Well, you know how I feel about capital punishment – I’m convinced that killing people is absolutely wrong, and should only be considered in the context of weighing one life against another.

Of course it sounds like a good idea – nobody likes those child-rapists, right? Of course they deserve to die! Rather then arguing that no one deserves death, I’m going to point something else out – not everyone defines ‘child’ and ‘rape’ the same way.

How young is a child? Below 18? Maybe 16? 14? 8? 4? Right off you’re going to have to pick an arbitrary number – what if you pick 15 as the magic number, and then some kid who’s 15-and-four-days gets raped? Is that somehow less worthy of death then the kid who’s 14-and-363-days?

And what’s rape? That should be obvious, but it isn’t – you know why ‘statutory rape’ is considered rape? Not because there’s neccesarily any coercion involved – but because the ‘victim’ is unable to give legal consent to having sex. So does this mean that we can kill a 19-year-old who has safe. consentual sex with his 17-year-old boyfriend? At 17 he’s still a child, and that’s rape – punishable by death?

Extreme examples? Of course they are – but you know that they’re going to happen, and innocent kids are going to get killed. Our justice system is good, but it’s not perfect – and would you trust an imperfect system to sentance criminals to death? Because I sure wouldn’t. I would feel guilty as hell about it. I do actually feel pretty guilty that we still have the death penalty here in the US, and that people would actually try to expand the territory covered by that act of cold-blooded murder.

Mmmm. Well, that’s all the politics i’ve got energy for tonight.