For the Record: The Derp Penalty

Everybody else was out saying you wouldn't even have Christianity without capital punishment, and I appreciate that, but doesn't that imply that it's already served its purpose? If Christians don't need to avoid pork or shellfish or sex with women during their periods because their Redeemer has redeemed them from all that, why would they have to put up with executions, of all things? Ilya Repin, Golgotha, 1869, via Varvara. 

Disappointed that young Monsignor Ross Douthat hasn't come out formally to protest against Pope Francis's announcement that the death penalty is "inadmissible", though he has produced a pretty subtle Twitter thread where he wonders if the Pope has gone even further with this than he did when he suggested it might be OK to let divorced people take Communion sometimes, and how dangerous could that be for the future survival of the Holy Mother Church, though he's pretty sure the death penalty issue is less serious than the divorce one—

But the bottom line is that this is another example of how Pope Francis has consistently exposed the tensions in the post-Vatican II conservative position, and pushed the JPII synthesis into intellectual crisis.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) August 2, 2018

—it's one of his technical pieces, written to assure 12 or 13 of his readers that he's really as intellectual as he looks, and he's pretty careful not to have any feelings about it other than your "concerned kitten is concerned" frowny face, and not adjure to anything controversial like having his own beliefs about right and wrong.

But how do you *really* feel about capital punishment?

Linoleum print by Daniel Hodgkinson.

Looks like Mr. LessThanPerfect deleted the tweet, but luckily I made a screen shot:

Looks premeditated to me

Image by LASTOChkin at DeviantArt. Don't know if the styling of the nym should be called capital (majuscule) PUNishment because I don't see the pun.

[Missouri Attorney General] Koster dismissed concerns over the cruelty of reviving the gas chamber in an exchange with The Associated Press, saying, “The premeditated murder of an innocent Missourian is cruel and unusual punishment. The lawful implementation of the death penalty, following a fair and reasoned jury trial, is not.” (via ThinkProgress)

Because no innocent person could ever be executed in Missouri. Except once in a while. Like if they miss a deadline, which shows bad moral character.

And is the gas chamber crueler than Dr. Doerhoff?

The doctor testified anonymously that he is dyslexic. That he sometimes confused names of drugs. That he sometimes gave inconsistent testimony. That the injection protocol was not written down, and that he made changes on his “independent authority.”

And that turns out not to be all. The Post-Dispatch has confirmed the man behind the screen was Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff, 62, of Jefferson City. Two Missouri hospitals won’t allow him to practice within their walls. He has been sued for malpractice more than 20 times, by his own estimate, and was publicly reprimanded in 2003 by the state Board of Healing Arts for failing to disclose malpractice suits to a hospital where he was treating patients. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch via Lethal Injection)

When Osama bin Laden was murdered

Glenn Greenwald righteously denounced a certain ugly-American response to the news--

one of those events which, especially in the immediate aftermath, is not susceptible to reasoned discussion. It’s already a Litmus Test event: all Decent People — by definition — express unadulterated ecstacy [sic] at his death, and all Good Americans chant “USA! USA!” in a celebration of this proof of our national greatness and Goodness (and that of our President)

 --although he may have been mistaken as to how far such vulgar behavior extended among the population (lots of us found reason to stay sober, and for that matter I don't recall Mitch McConnell dancing out by the White House, say,  or any self-described Republicans, though their reasons were certainly different from mine), or how long it was going to last.

Human sacrifice as represented in a label from the reign of Djer, second king of the First Dynasty (ca. 3100 B.C.E.), after which the Egyptians are said to have abandoned the practice

He also added, primly, [jump]