Wherein Pino Shades Purple

I am beginning to feel that I am slightly less red than I thought.  And with the New Year tried to talk myself into coming out.  That resolution is turning out to be harder than I thought.  See, I am convinced that both parties are flawed and am often dismayed that by claiming allegiance to one side or the other locks you into the whole bill of goods of either.  So, with that said, there are several {many} times when I think the right, or at least far right, has it wrong.  And when I am discussing or commenting, I always feel that if I come to defend the more liberal or “Democrat”‘ish view, I will be defending ALL of the policies of the Left.  And somehow that seems worse than letting the Right get a free pass.

Maybe I can try harder and allow my trend toward the Purple shine.

So, without further ado, I wanna say that I think this is good news:

The American Law Institute, the organization that provided the framework for our current capital punishment system, has washed its hands of the whole sorry mess. Abandoning the death penalty was necessary “‘in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.’” In other words, we don’t have a fair system, and we’re not ever gonna get one. Better to stick a fork in it than to keep pretending it will ever be workable.

Now, to be clear.  I firmly and absolutely feel that there are things that members of our tribe can do that should result in death.  When your actions are so egregious that the survival of all of us is risked, you have, in essence, self selected out.  This is not punishment or deterrence.  It’s just you can’t be part of us any longer.

With that said, our current system of laws and courts, as good as it is, simply can not and will not apply the death penalty fairly.  As such, it just can’t be part of us any longer.

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