-Update 7/3/08 - Andrew McCarthy offers pointed comments.
-Today the Supreme Court nixed the death penalty for those who rape children. 5-4 decision. This excerpt from Judge Samuel Alito's dissent is well worth reading. Louisiana residents are outraged at the decision. The crime (man rapes his 8 year old step daughter) is described here. Andy McCarthy notes Judge Kennedy's contemptible "judicial conclusion" -“Evolving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person[.]” Ed Whelan sums it up well:
Kennedy’s 36 pages of insufferable blather amount to little more than a declaration that the majority doesn’t think that capital punishment is ever a fair penalty for the rape of a child—"no matter," as Justice Alito puts it in his dissent, "how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be."