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Friday, September 23, 2011

Daily Kos: Eugene Robinson writes against the death penalty, and I disagree in part

Daily Kos: Eugene Robinson writes against the death penalty, and I disagree in part:

Eugene Robinson writes against the death penalty, and I disagree in part

He begins like this:

The death penalty is a barbaric anachronism, a crude instrument not of justice but of revenge. Most countries banished it long ago. This country should banish it now.

But it is next paragraph that really caught my attention:

The state of Georgia was wrong to execute convicted murderer Troy Anthony Davis as protesters and journalists kept a ghoulish vigil Wednesday night — just as the state of Texas was wrong, hours earlier, to execute racist killer Lawrence Russell Brewer.

For those who don't remember, Robinson reminds us that Brewer was one of those who dragged James Byrd to his death, and then expressed no regret about it.

But the Brewer execution is almost an afterthought to the link of thinking in Robinson's piece, which has the title