Death to the death penalty

A bit of good news..

The Supreme Court has ended the practice of executing people who were minors when they committed their crimes.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, ending a practice used in 19 states.

Juvenile offenders have been put to death in recent years in just a few other countries, including Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia. All those countries have gone on record as opposing capital punishment for minors.

Naturally, the court split liberal vs. conservative. The conservatives want to continue killing kids, as is done in only the most oppressive regimes in the world.

The four most liberal justices had already gone on record in 2002, calling it "shameful" to execute juvenile killers. Those four, joined by Kennedy, also agreed with Tuesday's decision: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as expected, voted to uphold the executions. They were joined by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

What's even more interesting is the conservative opinion on why it's good to kill kids.

"The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,' he wrote in a 24-page dissent.

"The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards," Scalia wrote.

That really is the dangerous part. Scalia is going to be Chief Justice soon, and here he is saying that the SC should not offer opinion on moral matters. Isn't everything moral at some level?

Scalia is not a dumb person by any means, and here he is usurping the authority of the very body he is part of. The SC's role is to determine if a law violates provisions of the Constitution. Of course that is going to involve moral choices. The Constitution of the United States is a moral document on it's own, and the SC needs to have the balls to protect the rights of minority groups against the bloodlust of the masses.

What if Congress passed a law that lowered the age of eligibility for the death penalty to 5 years old? Scalia would have no issue with that. Pull the kid out of first grade, strap him down, and inject him with chemicals until he is dead.

The real truth, as I pointed out yesterday, is that Conservatives like killing bad guys. They like making them dead in any way possible and hurrying them off to God's judgment. It doesn't matter how old they are. We've bombed children to death in Afghanistan and Iraq. What does it matter if we take some 16 year old kid and execute him?

That is appalling, and finally we have a small success. Lets hope it leads to the complete abolishment of the death penalty. The culture of death in the United States has got to end.