"Abortions for SOME....miniature American flags for ALL!!"

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"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much."

There is no death penalty in Europe or Canada (I think). Is crime in those places higher than in the US?

Let's play with some criminal psychology here. Two questions:
1. What kind of criminal doesn't believe he/she can get away with it when committing the act?

2. If you believed you can get away with murder, would you care what the law does to murderers, at least enough to refrain from committing the crime?

"Because if you haven't, you've really got no place to judge me."

We're not judging you. We're judging your views.

"I haven't seen you say anything that goes against the Party Line..."

You really could use some lessons in logic. What's your point with this?

"...so I wouln't speak about others doing the same. Again, you're being rather hipocritical."

Um, no. I can demonstrate my views to be correct, because I arrived at them through independent thought. You can't do the same. It's can not be hypocracy when the two events aren't comparable.

"I make no moral judgements against the mother, it is up to her..."

Again, you're good at avoiding questions. Just not good enough. Answer it flat out: do you believe the mother has a right to kill her child, and if so, why?

Secondly, we're not judging the mother. Just her actions. There's a difference.

"It's a fact that the death penalty is much more expensive than life in prison."

I'd like to know why that is, personally. How could a few drugs (or bullets if you live in Utah) and a fraction of a public defender's salary cost more than feeding a man for a couple decades? Let alone paying for the guards, the electrical bill, construction of the prison itself...

JK2:

"I'm sorry. I can't believe what an idiot I am."

Oh, you left yourself wide open there, buddy.

UM:

What's wrong with being repetitive and stubborn? Pseudo-logical and deaf I object to. I object to being called deaf. But I can be repetitive sometimes. Sometimes. There's nothing wrong with being repetitive.

Tora:

"Mr. Thou-Shall-Not-Kill-Applies-Not-To-Murderers Omega."

Which is why I've gone either way on this issue in the past. The simple answer is that it's unequivocably better for society as a whole for some people to be put to death. I don't think I could personally be asked to call where the line is, but there are cases...

TZ2:

"1. What kind of criminal doesn't believe he/she can get away with it when committing the act?"

One who doesn't care whether they get caught or not. Perhaps they intend to end their own life. Perhaps any possible punishment is deemed "worth it". Basically, the vast minority of criminals. Which is probably your point.

"2. If you believed you can get away with murder, would you care what the law does to murderers, at least enough to refrain from committing the crime?"

You're suggesting that stiffer penalties have no effect on crime rates? You're ACTUALLY suggesting that? In contradiction of all statistical evidnece, no less?

But ignoring all precedent, and proceeding on a purely logical basis...

Of course the possible punishment matters to the criminal. It's a simple risk/reward formula. Any intelligent person knows that there's always a chance that they'll get caught. Is it worth spending six months in jail if I had a 5% chance of getting away with $10 mil? Assuming no moral compunctions against stealing, most would say, "Heck, yeah!" Is it worth spending fourty YEARS in prison? Probably not.

Or for a simpler example: how many parking tickets would be handed out if the fine for speeding was $2,000?

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Pilot: You're sure they were Americans, eh?
Fraser: They were all wearing new boots, they were driving a Jeep Wrangler, and they carried big guns.
Pilot: Americans it is.
- "due South"

[Spelling of "repetitive" corrected. Spelling of "repetitive corrected".]

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Equality, Cooperation & Benevolence.

Let's swing this around to the other end here. You're 90 years old. You've had a stroke. A MACHINE is breathing for you. There's negligible brain activity occurring. You are, for all intents & purposes....an eggplant.

Now, in my personal beliefs, simply having functioning organs tain't life, chill'un. Somethin' needs t'be going on upstairs in the way of thought & there needs to be an expressiveness. Last time I checked, one cannot learn or "live" by said definition inside an ovarian Bastille, & I don't think there's much brain activity other than simple regulation going on in the womb...so by my definitions, I would NOT call that "life." Similarly, I don't see being the mental equivalent of a salad as being "alive." There needs t'be something THERE there.

And don't give me any of this "fingers can wiggle, they can move, heart's beating" shit. The heart still beats a short time after death, too.

It costs more to kill someone because of the appeals process. You're not spending $.25 on a .40 caliber round, you're spending millions to bring in a judge, jury, prosecution team, public defender if the defendent can't afford one. Electricity and power to keep the court room lighted.

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Gore/Lieberman 2000
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I'll hug your elephant if you'll kiss my ass.
***
"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating." - George "Dubya" Bush

Same goes for court backlogs.

Law ain't like what you see on TV. these guys can drag a case out for YEARS... especially if guilt isn't really in doubt... better to help the witnesses 'forget' what they saw/heard/did.

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

Spelling corrected. Many thanks. I corrected my spelling of "repetitive." Thank you.

Shik:

"doesn't it come down to how one defines "life?""

THANK YOU! That's EXACTLY what it comes down to. Not the mantras of "a woman can choose" and "it's a private matter", but whether the child is alive or not.

Now let's do this step by step, just so there's no confusion.

Premise 1: Death is the end of life.
Premise 2: The clinical definition of death is the point at which brain activity can no longer be detected.

Conclusion 1: Therefore, the end of life is defined by the absence of detectible brain activity.
Conclusion 2: If the end of life is defined by the end of brain activity, it would seem to follow that life itself is defined by the presence of brain activity.

Since it's possible to detect brain activity in an unborn child at around six weeks, as I recall from the last time we had this argument, it seems logical to conclude that the child is clinically alive starting at that point.

Personally, I think it's alive before that, but I can't clinically proove it, so...

I imagine things will stay a bit more stable and intelligent if we don't debate every moral issue facing America at once. Turning this into a free-for-all will mean locking.

Three points
1) The United Nations has passed motion after motion calling for the elimination of the death penalty. The UDHR calls the right to life an inalienable right (as does the US Constitution, for that matter). I won't even get started with Amnesty International's feelings on the matter. Almost every democracy in the world has banned it. IIRC, the European Union has taken steps to lock a constitutional-style blanket rule into its court systems permanently preventing any member from ever practicing the death penalty. As it stands, you can't get into the EU with capital punishment on the books, which is why the whole Kurdish resistance leader-guy in Turkey thing is stalling their EU application. It would appear that everyone in the world seems to disagree with American opinions on capital punishment. Which isn't to say that American opinions are wrong, but does make you wonder if a country full of redneck guvnors knows more than the collected opinions of some of the most intelligent experts on human rights in the world.

2) Canada has one-eighth the gun-related homicide rate of the US, and yet Canadians are more likely to live in a city over 100k people, IIRC (and, incidentally, we don't all pack those nifty concealed weapons that the NRA trumps as the greatest crime-reducer ever, but we won't go there cuz this is breaking the rule at the top of the post.) Australia, New Zealand and the EU are similarly more peaceful lands, and yet there is no death penalty. It's well-documented that in US states where there is no death penalty, the crime rates are typically lower than those where it is. No, I'll grant that Vermont mightn't be so full of drunken murderous bastards as Texas to start with, but you can't deny that there is essentially no correlation between the death penalty and lowered crime.

3) Again, citing Canada as and example, we've had several high-profile cases lately where guys were tossed in jail for twenty years or more after being convicted of first-degree murder, then subsequently cleared. (David Milgaard, Guy-Paul Morin, etc.) If they had been convicted in the US, and there's absolutely no reason to believe that the US justice system would be more likely to clear them, they;d be dead by now. Canada's justice system is by no means unjust or incapable--its just a fact of life that every court makes mistakes. Now either Bush has hit upon some sort of stash of miracle judges and miracle juries, and has, as he claims, executed no innocent people, or innocent people have been killed by the state and will continue to be killed by the state.

Omega as well as most of the rest of our right-wing contingent here makes much of government becoming oh so powerful and stripping us of our freedom. (Blasted liberal bastards!) The state apparently isn't competent enough to administer education or health care, and that doing so routinely step on the rights of the citizens. Then they turn around and say that the state is competent enough to take away a citizen's right to life.

*shrugs.* If it works for you...

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"...I was just up in Canada, Toronto actually. You know, they really hate you guys [Americans] up there? The funny thing is, they think you hate them back, when in fact, you just couldn't be bothered to care. Now in Ireland, it's a different story. At least we had the common decency to wait until the English invaded before we started hating them. I guess the Canadians are hating you in advance..."
-Irish Comic Ed Byrne on Canada-US relations

"you can't deny that there is essentially no correlation between the death penalty and lowered crime."

Oh, sure I can.

I've seen numbers, you've seen numbers. Whoever can post them first wins, I guess.

"The state apparently isn't competent enough to administer education or health care, and that doing so routinely step on the rights of the citizens. Then they turn around and say that the state is competent enough to take away a citizen's right to life."

Ah, but only when convicted by a jury of his peers, and only in very specific circumstances. There's a big difference between eleven people deciding the fate of one, and one person deciding the fate of a couple million.

11 people, who I've never met before, are given arguments by two people entirely looking after their own wallets, have the right to deceide whether someone lives or dies? I'm just not getting that...

I'll find numbers. The international ones are a decent start, aren't they? The US has by far the highest murder rate among leading democracies, and is the only one with the death penalty. Explain.

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"...I was just up in Canada, Toronto actually. You know, they really hate you guys [Americans] up there? The funny thing is, they think you hate them back, when in fact, you just couldn't be bothered to care. Now in Ireland, it's a different story. At least we had the common decency to wait until the English invaded before we started hating them. I guess the Canadians are hating you in advance..."
-Irish Comic Ed Byrne on Canada-US relations

I don't know how some people can sit in death row SO much longer than other people, but that's kind of inhuman, like legalized torture. Of course, the whole issue is inhuman.

The death-penalty is too severe a sentence to be judged emotionally, too many people are automatically biased...

My two cents.

Shouldn't then, a just punishment always be as equal as possible to the crime committed? That's the fairest way of looking at it...

You rob someone, they get title to your property.
You defraud someone of 6000 dollars, you owe them that back plus 6000.
You break somebody's arm, you get yours broken.
You rape someone... well, they do that to you in prison, anyway.
You beat somebody to death, you suffer the same fate

It's ugly, but it's fair.

Since when does death = life?

As to the abortion issue.. I don't really think the issues are all that separate. I mean, they're both issues about when it should be considered legal, ethical, and moral to kill someone.

I'm in favor of the 'right to die,' in curcumstances where the dying person has willingly and clearheadedly given up their 'right' to live. This is an act intentionaly committed with clear knowledge and acceptance of the consequences.

The death penalty also deals with the consequences of acts that were willfully done. When you willfully commit yourself to a course of action whose consequences include death, you know what you're getting into at the start.

In the abortion issue, however, the person doing the dying has absolutely no say in the matter, isn't even guilty of harming anyone, but can still die at the whim of another? And you stand there and have that gall to tell me that that's MORE moral?

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

That, or Goulags. Mother Russia had many of them, and many criminals were, erm, "given Special treatment".

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Equality, Cooperation & Benevolence.