tookie or not tookie?

* rudepundit sez that cnn switched over to CNNInternational for the tookie execution. thats bizzare. and btw - many americans seem to have zero idea about how disgusted most of the world is at your behavior.

i didnt mention the tookie thing cos i thought the argument was largely ridiculous. every execution is stupid. it doesnt matter whether it's tookie or the 1000th or the 346th execution. watching fox was generally perverse - it reminded me of the cheering folk on the sidewalk outside scottpetereson's courtroom. but the discussion was perverse on all the other channels as well. and a lot of the lib bloggers seemed to hedge as well... 'i'm not against the dealth penalty per se, but...' - and all this bullshit about whether he admitted the murders, or whether his good deeds blah blah. this from the same people who have no trouble drawing a hardline and saying 'no torture' - its cruel and inhumane and corrupts us all etc etc.

but then they equivocate about the death penalty? jeebus.

i accept that there are crimes worthy of death but i'd still advocate against the death penalty for the most heinous, guilty without doubt, provably-uncoerced confession with a million witnesses - because if we allow that, then we can allow something close to that. and then something else. and before you know it, you've just killed your 1000th person - and i heard some enormous statistic - i must be mistaken - but i thought that i heard there are 30,000 on death row! even if it was only 3,000, its still too many.

some of the major european countries (germany, at least) have a maximum jail sentence of 20 or 25 years. if they can maintain a civil society with those rules, why on earth would america need *verifiably* worse rules?

here's a rule that i suggest the american penal system adopt (on principle - it might have some complications in the real world). give up the death penalty, and give every prisoner a death option. if even they believe that there's no chance of redemption, and they really would be better off dead, then allow assisted suicide ( you might need to prove sanity and/or family consent or whatever). you can even give that option to lifers. i'd hate to think how many suicide attempts there are in jails - lets give them some dignity.

and once we've seen that it can be 'successful' in prisons, then perhaps there can be a debate whether you need to be in jail to die with dignity - and maybe that right could be extended to the general population (again, assuming there are appropriate guidelines).

thats the problem with the christopaths - they know that the naughty will go straight to hell for eternity, thats why they want to murder them - so that they can pay in hell for eternity+40 years. the jeebus folk love their punishment.

but the christopaths hate their assisted suicide. the idea of someone having eternity+3 in heaven is too much for them to handle. its not that they mind the extra 3 days so much (altho that isnt fair), its because most of the true-believers will be too scared on their death bed - because they arent quite sure how vengeful God is, and whether she is really forgiving of a shameful life, hidden under the blanket of propriety. so when it comes to them and theirs, they won't allow suicide because God has her plan and all that - but when it comes to killing a criminal, God's plan apparently goes straight out of the window.

in any case, apparently CNN switched to CNNInternational for the coverage of the tookie murder - a domestic event. thats really quite astonishing. how on earth did that decision get made?

lets hope joe klein has actually become an adult and decided that a (somewhat) more global perspective needs to be introduced into the debate. i did see the bbc about this issue (i always have them on by default) and the presenters were visibly disgusted. disgust is one of the most primal traits - i could see the disgust on the face of the reporters at the idea of the death penalty. the reponse was qualitatively different to the normal (perceived) disdain about the war, or even the latest torture issues.

ftr - i find the beeb the best by a long shot. they do fall down a lot, perhaps inevitably because they at least watch, and therefore mimic, the agenda set by the american cable channels. i cringe every time i hear katty kay or someone else on the beeb saying "War on Terror"