DC Sniper to be executed tonight

Well, it’s hard for me to think of a good reason to deny a woman an abortion, short of something ridiculous like the death of the fetus setting off a big bomb somewhere ( sort of the pregnancy version of Speed ). But that’s still not “absolute”. Nor is it absolute in the sense of being a law of physics or some such. It’s just that the fetus is a lump of tissue, and the woman is a person and there aren’t many plausible situations where the needs of a lump of tissue override the desires of an actual person.

As for killing people, I’m no pacifist. As I said; my main objection to the death penalty is that I don’t trust the government to kill the right people, and leave the innocents alone.

Yes I am their spokesman.

Well, you sort-of got your wish, he did die in jail.

You just single handedly brought a whole bunch of folks home to Jesus…

I think Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all atheists, so I’m a bit unsure how your premise holds up. For that matter, I seem to recall that Timothy McVeigh claimed to be an atheist…

:stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

Heck, I’m an atheist who doesn’t have a moral problem with the death penalty. My objection is on purely practical grounds.

The claim that Hitler was an atheist has little basis other than the belief that Evil = Atheism, as far as I know.

The Religion of Hitler » Internet Infidels Hitler was far from an atheist and made many public references toward the bible. The bible thumpers are denying one of their own.

I’m an atheist. Uh theres no afterlife right? So theres no pleasure or pain after death, there’s nothing.

So with your highly evolved atheistic sensibilities you think its better to keep him alive and torture him?

IMO, put him down like a sick dog and his troubles and ours will be over with.

And for those who think that we don’t have to kill him because keeping him in prison is effortless, you ever hear of prison guards? You think you’re responsible for his death when the goverment kills but it’s perfectly acceptable to let someone else risk his life imprisoning him. Hypocritical.

Could be wrong about Hitler…I thought he once self identified himself as atheist, but I might be mis-remembering. I was just tweaking gonzo’s nose in any case.

-XT

According to wiki (because I’m bored), here is what they have to say about Hitler’s religious beliefs:

So, as with much of Hitler’s life and beliefs, the only thing one can say with certainty is that the man was a first class loon.

If you say so, gonzo. The assertion doesn’t seem to be supported by the facts, but that has never stopped you before.

-XT

I feel much the same way. Mixed messages, in the extreme.

Besides, it’s 2009. Technology is amazing. This man should’ve been in a small soundproofed, egg-shaped room. Him, with one chair, one that could be moved into a reclining position by controls outside the room. (Egg-shaped room denying him any other place to sit or lay down.) In front of the chair, a large screen TV showing photos of his victims and via loudspeakers, the voices of their family members and loved ones, explicating at length and in detail about what was stolen from them.

On a loop.

Twenty hours a day. Non-continuous hours.

There could be a phone number. Victims’ family members should be able, if they’re inclined, to call that number and add to the recording. Victims’ birthday, the family should be able to call and talk about how it’s another year and their father/brother/son/husband/uncle is still gone, how he’d be X years old today, and so on. And that should be piped into the punishment egg at an especially amplified volume.

An inescapable and constant reminder of what youv’e done. Now that’s fit punishment.

Doesn’t that rather assume that he’s sorry already?

Just imagine the outrage here if someone declared that they’d like to see a woman repeatedly, forcibly raped for the rest of her life.

I tend to get a bit resentful … mrAru and I have to work to get food, shelter, cable and medical care. Theirs may not be fancy, but damn it, we do not live an extravagant life, nor do we in general eat fancy food. Any ‘gourmetness’ comes from the effort to use decent ingredients and cook from scratch instead of from convenience foods.

Why should they break the law, and get supported for years on my tax dollar?

There’s no absolute justice and morality, but the weird thing here is that you think a government can reliably dispense it.

Because we as a society have decided that prison is the solution to just about every social problem; with the result that we have a gigantic prison population.

And if your argument is that they should be forced to work, that just means you are driving down the wages or eliminating the jobs of the law abiding citizens who would otherwise do those jobs.

And if your argument is they should be executed, that’s expensive as well.

Lucky for Susan Smith, the woman who killer her two kids and then blamed a black guy for doing it.

Oh yeah women almost never get the death penalty no matter how vicious or malicious their crimes are.

That’s my peeve with the death penalty is that it is so unfairly applied.

We need to do way instain mother> who killer thier babbys.

I believe the strongest correlation is between killing a stranger and getting the DP. Susan Smith killed her own children, which is an extremely common set of circumstances for women murderers.

Note that the sniper killed strangers.

Regards,
Shodan

This sounds really peculiar to me. I can see arguing that long waits for execution are expensive or inefficient, but arguing that they make capital punishment “almost pointless”?

You object to waiting 20+ years to execute offenders because “the man was a different person then”? In other words, he might now have changed into somebody who wouldn’t commit such crimes, so it no longer seems quite just or appropriate to execute him?

You sound as though you’re saying “We need to hurry up and off these evil murderers before they get a chance to repent and become non-evil former murderers who don’t deserve to be offed!”