's a remarkably stupid and simplistic answer.

That's too bad.

So only minorities commit crimes?

Death penalty has no logical connection to totalitarianism.

I don't know what you're rambling about,, but it makes no sense. And abortion is as legal here as it is in Germany.

So how did they take back the mistake of letting Willie Horton out on a furlough and letting him go on a kill/rape rampage?

By killing and raping Kitty Dukakis.

Smiley -- again, given that you admit the system is imperfect (that is, we have in fact executed innocent people) but still support it, what in your opinion is an acceptable level of error?

I can't say that I know of any innocent people executed, but I accept that it's a possibility. I accept the level of diligence the legal system uses to find people guilty and I accept the possibility of error in that. Do you want some number, like less than one in a million? Less, and it's ok, and more, it's not? I don't know of any rationale for calculating such a number, do you?

Well, for you it's zero I'll bet, an easy calculation. Lotsa nuance in the liberal position on capital punishment, huh?

There are some things in life that may not require naunce. You know this as well as we do.

That comment was dedicated to any liberal who wrote that they are the only ones who consider the issues in a nuanced way. I don't keep a list of liberals who do that, so you liberals out there will have to decide for yourselves on whether to be annoyed.

This question is easier than you think, but you just wholeheartedly dismiss the constitutional issues at stake. This leaves you comparing capital punishment using the same cost/benefit analysis as you would apply to speed limits, anti-lock brakes, or pollution controls. It's not.

The level of diligence the legal system uses to find people guilty is precisely the question. The Supreme Court has clearly stated that in order to apply the most severe punishment-- capital punishment-- the system owes a heightened level of diligence. The methodology for calculating the number of permissible errors comes in our Constitutional right not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, our right to a jury trial of our peers, our right to avoid self-incrimination, and our right to due process of law.

It is not an irrational leap to conclude that the process that is due is the process that is closest to perfect in its application based on the fact that the punishment that is meted out is as final and irreversible as you can get. In fact, a casual review of Supreme Court cases on capital punishment combined with the standard gripe about people living too long on death row makes it clear that our system recognizes that extreme diligence is constitutionally necessary and appropriate.

Once you grasp that premise, then it is certainly rational and not begging the question to conclude that the due process demands of capital punishment require a standard of perfection that has not been currently met by the justice system. It is also not irrational to conclude that the standard may not be able to be met by the justice system. You're free to disagree and find that due process concerns are adequately met and provide your argument to support that.

Instead, you're so eager to bash "libs" you just don't want to pay attention to logic.

Yes, I should have been more precise - I'm happy with the diligence that is used in Texas. In California, it is probably excessive diligence because we have a backup of 600+ on death row.

You have simply defined "due process" in death cases to require an impossible level of perfection - again, assuming your conclusion. Not irrational, just an obvious use of sophistry to pretend that your foregone conclusion was fairly derived.

OK. If you have no intent of a reasonable discussion, I can be as ridiculously dismissive as you are.

You're only happy with the diligence in Texas because, like all conservatives, you don't care about the Constitution.

But it is nessecary that you don#t have it. Fact, the US would not be in, Bulgaria and Rumania almost certainly are and Turkey is at least getting the points the US does not. From my point o view the uS is just backwards when it comes to that (not in ohter things though off course)

That's making politics without political topics... that happened in post WWI Europe, too... I don#t say the same thing will happen, but still this is ot what democracy was invented for imo and it seems beackwards to me.

Fools and kids tell the truth

For american prisoners, yes.

No, but they bring more problems and the crime rate will be higher in LA than in, let's say, some place in Missouri. You know what I mean.

It is playing god. Even from a religious point of view, only god is to choose whether a life should be taken away or not. What's the difference in locking somebody in for the rest of his life or killing him? And there is/was no totalitarian system that didn't have the death penalty, is/was there?

For how long? And we don't cut the school's budget for those schools deciding to talk to kids about sex (as Bush does). You know what I mean, come on!

The rationale for calculating it is that as a society we're playing God when we carry out the death penalty. The way that you blithely dismiss that issue tells me a lot about your personal morality.

Why does there have to be nuance - so that you can distort it? To the best that I can tell, your number is "go fuck yourself". Lotsa nuance there, too.

So basically, you're saying that the death penalty's "success" should be measured by the number of people killed under it.

Also the quality of the killers getting put down and the caterwauling of the liberals.

If you can't execute people any more, like in California, why pretend and have a phony death row? That's just wasting money. The law should be functional or it's useless. I'm fairly sure that it's dysfunctional because of sophist lawyers like Galt, but I realize that in California I've got to accept such things.