"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child"

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Tex

Ah, well this should be good: please identify where in this thread I defined the term "unusual."

Do you still need more time on this, Cali? I'm trying to be generous given your remedial reading skills.

[FMCoug]

I don't have time to read the whole thread so maybe this has been brought up, but shouldn't a critical consideration be that if the punishment for rape is the same as for murder, more rapists will become murderers (no witness to testify)?

If the death penalty is on the table, you might as well do everything you can to ensure you don't get caught.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

Ah, well this should be good: please identify where in this thread I defined the term "unusual."

Oh, right- I forgot that this is the part where Tex pretends he hasn't actually made any arguments on the topic and can't understand why people think he has.

It is a tired act, Tex.

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

Oh, right- I forgot that this is the part where Tex pretends he hasn't actually made any arguments on the topic and can't understand why people think he has.

It is a tired act, Tex.

That's what I thought. You can't do it. Cali distorts and can't back it up, what else is new?

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

That's what I thought. You can't do it. Cali distorts and can't back it up, what else is new?

There is a difference between not being able to do something and realizing the waste of time it would take to do it. You and I both know your arguments, as does everyone else who has read the thread. It won't help you now to pretend anything different.

People know your routine, Tex. Like I said, it is a tired act.

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

There is a difference between not being able to do something and realizing the waste of time it would take to do it. You and I both know your arguments, as does everyone else who has read the thread. It won't help you now to pretend anything different.

People know your routine, Tex. Like I said, it is a tired act.

I can't converse with you. You're simply too dishonest.

Cheers.

[Tex]

Here's a surprising follow-up on this story. It appears Kennedy got some of the facts wrong in his majority opinion, and the minority dissenters missed it too.

Because, as Greenhouse puts it, the factual error went to a "central part of the court’s analysis." It seems that when Justice Kennedy cited just six states that have the death penalty on their books for child rape, he asserted that this penalty did not exist in any federal jurisdiction either. But in 2006 Congress added child rape to the offenses that can earn the death penalty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As Dwight Sullivan, the milblawger, puts it, "“We’re not talking about ancient history."

...

[It] is telling ... that the very recent opinion of the Congress that child rape deserves the death penalty was not only not given any weight. It was not even known to the justices at all.

However, he notes that this doesn't "really" affect the core judgment, because:

The citation of what legislatures have and haven't done is just window dressing for the real ground of decision in these Eighth Amendment "evolving standards of decency" cases—namely, the impulses of the justices themselves. As Justice Kennedy put it, "objective evidence of contemporary values . . . does not end our inquiry. . . . We turn, then, to . . . our own understanding of the Constitution and the rights it secures."

It's hard to know which is less reassuring. When the Court consults "objective evidence of contemporary values," it engages in something other than legal reasoning. When it consults its "own understanding of the Constitution," like as not it is shouting down a well. The echoes that come back will substitute for the authentic Constitution.

In other words: "the Constitution means what we want it to mean."

The New York Times apparently had the story on page 1 today.

http://bench.nationalreview.com/post...FlZTQxOTA4ZGI=

[MikeWaters]

tex, if you were on the supreme court what else would merit the death penalty, and how would you decide?

[Tex]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

tex, if you were on the supreme court what else would merit the death penalty, and how would you decide?

http://cougarguard.com/forum/showpos...&postcount=102

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

http://cougarguard.com/forum/showpos...&postcount=102

Don't you see, Mike? This thread is for Tex to state how stupid other people are for the decisions they have made. At no point in time does Tex feel it is appropriate to take a position on what the right way of making the decision would be, and if he ever does, at no point should his statement actually be construed as an argument supported by Tex.

Tired act.