Voting no on the death penalty

Dennis York gives good reasons for conservatives to distrust the death penalty.

Nobody has had reason to complain about the court system over the past few decades than conservatives. Almost monthly, some court kicks out an opinion that leaves the public completely perplexed. One needs to look no further than last week, when Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled against the NSA's wiretapping program, forgoing the pesky "legal" grounds and instead launching a partisan attack against the Bush administration. In recent years, courts have inexplicably held the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional and held the appalling McCain-Feingold law to be constitutional. Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her five children in a bathtub, yet her conviction was overturned. Does Roe v. Wade ring a bell?

Yet somehow, when it comes time to kill someone, many conservatives are willing to close their eyes, plug their ears, and invest all their faith in the apparent evenhandedness of the court system. This is just foolish.