protecting children and violent crime...

boy...americans sure like to kill people...especially if it is meant to show how wrong killing people can be. new mexico is thinking of taking a shot at being within the first wave of states to enact a bill to kill more people by expanding the crimes which are death penalty eligible. somehow this draconian revenge has survived in the united states...and fundamentalist crazy nations...although recently i wonder just which side of the fundamentalist crazy nation the united states falls on. so while the rest of the world becomes more civilized with time...we digress, intent on showing our respect for the sanctity of life through state sanctioned killing. very logical...really.

new mexico wants to join a few other states in making those convicted of a sex crime against a child for a second time eligible for death (when you say it that way, it almost sounds like it is supposed to be a privilege...and perhaps, considering the disgusting manner in which we operate our over-crowded prison system, it is...and for those of you wanting to rain hell on the republicans for this shit, oklahoma was the last state to slip farther into the dark ages...the governor that signed the bill, a democrat...and bill richardson, the fuckhead supposedly running this state - although you wouldn't know it from all the time he spends elsewhere attempting to boost himself for a presidential bid - is in favor of state sanctioned murder). proponents will say this is to show how important our children are to us, and to deter people from raping kids...cause that is going to work.

so we will waste millions of dollars on cases trying to kill someone...see, when you seek the death penalty, you end up with two trials and a hell of a lot more time and effort, and the state foots the bill, usually for both sides. and it gets really, really expensive...stupidly so considering for the most part these people are never going to get out of prison anyways. and we will "protect" our children by putting them through the ringer even more than they would otherwise...not only will they have to testify at trial, but the cross-exam will be hell for them, and then they will have to be involved in the sentencing trial, and then go through decades of appeals. yea...let's protect them by making sure they can't try and move on with their life and heal for at least a good twenty years...brilliant.

not to mention the very real possibility that seeking death for repeat sex offenders may very well have the opposite effect and actually encourage them to do even further harm to the child. dead kids don't speak...and if you know they will seek death anyways, well, you got a better shot if you don't leave a star witness. again, brilliant.

silly me, i always figured the more "civilized" a society became, the less blood thirsty they would be for revenge...although maybe that still holds true...we are just heading back to barbarism...

along those lines...violent crime is up in this country, murders by almost 5 percent according to the latest fbi statistics. looks like our increased penalties and "cracking down" on crime are really paying off. really, look how well longer sentences deter folks from violent crime. look how well placing an obscene proportion of our population behind bars is at getting the crooks off the streets and making them safer for us law-abiding schmucks. yea...this approaching is working fantastically...let's keep it up. at what point to you step back and realize this isn't working for shit and become open to something other than more vengeance? i know, i know...that was a very un-christian and un-american question to ask...may god smite me for questioning the ways of his obviously chosen people...

the bill of rights disintegrates because freedom just gets in the way...