267 Comments

Trump and Co. should be very careful about state sponsored violence. He pisses enough people off and it might be the awning of a gas station for him and his death row buddies

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"until Congress says otherwise through legislation" ... uh, I don't recall the Constitution being written that way?

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// Heritage Foundation’s creepy-as-fuck plan for the Trump second term //

I know it was written mostly with Trump in mind, but let's be honest. It's their creepy-as-fuck plan for **the next Republican President**, regardless of who that is or when they get into power. They just hope it's Trump, because a) he's already proved himself more than willing to grab all the power for himself he can, and b) he's who they have to work with this cycle. Next cycle, when his dementia is so pronounced that even his most dead-eyed cult members can't ignore it, they'll rewrite it for whoever is the front-runner then.

We're not in a fight with just Trump to save the country. We're in a fight with the White Supremacist/Christian Nationalist majority of the Republican party, and that fight won't be over with this presidential cycle. It'll last until we either have institutions that are hardened enough to stand against the next Trump, or we've completely broken the backs of those two political factions.

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Agreed, the issue is a systemic love of strongman dictators, not the love for this particular strongman dictator.

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Ta, Robyn. Abolish the death penalty. All these prisons are nickel and diming their charges for every penny they can wring from them. Meanwhile, one of their major expenses is death row. Senseless.

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The death penalty was just huge in medieval times, often by grotesque and horrible methods, and "we all know" that violent crime was a lot rarer back then. Feudal lords often had the right of the high justice, the middle and the low. As the archer Aylward says in one of Conan Doyle's novels, "Low justice means that you may fleece him, the middle that you may torture him, and the high that you may slay him."

Oh, those were the days. Appears that Republican legislators would just love to have them back, withal.

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The "Bloody Code" just made England more violent too. If robbing you gets me the death penalty what's the purpose of leaving a witness?

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Another reason to hate Bill Barr. In the last 6 months of the Trump 'Presidency' there were 13 executions in the last 6 months. The fear was that Biden would be legislating to ban them. In particular 5 occurred in the time between the election and the transition of power. Which has always been a tradition of pausing executions during that time. But Xmas ain't Christmas unless some felon gets to die.

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"It’s likely we could end up with a situation where they are at least trying to execute someone every other day."

Did you see what Donald and Bill Barr did in cahoots with that Federal Bureau of Prisons from 2016-2020 ...?

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So much bullshit in that “plan.”

There is no current crime wave. Crime, especially the kind of crime that gets punished by the death penalty, has been going down. Deterrence? Already mentioned in the post. As was the whole doing the defendant a favor thing. Then there’s the bit about bringing up their, oh so ironically, favorite hot button issue; sexual abuse of children. Not only is there nobody on federal death row for that offense, it’s not a crime eligible for the federal death penalty. But they’re happy to throw it out there like a doggy treat for their base. It would be difficult to pack much more disingenuousness into one paragraph, though I’m sure they’ll make the effort in the future.

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𝘌𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴...

You think that'll stop them? Hell, they'll probably bring back the guillotine.

(Which might actually be more humane from the standpoint of the condemned -- i.e., legally murdered -- person.)

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"more humane"

So then they won't bring it back

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If, god forbid, Trump is elected I hope that President Biden has the good sense to commute the sentences of everyone on death row to Life WITH the possibility of parole.

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What would it take to terminate slash obliterate slash erase slash like-it-never-existed the Heritage Foundation? Asking for a friend...

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There was an sf novel by Jack Chalker with a weapon that could rewrite the source code of the universe so that your enemy was not simply dead, but had never existed.

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Putting either Wayne LaPierre or Donald trump in charge ought to do it.

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A nation that is brutish enough to tolerate the death penalty will also tolerate gas chambers.

That's their true motive.

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"It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes — particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children" ... so, Matt Gaetz then?

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Ugh, I was reminded that Stephen Miller exists. Can someone please give that Nazi an ark to open?

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Opening their border plan would probably have the same effect, being it's the one and only extant policy they have to pour all their concentrated evil into:

Secretary of State Ron DeSantis opens the plan, wraiths fly about the room...

Chief of Staff Steven Miller: "IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!!!"

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"It’s authored by Gene Hamilton, vice president of America First Legal..."

And yet, in the very second sentence, he commits one of the right wing's favorite lies:

"...but the current crime wave makes deterrence vital at the federal, state, and local levels..."

Also, what local jurisdiction has the death penalty? Unless you count "death by cop" - which of course, comes before any arrest, trial, or conviction.

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THE CRIME WAVE ITSELF DOES NOT EXIST

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Murders are down an average of -19% across America's biggest 236 cities, not that you'd know by opening up the proverbial paper.

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