What's cruel & unusual is US.

[kpete]

So what does “cruel and unusual” mean?

I once asked that of a law professor. The Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment, but I figured there had to be some technical definition I, as a layperson, was missing. I mean, from where I sit, it’s pretty “cruel and unusual” to execute someone, but to judge from the 1,392 executions of the last 38 years, that isn’t the case.

Scott Panetti almost became number 1,393 last week ... In a rational place, it would not be news that Panetti was not killed. In a rational place, they would understand that state-sanctioned execution is a relic of frontier barbarism that leaves us all wet with the blood of the damned. In a rational place, they would say there’s something especially repugnant about applying that grisly sanction to the mentally ill, like Panetti.

But Panetti doesn’t live in a rational place. He lives in America. Worse, he lives in Texas.

......we are debating whether to kill a man so addled he tried to subpoena Jesus. And that leads to a conclusion as painful as it is unavoidable:

What’s “cruel and unusual,” is us.



http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article4300843.html

[BlueJazz]

1. America is just probably devolving. I think many people have known this for a long time.

We honor a lot of sociopaths and shun the people who are kind. (arrest old man who feeds homeless?)

Even Rats will try to save another rat when chocolate is IN THE WAY.
We run over other people to save 20 bucks on a TV. (Walmart black Friday)

The 2 women at Publix yesterday didn't know what Fracking was...
A person I was talking to at Sears didn't know what hard water was...

I get the feeling that we are the poor and the very rich and the fairly-well- educated and the stupid as a fox-news-viewer society.

[99Forever]

2. Excellent article. Huge k&r